Contents
Title Page
Books by Rob Blackwell
The Last Blog
Do you believe in ghosts?
Playing the waiting game
Lights in the Basement
I hear noises upstairs!
Nervous but still alive!
Why I'm really here
Angry Spirits
The Girl Scout and the ghost
Lights, Part II
Petrified beyond the ability for rational thought
In the dark
"Don't let her take me away"
The Soldier
Sound and Fury
Damn!
Please help me
TELL THEM
What really happened to Sean Gordon?
More Information
The Last Blog
Rob Blackwell
Books by Rob Blackwell
The Sanheim Chronicles:
A Soul to Steal (Book One)
Band of Demons (Book Two)
Give the Devil His Due (Book Three)
Complete Box Set
The Soren Chase Series
Closed at Dark (Sign up for Rob’s newsletter here and receive it for free)
Carnival of Stone
The Forest of Forever
The Last Blog (A Soren Chase short story)
The Pretender (Coming soon!)
Audiobooks
A Soul to Steal
Band of Demons
Give the Devil His Due
The Last Blog
Oct. 12, 2012, 9:53 p.m.
Soren Chase
Sean Gordon went into Madison Manor on November 14, 2010, and was never seen again. What happened to him has been the subject of fevered speculation.
We can agree on several facts. Sean wrote seventeen blog posts between the hours of 8 p.m. and midnight. The posts were part of a live blog of his time in Madison Manor, which has a reputation as one of the most haunted homes in Leesburg. The posts provide a disturbing account of his time there, as well as revelations of Sean’s own past.
But were the posts and the events they described actually real? That’s the question that has dominated the resulting discussion. Those who have followed this story have fallen into two camps. The first insists that Sean encountered genuine paranormal phenomena on an unprecedented scale, and his blog provides the long-awaited proof that an afterlife exists. The other believes Sean perpetrated a hoax that went unexpectedly viral.
At this stage, it is tough to add anything new to the discussion. The fights over message boards and water coolers — and even on CNN in one memorable encounter — have persisted for two years with no resolution in sight.
When I was hired by some of Sean’s friends to look into the case, I wanted to refuse outright. Everyone, it seems, had already made up their mind. Yet I also found the case impossible to resist.
Despite what the media and others may have concluded, Sean’s case is not simple. There is evidence on both sides of the equation. Yet I believe I have definitively uncovered what happened to Sean Gordon — and I think the answer will surprise you.
Before we discuss that, it’s worth rereading the original blog posts. While several versions exist on the Internet, many have been subsequently changed and embellished. The following are the blogs as Sean wrote them, unaltered by me.
I think the story here is far different than what most believe.
—Soren Chase
Do you believe in ghosts?
Nov. 14, 2010, 8:02 p.m.
Sean Gordon
Do you believe in ghosts?
That’s the question that has “haunted” me since I was a kid. (See what I did there?) I’ve heard a lot of campfire stories, read several books and interviewed those who have claimed to see and study so-called spirits. But I’ve never really known how I would answer the question.
Oh, I want to believe, but the cold, cynical part of me insists that there’s no mystery here at all: we’re all just ugly sacks of meat, destined to die, rot and decay into dust. Ghosts aren’t real. They can’t be.
And yet there is that tantalizing sense of “what if.” What if there is something on the other side of life? And what if I could experience it for myself? What if I could prove ghosts were real?
I’ve been obsessed with the question for a long time, but it wasn’t until my interview with the reclusive Margaret Madison last year that it occurred to me I could truly answer it. Of all the people I have talked to about ghosts, she was the most rational and level-headed. And, when it came right down to it, she finally told me what I had to do.
“You can never really believe in something like ghosts unless you experience them for yourself,” she told me.
The solution was clear — I had to spend the night in a haunted house.
Mrs. Madison was a believer, and with good reason. She was the owner of what local ghost hunter Terry Jacobsen calls “America’s most haunted house.” I spent an afternoon with her and was blown away by her tales. She had so many stories that if I tried to recount them all, it would fill a book. Maybe after this experience, I’ll write one.
You won’t find Madison Manor on the local ghost tours or those reality TV shows that follow “paranormal investigators,” mostly because Mrs. Madison never wanted to make a fuss. But Jacobsen insists she was sitting on top of the real deal.
“Margaret has been very generous letting me study her house,” he told me last year. “While I’ve seen some strange activity all over Leesburg, I’ve never seen anything like what’s in her house. Furniture that moves of its own accord, shadows that emanate from no known source, and electromagnetic activity that is truly off the charts. I can’t say for certain there are spirits in that home. What I can say is that some type of phenomena, unexplained by science in its current form, is there.”
Since Mrs. Madison died five months ago, I have begged the Town of Leesburg — which now owns the property — to let me inside. They have denied, ignored and tried to intimidate me. But with your help, I’ve finally overcome them. Your letters and phone calls on my behalf have made all the difference.
