Unraveling Rose Red: Piecing together the puzzle of history and “coincidence” in Rose Red.

Hotel Bremen, like Pinafore Lodge, was a very popular resort destination in the late 19th century and early 20th century. It resided on the cool, calm waters of Lake Chincopee in northern New Jersey.

After the last of the local Indians were driven from the area by white industry - primarily ice, cut in large blocks during winter and shipped around the area for storage in ice houses - the beautiful lake was prime for spring, summer, and fall retreats for middle and upper class travelers from around the country.

While one might suggest the brutality of the way the indigenous Indians were driven away could be enough to curse the entire area, their treatment was not entirely without justification. The local Indians sided with the British in the American War of Independence, as part of a confederation led by the Mohawk. They met their fate at the hands of New Jersey militia, and the rest who remained on the lake for several more decades were derided and finally shoved out of the way by the relentless forward momentum of industry. Between the ice businesses, the numerous iron mine operations on the lake’s surrounding mountains, and the growing tourism, there was very little undisrupted land left for the Indians to live on. Eventually their tribe dwindled and was absorbed into the larger Lenni Lenape nation, and descendants are rare. They are all but extinct.

The fact that the Indians, in the late years of the 18th century, brought their demise upon themselves leads me to think that the tragedy I’m about to describe (and its connection to Rose Red) has nothing to do with American Indian lore. It’s merely an interesting footnote to Hotel Bremen’s history, given that Rose Red has its own American Indian story, too.

Built on one of the larger of the two mountains on the eastern shores of Lake Chincopee, Hotel Bremen towered over the landscape like a fortress. Under the nearly dictatorial eye of German owner Bernon Abend, construction began in 1883 and was completed in 1887. By 1890 the Hotel Bremen had defined Lake Chincopee as the place to be for a lakeside getaway.

Of all the forty hotels that sprung up on the sweet shores of Chincopee, the singular attraction most responsible for the surge of tourism at the lake by the turn of the century was Hotel Bremen. Indeed, almost from the day it opened its doors the hotel seemed to draw celebrities, politicians, and international legends like honey draws flies. This boom in high-profile visitors created a boom in everyday folks visiting the grand hotel, filling its 100 private bath suites and 200 shared bath accommodations to capacity. - Johnathan Caine, The Grand Dame of Chincopee

Abend believed God, and perhaps wealth, was in the details. And his meticulous plans paid off. The hotel was built with large terraces to allow patrons to take in the cool, refreshing lake and mountain air. Its dining halls were spacious and airy, brimming with potted plants to bring something of the outdoors inside. The nearly unprecedented 100 waterfront rooms with private bathrooms were always booked with high class clientele. The 200 other rooms with shared bathrooms, 2 baths per hall, were more typical of the time. Staff worked day and night to ensure everything was kept spotlessly clean, so that all visitors would feel as though they had a safe, private space in the hotel to call their own.

Expansive manicured gardens led to the large waterfront, where a private beach and ample changing rooms gave guests an opportunity to thoroughly enjoy a swim. Canoes were available for a modest rental fee, as were fishing poles and tackle. Bait, local herring netted daily by a nearby bait company, was on sale at the beach’s concession stand, which boasted the cheapest bait on Chincopee. As a result, the hotel’s public dock was often sprawling with activity as fishermen stopped for bait and refreshments. A loading dock was reserved only for the steamers that transported passengers and luggage from the local railways. As many as 300 guests could arrive in a single day.

Behind the hotel a second structure, not often photographed but no less magnificent, housed the incredible number of staff required to keep Hotel Bremen a well-oiled machine. And Abend would have it nothing less than perfectly greased. Groundskeepers, handymen, wait staff, cooks, concession workers, life guards, dock workers, housemaids, guest services, front desk staff, medical staff, and concierge staff amassed a total of 300 people. The hotel had a maximum capacity (guests and staff combined) of 1400.

Of course, the hotel was named “Bremen” after Abend’s hometown of Bremen in northwestern Germany. He had come to America to further his considerable fortune in 1875. It only took him 12 years to find his niche and succeed beyond his wildest dreams.

