Case Files

The Farmhouse Haunting

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today,
I wish, I wish he'd go away...
~ Hugh Mearns, “Antigonish”

Reports of faint footsteps heard in the dead of night, an occasional cold spot, or the brief sighting of something indistinct out of the corner of the eye are interesting phenomenon, but not very exciting to a seasoned ghost hunter. But occasionally an investigation comes along that is so packed with paranormal activity that is simply irresistible. The following is the story of a farm house where spirits were determined to make themselves known to the living, and they would stop at nothing until someone paid attention to them.

     In the summer of 2016 I received an email from a woman named Brigitte. The message read:
‘I need your help as soon as possible with some very troubling issues at an old farmhouse my husband and I purchased a few years ago. I am nervous about the escalating activity. Can you call me?’
     In spite of the brevity of the request I was intrigued, so I picked up the phone and gave Brigitte a call. A half hour later I hung up absolutely stunned by what I had just heard. The amount of activity Brigitte and her husband had witnessed was incredible to say the least. Needless to say, I was more than just a little eager to meet Brigitte and to conduct a proper investigation.
     Brigitte’s house is a gorgeous farm house in a suburb of New York. The house sits on a parcel of 15 acres of land, and the accompanying barn, stables and outbuildings give the impression that one has traveled back to a time when horses, donkeys, chickens, ducks and vegetable gardens were once both commonplace and a necessity.
     I interviewed Brigitte to get the specific details of the activity that had been plaguing her and her husband since they bought the house, and she was eager to tell me about their experiences.
     “As soon as we bought the house I had a sense that something wasn’t right. Sometimes when I would stop by the barn to check on the horses it felt like someone was following me, like they were right behind me. It was almost as if I could hear them. I’d turn around and look, but of course there was no one there.
     Then an odd thing started happening. I would come outside to tend to the animals and the horses and donkeys would be running loose. All of the barn doors somehow got unlocked. At first we thought that the person who was in charge of the barn wasn’t locking them properly. We had surveillance cameras installed, partially to show the guy that he hadn’t locked the barn. But in fact the cameras showed that he had secured the locks. The barn was clearly locked, but the deadbolts on the doors were somehow unlocking by themselves.”
     I asked Brigitte about the first activity the couple noticed inside of the house.
     “I would say the first thing we noticed was upstairs in the original part of the house. The house was added onto over the years, but the original part was built in 1812. One day I walked upstairs and found that the door to the attic was opened. It’s the pull-down type, and I found it open about three feet. It was startling seeing something like that because someone had to have reached up and pulled the door down with a considerable amount of strength in order to move it that far. Other freaky things happen in the original part of the house.
     One time I found all of the dresser drawers open in the upstairs bedroom. Every single drawer from the top to the bottom was opened exactly the same length. All ten drawers were evenly pulled out from top to bottom all exactly the same, as far out as you could pull them.
     Another day, in that same bedroom, I found that a lamp had been pushed all the way to the very edge of the table and the lampshade was hanging totally crooked. It looked as if someone had pushed the lampshade all the way down on one side, it was that crooked.
     The dogs don’t like going into that part of the house unless they follow me up there. They’re very spooky about it. They’re always barking at the walls a night in that part of the house.
     Just the other day I was laying on the bed with the dogs in the upstairs bedroom doing stuff, looking at my computer and at my Kindle. I was doing like three things at once, so I was fully awake. All of a sudden the dogs started barking, and out of the corner of my eye I saw movement on the dresser. I looked over and two of the dresser drawers were open. The drawer two down from the top was open, and one up from the bottom was open. I’m positive they were closed before. Then the door to the room slowly started to close by itself. It had been half open, and as I lay there I watched it close all the way then open up again.”
     One of the most frightening things to happen to Brigitte in this upstairs bedroom came in the form of two dreams she had while sleeping there. Or were they dreams?
     “In the first dream I was upstairs looking around for something. I walked out of the bedroom and started to go into the bathroom. All of a sudden this little girl came running straight at me out of the bathroom.”
