Previously: The Beijing Ghost Bus.
Type: HO (Haunted Object).
Period/location of origin: 1910-1912, North Tonowanda, New York. Please note that North Tonowanda is where subject, the allegedly haunted Herschell-Spillman carousel known as Trimper’s Carousel, was built — hence the city’s designation as subject’s location of origin — but not the location to which it is most frequently tied. That location is the Trimper Rides amusement park in Ocean City, Maryland, where subject was installed shortly after the completion of its construction in 1912 and where it still resides as of this writing.
Appearance: Subject appears to be an antique menagerie carousel built by the Herschell-Spillman Company and dating back to the early 20th century. 50 feet in diameter, it features 48 animals — 12 jumping horses, 11 standing horses, and 25 menagerie animals including such options camels, cats, goats, lions, ostriches, and a dragon — along with four chariots, one of which is functionally a rocking chair. All ride vehicles were hand-carved by German artisans. The animals and chariots are spread out in three rows and over two levels.
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The carousel was originally powered by steam engine, but is now electric. The Bill Kromer band organ installed within the carousel once played Wurlitzer 125 rolls; however, it is not currently operational.
Modus operandi: Trimper’s Carousel appears to be haunted by the late Joanne Trimper, who harbored a great love of subject while she was alive. Occasionally, those passing by the carousel, or waiting in line for it, or riding it, or performing maintenance on it, may detect a brief burst of a floral scent. This scent has been identified as “Crystal” or “Cristal,” the name of the perfume favored by Joanne Trimper in life.
The presence of the perfume’s scent is believed to denote the presence of Joanne herself, although it is not known whether there are any particular witnesses to whom she is more likely to appear, or whether there are certain circumstances or situations required to inspire her presence.
Some believe that witnesses are more likely to experience the perfume’s scent if they are riding the horse now known as the “Forever Joanne” horse — a white horse sporting a turquoise sash and beige saddle and festooned with red roses known to have been Joanne’s personal favorite — although there is currently no concrete data comparing the rate of the scent’s presence when witnesses are near or riding this horse versus its rate of appearance in other situations or circumstances.
Containment: Subject is currently contained within a pavilion on the south end of the Ocean City Boardwalk that also houses several other antique rides, including a second carousel built the 1920s by the W. F. Mangels Company. This second carousel, known as the Children’s Carousel, is not, as far as anyone knows, haunted — that distinction is held here only by Trimper’s Carousel.
However, the haunting of subject is, for all intents and purposes, benign. As such, subject may be safely enjoyed by any who wish to experience it.
Additional notes: The Trimper Rides amusement park dates back to the late 19th century. In 1890, Daniel and Margaret Trimper, who had owned and operated a popular bar in Baltimore together called the Silver Dollar Saloon, left the city for the shore; they settled in Ocean City, where they intended to branch out into further arenas of the hospitality business.
And branch out, they did: They began with two hotels located right on the beach — the Eastern Shore and the Sea Bright — and from there, they went on to add an outdoor pavilion, where they hosted events ranging from live theater to boxing matches, a shooting gallery, a roller rink, a movie theater, and more.
By 1900, the Trimpers had branded their boardwalk-based entertainment empire the Windsor Resort, so named for the Windsor Castle-inspired re-theming of the Sea Bright Hotel following reconstruction efforts in the wake of a large and damaging storm. After the addition of the carousel — of subject itself — in 1912, and the building-up of a collection of rides, the amusement park section eventually became known as Trimper’s or Trimper Rides, while the carousel itself earned the name Trimper’s Carousel.
Trimper’s Carousel was constructed by the Herschell-Spillman Company. The titular Herschell was Allan Herschell; after immigrating to the United States from Scotland, Herschell steadily established himself as manufacturing magnate, eventually coming to specialize in carousels and other amusement park rides.
Herschell was involved in the creation and running of a series of manufacturing companies all based in North Tonowanda, New York: First, with his brother George Herschell and James Armitage, who had immigrated from England, there was the Armitage Herschell Company, a brass and iron foundry; then, there was the North Tonawanda Barrel Organ Factory, which he backed financially while Eugene de Kleist took the helm (eventually, this firm was purchased by the better-known Rudolph Wurlitzer Company); then, with his in-laws, there was the Herschell-Spillman Company, which specialized in elaborate carousels; then, after that company split, there was the Allan Herschell Company, which operated in direct competition with the Spillman Engineering Company.
