The Sewing Ghost

In 1891, John F. Craig bought a handsome home at 609 Columbia Avenue at a sheriff’s sale for the grand total of $7,500.

If he could see it now!

Craig’s summer home, which was built just after the Civil Way, stayed in his family until two of his six children, Susan and Martha, sold it to "outsiders" in the 1950s.

The building served as an apartment house until the bed & breakfast rebirth of Cape May in the 1980s when it became an inn.

In February 1993, Frank and Connie Felicetti opened it as a delightful, restored Victorian B&B.

It is noteworthy for its wrap-around porch, two enclosed sun porches-one in which guests may enjoy the morning sun, the other in which the afternoon sunshines – a library with shelves of vintage volumes, and floor-to-ceiling doors which open to fresh breezes from the sea.

The Felicetti’s introduction to what may be a permanent ghost, er, guest, came early on in their ownership of The John F. Craig House.

Their very first guests were four-women – a mother, her two adult daughters and a grown granddaughter. They checked in to the Craig House for a weekend.

"It was the older woman who came down to us first," Connie recalled. "She was staying in Room 5, the Lucy Johnson Room, which we had named after the Craig family cook.

"It was one of the rooms used by servants in the oldest party of the house.

"She came down and thanked me for sewing a button on her slacks. Well, I said ‘excuse me, but I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about! I didn’t sew a button on your slacks.’

"She said that she had left a needle and thread and button there, but hadn’t gotten around to putting it on. When she went into the room that afternoon, the button had been sewed on."

Connie didn’t sew it on. No one else in the Craig House staff did. The others in the woman’s party said they didn’t, either.

"We decided then," Connie said with a cautious chuckle, "that is must have been Lucy Johnson who did it."

During that first year of operation, the Felicettis were asked several times about the presence of any supernatural activity within the walls of their inn.

One particular woman, a friend of Connie’s, stayed in Room 5, the "Lucy Johnson Room," and casually asked Connie if there were any ghosts floating around the place.

Connie told her of the button incident and other idle talk about spirits there.

"The woman looked at me very seriously," Connie said, "and told me that she had definitely felt a presence up in Room 5."

Another time, a young couple was packing their luggage into the trunk of their car, preparing to leave after a quiet stay at the Craig House.

The woman approached Connie with what was now a somewhat familiar question. Were there any ghosts in the Craig House?

"I told her about Lucy," Connie recalled. "And she started jumping up and down on the driveway. ‘I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT!’ she said.

"Her husband put his hand up to his head and said she hasn’t stopped talking about this all weekend.

"She said her husband didn’t want her to ask me," Connie continued, "but she just had to because she sensed many things and knew there was spirit energy in the house.

"Among other things, one of the most obvious incidents in the night was when a closet door in the Lucy Johnson Room opened on its own."

While Room 5, the Lucy Johnson Room, seems to be the epicenter of the ethereal activity in the Craig House, some less tangible tales have come from guests who have stayed across the hall in Room 4, the Susan Craig Room.

"There was a young woman who came down and told us that she had intended to put a bottle of medicine on an air conditioner to keep it cool overnight.

"She went to bed, and in the middle of the night a dish of potpourri on her night stand fell to the floor. It made enough noise to awaken her.

"The dish hadn’t been near the edge of the table or anything. I had to do a lot of moving to fall over the side.

"Anyway," Connie said, "it woke her up, and when it did, she noticed she had forgotten to place her medicine on the air conditioner."

The woman was seriously convinced that the dish falling for no apparent reason was a sign from something or someone in that room – something or someone who had been looking out for her.

Also in the Susan Craig Room is the strange story of a woman who was sleeping there, was awakened in the night, and saw a little, red-headed girl standing at the end of her bed.

The woman who had that experience is long from the Craig House, and could not be found.

But her story – her tantalizing little story about the ghostly red-headed lass in Room 4-remains indelibly etched in the animals of the John F. Craig House.