     Brigitte stopped her narrative to show me how the girl ran out of the bathroom with her hands straight out in front of her as if she was pushing. The girl made an angry screaming sound as she ran toward Brigitte.
     “She was screaming and pushing me backwards, trying to push me down the stairs.”
     A few weeks later Brigitte had a second dream of this girl while she was sleeping in this same bedroom.
     “It was about three o’clock in the morning. I was sleeping and the dogs, who were in the room with me, just started going nuts and barking viciously. I opened my eyes and there she was, this creepy looking little blonde girl. She was the same girl I had seen in the other dream. She had blonde hair and was dressed the same as she had been in the first dream, wearing a nightgown of some kind. She looked very depressed. She scared the shit out of me! And the weird thing is, the curtains were billowing behind her. It was so scary.”
     I asked Brigitte if she thought it was a dream, or if she thought she had an actual visitation by the spirit of this menacing little girl?
     “It started as a dream. But then the dogs started barking, and I sat right up in bed. I can’t be certain if it was a dream or not. But I woke up right after and the curtain was absolutely billowing. There isn’t a vent there, and all of the windows are new and airtight. There’s no airflow over there. So I woke up from this ‘dream’ and saw the little girl with the curtains billowing around her. After she disappeared, the curtains were still billowing. I know I was awake when I saw that. I was definitely awake watching the curtains as they continued to billow out from the window.”
     Brigitte is not a very good artist, but the dream was so frightening that she did a quick sketch to try to illustrate what she had just seen. The next day she brought it to a friend who is a professional artist. By using Brigitte’s rough drawing and the description of what she had seen, her friend was able to draw an accurate depiction of the girl in the dream. This drawing can be found at the top of this case file.
     The activity isn’t confined to the original wing of the house. Brigitte said that things happen all over the house.
     “I came into the family room one afternoon and found that a religious book had been thrown off the shelf. It was lying on the floor, quite a distance from the shelves. A few days later, I found some cards from a box of Tarot cards lying on the floor. Not all of the cards were on the floor, just about nine of them. The others were still in the box. As was the case with the book, the cards looked as if they had been thrown off the shelves. In both cases it looked as if these things had been thrown, not that they had fallen. They were laying approximately four feet away from the book shelves.”
     Brigitte and her husband are the only occupants of the house. I asked Brigitte if her husband had ever witnessed anything unusual.
     “Yes. Oh my god. My husband, Andrew, had the freakiest thing happen in the kitchen right in front of him. I was in bed one night and I heard the alarm go off. The alarm ‘talks’ to tell you which door or window is open. It said, “Kitchen window alarm”. Then my husband starts yelling, ‘Brigitte get in here!’ So I ran into the kitchen. He was totally freaked out.
     Andrew said that he had a glass bottle of milk out on the counter, and there was about a quarter of an inch of milk on the bottom. He had placed the bottle cap loosely on top of the bottle because he had just used it. He said that all of a sudden the cap just flew up in the air. It hit the ceiling, then flew across the room at about a forty-five-degree angle and smashed onto the window which set the alarm off.”
     I stopped the interview briefly to measure the distance from the window to where the bottle had been. The cap had traveled over 15 feet!
     “This doesn’t even make sense,” Brigitte continued. “There was no gas build up in the bottle. It was good milk, and he had just used it. The cap wasn’t even on tight. And it hit with such force that it set the alarm off.”
     Andrew was also a witness to something else that was truly disturbing and unexplainable. Brigitte explained, “I was in bed at around 10:00 o’clock at night. Andrew went out the front door to feed the horses and came right back. He just ran out to the barn, threw them some hay and ran back. He was gone for no more than three minutes. He said that as he was coming back in, he heard what sounded like a party going on inside of the house; that there were tons of people all talking. He said it sounded like both adults and kids, as if there were a bunch of people in the house. He said that he could hear kids laughing. As he walked up the steps to the front porch he could still hear all these people talking and laughing. As soon as he opened the front door, the sound suddenly stopped. He looked over into the dining room and all of the chairs were all over the place. On one side of the table they had been pushed right up against the walls. On the other side of the table, they were pushed back into the middle of the doorway. There were six chairs in all at the table. The three that were pushed totally back against the wall were pushed neatly back and lined up against the wall. The ones that were on the other side looked as if someone had tossed them.”
