The Roxborough Runner
111 West Mermaid Lane, also known as Baleroy Mansion
“I believe that energy cannot be created and cannot be destroyed. If that is your scientific belief, then energy does move into different forms. So then, yeah, why not? I believe in ghosts.” Said Katy Friedland, past neighbor of 111 West Mermaid Lane, also known as Baleroy Mansion: America’s most haunted house.
A quick Google search of some of America’s most paranormal homes will lead you to Chestnut Hill’s Baleroy Mansion. Just three blocks from SCH campus, this stately Georgian mansion is Philadelphia’s paranormal ground zero.
It was first built in 1911 but it was only after 1926 that paranormal occurrences began getting reported when the Easby family bought the home. The family consisted of Major May Stevenson Easby, his wife Henrietta Meade Large Easby, and their two sons, George and Steven Meade Easby. After Henrietta and Mayor May Stevenson Easby’s death in 1969, their son George inherited the house and lived there up until his death in 2005. The house was then put back on the market and sold in 2012.
Numerous Ghost Stories have occurred from 1926 to 2005 in the mansion, while the Meade Easbys resided there, with a few notables as follows:
Steven’s Foreseeing Fountain
The first ghost story reported in Baleroy involved the sons of the 1925 owners. Young boys Steven and George Meade Easby played out in the front yard of Baleroy on that fateful day. The beautiful cascading fountain called to little Steven who became transfixed by it. Encouraging his brother to go towards it, the boys peered into the fountain and saw their reflections, in which Steven’s head turned to a skull while George’s remained normal. Only weeks later, young Steven died of a blood clot in the brain.
The Flying Teapot Incident
George Meade Easby (as mentioned previously) inherited the Baleroy Mansion after both of his parents passed away. Baleroy got a reputation of a house of extravagant parties with costumes and glitz because of how frequently George would host at his haunted mansion. One afternoon, Meade Easby was hosting an afternoon tea. The afternoon was cut short however, when tea pots went flying and exploding. One flew directly into a guest’s head while others simply exploded on sight.
Amanda and Napoleon’s Blue Chair of Death
George Meade Easby kept many antiques, notably, a haunted blue chair said to be owned by Napoleon. After four people died days after sitting in his Blue Chair, he asked a medium to investigate the chair. Turns out that the chair was haunted by a spirit named Amanda who took a liking to it, but Amanda had very little patience for new guests, so she supposedly lured them to take a seat in the chair, only for them to die mysteriously days after.
George loved the house and its hauntings. He played into the ghosts and spirits, with his extravagant gatherings and halloween tours of this house. Meade Easby often held séances and tried to catch photos of the ghosts. Of course, his reputation dwindled the more and more “photos” of ghosts he acquired and tours he hosted. He was viewed by many as crazy or insane because of his beliefs, with some neighbors wanting to stay far away from George and what he thought about the paranormal.
Of course, I was a skeptic of this house and its stories. I spoke with Katy Friedland for her thoughts on the house. “I would say yes,” she answered when asked if she felt any spiritual presence from the house. She also remarked that the house was “frozen in time” with its architecture and overall feeling of the home. However, this wasn’t enough to satisfy the desire to investigate myself, so I visited the house and owners to ask about their experience. The owner, who preferred to remain anonymous, said they never had deadly experiences with the ghosts like Amanda, but did have experiences with harmless spirits, like Steven.
Around the time their son was the similar age as Steven, they saw a small blond boy (who had a striking resemblance to their son) in the laundry room and asked him to come into the kitchen. There was no response, so they raised their voice and asked again. Instead, they got an answer from their son who had been upstairs on the third floor the whole time. Additionally, they mentioned that one night when they saw the same blond boy they thought it was their son wandering the first floor. They went upstairs to question him for being awake so late at night, and found both sons fast asleep, just like when they put them to bed hours earlier.
Inside the house, it seemed like there was both paranormal and “normal” living in the house together. There was probably some peace pact ever since the Easbys completely vacated the house to live together in harmony. Whether it was the antiques or George Meade Easby himself that provoked the ghosts, they seem to have settled with the new owners who haven’t reported any extreme paranormal instances.
The only obvious object to avoid was the blue chair, which had left the house by the time I got there. The Blue Chair of Death,, was auctioned off after the current family moved in, which is probably for the better.
“This winged Chair of Death had reportedly killed at least four people, and then it was sold at auction, and it just exists somewhere out in the world, [at] someone’s house, maybe still killing people, and it wasn’t disclosed. How horrible is that!” said Friedland. Fortunately, Baleroy is now only visited by Steven, whose rare appearances are the only reminders of the supernatural living among us.