Ghost Hunting

by Jason Hawes, Grant Wilson

  On the other hand, there’s the tale of John Jacob Astor IV, heir to the nation’s most amazing fortune back in the early 1900s. His grandfather and namesake, the first John Jacob Astor, had become the richest man in America by investing first in the fur trade and then in Manhattan real estate. John Jacob IV inherited John Jacob’s money but not his impeccable sense of timing.

  In 1911, John Jacob IV divorced his first wife and, without blinking, married eighteen-year-old Madeline Talmadge Force, a woman thirty years his junior. The wedding, which took place in Beechwood, the Astors’ magnificent Newport, Rhode Island, mansion, instantly created an international scandal. The couple went to Egypt for their honeymoon, hoping to stay until the controversy boiled over.

  However, Madeline became pregnant a few months later. Wanting the child to be born in the United States, the Astors booked passage back to New York on a spanking-new luxury vessel called Titanic. Not a good move, as we in the twenty-first century know all too well.

  When the Titanic hit an iceberg and started to sink, Madeline got into a lifeboat and survived. John Jacob IV, the richest guy aboard, was forced to go down with the ship. His body was later found and returned to the United States for burial.

  It’s said that his spirit haunts the ballroom at Beechwood, the place of his greatest joy. Purchased by the Astors in 1881, the mansion was the social hub of New York society for most of what historians call the Gilded Age. But over the last hundred years, it has developed a different kind of reputation—as a place infested with supernatural entities.

  The other tragedy associated with Beechwood was the death of a telephone repairman in 1911, a year before the sinking of the Titanic. Mixing up his wires, he accidentally electrocuted himself. Now his spirit is said to haunt the basement, whispering of his pain to anyone who goes down there.

  Strangely enough, the apparition people have claimed to see at Beechwood is neither John Jacob IV nor the repairman. It’s a lady in yellow who’s been spotted on and around the mansion’s spiral staircase. When anyone approaches her, she disappears.

  The only people who live at Beechwood now are its tour guides. However, they were uneasy enough about the goings-on in the place to call T.A.P.S. Our job was to find proof the place was haunted or set the guides’ minds at ease.

  Grant and I took four investigators with us this time: Carl, Steve, Andy, and Dustin. After all, Beechwood was a big place, and we wanted to be thorough. We were met at the door by Patrick Grimes, the mansion’s executive director, who in turn introduced us to tour guide Cecilia “CC” Ice.

  CC was beside herself. She had heard voices, felt someone’s breath on the back of her neck, and even seen a couple of apparitions. She had closed doors and found out moments later that they were open again. She had heard footsteps behind her on the stairs, but when she turned there was no one there. If her claims were accurate, she had a right to be upset.

  Morgen Ballett, the mansion coordinator, had experiences to report as well. She said the ballroom always felt cold to her, even on warm summer days. On more than one occasion, she had turned in response to a voice only to find she was alone.

  We set up our equipment, mostly in the basement and on the stairs, and then divided into two-man teams. Grant and I went up to a third-floor bedroom where CC and some of the other tour guides had heard voices. We found that the doors there didn’t close very well.

  In conditions of high humidity, doors tend to swell up, and Newport was right near the ocean. A good breeze might push the door open, making it possible for someone in the room to hear footsteps or conversations in the hall outside. It seemed to us that this might be the explanation for the guides’ experiences.

  In the meantime, Andy and Dustin visited the ballroom, which Ballett had said was always cold. Being the canny investigator he is, Andy checked the heating system in the mansion and discovered that it worked on forced hot air. That meant there was ductwork leading into the ballroom.

  After a brief search, he found the vent that was supposed to keep the room warm. For some reason, it was stuffed with rags. The same was true of the vent at the other end of the ductwork, near the furnace. If the ballroom was cold, the mansion’s residents had to look no further than those rags.

