Bats: Like all of New Jersey, Brigantine had a healthy population of vicious greenhead flies that were literally capable of drawing blood with every bite. The Castle, being located near a wild life refuge and being ringed with powerful white lights, would attract clouds of flies from miles around. Following the flies and looking for an easy meal were huge swarms of bats.

"There would be tons of bats and they'd barnstorm the Castle" recalls Eric Princz, a ___ year veteran of the Castle. " In the daytime they'd all go into the {exterior} stucco walls and I'd run around picking them up with a rag and put them in a birdcage. They never actually got into the castle or into the guests hair."

The only animals that were ever a problem were the seagulls who would steal slices of pizza right out of people's hands.

"Used" Caskets:

Eric: "Wanna hear a weird story about the coffins?"

Russ: "Gimmie"

Eric: "Somehow or another we were able to get used coffins, 25 to 30 at a time.

They were filthy and disgusting when we got them…"

Russ: "Used?"

Eric: "Yeah, they had been dug up from somewhere. They smelled, they had crap in them, they had embalming fluid stains. Somewhere they picked up 25 used coffins. This was at the time of the Mansion {the Haunted Mansion at Long Branch}, so they got most of them, but we got some of them. Oh my God were they gross."

Russ: "How the hell do you get used coffins? I thought you meant like a display model or something. These were in the ground?"

Eric: "Oh yeah, these were in the ground. These had rusting lids, and the insides---ugh! They did not have a pleasant smell in them."

Russ: "That's awesome!"

From an anonymous source comes an account of a visit to Brigantine Castle after the Castle had closed its' doors.

"There was no power on in there, and the Castle was all open from being broken into, so we got a big rope and tied it around a casket and began lowering it down of the side between the parapets. It was all dark and there was all this thunder and lightening going on, just like a stereotypical bad B grade horror movie. We dropped it off the North side of the building so no one would see us. Bam!- down onto the pier. We almost went over the parapets with it! The weird thing is that as we were leaving, other people were going in to take stuff! Our car was a little hatchback, and we stuffed it in there and drove off down Brigantine Boulavard with a casket hanging out of the back."

"All over Brigantine Island people have different parts of the Castle."

The Wind: "In the Funeral Parlor, which had a coffin on one side of the room, a coffin on the other side of the room tilted on an angle, it had a little pew against the wall with skeletons in it, and it looked like a mortuary with stained glass windows and the whole bit. So you'd be laying in there, especially during the day when it was slow and you had been out the night before, laying in the coffin, and you could fall asleep, or you'd look up and see the chandelier swinging back and forth. What you didn't realize that it was the building swaying back and forth 6 to 8 inches every time the wind blew. "

The thing with the Castle was that it would leak like crazy. It was all built out of plywood and drywall and caulk. In the winter between the freezing and all the seagull debris the parapets would fill up with water, and then the plywood would leak and drain water down into the Castle. The water would build up in the drywall and big chunks of the ceiling would come down.

"So the first thing each year we would go in, and we'd call it 'surveying the damage' while opening up the Castle. We'd take the big drywall screws off, open up the back door 'cause we'd screw the whole thing shut with big sheets of plywood every year. Then the funky-ass smell would come out and you knew you were back in the Castle. Then it was like, 'let's take a walk through'.

Most of the time it was before the electricity got turned on, because you didn't want to turn the power on in case there were any breaks in the line from the stuff coming down on the inside. So you'd walk through with a flashlight that would of course die about halfway through. It was like this thing, 'who's going to walk first?', walking along like 'squish, squish', with mushrooms growing on the walls, waiting to see if they'd fall through the floor. Nobody ever did."

"Dove gray spray paint and hot glue, that's what kept the Castle together".

The Rat Room: "All the rat room was a dark room cut up like a maze 18 inches wide, and it had rubber hoses through the wall and on the floor were pieces of foam with more hoses sticking up. The whole point was psyching people up to believe that the room was full of rats, and people would just go crazy in there. After people went through into the Rat Room you'd have to hold the door shut because they would try to come back and escape".

From my personal expeditions through the Castle, this is the place where I recall people freaking out the most. Women literally in hysteria, screaming wildly in a tiny pitch black room. For extra effect, my friend and I would kneel down and grab people's legs and yell, "They're all over me!".

The Sacrifice Room: About halfway through the tour and located in the middle of the castle was a chamber known as "The Sacrifice Room". Originally this was a room where a girl would be stabbed and a demon would appear on a large screen that hung from a wall. Over various years the room was home to a Jack the Ripper scene and an Exorcist scene.

"That was the only room where, as far as the Castle actually being haunted, yeah a lot of weird shit happened in there…plus we had a lot of insane people working there, really some people who were mentally unbalanced. They were the best actors. "

"People heard voices when no one would be there, but you'd expect that working in a place like the Castle. There were the shadows, people were always seeing shadows of people walking into the room when no one was there. The hallway would be empty."

Rumor had it that some of the cast who were supposedly actual Satanists would conduct rituals in this room. Being in the center of the Castle, this was also one of the hottest areas to work in. If it was 100 degrees outside it would feel like 150 in the Castle.

"We had to put fans in there, people were bathing in powder. It was disgusting. The worst was the gorilla suit from the years that we would have the gorilla illusion. I mean if it were 100 degrees out it would be 200 in the suit…They only had one gorilla suit and no one would want to put it on after the fat guy had worn it 'cause it stank like sweat so bad."

"On the other hand we also had people who spoke like televangists working there too, which was kind of strange… the place attracted all sorts of weird people. Also trans-sexuals, we had a lot of trans-sexuals working there, post and pre-op."

Actors: Many of those employed at the Castle were real actors.

"Misfits aside, they had real actors from the local colleges because the Castle had speeches all over. They had grunts for pop-outs and little stuff like that, but the rest was theatrical. Everybody's speech was a minute or two long. They could be really creative and do a lot of satire."

Celebrities: "Then we'd get celebrities through, all the time. We got Cher, Billy Crystal, Joan Rivers, Lou Rawls, Cliff Robertson. The actors used to do impressions of the celebrities as they went through. The actor who did Dr. Rat did an impression of Joan Rivers, 'Can we talk? Oh my God…', it was really funny. They all came from Atlantic City. Anyone who played Atlantic City would come through the Castle. They'd give them V.I.P. passes. I still remember scaring Cliff Robertson and his kid. All the fighters too, anyone in sports.

We got Hell's Angels too, but they were always well behaved, really cool."

Cast: The first year had 75 actors, 30-35 per shift. The least they could run with was 15 per shift.

Misc: Eric said that he never had any trouble with the guests but that frightened women would sometimes grab him, accidentally clawing him.

The Tilt Room: "a room with a slanted floor, kind of a foam room, but it did have a stucco wall that was really nasty if you fell into it. "