     I stopped the interview to do some measuring. The chairs that were found pushed neatly against the wall had moved four feet. Those that were scattered on the other side of the table had traveled over five feet. As I moved the chairs back from the table I could feel their weight. These are very heavy, solid wood chairs. Somehow, in the space of three minutes every chair went from being neatly placed around the dining room table to being pushed 4 to 5 feet away; all with the accompanying sound of a party with adults and laughing children.
One day Brigitte was in the kitchen when she noticed someone standing in a doorway several feet away. “I was in the kitchen making coffee and playing with the dogs and I could swear there was a man standing in the doorway near the stairs that lead to the upper part of the original house. I thought it was my husband because we were the only two people in the house. This figure blocked out all of the light coming in from that room. He was just standing there and I thought it was Andrew on the phone. I mean, why else would he just be standing there? I was down on the floor playing with the dogs and I started joking around and said, ‘Come and join the love-party with the dogs.’ I was really hamming it up because I thought Andrew was standing there staring at me. But when I went to look at him, out of the corner of my eye I saw this person going up the stairs. So I called, ‘Andrew?’ And I suddenly got this really foreboding feeling. I went upstairs into the old part of the house looking for him, and I went through all of the rooms calling, ‘Andrew? Andrew?’ But he wasn’t up there. The next thing I know I hear him call to me from downstairs, ‘What do you want? I’m down here in the bedroom’.”
     Other activity seems to center around the area of the master bedroom and bathroom.
     “My husband has hair products in the bathroom – a brush, hair gel, stuff like that. He’s the type of man who knows where every single thing is. Often you go in there and all of his hair products are strewn about the floor, or they’re just thrown around. He’s also found some of his hair stuff in the shower. This has happened at least five times that I know of. Sometimes it’s his brush, sometimes it’s the other stuff.
     The shower has also turned on by itself in the middle of the night. It wasn’t just trickling as if someone forgot to turn it off completely. It was turned on full force. With this type of faucet, you have to pull it up from the bottom, then around to the top in order for it to fully turn on. I had the guy who installed it come back several times to look at it. I asked him if there is any way that it could turn on by itself and he said, “No Brigitte, it can’t open on its own.”
     Sometimes, it seems as if something is trying to help Brigitte. One incident in particular seems to point in this direction.
     “One night I was awoken by a loud sound in the bathroom just off of our bedroom. I walked in and found the source of the sound -- my toothbrush had been thrown into the bathtub! I always keep the toothbrush in the toothbrush holder on the sink. How did it get from the toothbrush holder to the tub, which is about six feet away? As I was looking at the toothbrush I noticed that all of the drawers in the closet were open. Just like the dresser drawers that I had found open in the upstairs bedroom, all of the closet drawers were opened exactly the same amount from top to bottom. Seeing the drawers opened like that lead me to go into the closet. At the end of the closet is a window with shutters that looks out onto the barn. I always keep the slats on the shutters closed, but when I walked in there they were wide open. I looked out the window and there was my horse on the ground. He had developed colic and was laying on the ground suffering. So, I felt like some spirit had woken me up out of a sound sleep to try to help me rescue my horse. I did get him surgery, but he died a month later.”
     Other times, it seems that something is so desperate to get Brigitte’s attention that it ends up scaring the hell out of her.
