Local can’t shake eerie encounters

Gennie Fritz didn’t sleep in her own bedroom for six years.

“When I would go to bed at… Gennie Fritz didn’t sleep in her own bedroom for six years.

“When I would go to bed at night, my bed would shake,” she recalled. Terrified, Fritz, then 11 years old, would only sleep either in her mother’s bedroom or on the couch; the behavior continued until she left for college.

The shaking bed was not the only strange thing that happened to Fritz. She has predicted a plane crash, seen orbs of light dance around her room and seen glimpses of strange shadow figures.

Fritz recounts her experiences of living in two haunted houses, one in Pittsburgh and the other in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on HauntedDiary.com and GhostChatter.com – sister sites that have attracted a massive community of paranormal buffs. About 2,200 people have registered to chat at GhostChatter.com.

“[My mother and I] felt a need to share our experiences, and we wanted a place where other people could go and say, ‘Oh, I am having these things happen to me, too’,” Fritz said.

Until age 18, Fritz lived with her mother and brother in a haunted house in the South Hills, a Pittsburgh suburb. The first paranormal experience she can remember – the plane crash prediction – occurred when she was 4 years old.

“I remember looking outside my bedroom window and seeing a plane crash into what looked like the woods below,” Fritz recalled.

She ran screaming to her mother, but no plane had crashed – until later that evening. HauntedDiary.com has a newspaper clipping about the crash.

Growing up, Fritz had more bizarre experiences. Twinkly-sounding music, “something similar to a melody from a music box,” seemed to come from nowhere. Glowing orbs – which she nicknamed “Tinkerbell” – danced around her bedroom. A shadow figure appeared in front of the family’s Christmas tree. The figure slowly developed arms, then legs, then a torso. Fritz, age 11, hid under a blanket.

After a year at Slippery Rock University, Fritz moved into a duplex in Wilkes-Barre with her boyfriend. The duplex, apparently, was also haunted.

“Jason had experiences there himself, before I came around, so it is not like I brought the ghosts with me,” Fritz said of her boyfriend.

“I personally feel that this side [of the duplex] is occupied by a mild spirit who doesn’t seem to do much,” she said. Lumps of coal that mysteriously appeared in the basement have been mysteriously repositioned. Shadow figures have appeared in an old mirror that previous owners left behind.

In January 2002, Fritz and her mother launched HauntedDiary.com, featuring their personal accounts and perplexing photographs from inside the houses. Ghostchatter.com was launched in spring 2003, when Fritz’s MSNBC-hosted chat room became troublesome.

Fritz chats online when her 12-month-old daughter is napping, though the baby’s grandmother, immobilized by a bad leg, is the main administrator of the site.

About 30 people gathered at the community’s two off-line get-togethers – the first, in July 2003, was at Point View Hotel in Brentwood, Pa., and the second, the following October, was at Larry’s Roadhouse in Brookline, Pa. Both places are supposedly haunted.

“It took researching on our part, because you don’t go up to someone and say, ‘Hey, you got a ghost in that building?'” she said. “We had a tour and got to hear about the history of the buildings.”

The group also used an Ouija board. Some people reported “feeling a presence.”

Fritz is planning a third get-together in Pittsburgh next spring.

“We are planning a haunted bed and breakfast, where people can stay overnight if they want,” she said. “We are anticipating a lot will come to this one – maybe 100, if not more.”

Fritz thinks that the ghosts she has encountered are previous owners of the houses but does not know exactly what they want.

“They might be lost or lonely. I think it depends on the spirit.”

Even though she has a daughter now, Fritz does not mind sharing her home with ghosts, under one condition – “as long as whatever it is isn’t scary.”