  Over the next several hours, we took a lot of footage in the mansion but didn’t run into anything that could be called paranormal. Eventually, we packed up our vehicles and made the drive back to Warwick. It was only about thirty miles, but at that hour there’s no such thing as a short trip.

  Back at headquarters, Steve and Andy went over the data we had collected. Even under the best of circumstances, this is tedious work. Guys get up to take breaks and get something to eat, but there’s no easy way to do this part of the job—and no way to do the job without it.

  At one point, they came across what looked like orbs. However, they wound up being nothing more than dust. In the end, there was nothing to report.

  However, we had debunked some of the claims at the mansion. And when we presented our findings, we were able to set the tour guides’ minds at ease. If we helped someone, it was worth the effort.

  * * *

  GRANT’S TAKE

  Though we didn’t find any solid documentation at the Astors’ mansion, the place did have a feeling of sadness about it. John Jacob Astor IV would have been one of the most powerful men in the world if he had survived his ocean voyage. Unfortunately, he met his match on the Titanic.

  * * *

  THE FACE IN THE BATHROOM MIRROR MAY 2005

  Usually, the calls we get are from people who are having paranormal experiences. Occasionally, we hear from other investigators who are in over their heads. That’s what happened in Roselle Park, New Jersey.

  Dave Tango and Ray Mennincucci had founded Central Jersey Paranormal seven months earlier because of a mutual interest in supernatural occurrences. They had been clipping along just fine, gaining experience and know-how, until they ran into a case of a schoolteacher who believed the sanctity of her house was being violated—either by a ghost or a prankster, she didn’t know which.

  Dave and Ray could have kept the case to themselves. Some groups out there would have done just that, thinking of themselves instead of their client. But Dave and Ray knew how troubled the homeowner was and didn’t want to shortchange her. That’s why they called in T.A.P.S.

  Grant and I went down to meet them, bringing along Steve, Andy, Dustin, and Paula Donovan. We got together with Dave and Ray in a motel in Newark, New Jersey, and listened to what they had already learned.

  Apparently, the homeowner had repeatedly heard objects knocked over and moved on the second floor of her house. Also, an impression like a face print had appeared on her bathroom mirror while she was in the shower. A chair in her computer room seemed to have a life of its own, the basement smelled like perfume sometimes, and she had felt a traveling cold spot.

  As far as she knew, the previous homeowner hadn’t had any of these experiences, but that didn’t make her feel any better. She was so distraught that she was ready to sell her house and move.

  After we interviewed her and told her we would do what we could, we started to set up our equipment. Unfortunately, Steve—who never makes mistakes—made one that time by forgetting the power supply to the DVR monitor. I get angry about stuff like that, but I didn’t have the heart to give Steve a hard time, especially because he was so up-front about it. If a guy gives you excuses, you want to set him straight. But if he tells you the truth, you’re more inclined to let him slide.

  Anyway, the rest of the setup went smoothly, giving Dave and Ray an education. They had seen us work on Ghost Hunters, but it was different in person. There’s a lot of detail work in an investigation that we can’t show on television. We just don’t have time.

  We had Andy, who’s great at debunking strategies, take a look at our client’s bathroom mirror. He decided to spray cooking oil on the mirror, reasoning that if an image was going to show up, it would do so in cooking
oil as easily as in water vapor.

  Meanwhile, Grant and I grabbed our thermal-imaging camera and took a walk around the main floor of the house, allowing Dave and Ray to tag along. We hadn’t gone far before we heard noises above us that sounded like people walking around. Our first thought was that one of our teams was up there, but that wasn’t the case. And when we investigated, we didn’t find anyone. One other thing: when we were recording the noises, Grant’s laptop seemed to crash. It was all right again a moment later, but we were never able to make a record of what we had heard. A coincidence? Maybe.

  In order to give Dave and Ray as varied a learning experience as possible, the next thing we did was split them up and assign them to Steve and Dustin. Dustin mentioned to Dave that he had been terrorized as a child by an entity he couldn’t identity. That was what had spurred him to buy some basic equipment and start ghost-hunting.

