I spent the holiday back home in South Carolina, and then drove up to New York on January 2, 2007. Serg was from Queens, so it was a short drive for him. Eilfie took a bus from State College, Heather from Altoona. Katrina didn’t make the first case, but later trained in from Philly.
The night prior to the first shoot, we stayed in Queens near the first client’s house, and had to get our asses out of bed at 6:00 A.M. to pick Heather up at Grand Central Station. We’d be seen reassembling there, and then hold the briefing in the café. Paranormal investigators are night owls, so for all of us, it was an unheard-of hour. Once we got there, the crew had trouble setting up. Worse, I was recovering from a bug and still feeling pretty sick, so I passed out on a bench.
The case itself would prove interesting, frustrating, and ultimately disheartening. It involved something we’d yet to explore deeply on the show: electronic voice phenomena, or EVPs.
Our client, an older woman named Carol Anne Crowley, lived in a beach house in Rockaway with her husband, Brian. They both claimed to hear bumps, footsteps, and voices. What made this different was the fact that Carol Anne told us she’d spent time researching the paranormal, found out about EVPs, and had produced a huge number of recordings of what she was convinced were spirit voices. She also told us she’d been experiencing bouts of depression that she blamed on the spirits.
My original goals were to investigate the house and the recordings, and if the phenomena seemed real, to try to resolve the haunting. But things wound up taking some surprising turns.
We were initially worried that Carol Anne was being victimized by the spirit(s). Just as in life people can have roommates or spouses who latch on and become draining and exhausting, in death it’s possible for spirits to attach themselves the same way. Deliberately or not, spirits can affect the emotional and psychological state of the living in a sort of parasitic relationship. This intense spiritual attachment is almost never a good thing—I’ve yet to come across a situation where it is. Here, Carol Anne claimed that a woman who died in her house committed suicide. Now Carol Anne was depressed. Could it be that this spirit was now oppressing Carol Anne?
After we arrived, more of the story came out in our interviews. Carol Anne and Brian had moved into the house ten years ago. It was a very nice place in a really cool neighborhood. Retired, they said they were enjoying an active social life. In the basement, they had a finished club room with a pool table and bar. A sliding door opened out to their backyard, where there was a great view of the Manhattan skyline. They had a hot tub and grill, and a short walk to the dock where their boat was moored. Their friends were all neighbors, so they’d pull their boats together and hang out.
Apparently they were really enjoying life, until Carol Anne’s involvement with spirits came into the picture. “My grandkids don’t want to come here, so whatever’s here, I’d like to clear it up and have it gone,” she told me.
She also said the activity began within weeks of their moving in. There were noises in the hall. When her granddaughter stayed over with a friend one night, the friend said she’d heard someone walking up the stairs. Carol Anne heard breathing in her room, and voices.
According to Brian, they’d been living there about two years when a friend of his from the yacht club asked if he knew there’d been a suicide on their property. According to the friend, someone named Mary had hung herself in the garage. A neighbor told Brian that apparently, Mary’s husband opened the door and found her. The neighbor heard the scream, went out to look, and saw Mary hanging.
Brian didn’t mention the death to Carol Anne at first, but she said that once she found out, “We started asking around and people said, oh, yeah, someone really did hang themselves in your garage.”
Carol Anne told us that she’d gone to a psychic. While she claimed she didn’t tell this psychic anything in advance, when we later had our own psychic walk-through, Carol Anne added her own details to what the psychic said. It’s possible the original psychic was hitting well, but based on what I saw, it was also possible Carol Anne provided a lot of the information herself. She seemed really eager to believe.
My understanding is that the psychic also suggested Carol Anne help Mary’s spirit move on. In my experience, that’s a big task, and it raises your sense of self-importance. You start to feel if you don’t help this poor person no one will.
Either way, it seemed these experiences fueled her interest. Carol Anne told us that after that, she began going to more psychics, did more and more Internet research and joined online groups. About two years prior to our investigation, she said she learned about EVPs as a way to communicate with spirits and got into that very heavily.
Carol Anne told us that although she was afraid of the site of Mary’s death, her interest was so strong, she went into the garage for an EVP session, using her cassette recorder. Alone, she asked, “If you’re here, Mary, answer on the tape.”
When she played the tape back, in response, she got a hissing sound, then a long, drawn-out “yessssss” and “Maaarrryyyyy.”
“I just found it fascinating that you could pick up voices like that,” she said.
I understood. Hearing what sounds like an actual answer to your question seems so much like solid proof, how can it not be exciting? I also knew EVP recordings weren’t always as they seemed, and could be dangerous. As the case progressed to day two, Carol Anne’s interest seemed, to me, to border on obsession. She said she’d record entire movies on VHS just so she could play them back and listen for hidden voices in the soundtrack.
According to Brian, he didn’t believe in any of this until some of the tapes convinced him something was up. He also said he realized how important this was to Carol Anne and wanted to be supportive. At first it didn’t strike him as a problem for her, but then voices took a darker turn, telling her to “get out of here.” More recently he’d come home to find all the lights on. He had the impression his wife was too nervous to tell him how scared she was.
