“Okay. Why don’t you investigate down here, and Randy and I will go back upstairs,” I said.
Relief washed over their faces, and they willingly began to investigate the main floor of the mansion. Randy and I grabbed our gear and hotfooted it back up to the second floor.
As soon as we reached the second-floor landing, it became apparent that the energy had changed dramatically. The energy that we’d felt in Captain Stanley’s room seemed to ooze out of the walls and permeate every available space.
Randy and I moved from room to room in search of the source of the energy. We did notice that the only room that didn’t have this energy was Emma’s. Her room remained calm and serene.
“That’s curious.” Randy shrugged as we left Emma’s room and continued our search.
“It is,” I agreed. “Either this entity respects Emma, or Emma is keeping the energy at bay somehow.”
We spent the better part of two hours trying to find the source of this heavy energy and make contact, but to no avail. Whatever was up there wasn’t in a talkative mood. It just wanted us out.
From what I’ve been told by the people who work in the museum, Captain Stanley was a rather nice man, so I highly doubted he was responsible for the energy that filled the room.
My best guess is that one of the many maritime relics from past shipwrecks and other sources has a ghost attached to it, and it is he who is responsible for the activity in Captain Stanley’s old bedroom.
Defeated, we returned to the kitchen to talk to Donna. We told her what we and our team had experienced on the second floor, and asked if any of the volunteers had similar experiences.
She seemed confused by our question, and said that no one had ever said anything about experiencing the type of activity our team fell victim to. Our only conclusion is that we were strangers to the spirits that either reside here or that visit from time to time.
We believe that the spirits were just trying to protect the museum from a perceived threat. This type of behavior by a ghost or spirit is not uncommon. If they love the place they are inhabiting, many types of entities will try to protect that space from people they don’t know.
Because the new investigators were spooked by their experiences, and due to the lateness of the hour, we packed up our gear and left. Donna asked us to come back the next weekend to investigate the other historical buildings on the property. We jumped at the chance.
The following weekend, with more experienced paranormal investigators in tow, we returned to the museum grounds. We invited another paranormal investigation team we’ve worked with in the past to help, because of the sheer size of the investigation. It would have been impossible for us to cover all twelve-plus outbuildings by ourselves.
We were greeted warmly by a small group of the volunteers and a couple members of the Board of Directors. After introductions were made and the small talk was finished, it was time to get down to business. Once again, the museum was kind enough to let us use the kitchen as command central. One of the volunteers unlocked all the outbuildings, including the restroom building, and then retreated to the kitchen to allow us to do our thing.
The tech people from both teams scurried around the property like rabbits, setting up the equipment in as many buildings we had cameras for. They also checked out all the equipment to ensure everything contained fresh batteries and was in good working order.
We then divided into pairs and headed off in opposite directions.
The first place I wanted to investigate was the old church. The church had a rich history. It once was a grocery store, then a bar, and then a church. The steeple had been added at that point.
Our team usually conducted ghost hunting lectures in the church every October, as a fund-raiser for a museum. It seemed to us, and many of the people present during those lectures, that we weren’t alone. We’d done fund-raising lectures for the museum in this building several times before, but this was the first time we’d been able to investigate the grounds and all the outbuildings.
This is because we seemed to always have equipment malfunctions or other type of activity happen during one of our lectures.
Randy and I entered the old church and immediately walked down the center aisle of pews to the raised altar area. To us, this seemed to be the place where much of the activity occurred during the lectures.
We spent a good hour and a half trying to make contact with any entity that may have been present in the church, but all we got in response to our questions were a few odd noises that we couldn’t positively attribute to anything paranormal.
As we walked out of the church and headed over to the dairy barn, we heard a scream come from the area where the old train depot stood. Randy and I rushed over to see what happened.
We found a couple of our investigators, along with an investigator from the team we brought along, laughing hysterically. When Larry, one of our investigators could stop laughing long enough, he told us that when Dan, his investigating partner, looked in the window of the train depot, he saw a man sitting at the depot desk. It scared the crap out of him, which is why he screamed. Larry looked in the window and saw that it was a mannequin dressed up as the depot master—hence, the hysterical laughter. This was really a rookie mistake, and happens a lot when someone is amped up to see a ghost and spots a mannequin, or a shadow cast on a wall by some object in the room, etc.
Embarrassed, Larry said it wouldn’t happen again, and the team walked around the building to enter the depot. Still chuckling, Randy and I headed back toward the dairy barn.
The dairy barn was filled to overflowing with various equipment that would have been used back in the day. There were old-fashioned milking machines, milk cans, and other paraphernalia. Two narrow mangers lined both sides of the barn and large dairy machines ran down the middle of the building. No one had ever reported anything even remotely paranormal occurring in the dairy barn, but a good paranormal investigator leaves no stone unturned—just in case.
