Regional Chapters
Chapters run orientation, keep local reference files, staff supervised watches, and send finished case material to the National Archive. A chapter's standing describes how much administrative capacity it has. It says nothing whatever about how much gets reported in that region, which is a question we get constantly.
Eastern Pennsylvania / Lehigh Valley
Coordinator: Mara K. Voss, [email protected]. Full field and archive operations, and the primary intake chapter for the Northampton County review currently open. Meets monthly except August.
This is the chapter most new members are routed to, largely because it is the only one with more than two people who can reliably run a watch.
Northwestern New Jersey
Coordinator: Thomas J. Berrick, [email protected]. Utility corridors and roadside drainage, plus cross-river comparison work with Eastern Pennsylvania. Quarterly public meetings, usually in Washington Borough.
Wyoming Valley
Coordinator: Judith A. Pell, [email protected]. Six meetings a year. Working through a substantial backlog of pre-digital case files, which is slow and thankless and which nobody else has volunteered to take on.
Southern Tier New York
Coordinator: Elaine M. Corda, [email protected]. Intake and archive work is active; field watches by assignment only. Currently indexing regional newspapers back to 1901.
Delaware Valley
Coordinator: Neil S. Harrow, [email protected]. Intake remains open. Field status has been provisional since the 2025 training review, which has not concluded. Members in this area who want field work should contact Eastern Pennsylvania in the meantime.
Appalachian Chapter
Coordinator: Russell P. Danner. Boundary-road reports and the long-running job of separating regional folklore from what present-day witnesses actually say. Limited field capacity — in practice this chapter is Mr. Danner and two correspondents.
The chapter address is a post office box; write to the National Archive and we will forward. The danner@ address printed on older materials has not worked since the 2021 mail migration.
Upper Delaware Correspondence Unit
Coordinator: Samuel E. Rusk, [email protected]. No independent field teams. Cross-jurisdiction report matching, reviewed jointly with the neighbouring chapters.
Central Pennsylvania
Last coordinator: Donna R. Milnes. Records are held by the National Archive and new reports from the area are routed to Eastern Pennsylvania. Recharter requires five members and a coordinator willing to hold the files; we have had three members and no coordinator for some years now.
What a chapter can and cannot do
Chapters are administrative units, not independent authorities. They can take reports, run approved training, and hold working copies of case material. Archive numbering, restricted-file custody, public safety notices, and any change to national method stay with the Council.
Chapter boundaries are practical rather than legal and they overlap wherever a drainage basin or a run of reports crosses a state line. If two chapters both think a case is theirs, it goes to whichever one has the witness's telephone number.
Full office list on the Contact page. New members should start with Membership.
Directory last audited September 2026. Contact details are checked between formal audits when somebody notices they have stopped working.