But with a German name and German owner, Hotel Bremen’s charm couldn’t last. Anti-German sentiment stirred in the early years of the 20th century. By 1914 Germany had declared war on Russia and France. U.S. President Wilson immediately stated neutrality, acting on the majority of public opinion at the time. But by 1917 the war in Europe had raged unabated with so little progress that Wilson, frustrated by the lack of resolution, called for a cessation of hostilities on both sides. Some Americans, like John Rimbauer, were making their fortunes from the conflict, as their European business partners and contacts required fuel and other basic necessities to conduct their war. Abend, however, began to see his business decline. The German resistance to Wilson’s pleas for “peace without victory” was taking its toll.

By April of 1917 Wilson asked for a declaration of war. By the end of May a draft began, and America’s embroilment in the first World War was boosted by the first American victory at Cantigny. The writing was on the wall for Abend and his Hotel Bremen, by then fortunate to see as many as 300 total guests at any given time from the summer of 1916 until its demise in August of 1918.

The severe drop in patronage was a direct result of anti-German feeling and propaganda during the war. Abend was said to have considered changing the name of the hotel to something less readily identifiable with Germany, but the damage was already done. He’d amassed his great fortune from the hotel from 1887 to 1912, after which business at first steadily slowed, then took a sharp nose dive. In 1918 Abend was faced with a big decision: sell the hotel, which was no easy task given that its German reputation was already so strongly cemented, or wait it out and inevitably go bankrupt. The cost of running the place was immense and it was eating a growing hole in his wallet with every passing second.

On August 5th, 1918, the hotel had 248 guests and the full compliment of 300 staff on premises. At approximately 1:00am, a fire broke out in the staff quarters, precisely when the majority of Hotel Bremen’s workers were fast asleep. Because of the hotel’s wood construction, which was very common for hotels of the era, the fire quickly spread. Walls, floors, ceilings, curtains, bedclothes - nothing was safe. A small fire turned into an absolute inferno more quickly than anyone could imagine.

The west wing of the staff quarters was completely ablaze by the time the local fire department arrived with its primitive fire-fighting technology at approximately 2:15am. Most of the staff had evacuated and roused the sleeping guests, who too fled their rooms and congregated in the gardens. In addition to the firefighters from the local town - and soon three neighboring towns - guest and staff volunteers lined up stretching as far down as the lake to ferry buckets of water hand over hand to the burning building. They were no match for the blaze. It consumed the staff quarters entirely, and in the process set fire to the rear terraces of the main guest building.

The flames lapped at the ground floor and crawled up the external walls. Penetrating the rooms within, the fire weakened the structure so quickly that by 4:00am the second storey collapsed, bringing with it the third and forth, until nothing was left but a burning pile of rubble. Firefighters and volunteers continued to work well through the morning to extinguish the flames. But in one terrible span of three hours, Hotel Bremen was no more.

It was a miracle that none of the guests were harmed. It was an even bigger miracle that any of the staff escaped alive. However, after multiple head counts were conducted the following afternoon, it was concluded that 32 staff members whose rooms were located at the fire’s epicenter in the staff house’s west wing had perished. 32 souls who stood no chance of survival.

As rubble was cleared and memorial flowers laid out for the deceased, most of whose remains were never found or were too charred to be identified, rumors began to circulate that the fire was no accident, but arson. Traces of coal tar and petroleum discovered near the ruins of the west wing confirmed the suspicions.

But who? Abend, whose worldly fortune was so deeply invested in the failing hotel? Did he stand to gain from insurance? Or was he simply unable to find a way out of his predicament, with sale of the business looking unlikely? If it was Abend, why wouldn’t he wait until the hotel closed its seasonal operations in late October? A skeleton crew of only a few groundskeepers and handymen remained on the property year-round, and off-season they were rewarded for their loyalty with temporary quarters in the main house’s private bath suites. If Abend wanted to put an end to his hotel dream, he could have done it in a far less destructive way.