And the activity seemed to be escalating. Carol Anne’s brother-in-law, Mario, told us he was staying there one night when he felt as if something was trying to get under his body and physically lift him.
“I’m going home. I’m wide awake now,” he said to Carol Anne.
She filled in the details. “Two in the morning he got dressed, drove all the way home to Jersey, and hasn’t slept here since.”
There were a number of things to work on in short order. I wanted a closer examination of the tapes to learn more about Mary, and to figure out what the escalation meant.
Eilfie and Heather went out to interview the neighbors about Mary, but that wasn’t very fruitful. The only person willing to discuss her didn’t want to appear on-camera. Claiming to be a relative of Mary, he did confirm that she had hung herself in the garage back in the sixties, but he did not know why.
As for the tapes, Carol Anne had amassed about fifty. I was eager to review them all, but our schedule didn’t allow us to prepare for things like that in advance. Even though the analysis started right away, all of us could only listen to so many.
In a part of the investigation that doesn’t appear in the episode, I also brought the tapes to an audio engineer. It was his impression that while a lot of the voices could be explained as originating from outside, or a television set, some could be legit.
The clips played in the episode were basically a “best of.” You can clearly hear “Mary” and “get out of here” (for some reason that’s been a catchphrase for malevolent spirits since The Amityville Horror).
There were also recordings where Carol Anne claimed to hear voices that we did not. I don’t believe she was trying to trick anyone, but with EVPs, it’s easy to trick yourself. Whenever dealing with faint sounds or blurry pictures, investigators have to be very careful of pareidolia, the tendency of the mind to see and hear patterns. The human brain is basically a machine that searches its environment for patterns. When it can’t find one, it often tries to fill in
the gap on its own, perceiving patterns that aren’t there.
That’s why, on many paranormal shows, certainly the better ones, investigators play captured sound for a client, and first ask what they hear before offering their own opinion. If someone is told what to listen for, it’s more likely they’ll hear it. Here it was very difficult to sort out what might be real or not necessarily imagined but at least misidentified. At the same time, there was enough on the tapes to make me believe something was going on.
With no luck research-wise, and a tight schedule, I hoped Dead Time would give us more. Since Carol Anne had recorded so much activity, it was logical to try to record our own EVPs. We set up audio equipment in the garage, the location of the suicide. We spent a lot of time trying to contact Mary, or any other spirit, but had no success. That made me wonder how much the activity might be centered on Carol Anne herself.
Another indication of that was Carol Anne’s statement that over time, the spirits she felt she was in touch with changed. Some would pass over, she said, but others would show up. To me that meant she might not only be contacting spirits that were already present, but also attracting new ones, the same as a spirit board or the 100 Candles game.
Between the escalation and Carol Anne’s depression, I was concerned that the problem could go beyond a standard haunting. As our focus shifted to Carol Anne, research on the spirit took a backseat. It’s possible we could have found out more about Mary, but our time was limited and we had to deal with what I felt was most important.
Given my concerns, I was very pleased to be able to call on Lorraine Warren for help. A demonologist, paranormal investigator, and much more, she was someone I’d read about and admired for ages, making it a very special experience for me to work with her for the first time.
When I was sixteen and studying everything I could about the paranormal, the names Ed and Lorraine Warren popped up over and over. They’d been involved with prominent cases across the globe, from Amityville to the Smurl haunting. To me they were iconic.
Ever since we started UNIV-CON, I’d sought them out as guests, but the timing was never right. Sadly, Ed passed away on August 23, 2006. After his death, Lorraine attended and we did a video tribute to her husband. When the producers contacted her, I was touched to learn that she’d told them the only reason she agreed to do this episode was because of me. Lorraine is incredibly dedicated and professional. She’ll take calls at 1:00 A.M., do whatever needs to be done to help someone. I could hardly contain my excitement when I heard that she had agreed. Little did I know at the time, but this episode’s investigation was the beginning of a very close friendship.
Upon Lorraine’s arrival, I played the tapes for her. She felt that some were spirits, and became concerned they could be malevolent.
With Lorraine and I both worried that the client might be drawing these things to herself, I asked Carol Anne how often she did the EVP recording.
“Every day,” she answered. “I’ve actually gotten out of bed because I have to hear some of them, like two or three in the morning.”
It really sounded like more of an addiction than a fascination—and a dangerous one. If you believe in spirits, it follows there are billions. Open a door, shine a light, and they’ll start coming through. They’re not all going to be warm and cuddly. The more recordings she did, the more frightening and damaging the haunting could become. And, according to her own statements, that’s exactly what happened. It started out as harmless, but soon she was recording for over twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Her family started claiming to have frightening experiences while Carol Anne fell into isolation and depression as she became more obsessed with speaking to the dead.
Lorraine warned Carol Anne that because of her repeated efforts, something evil may have come through and been trying to oppress her. Oppression, in this sense, is one of the early stages of possession in which an entity makes it difficult for you to enjoy your life. That seemed to fit in with what Carol Anne was experiencing. As I explained earlier, spiritual oppression is like a parasite that latches on to you, slowly draining you, affecting you on every level: psychologically, physically, and emotionally. Whether or not you believe in ghosts, her twelve-hour a day EVP sessions were clearly affecting her lifestyle.