As has been noted, Trimper’s Carousel arose out of the Herschell-Spillman Company era, which was in operation between 1901 and 1915. Referred to as a menagerie carousel, due to its inclusion not just of horses, but also of a variety of other animals both real and imaginary, Trimper’s Carousel began construction around 1910 and was eventually installed at Trimper Rides in 1912. It quickly became a fixture of the amusement park, and has been in operation more or less constantly ever since.
Daniel Trimper operated Trimper Rides for forty years; then, after he passed in 1929, management of the amusement park was passed down to his and Margaret’s children, of which there were many (10, seven of whom survived to adulthood). Successive generations of Trimpers have continued to take on management of the park, making Trimper Rides a true family operation — although these days, it is called Trimper Rides and Amusements, and rather than a small business, it is a multimillion-dollar corporation.
After Daniel Trimper’s passing in 1929, Daniel Trimper, Jr. took the reins, followed by Daniel Trimper III in 1965, and Granville Trimper in 1981. Granville was particularly beloved in Ocean City — and it is his wife, Joanne, who is believed to haunt subject.
Joanne, née Morgan, was originally from Sharptown, Maryland, a town about 45 miles west of Ocean City. She and Granville met during a trip Granville made to the town to deliver a ride from Trimper Rides to the carnival in Sharptown under a lease agreement; the two subsequently married, and Joanne joined the Trimper family business, where she worked until her passing in 1991.
Per family lore, Joanne loved the carousel, and was particularly fond of the previously-described horse now known as the “Forever Joanne” horse. And, according to accounts relayed to Mindie Burgoyne by longtime Trimper Rides and Amusements employees as she researched and reported her 2014 book Haunted Ocean City and Berlin, some believe that Joanne may still come to admire the carousel in spirit all these years later.
Burgoyne writes that an employee who had been at Trimper’s for decades — more than 30 years at the time of the book’s publication — told her about a time a mechanic had gone to the employee to report an unusual, though not unpleasant, scent he had detected while working on the carousel and asked if any new chemicals that hadn’t previously been utilized were now in use around the ride. The employee checked the ride’s various invoices and records to see whether that was the case; it was not. No new chemicals or other scent-releasing agents had been put into use on or near the carousel.
Then, seven months later — during the off-season, notably — a restoration artist came to the employee to report the same instance of an unusual, floral scent. Then, several weeks after that, the employee finally experienced the scent herself — and, curiously, noted that it smelled familiar, but she wasn’t sure how or why.
She figured it out shortly thereafter when she and her granddaughter were testing perfumes at a Boscov’s department store: One of the testers she sprayed was the exact scent she had detected near the carousel. The bottle of the perfume read “Cristal” — and Cristal (or Crystal, as it is sometimes referred to as) was known to be Joanne Trimper’s signature scent.
This researcher has been unable to determine the precise perfume in question; there are many floral perfumes with the name “Cristal” or “Crystal,” and without a brand name to go with it, it is very difficult to narrow the list down. Still: Scent can have powerful connection to memory, and it is not unheard of — indeed, it is actually quite common — for some indications of potential supernatural activity to revolve around scent.
Trimper Rides — now called Trimper Rides and Amusements — remains in operation today; Antoinette Bruno, whose father was Daniel Trimper III, has held the position of president within the corporation since 2020. Trimper’s Carousel, meanwhile, also remains in operation in the same location in which it was installed more than a century ago. It received the National Carousel Association Historic Carousel Award in 1996.
No doubt Joanne Trimper would be proud.
Recommendation: Subject may be safely ridden. Enjoy your ride!
Resources:
1912 Herschell-Spillman Carousel at Atlas Obscura.
Spirit That Haunts Trimper Carousel at Chesapeake Ghosts.
Celebrating 125 Years Of Trimper Rides at Ocean City Today.
2020 A Year Of Transition For Ocean City’s Trimper’s Rides at the Maryland Coast Dispatch.
Trimper’s Rides entry at the National Carousel Association.
Haunted Ocean City And Berlin by Mindie Burgoyne.
Ocean City Oddities by Kristin Helf and Brandon Seidl.
Herschell Carousel Factory Museum.
Allan Herschell Companies at North Tonawanda History.
Video footage of Trimper’s Carousel in action.
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[Photos via Linda Rain 714 (1, 2)/Flickr, available under a CC BY 2.0 Creative Commons license; Bill Price III/Wikipedia, available under a CC BY 3.0 Creative Commons license.]
