The Haunting of Conewago Chapel
Turn-of-the Century Ghostbusting in Adams County, PA
In 1903, ghostly apparitions and weird rappings in the historic Conewago Chapel in Adams county, PA, attracted a lot of attention and even some ghostbusters.
Catholic Chapel Built Outside of Philadelphia
In the 18th Century, Father Joseph Greaton had the responsibility of preaching to all of Pennsylvania from St. Joseph’s Chapel in Philadelphia.
He secretly offered Mass from the home of Robert Owings in Conewago as early as 1721. The parish was founded in 1730 and Father William Wappeler built a log chapel in 1741.
“Gateway to Our Faith”
The chapel was enlarged in 1768 and became the headquarters of the Catholic church for Pennsylvania west of the Susquehanna River, western Maryland and the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and was informally noted as the "Gateway to Our Faith."
A stone church was built in 1787 under the direction of then pastor Father Pellentz. It remains the oldest stone church in use in the United States, according to the Harriburg Diocese. However, the Jesuits stopped using it in 1900.
The Ghosts of the Chapel
By 1903, accounts were being made of odd sounds and sights at the chapel, though it was said it had been happening since the early decades of the chapel’s existence. Father Halftermyer found himself having trouble keeping an assistant because of the sounds.
“I have had no personal experience with the apparition. Those who have seen it describe it as a thing of mist, having the outlines of a human form garbed in ecclesiastical robes. The midnight hour is the usual time for its coming, and it has been seen most frequently in the sleeping apartment assigned to the assistant rectors,” Halftermyer said in a newspaper interview.
One report said that one of the assistant rectors said that during the night “unseen fingers, having a temperature of the grave, seized his hair and pulled it vigorously. He started up just in time to see the dim outlines of a priestly figure disappear into mist. To have the cover pulled from their bed while they slept, and to awake to see the apparition dissolving, has been the common experience of all those assistants who occupied the sleeping chambers.”
The Investigation Reveals
An investigation was undertaken in September of 1903 that supposedly explained all of the supernatural activity in the church.
“Scores of bats found a home in the top story of the parish house and made slight but nerve-wracking noises. Pet dogs, scratching for fleas, thumped their legs upon the resounding floors, and this gave rise to the belief of ghosts’ tattoo. The clanking irons and gurgling noises were due to the water pipes leading from a windmill in the valley below the chapel to a tank upon the parish house, the irregular surging of water causing the pipes to shake and rattle,” reported the Emmitsburg Chronicle.
Now how this explains the apparitions is unknown, but the investigation ended the haunting of the Conewago Chapel.
Conewago Chapel
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