Sayreville police investigate old firehouse's hauntings on video. See what they found

The walls of the Sayreville original firehouse and borough hall won’t stop talking.

And why would they? Over more than a century, the circa-1909 building has been a firehouse, police station, jail, classroom, and venue for municipal meetings, government offices and the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary.

With a red brick façade and interior filled with remnants of its varied past, the building has been vacant since 2018 after a pipe broke — and it’s long been rumored to be haunted.

Now, the “Poltergeist Police” have determined — with the use of EMF meters, SLS cameras, a medium and even cat toys — that’s likely to be true.

Lt. James Novak and Charles Teator and Briana Cortez of the Sayreville Police Department were members of the Poltergeist Police in a nearly hour-long YouTube video and ghost investigation of the building that the department posted on Friday, Oct. 13.

“I’m open to the idea that something that I don’t understand happens in the universe, but I’ve always been skeptical,” Novak said. “I’m definitely more of a believer after this investigation.”

It took more than the building’s eerie basement jail cells to convince him. The investigation yielded results like cat toys lighting up from heavy motion, figures picked up on SLS cameras and holding Cortez’s hand, temperature changes corresponding with changing EMF readings, and a medium’s findings — to name just a few.

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“I had goosebumps all over my body,” Novak said of one encounter in the building revealed in the video. “It was a little bit like, ‘Oh man, maybe this is real.’ "

Jane Cope Terzino, recording secretary of the Sayreville Historical Society, thinks so, too.

"There's something there," she said.

Over the summer, other members of the society inspected the building, since it is working with the borough to preserve it. They all "just had a sense that something was there," Terzino said — particularly in the basement jail cells.

"Before the investigation, we had been talking about restoring the jail cells because they look so good," she said. "We're not talking about that now. We don't want to put people through that if there's something down there."

However, the society is still working to preserve the building. It recently submitted a proposal to the borough to establish a committee to discuss ways to bring the building back to life, such as by transforming it into a first responders' museum.

The old borough hall and firehouse was named one of the most endangered places of 2023 by Preservation New Jersey.

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“A lot of people see the building, but no one has been inside it for a long time,” Novak said. “The historical society is trying to come up with a way to repair it and open it to the public, so the video came at a good time to do an investigation and generate interest.”

Haunted borough hall or not, Novak would take a ghost any day over a criminal.

“In my experience, criminals are far scarier,” he said. “I’ve yet to meet a ghost that’s a danger to me.”

Watch: bit.ly/3SgAjgn

Contact: JIntersimone@MyCentralJersey.com

Jenna Intersimone has been a staff member at the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey since 2014, after becoming a blogger-turned-reporter following the creation of her award-winning travel blog. To get unlimited access to her stories about food, drink and fun, please subscribe or activate your digital account today. You can also follow her on Instagram at @seejennaeat and on Twitter at @JIntersimone.

This article originally appeared on MyCentralJersey.com: Sayreville Police deem old firehouse haunted