  At the same time, Grant and I went to check out another complaint: that the client’s motion sensor alarm in her basement would go off, indicating activity there. We fooled around with the alarm, trying to see if there was a short in the line or something—and got some activity all right. Too bad it was the kind that came with dark blue uniforms in a patrol car. By accident, we had set off the alarm and brought the police!

  Still, we were able to find a plausible explanation for the alarms’ going off in the basement. The homeowner had hung some icicle-style Christmas lights down there, and her forced-air heating system would set the lights swaying every time it came on.

  By the time we packed up in the wee hours, I was of two minds. But then, it had been a very mixed investigation. We had debunked the activity in the basement, so we could put the client’s mind to ease on that count. That was good. However, we hadn’t been able to coax a face to appear on the bathroom mirror or get the chair in the computer room to move, so we couldn’t shed any light on either of those situations.

  As for the footsteps we had heard where there shouldn’t have been any…that was both good and bad. It was bad because it meant there might be a supernatural presence in the house but good because there weren’t any intruders.

  I wished that we had been able to produce a record of those footsteps. Unfortunately, they had been lost with the temporary crash in Grant’s computer. Or so I thought—until Steve discovered the audio on his DVR disc, recorded in our mobile command unit!

  The question was how our client would react to what we had learned. As always, there was one way to find out. As soon as we could, we went back to her house and presented her with our findings.

  When we played our recording of the footsteps, she nodded and confirmed that was what she had heard. We explained to her that any repetitive noise or image falls under the category of a residual haunting—one that’s like a movie, playing over and over again when the conditions are right. It wasn’t going to hurt her.

  She seemed more at ease when we told her that. Also, she had gotten some validation of her experiences, so she knew she wasn’t crazy. Before we left, we assured her that Dave and Ray would be around if she needed them. That seemed to make her feel good too.

  You may wonder why I didn’t refer to our client in this case by name. Anyone who saw her on our television show knows that she preferred to remain anonymous. We understand that perfectly. People’s careers can be hurt if they’re associated with ghost hunting. That’s sad, but it’s the way it is.

  We’re just grateful the client brought us into her home. The fact that she was willing to tell her story, if only from the shadows, helps our field immensely.

  The next day, Grant and I were working our day job with Roto-Rooter when the subject of Dave Tango came up. Both of us had taken an instant liking to him and the workmanlike way in which he had approached the investigation.

  “He’s like Brian without all the bull crap,” I noted.

  In fact, we were looking for a replacement for Brian. Unfortunately, Dave lived too far away to be a full-fledged member of T.A.P.S. But we agreed that if the opportunity arose, we would work with him again.

  We just didn’t know how soon that would be.

  * * *

  GRANT’S TAKE

  You might wonder how a supernatural presence could cause a computer to crash. Remember, ghosts draw on energy in order to manifest. If they can’t find it anywhere else, they can pull it out of a computer battery, causing the device dependent on that battery to skip a beat.

  * * *

  PUSHING THEM OUT MAY 2005

  The Worthington family had been in their house for a year, and they didn’t want to stay one more minute. The kids, especially, had had it with the place. Fourteen-year-old Josh claimed he had been slapped in the face by an unseen presence while listening to CDs in his room. His sixteen-year-old brother, Nathan, had felt a presence standing next to his drum set and couldn’t sleep as a result. And their mother, Cheryl, had sensed something watching her in her bedroom.

  Cheryl’s two daughters, who were younger than their brothers, had seen dishes fall and heard voices telling them to “get out.” Once, they saw what looked like a man standing outside the bathroom.

  The family felt especially vulnerable because Cheryl’s husband worked nights. They wanted to know what was going on in the house they had been so eager to buy, a vintage structure built back in 1890.

  Mike Dion, a member of the extended T.A.P.S. family, had investigated the place previously. His people had felt the touch of something they couldn’t see, but they hadn’t turned up any concrete evidence of a haunting. However, Mike felt the family’s accounts were credible enough to warrant a reinvestigation.

