UPDATE: I’m sorry to report that Mr Pitkin won’t be able appear at the Pember. I’ll let you know if he’s able to reschedule.
Join us at the Pember Library Wednesday, August 1, at 6:00 PM as David J. Pitkin discusses New York State legends, folklore and ghost stories. Pitkin tells us he has recently collected a super strange story from Middle Granville, that will be featured in his next (2014) book of NYS Ghosts.
Retired teacher and author David J. Pitkin has sought solutions to mysteries throughout his life. In the 1960s he became fascinated with the workings of the unconscious mind and on the growing evidence for ghosts and hauntings: consciousness surviving body death. Since hearing a ghost (later identified as a suicide from 1940) walking in a haunted barn in 1968, and visiting the “Riley House” in Saratoga Springs, NY, in 1978, he has experienced a number of paranormal phenomena. Over the years, he has collected over 800 folktales of hauntings and apparitions, in the Caribbean, Canada, the U.S., and is now interviewing and investigating haunted houses around the world. Many of these early experiences are detailed in his haunted house books, Ghosts of the Northeast, and his recent works: Haunted Saratoga County, New York State Ghosts, Vol.1 and NY State Ghosts, Vol. 2.
Conducting ghost research for forty years at many reputedly haunted sites in New York State, New England, and Canada, he has become a philosopher lecturing on death, near-death experiences and survival of death. A resident of Chestertown, NY, in the Adirondack Mountains, Pitkin lectures widely on parapsychology and metaphysical themes, including ghost stories from his books on haunted houses. His goal is to enlighten others, but not frighten them.
Following eight years of travel and research, Pitkin published New England Ghostsin 2010. This is a collection of over 135 New England tales gathered in the six states of that area. He is currently working on a third volume of NY State stories, a single volume of stories from Warren County, NY, where he lives (scheduled for publication in autumn of 2012).