     “This next thing that happened was terrifying - absolutely terrifying. My husband was away and I was alone in the house. I was a sleeping in my bedroom and at 2 AM I heard distinct footsteps right outside of my bedroom door. It was so real that I thought a prowler was in the house. The dogs were in the room with me and they weren’t reacting to the sound, so I figured it was more ghost stuff happening. I got up, locked the bedroom door, turned on the house alarm and fell back to sleep. At 2:45 AM I was awoken by a horrific BANG on the bedroom door followed by the door shaking. It was exactly like someone either pounded their fist on the door, or they threw themselves against the door and then grabbed the whole door and shook the whole thing. I could hear the doorknob shaking. Suddenly, it stopped and everything was quiet for twenty minutes or so. Then all of a sudden there was another BANG on the bedroom door. I could also hear the sound of things being thrown around the bathroom. I turned on my TV to drown out the sounds and I didn’t get any more sleep that night. In the morning when I went to let the dogs out, my bedroom door was unlocked! I’m absolutely positive I locked it when I heard the footsteps. Creepier still, I examined the door and found that the pins to the door hardware were all loose -- the top pin was almost all the way out.”
Brigitte and her husband are not the only people to have witnessed activity in the house. A good friend of theirs had two frightening experiences in the basement.
     Brigitte explained, “My friend Janet was in the basement candling my eggs, and my little chickens were down there with her. All of a sudden, the door to the room she was in slammed shut and then opened again. She said that it was really loud and that the sound startled her. Another time she told me that she was down in the basement when she heard a deep man’s voice say loud and clear, ‘GET OUT’. At first she thought it was me making a joke. She’s like “Brigitte, what are you doing here? Brigitte? Brigitte?”
     Several other people witnessed activity on the farm. Hector, the man who takes care of the horses, witnessed doors unlocking right after he locked them, and the doors opening right in front of his eyes. Another time he went to feed the chickens in their coop when all of a sudden the door closed behind him and the deadbolt locked. He actually had to cut open the screen to get out of the chicken coop. Anyone who has used a deadbolt knows that this is just impossible. Someone would have to turn the deadbolt all the way around in order to lock it. Another time, Brigitte was standing on the front porch talking to Hector who was down on the lawn a few feet away. She had been standing there talking to him for several minutes with the front door open behind her. Hector watched as the front door slowly closed behind her, locking her out of the house. The front door cannot lock on its own. It has to be manually turned in order to lock. There was no breeze that day, so the door couldn’t have just blown shut.
     The handyman, Jacque, was alone working in the attic when he heard someone calling his name. The voice sounded like it was in the room with him. Other times the lights have gone out while he was working in this room. There have been times when he has been forced to stop working in the attic because a strange feeling will overcome him, as if someone is watching him.
     Brigitte’s 20-year-old niece refuses to stay in the bedroom in the old portion of the house because she has horrible nightmares whenever she sleeps there. In the dream she sees an old man just inches away from her face staring into her eyes.
     Many times people have smelled cigarette and pipe smoke in various parts of the house even though neither Brigitte nor Andrew smoke.
     Other activity seems to center around the dogs. Several times the couple has come home and found their Pug dog locked in the master bedroom.
     Brigitte explained, “Several times I’ve come home to find my little dog locked in the master bedroom. There’s just no way that can happen. The dogs are allowed in the other part of the house, but I always keep the bedroom door closed because we keep that as a ‘hair-free zone’. I found her locked in there several times. I tested the door myself to see if it’s possible for her to push the door open with her nose or something, but it’s impossible. And even if she got in there somehow, there is no way for the door to close on its own.
     Another time I found my other dog locked in the master bedroom, and she was totally panicked. I went for a horseback ride and I came back and there she was locked in the bedroom in a panic.”
     The house is equipped with a state-of-the-art surveillance system complete with motion sensors and cameras. Activity has actually been recorded and captured with by this equipment.
     “The motion sensors have gone off many times while we were away. We had the equipment checked and it’s in perfect working condition. The police have called us while we were on vacation because the living room sensor and the sensor in Andrew’s office were going off. Other times the sensor in our bedroom has gone off. But the main motion sensor that keeps going off is the one in the living room in the old part of the house.
     Last January the cops came because our front door had opened and closed on its own. You could see it in the surveillance video. One of the cameras is pointing right at the front door, and you can see it open and then close. The door was locked, but in the video you can see it open wide, then close again. When the police arrived, the door was locked. That means that someone unlocked the door, opened it, closed the door, and re-locked it.”
     I asked Brigitte, “How far could you see the door open in the video? Was it just a little, or did it open wide?”
