Footage Captures Foot Fetish Phantom Haunting New Jersey’s Hotel Somerset

Jersey jokes are bad enough, but how can the Garden State get respect if our ghosts have creepy fetishes?

Over in Somerville, the Hotel Somerset (est. 1748) has had a run of spooky activity, forcing owner Tom McCormick to call in some experts. In the past couple of years, a handful of residents have complained of having their feet tickled in their sleep. Adding insult to injury, the shoes would also be rearranged by morning. No word if any ‘ectoplasm’ was found wiped on dirty, smelly socks. Also the obligatory eerie girl ghost haunting the basement, and orbs!

Orbs caught on video! Holy crap!

The McCormicks called upon local ghost hunting group, Paranormal Diagnostics, and you can check out the details of their investigation over at MyCentralJersey.¹

One thing these Scoobys can’t discern is if these phantoms are new tenants, or century-old mainstays zealously guarding their fetters. I propose the former, based upon the African concepts of sasha and zamani.

Go Sasha! It’s your birthday! Mmm, yeah…

They’re not paranormal porn stars, but two different states of the dead. Sasha are spirits who are still known, and remembered, by the living. For example, your grandpa or Mister Mittens. As long as someone remembers them, these souls will be bound to the world of the living, or stuck in limbo, ’til their memory passes on.

In short, the ‘living’ dead.

On the other hand, zamani are spirits from the distant past who have been rendered abstract as memories. Like George Washington embodying the ideal of never telling a lie, or Marie Antoinette’s life reduced to the apocryphal “Let them eat cake”. Since no one truly remembers these people as they once were, creating passable analogues from historical accounts. The essence of these spirits no longer has agency over our side of the veil, becoming truly dead.

The dead can’t move on, until you move on?

What are your half-baked theories on the afterlife? Write backwards on the mirrors in the Who Forted? men’s room, post ’em on Facebook, at Twitter, or, if you dare, the comments below!

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1. http://www.mycentraljersey.com/article/20140408/NJNEWS10/304080030/Ghost-hunters-investigate-Somerville-s-Hotel-Somerset ↩