  So there we were in Keene, New Hampshire, following Mike’s recommendation. The team, in addition to Grant, Mike, and me, included Dustin, Steve, Andy, and Dave Tango. Shortly after we had said good-bye to Dave in New Jersey, he had called asking to come on another case with us.

  This one, we felt, was a good opportunity for him to become more familiar with our methods. A training cruise, if you will. Though Dave was obviously fascinated by the supernatural, he had never had any personal experiences with it. That made him pretty much unique in our group, where nearly everybody could point to something in his or her past.

  The first investigator with whom we hooked Dave up was Andy, so he could develop an appreciation for Andy’s methodical debunking style. They went to the kitchen to check out the claim that dishes were falling off the counter. As it turned out, the countertop was loose, so we didn’t have to look to the supernatural for an explanation.

  In the meantime, Grant and I went up to the boys’ bedrooms and got comfortable—me in Josh’s room and Grant in Nathan’s. As much as we discount our feelings when it comes to documenting the paranormal, we don’t ignore them. Very often, as my partner will point out, our best tools are our human instincts.

  About 11: 00, Steve, Mike, and Dave moved into the master bedroom to take some still photos. Dave was taking the shots. Knowing a flash could be disturbing, he announced each one. Steve told him he didn’t have to do that. He and Mike knew the flashes were coming.

  Steve, Mike, and Dave left the master bedroom to go into the hallway when they heard an exclamation. It had come from Grant. He was standing at the threshold of Nathan’s room with a snare drum lying on its side at his feet.

  I got there a moment later. “What happened?” I asked my partner.

  Grant said he had heard the approach of Steve’s team and was leaving the room to meet them when something hit him in the back of the ankle. When he looked down, he saw the snare drum from Nathan’s drum set.

  G.W. was a bit unnerved. He hadn’t detected a temperature change in the room or anything else that might have served as a warning. He had just heard a sliding sound and felt the impact of the drum.

  But then, moving objects make me a little crazy too.

  Steve and Mike remained in the room to see if they could get something on camera. “Did you knock over the drum?” they asked any spirits that might be i
n the vicinity. “Are you trapped? Can you make a noise for us?”

  They were there only a few minutes before they noticed that their batteries were losing power precipitously. Was an entity trying to manifest in the room? If so, it would need energy, and the juice in their batteries would be a good source of it.

  However, nothing manifested.

  As seriously as we take our business, we can sometimes get a little loopy staying up all night and creeping around in the dark. It’s not unusual for us to play tricks on each other. When there’s someone new to the group, those tricks start to look like fraternity initiations.

  But then, in the literal sense, we are a fraternity. A brotherhood of ghost hunters.

  In this case the new guy was Dave. Steve and Andy saw their opportunity when they found a princess’s tiara in one of the girls’ rooms. Putting it on Dave’s head, they led him to believe it was a headlamp.

  He wore it for hours, periodically fumbling around in an attempt to find its “on” switch. Steve and Andy could barely keep a straight face. Finally, Grant and I joined them. What the heck is this? I asked myself as I removed the tiara from Dave’s head.

  Even in the dark, I could see Dave blush. Turning to Steve, I asked, “Is this professional?” I was trying to sound stern, but inside I had to laugh. That tiara on Dave’s head was the silliest thing I had seen in a long time.

  About five hours into the investigation, Dustin and Mike entered the master bedroom with an audio recorder. The family had heard sounds there, voices and rumblings, and we needed to check it out. At first, the place was quiet. Then Mike heard a cough, which sounded female to him. “Is that you trying to give us a sign?” he asked.

  There were no other sounds.

  Shortly after that, we wrapped up. We had to be quiet because the kids were all asleep by then. We assured Cheryl that we would speak to her within the week. As the first hints of dawn appeared on the horizon, we got on the road back to Rhode Island.