It was more likely that the arson was conducted by anti-German extremists. As with any time of war, the enemy at home equals the enemy abroad, right or wrong. Abend’s good standing in the community meant nothing to those who saw striking at Hotel Bremen as scoring a victory against the Germans, even as World War I was coming to its conclusion. The culprits, however, were never found.

The woman who recommended Pam Asbury to Joyce Reardon was Lisa Torres, a friend of Joyce’s who’d also known Pam all her life; she was Pam’s (family’s) neighbor. Lisa was a transplant from Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Dutch region to be precise. After the destruction of Hotel Bremen, Bernon Abend sold the land at bottom price and relocated to Pennsylvania, where he could blend more easily into the already-established Germanic population in the Pennsylvania Dutch area. He married and had two sons, the younger of which was the father of Lisa Torres - nee Abend. Lisa Abend became Lisa Torres when she married Galeno Torres in Washington.

There’s no direct blood link between Pam and Hotel Bremen. But had Lisa not brought Pam to Joyce’s attention, Pam would not have been there with the group on the Memorial Day expedition to Rose Red. If not for the hotel’s demise and Abend’s relocation, Pam would be safe and sound as I write this today.

There is little left of Hotel Bremen today - absolutely nothing of the original structure on the site it once occupied; it’s presently a development of assisted living condominiums for wealthy seniors. Some salvaged fixtures like lamps and doorknobs have circulated on the Internet on places like eBay, but the authenticity of these items is dubious, since it was trespassers and treasure hunters who procured the reputed artifacts in the first place. Bernon Abend never signed any certificates of authenticity for such treasures and never collected or sold anything of Hotel Bremen after its demise.

However, the legacy of the 32 dead lives on in local legend. NJ paranormal societies and ghost hunting groups poured over the property endlessly until construction of the assisted living facility began and the property was more closely policed. Photographs of orbs, vortices, shadows, and even full-figured apparitions have reportedly been taken there, particularly between the hours of 1:00am and 4:00am. During these “witching hours” on the Hotel Bremen property infrared video once captured disembodied shadows in motion, but because the investigator was a novice at paranormal studies he didn’t know to try to debunk or authenticate his video. As such, I personally write it off as shadows of branches caught in the dim light of a nearby streetlight. It’s the most likely explanation for what I was shown.

More compelling to me are the tales of the staff of the present assisted living facility on the Hotel Bremen property. One nurse, who wishes to go only by her online moniker “NJDevilNurse”, told the following tale on a forum dedicated to weird happenings in the state of NJ. I’m reprinting this with her permission.

One night I was using the staff toilet on the ground floor of the western block. The staff rooms, which are a locker room, break room and bathroom, are directly against the western wall. I knew the stories of how the fire broke out on the ground floor of the west part of the hotel’s staff house, but I’m not really into ghost stories so I never gave it much thought. Those of you who know my posts here know I’m interested in the really weird things in NJ, like the NJ Devil or albino villages etc. Ghosts are not on my list.

But this night I finished washing my hands and started to hear a sound like voices, but not talking. They were almost screaming in a way that sounded like singing. Wailing, I guess you could say. I thought it was air in the pipes so I turned off the sink and waited a while. The sound went on and I was starting to freak myself out. I left the bathroom and asked another nurse who was taking a coffee break if she heard anything while she was in the break room. She hadn’t, but she did tell me she heard something very similar when she was dispensing medication to patients directly above our staff rooms a few days earlier. The western block has a lot more acute care patients, usually the sick spouses of people who need little or no assistance and live in the north, south, and eastern blocks.

About a month went by before I heard the sound again, but it was very clear. This time I was answering a call from a patient on the third floor on the western side of the building. While I was walking down the hall towards his room I heard it really loudly, and this time I’m sure it wasn’t air in the pipes. It was definitely the sound of people crying and screaming as if all the patients on that side of the block started screaming all at once. I haven’t heard it since but I am now a total believer there is something weird going on at that place. - NJDevilNurse

On another site, a young janitor named Bob tells a tale of a curious sighting, also reprinted with permission:

One night at two AM I was mopping the floor on the third floor in the west building. A nurse spilled juice she was bringing a patient and even though most the patients on that floor can’t get out of bed and wouldn’t slip on it it’s my job to take care of every mess right away. I remember that it was two because I looked at my pager when I got the call to go clean it up and it was two on the dot.

