To the average passerby, Hoboken may appear to be an innocent little city, but the Halloween season beckons the creepy stories that convey the spirits that reside within it. Be it Arthur’s Tavern, The Brass Rail, or Sybil’s Cave, ghosts of Hoboken’s past get the spotlight once again as their stories are once again brought upon us for this spooky season.
Our first ghostly spirits trace to Arthur’s Tavern — a building approached by the founder of New Jersey Paranormal Research, John Cifarelli, to investigate reports of otherworldly events caught by employees, such as footsteps, lights flickering, doors opening on their own, a clipboard flying off a desk, whispering, and someone’s hair being pulled. Along with his investigation came parapsychologists who joined the search to come away shaken — certain that the women’s bathroom of the Tavern was undoubtedly haunted.
Beyond Arthur’s Tavern, another establishment, The Brass Rail, also appears to be riddled with its own ghostly presences. It is alleged that the building is haunted by a bride and groom who had died there over 100 years ago. As their story goes, there was a wedding held in 1904 that occurred just like any other before the bride tragically tripped on the stairs at the top of the second floor and died after her neck had broken by the end of the fall. In dismay, the husband reportedly drank quite considerably before eventually leaving a suicide note reading, “Now that my wife was taken from me, there is no reason for me to live,” hanging himself after his last drink by the staircase. Nowadays, waiters and waitresses cleaning in the thick of the night report seeing the bride and groom walking down the stairs where they both perished. Cifarelli reports that the owner of the restaurant, at the time of the investigation in 2007, firmly believed in the haunted nature of the building due to photographs and equipment revealing a presence “not of this world.”
Perhaps no other more well-known tragic tale of haunted landmarks exists than that of Mary Rogers, dating back in 1841 when her missing body was discovered washed up on Hoboken shores near Sybil’s cave. Rogers was a 20-year-old who ran a boarding house at the New York City hall located on Nassau Street and worked as a saleswoman in a tobacco shop on Broadway. She was last seen alive by her boyfriend at the time, Daniel Payne, when she had told him that she’d be visiting her aunt uptown — her last recorded moment alive.
Three days later, Roger’s body was found in the Hudson, showing results of strangulation, sexual assault, and blunt force trauma. However, her killer was still unidentified. The story quickly gained immense popularity in the newspapers. Rogers would soon be dubbed the “Beautiful Cigar Girl.” Investigations carried on as her ex-boyfriends and suitors were charged and brought in for questioning. Tourists began flooding into Hoboken to visit Sybil’s cave near where her body had been discovered. Daniel Payne, in particular, was put under immense pressure from the public due to a belief that he was involved with Roger’s murder due to his close relationship with her, being harassed by many individuals under this notion. Facing this newfound stress, coupled with his grief, Payne committed suicide outside the cave by poisoning himself, leaving behind a note that read, “To the World Here I am on the very spot. May God forgive me for my misspent life,” which some took as his confession to the murder (though the case was never officially solved).
The case itself is largely believed to be the inspiration for an at-the-time quite unknown writer Edgar Allen Poe’s with his novel, The Mystery of Marie Roget. Though the story is set on the steps of River Seine, the murder-mystery plot and names seemed to quite significantly reflect the real-life case. Additionally, The Mystery of Marie Roget would be published in Snowden’s Ladies’ Companion across three installments in November 1842, December 1842, and February 1843 — not long after the murder.
All that’s left behind from the extremely bleak event is Sybil’s Cave itself, which was reopened in 2007 after having been closed down in the 1880s due to water quality control. In 2009, the area was excavated and researched by archeological experts who learned more about the site’s interior and determined that the water was not safe to drink, influencing the decision to keep the cave closed to the public with a gate that stands to this day as it remains forever haunted by the “Beautiful Cigar Girl.”