With no activity after a half-hour, Randy and I walked through the property to the old hunting cabin, which sat nestled just inside the tree line on the northern side of the property. A mown trail wound its way a short distance into the woods, toward the cabin.
We first walked around the outside of the cabin to get the lay of the land, and to inspect the building for any holes or unstable beams, and to make sure all the windows were intact. We also checked to see if any tree branches could scrape the sides of roof of the cabin, if the wind blew. That way, if we heard something, we would know whether it was paranormal or caused by the old building itself.
Randy and I climbed the two wooden stairs to the front door and opened it, peering into pitch blackness. The door emitted an eerie creak as it swung open for us to enter. It was so stereotypical of a Hollywood haunted house movie that we both laughed.
Randy and I had no idea, nor did the museum, who all the occupants of the cabin were, over the years, and there’d been no paranormal activity reported, yet that seemed to make the adventure more exciting.
The cabin was so dark, we couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces. Even the dim light of the moon coming through the faded curtains did little to pierce the inky blackness that greeted us.
We turned on our UV flashlights, which emitted a soft purplish glow, and we could make out a bunk bed in the far corner of the small cabin and little else. We settled in on the floor and began an EVP session.
At first our questions were met with silence, but as we kept going, we could hear soft taps on the hand-hewn logs of the cabin. We knew there was nothing outside that could cause such noises, but the more we asked questions, the less of a response we got, so we moved on to another building.
We investigated throughout the night, and other than a few inexplicable noises, we didn’t receive anything else of note.
We concluded that most of the activity was in the
mansion itself, and we plan on revisiting the mansion in the coming months.
As far as Black River Paranormal is concerned, this case is still open and is an ongoing investigation.
While we’re in touch with the museum personnel quite a bit during the year, they haven’t told us of any other paranormal activity occurring, but that’s not unusual. Generally, they save it up for when we are going there to do an investigation and lay it on us all at once—which works out just fine for us.
[contents]
Chapter 13
When Darkness Comes to Play
“It’s coming. Can you feel it?” I asked Randy, the founder of Black River Paranormal, who was standing beside me.
“I feel it.” Randy scanned the inky black basement of our client’s home with the video camera.
My heart felt like it was going to pound out of my chest, as I felt the dark energy come toward us with the power of a freight train.
“I just need it to get a little closer so I can be sure.” I took a couple of steps backward until I felt the cold cinder block wall of the basement pressed against my spine.
“Gotcha,” Randy whispered.
I shined the beam of my flashlight toward a small opening in the fieldstone wall opposite us. For a brief second, we saw the shadow of an entity peek at out at us before vanishing.
“Let’s get back upstairs. I’ve seen enough,” I said, working my way out of the tiny room toward the staircase that led out of the basement and to the light of day. Randy and I both collapsed on the grass when we reached the safety of the outdoors.
“Demonic?” Randy turned off his video camera and exhaled a sigh of resignation.
“Can’t say for sure, but it’s definitely a negative entity. Let’s go talk to the client.” I stood up and brushed the loose grass from my jeans.
Even before we pulled into the driveway of our client’s house, we both knew it would end up this way. Over the last couple years, Black River Paranormal had gained a reputation as being one of the only paranormal investigation teams in the area that would take on a case dealing with a dark entity. This was just another one to add to the ever-growing list.
Our client, Jennifer (not her real name), and her two teenage daughters lived in the mid-1800s house on a large tract of land out in the middle of nowhere. Jennifer contacted us because of an abundance of paranormal activity occurring in their home.
What sucked us in was the fact that her youngest daughter appeared to be the target of whatever dark entity had taken up residence in the basement.
There had been reports of people being pushed, scratched, and terrorized by this entity, and it was up to us to figure out how to get rid of it. In addition, the family reported seeing the apparition of a man in the barn, apparitions in Jennifer’s bedroom, and various apparitions roaming the property. Objects would be moved or thrown around the house, and the paranormal activity was escalating at an alarming rate.
During our various interviews with the client, we learned her ex-husband was deceased, and during his life had been prone to domestic violence. It was our theory that the domestic violence was the catalyst that may have drawn in a demonic entity, which then took up residence in the basement of the house. Not an unusual occurrence, but anytime a possible demonic entity is involved, it makes any situation that much more dangerous to the clients and to our team.
Alternatively, our client’s ex-husband could be the malevolent entity in the basement. Either way, our main goal was to protect the safety of our team and our client.
The only other option was that we were dealing with a particularly nasty poltergeist, or the activity was manifesting itself as a poltergeist, because there was a teenager in the house.
It’s been a long-standing theory in the paranormal community that oftentimes, if a teenager is present, poltergeist activity could occur. This is due to the fact that the teenager is going through many changes at this time in their life. Their hormones are raging and their emotions are running high. Because of all this energy swirling around the teenager, the teenager themselves could be attracting the activity, and not be aware of it at all.