I can’t say I’m surprised. I’ve always believed in the power of persistence. Even though I’m just a sports reporter, I was able to call in a few favors (folks who shall remain nameless here for their own protection). These unanswered questions about what happens when we die have preoccupied me for so long, I never believed a few small-minded bureaucrats would stand in my way for long.
My mother always said that in life, you get what you deserve. In this instance, at least, she was absolutely right. I’m finally here.
I couldn’t be more pleased. Since that interview with Mrs. Madison, I’ve desperately wanted to stay and see if what she experienced was real. Better than that, I’ve wanted to share my experiences with you in real-time.
So tonight, I’m going to live-blog everything that happens here with complete honesty. If nothing goes on, and I sit here twiddling my thumbs, I’ll let you know. But if spooks and spirits abound, I’ll tell you all the details. I will relay every creak of the stairs, moan of the wind or whisper from the corner. I’ll be your eyes and ears.
Tonight — together — we’re going to tackle one of the world’s greatest mysteries: Do ghosts exist?
I know I’m ready to find out. The question is: are you?
Playing the waiting game
Nov. 14, 2010, 8:15 p.m.
Sean Gordon
So I’m well and truly ready now.
Laptop is on, and I’m sitting in the living room typing away. My connection to the Internet is completely stable,
thanks to my hotspot. Let’s just hope Verizon’s network doesn’t drop me during the spookiest moments.
I’ve also checked this entire house top to bottom. I want to make sure no one, having read my plans on the blog, is waiting to give me a surprise. I was thorough. The house has four levels if you include the basement and I checked every room and behind every door. For God’s sake, I even checked the bathtubs on the second and third stories. I’m not going to have some asshole jump out at me in a white sheet.
So I’m ready to report on anything and everything that happens. One word of warning: my editors tell me I tend to write long. I know that as a blogger I’m supposed to be short and to the point, but I’m a journalist and we have trouble doing that. So if I drop a whole narrative on you, don’t freak out. Got it? Good.
So let’s go. The live-blog is officially starting. Bring it on, Madison Manor. Do your worst.
Lights in the Basement
Nov. 14, 2010, 8:34 p.m.
Sean Gordon
So I’ll admit this experience isn’t going quite as I hoped.
I heard a trashcan fall outside and became very excited. After a half hour at my post, something was finally happening. The ghosts had arrived!
But it turned out it was just a hungry squirrel. I’d love to tell you it was the ghost of a squirrel — or maybe a zombie squirrel — but I’d be lying.
Ugh. I know there was never any guarantee that I’d find ghosts here, but I was hoping something would have happened by now. Instead, the house has been quiet and I’m starting to worry I’m going to win an award for the most boring blog ever written.
So if we can’t talk about my own ghost story, let’s talk about one of Mrs. Madison’s, shall we? Gather by the campfire, kiddies, and I’ll tell you a tale. It ought to bide the time until something goes bump in the night.
It started with the lights.
Margaret Madison fell in love with the house in 1966, a year before she and her husband bought it. If you look at it now, it’s easy to see why. It’s a historic Victorian home that looks like it jumped off the pages of Country Living. It has one of those wide porches with a swing and some chairs, the kind where you imagine yourself sitting and sipping mint juleps on a hot August day (or maybe that’s just me). The purple trim has faded a bit, but you get the idea: the place looks grand.
But it didn’t nearly fifty years ago. Mrs. Madison said when she found it, it was in poor repair, the price of decades of neglect. It hadn’t been properly lived in since the 1940s when the previous occupants had up and left without explanation. Their attempts to sell it had failed. I bet you can guess why, given that this is a ghost story.
The thing was, Margaret Madison didn’t know any of that. She saw the house and said there was something about it that just “drew” her to it. After a year of requests to her husband, the two finally purchased it in 1967 and began the long, drawn-out process of restoring the home to its former glory. That’s why it’s called Madison Manor. She told me that the name was a bit of a local joke at first given all the money they were putting into the place, and somehow it just stuck.
Still, when they finally moved in, she knew there was something unusual about the place. For starters, the house was always unnaturally cold in the midst of a hot Virginia summer, even on the upper levels. She chalked it up to drafts in the house, which was more than 110 years old. But she also said that as soon as she stepped foot into the completed house, she had the distinct feeling she was being watched. Her husband insisted it was the product of her imagination.
It took the lights to convince her it was something more.
Mrs. Madison never liked the cellar much. Originally built to store coal in the 19th century, it was dark, dank and had a tendency to flood. But it was also where the brand-new washing machine was, and with three kids, she needed to be down there a lot. She walked down the steep steps from the kitchen at least three times a day. Every time, she would pull the chain to turn on the light, a single bulb attached to a wooden beam. When she went back upstairs, she would always click the light off.