During this line of conversation, Carol Anne opened up to us more about her depression, and her feeling that it wasn’t coming from within her, but somewhere outside. She told us that her friends had noticed the change in her. They’d visit on weekends to socialize as they had in the past, but Carol Anne said she would just stay upstairs, not even coming down to say hello!
There were other factors possibly making her vulnerable. Her voice choked with emotion as she told us how, in the last three years, she’d lost both her mother and a sister, and missed them terribly. Lorraine, having lost her own husband recently, was very sympathetic. She’d also come to a conclusion.
Taking me aside, she said, “This house isn’t haunted, it’s her.”
Lorraine felt it was possible that Carol Anne wasn’t letting some of the spirits, like Mary, pass on, because she was constantly trying to engage them. It made a lot of sense. I never heard Carol Anne say, “Mary, you’ve got to accept the fact that you’re dead and move on.” It was always, “Mary, Mary, speak to me.” After all, how many times did she need to record Mary’s voice? If she was trying to help her, there should have come a point where she’d ask Mary to depart. As far as we could see, that moment never came.
After this episode aired, I received a tiny bit of slack from some ghost hunters who thought it was absolutely ridiculous to think that one can be harmed trying to collect EVPs. I love ghost hunters, but sometimes they can be really thick and immature. Paranormal investigation, as well as ghost hunting, is not a game. It’s not a toy board you can buy in a store, use to conjure up some spirits for “ooh’s” and “ahh’s” and then put underneath your bed until the next time you decide to get some kicks.
If you accept the possibility that there are spirits you can communicate with, then you have to accept that there are risks, negatives. In the case of Carol Anne, if she was indeed dealing with a spirit who committed suicide, then there must be some emotional and mental anguish still residing in that spirit’s consciousness—unless you believe someone who commits suicide due to depression would decide to stick around the house for shits and giggles. There’s clearly trauma and a lack of resolution that needs to be cleared. The spirits do not need a bunch of overweight, fashionless ghost geeks walking in and asking for the spirit to do parlor tricks for their amusement.
In the past I’d seen the emotions of the client play in to the haunting in different ways, sometimes creating an in for the spirits. Here, for the first time, I thought it could be causing the activity.
While I don’t think the haunting was completely demonic, there may have been those elements present in some form. Due to the change of focus from the investigation to an intervention with Carol Anne, we didn’t have time to conduct a full test to determine whether the phenomena were demonic. To be safe, however, we did arrange a formal Catholic blessing for Carol Anne. Ultimately, though, as long as that door stayed open and Carol Anne kept inviting things in, it could have gone that way. Regardless, the bottom line was that Carol Anne was, as she said, unhappy.
By now, Brian told us that he recognized a problem. While at first he wanted to be supportive, he confided in me and others that he was really kind of sick of this. It made sense to me. After all, they were in their retirement years. Instead of enjoying their life with family and friends, Carol Anne spent her time up in a room listening to dead people.
I don’t like to tell people how to lead their lives, but in this case, I felt it was important to her for us not to hold back. Rather than continue with a standard investigation, I suggested we hold an intervention. Lorraine and I sat down with Carol Anne and tried to make it as clear as possible that regardless of whether the activity was genuinely paranormal or not, we felt
that Carol Anne had an obsession, and that obsession was dragging her down. At the time, she seemed very receptive.
“There definitely was a change in me after I [moved into the house],” she said. When we pressed her to stop the recording, she agreed. “I really have to get out of it,” she said.
As a symbolic gesture, I asked her to throw her recorder into the ocean, to tell herself she was really letting go of her EVPs. She did throw a recorder into the sea, but not the one she used. That one belonged to her sister-in-law, so she said she couldn’t destroy it. She did promise to return it to her sister-in-law, and she gave me all her tapes. Two bags full. That, I thought, was a big step.
Meanwhile, though it didn’t make it into the edit, we did try to help Mary’s spirit. Through Lorraine, we contacted a priest who said a mass for Mary, and prayed for her soul to move on. He also did a house blessing, asking for the spirit of Mary or any other spirits Carol Anne knew of, to move on.
Afterward, as happens with many cases, Carol Anne seemed lighter. When I called to check in a short while after we left, she told me her friends had come over. They all sat by the water, chatted, and she’d gone into the hot tub. Brian also seemed very grateful for the change.
In the closing director’s log, I expressed confidence that Carol Anne would keep her promise. She said she was grateful we’d come and eager to change. If she followed through, I felt it would’ve been one of the best things we’d helped accomplish, more than removing a ghost or collecting some evidence.
Looking back, though, her apparent change of heart happened quickly. Just as she’d enthusiastically filled in details for our psychic walk-through, here she may have been filling in the blanks for the “recovery” story we presented. And, over time, things didn’t go so well.
A few weeks after the priest did the house blessing, Carol Anne told me she was still having activity. “Don’t try to contact it yourself,” I said. “If you need help, contact the priest again.”
Paranormal State: My Journey into the Unknown Page 13