We quickly dismissed this theory because of the EVPs we’d gotten, and the fact that some of the activity didn’t fit the pattern normally associated with a teenage-induced poltergeist.
Randy and I were at our client’s home that day to conduct a preliminary walk-through of the property, before bringing in the rest of the team for a full-scale investigation the following weekend.
The clients indicated they really didn’t mind the spirits being around the house, but the entity in the basement was too much for them to tolerate. Initially we felt that the violent activity, such as the scratching and pushing, could be attributed to the ex-husband. The energy I’d felt didn’t substantiate that theory, but we couldn’t as of yet rule out the possibility. The ex-husband had resided in the home, and there had been domestic violence present.
What really caught my attention was the feeling I got as I walked around the yard of the house. It felt as though something was pulling me toward the backyard of the home, which was comprised of acre upon acre of old, overgrown crop fields and treed areas, but I didn’t take the time to explore the area until we’d gathered the entire team the following weekend.
We arrived that weekend with the full team in tow, along with another paranormal investigation team we worked with on various cases.
We had plenty of daylight left, so the head of their team, Carrie, and I decided to walk around the vast landscape behind the house, while the teams were busy setting up the technical equipment—which could take a couple of hours.
We trudged through the tall grass and almost obscure trails for about an hour when we ran into the homeowner and one of her daughters, who were out walking the dog. My personal opinion is that she was keeping an eye on what we were doing, but I can’t say for sure.
“You know, there’s the foundation of an old building out here somewhere.” She took a long drag of her cigarette and blew smoke rings into the air.
“Really?” Carrie and I looked at each other.
“Yeah, one of the neighbors, who lived here forever, told us that back about twenty or thirty or so years ago, there used to be a satanic church on the property. I’ve only lived here for six years, so I wasn’t anywhere near this place at the time the cult was active,” Jennifer explained, not meeting our curious gazes.
“Which neighbor? Can we talk to them?” I asked.
“He passed away a few years ago,” Jennifer said. “The property has changed hands a lot since then.”
Carrie and I looked at each other knowingly. We’d heard rumors for years about a satanic cult that operated in this area back in the late 1960s through the late 1970s—perhaps even into the early 1980s.
While the existence of such a cult is pretty much common knowledge for anyone who lived in that area during the time the cult was active, it’s still very difficult to get anyone to talk about what happened back then, for fear of retribution by any cult members who may still be living in the area.
We’d looked for the church rumored to be the main hub of that activity off and on for years, but we had never found it. We were almost ready to chalk it up to urban legend, but too many people we’d talked to over the years had confirmed the existence of such a cult.
“Do you know where it is?” I asked.
“I honestly don’t remember, but I know it’s out here. From what I’ve heard, there was a fire out here before I bought the property and the church burned to the ground. All that remains is the stone foundation,” Jennifer told us. “Do you think that could have something to do with what is going on at my house?”
“It could,” Carrie admitted, not wanting to say much.
“We’re going to wander around a little more. We’ll meet you back at the house shortly,” I said and headed off into a clump o
f trees, with Carrie close on my heels.
“This could be way bigger than we thought,” Carrie mused as we wandered down a trail.
“Yeah, we’ve got to find that church. I think that could be what’s drawing all the activity to this place. But we’re running out of daylight, and we don’t want to be out here in the dark without any flashlights or other equipment,” I added.
Carrie nodded, and we both reluctantly turned around and headed back to the client’s house.
I cornered Randy by the cars, and out of the earshot of our client I told him what we’d discovered. Randy agreed with my theory that the negative energy from the old satanic church was only adding to our current problem, and that we didn’t have any choice but to move on and try to get rid of what was already here.
Both of us were pretty sure that in time, what we got rid of tonight would only rear its ugly head once again in the future, unless we found that church. However, with darkness falling, and the more immediate concerns of our client, we knew all hopes of finding the satanic church tonight was out of the question.
The members of both ghost hunting teams assembled inside the house and we all paired off, grabbed various pieces of equipment, and headed off in separate directions to investigate.
I took two team members and made a beeline for the barn. There’d been many reports of a male apparition there, along with a rather strange story.
According to reports, the previous owners hired a woman to paint a stallion on the barn while they were on vacation. Upon returning from their trip, there wasn’t a stallion painted on the barn, even though the painter had called them to tell them the job was complete.
They contacted the painter, who understandably was very confused as to what happened to the mural she’d painted. She then, in front of witnesses, repainted the stallion mural. The next morning, the mural had disappeared, and there were no signs that it had been painted over. If this story is true, and there’s no reason to believe it isn’t, we still can’t explain what happened to the mural.
Stalking Shadows Page 14