It was like a ghost town upstairs in the third floor hall because everybody was asleep except the two nurses at the nurse’s station at the other end of the hall. It was pretty dark but lights are always kept on dim at night so the nurses can still see to get around. I brought my bucket and mop to the spot and as I got to where the juice was I saw a figure get up like it was crouching down and run really fast around the corner. It was a dark figure almost like a shadow and it scared the crap out of me. It was moving way too fast to be any of the patients and the nurses all wear white uniforms. When I looked down the hallway there was nothing there. I can’t explain it but I know the place is supposed to be haunted because of all the people who died there when it was a hotel so who knows? - Bob

Finally, a construction worker named Will Peterson answered a call I posted on a forum for true “ghost stories” from the Hotel Bremen property. Here’s what Will had to say.

Dear Ms. O’Sullivan

I’m replying to your post asking for ghost stories from Hotel Bremen.

I worked construction on the Phoenix assisted living housing where the hotel used to be for a year in 2005. The property had been abandoned a long time and there was nothing there when we started work but a lot of trash from kids who’d come scare each other there at night. I can’t say I saw anything specific to the hotel because of that, everything old was gone.

But I did have an experience I can’t explain and I believe was an encounter with a ghost.

The western building was the first to go up because it needed to be more sophisticated. It has a lot of medical equipment and had to be built to different specs. So I spent a lot of time on that part of the property where the fire happened in 1918. One day I was pouring some concrete for the ground level when I heard a woman’s voice, and there were no women on our crew. I was surprised and looked up, and about five feet in front of me was a young woman who was really pale. Like I could almost see through her. It was the middle of the day so it wasn’t your typical midnight ghost appearance. Whatever this was happened right before my eyes in plain daylight.

She was medium height, thin, blond with blue eyes. She was wearing a dress that looked like a nightgown, kind of old fashioned. It was pale green and had short sleeves. But the weird thing is that she looked wet, like she’d drowned or something, and I know the people who died there died in a fire. She just stared at me and had this creepy smile on her face. Otherwise I think she would have been pretty at some point. I turned to my buddy who was working a few feet away and had his back to me, and I told him to look. But when I looked back she was gone. I started looking around the area and peered into the brush and nearby trees but didn’t see any sign of her. She would have had to move really fast and silently to run away so quickly and leave no trace.

I don’t know who she was or what she wanted but just thinking about her gives me the creeps. Thankfully I never saw her again, and nobody else on the crew reported seeing her either. Almost everybody was on the lookout for ghosts, because of all the stories. It was like a big joke. So maybe it was my mind playing tricks on me, but she seemed very real.

Good luck with your research.

Will Peterson

Reading Will’s letter sent a few chills up my spine, as well. His description sounded exactly like the description Emery Waterman gave of Pam when he saw her after her disappearance - using his post-cognate skills he said she was drowned in Ellen’s pond, very pale, and wearing a light green summer nightgown. I wouldn’t have made the connection had the Hotel Bremen not been tied, even not through blood, to Pam Asbury. But the more I uncover in my research, the less willing I am to dismiss these kinds of experiences as coincidence. Why Pam would appear to Will on the site of Hotel Bremen (on the other side of the country from Rose Red and on a date totally unconnected to her Memorial Day disappearance) is not something I can explain.

Given time I hope I can answer these kinds of questions, but right now there are still too many pieces of the puzzle to be assembled. One of my top priorities, however, is to try to find any evidence of a more concrete tie between Pam and Hotel Bremen - such as an ancestor who once stayed there. I will follow up if I find anything, and if you have any information, please leave a comment or note in the guestbook.

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