     “It clearly opened wide and then closed. It was dead bolted and the alarm was on. It set the alarm off when it opened.
    The surveillance cameras have also recorded lights going on and off in the house while we’re away. The cameras have night vision, and you can see the whole house from the different cameras. I’ve checked the surveillance videos and I can see that lights have turned on, then off by themselves in various rooms in the house.”

The Investigation
     I work with several psychics, all of whom possess various abilities. But as I considered the magnitude of this investigation my thoughts immediately went to my former investigative team mates from Katonah Paranormal, Kathy O’Donnell and Karen Darby. The two women are sisters, extremely gifted psychics, and they are both dear friends of mine. I was thrilled when they jumped at the opportunity to help me with this fascinating case. I purposely did not tell Kathy or Karen any details about the investigation. They did not know any specific details of the activity that Brigitte and her husband had experienced.
     We arrived at the house and were greeted by Brigitte. Over coffee, we told her the precognitive impressions that each of us received the previous week. Kathy started by telling her about a message she received that actually woke her up that morning.
     “I was seeing people dressed the way Pilgrims or Puritans dressed. They were in a little village made up of a bunch of small houses and a blacksmith shop, and they were just going about their business. But what woke me up was a male voice shouting “Hutchinson” in my ear, and then he whispered, ‘Anna .... Anna’ So clearly a female is involved here.” Interestingly, we were later able to confirm that in 1643, Anne Hutchinson and six of her children were killed by the Algonquin Indians in retaliation for a slaughter of over 100 of their people by the Dutch settlers. Although this incident happened in what is now The Bronx, New York, Brigitte's home is built near the site where another Native American tribe had been slaughtered by settlers. Could there be a connection between these incidents from long ago and the activity on Brigitte's farm?
     I had a vivid dream earlier that week that I knew was connected to the case.
     “I dreamt that I saw a large, circular pond with a very low stone wall around it. It was winter, and it was frozen over, and there was a little girl playing on the ice. She looked to be about seven or eight years old. From the way she was dressed, I would say this took place at a very early time period; maybe the late 1800’s or early 1900’s. She was wearing a long, old fashioned looking dress. I was on the edge of this pond poking the ice with a stick. The ice was soft and slushy on the edges and I said to the girl, “Don’t come near the edge. It’s dangerous. Don’t come here.” But she didn’t listen. She went near the edge, and she fell through the ice. She fell all the way under. I started breaking the ice in order to get some light in there so we could see where she went and to make a larger hole for her to resurface. When we could finally see her under the water, someone jumped in and got her and pulled her out. The next scene was of the girl’s father standing over me as I was trying to revive her, but it was too late. She had died, drowned. Her father was calling out to the people who were there, ‘Somebody’s got to do something. Go get somebody.’ I said, ‘It’s too late, nothing can be done.’ This dream was really strange because I never dream about people I don’t know. I mean, how many times have you had dreams about something taking place in the past and seeing people you don’t know? I didn’t know any of the people in this dream.”
     Karen’s impression had images that were similar to my dream, which we hadn’t discussed before.
     “My impressions were very similar to Barry’s. I was seeing a round shape which I think was an artesian well; something they used back in the day to feed cattle in the pastures. It didn’t seem to be as large as the one in Barry’s dream, but it was a good size. The stone that they used to put on top for safety years later was off, and I also saw a girl. I would say she was dressed from a later time period than the girl in Barry’s dream, maybe from around the 1920s. The name “Rosie” kept coming to me. I think this was a nickname, something they just called her. She had a younger brother with the name Joshua. Both were very fair haired. I’m not getting a real strong grasp on how she passed, but I see something like thunderstorms and lightning. I don’t know if that has anything to do with how she passed, or if it’s just symbolic of deep anger that she has in her about something. I’m also hearing ‘dolly’, so was it a doll that she had that was special to her that got taken way, or that she lost, or maybe it fell in the well and she tried to reach for it and that’s how she passed? It’s really hard to pinpoint with her, but I keep seeing the same thing. One minute I see her all dressed out with the ribbons and her hair neatly combed, wearing a light blue dress, very pretty -- and then the next minute I see this angry look about her.