Except it wouldn’t stay that way.
By the time she walked the 12 steps up to the kitchen, the light downstairs was often back on.
At first, she thought it was her mistake. Maybe she had just forgotten to pull the chain. But after the sixth or seventh time, she became convinced it was a problem with the light. She replaced the light bulb and then, when it kept happening, replaced it again. She asked her husband to look into it. But a funny thing happened—it always stayed off for him. He didn’t think there was a problem at all, and insisted it was just Margaret’s failure to give the chain a proper pull.
She even wondered if it was the kids playing a trick on her. But none of her children enjoyed going into the basement (“It’s creepy!” they said) and the light seemed to turn itself back on only when she was alone in the house.
By now, Mrs. Madison was quite worried. She would confirm the light was off, turn around and — by the time she reached the top of the steps — find it was back on again. She became scared to go down there, but was more afraid to admit that to her husband.
The last time it happened to her was a Tuesday, she told me later.
Like always, she carefully pulled the chain and walked up the stairs, only to find the light on when she reached the top.
She sat down on the steps and cried. In that moment, she wanted to leave the house permanently. The feeling of being watched constantly had not abated. She sometimes woke up in the night hearing whispers in the dark. She heard children crying but — when she checked on her own kids — it wasn’t them. She heard footsteps in the house when she was the only one there.
But the light was pushing her over the edge. She could try to explain away everything else as nightmares or her imagination, but the light was a fact — and it didn’t want to be ignored.
“Please,” she called down, still crying. “Please stop. I know there’s something here. I know the house is haunted. Please just stop. I know you’re here.”
She carefully walked down the steps again, trembling with fear. She pulled the chain to turn it off. She walked back up the steps.
When she turned around, the light was still off.
“It got what it wanted,” she told me. “It was at that moment that I stopped pretending there was a ‘rational’ explanation for what was happening to me. I didn’t tell my husband or the kids, but I accepted that we shared our house with a ghost. It was honestly a relief. We want so badly to live in a world where everything runs the way it should, where ghosts, monsters and demons don’t exist. But it’s just an illusion. And once I accepted that these things are real, it was like a weight lifted from my shoulders. I don’t care who believes, or if my neighbors or friends think I’m crazy. There is a ghost in my house.”
For a time after that incident, Margaret Madison’s life mostly returned to normal.
The light stayed off when she pulled the chain, the whispers receded in the night and — while she often heard the sound of footsteps upstairs — things were generally quiet.
And then her son brought one of his friends home and all hell broke loose.
I hear noises upstairs!
Nov. 14, 2010, 8:40 p.m.
Sean Gordon
Hang on.
I had to break off from writing that story because I have breaking news. A moment ago, I distinctly heard the sound of footsteps upstairs. There was a creak and then several soft thumps of someone walking down a hallway.
I can’t be positive, but I think I heard a door open as well. So I’ll admit I’m a bit jumpy now. I might have heard my first ghost.
But this is what I’m here for, right? I wanted to spend the night in a haunted house. And I was complaining that nothing had happened.
If you can hang on a minute, I’m going to go check it out. I know there are only a few dozen of you actively following this, but if you don’t see an update from me in 10 minutes, maybe one of you should
call the police?
I’m kidding.
Probably.
Nervous but still alive!
Nov. 14, 2010, 8:47 p.m.
Sean Gordon
Don’t call the cops quite yet.
I don’t know if it’s a false alarm or not, but there was nothing unusual upstairs. Okay, maybe that’s not quite true. I’m pretty sure I shut the door to the main bedroom when I was on my tour earlier today and now the door is open. The trouble is, I don’t trust my memory. I think I shut it. But did I? Maybe I meant to and forgot.
Memory can be a real bitch sometimes. It’ll show you the events you wished had happened instead of what really did.
So I’m back in the living room, all the lights turned on to give me some (probably false) sense of comfort.
I want to respond to some of your comments, but let me post this quickly before one of you calls the police!
Why I'm really here
Nov. 14, 2010, 8:58 p.m.
Sean Gordon
Okay, everything is quiet again. It’s possible I imagined the footsteps upstairs. That’s what I keep telling myself. It’s funny, really. Ever since I talked to Mrs. Madison, I’ve been dying to stay in this house and experience some of what she did. And now that I have felt the barest hint of it, I’ll admit I’m nervous.
There is some relief knowing you guys are out there too.
Really appreciate the comments so far, even the weird ones. It makes me feel less alone. (I’m going to try to answer all the questions, except for the creepy ones from “Quinn O’Brion.” I know who that is, and it’s not a funny joke. My editor, Tim Anderson, would not appreciate it.)
The Last Blog: A Short Story (The Soren Chase Series) Page 1