     The last thing I saw this just this morning. I was sitting across from her and there was a large woven basket between us. She was at one end and I was at the other. I didn’t see anything in the basket. It seemed to be empty to me. Maybe it represented something like a peace offering? I’m just not sure. But there it is again, the symbolism of the round shape – Barry’s pond, my artesian well, and the basket.”
     Brigitte told Karen the dream she had of the little girl who stormed out of the upstairs bathroom and tried to push her down the stairs. It sounded like the angry looking girl in Karen’s vision.

     We proceeded to do a walkthrough of the house, starting with the living room. Both Kathy and Karen felt active energy as soon as they walked into the room. Kathy also described a feeling of “a soft electrical buzz” when she was in various parts of the room. I commented that it felt as if something bad had happened in this room at one time, some sort of a tragedy. Suddenly, Karen exclaimed, “It felt like somebody just took my hand. My right and is buzzing.” The feeling in her hand stayed with her as we went into the next room, the master bedroom.
     Kathy said the bedroom felt ‘pretty charged’ but thought it was because someone was following us from room to room. Karen continued to comment on the sensation in her hand, at one point saying, “My hand is on fire, I’m telling you.”
     We went back into the living room where something interesting happened. All three of us felt intense energy in the exact corner of the room. As we stood there talking about who strong it felt Brigitte laughed and said, “That’s right where the front door used to be! We redesigned this room, but you’re standing exactly in the spot where the door was.” Doorways, especially front doors, often retain a lot of residual energy from all of the people who came through the over the years.
     We made our way upstairs to the old part of the house. On the way up Kathy exclaimed, “Oh! Oh my gosh. Somebody just pushed my right shoulder and I hit the wall. They pushed me!” Kathy was totally unaware that this was the same stairway that the little girl tried to push Brigitte down in her dream. As I reached the landing at the top of the stairs, I was overcome by a strong, unpleasant feeling.
     As we were conversing in the hallway near the stairs, Kathy suddenly looked over at the bedroom and said, “What was that? Did anybody else see someone enter that room over there? No? Well, somebody just walked in there.” We walked into the room to investigate. This was the same bedroom where Brigitte found the dresser drawers had opened by themselves, and where the lamp was found pushed over. It was also the same room where Brigitte had the dream of the little girl, and where the curtains were billowing out from the window.
    Kathy said, “I am not sure it’s because someone had some sort of pneumonia or something, but I’m getting a crushing feeling in my chest in this room. Chest pains. It’s like a heart attack or pneumonia or something. Just crushing chest pain. I don’t like the energy in that room.”
     Karen added, “My throat feels very thick, like it's hard to swallow. I’m also getting that someone might have had really bad pneumonia or something. It’s strongest when I stand at the bottom of the bed. I feel it coming towards me.” She also picked up the name Josiah in this room.
     Brigitte said that our impressions echoed an experience she had several weeks earlier. She was sleeping in this bedroom when she was overcome by a crushing feeling on her chest. The feeling woke her up out of a deep sleep. She actually thought she was dying because the pressure was so strong and she couldn’t breathe. She managed to stagger to her feet and make her way to the bathroom in the hallway where the feeling finally subsided.
     Just down the hall from this bedroom is a study that overlooks the front of the house. An interesting architectural detail in this room is a small, pyramid shaped nook with a decorative window. Brigitte said that the space was once part of the attic which was opened up to become part of the room.
     Kathy felt very uncomfortable in this small attic space, saying it made her sick to her stomach. She felt that something highly charged had happened in there. Karen got a number of odd sensations when she walked into that space. “I definitely felt a younger person, a young adult in that area. And then it just kind of felt like - I’m not saying this happened - but it’s just a feeling that I get, like a knife in the back as I walked out. And then I kept getting pulled back. It was like something replaying over and over again. It could have been someone with a really hard punch, or they had a hard object that they hit someone with.”
     From the top floor, we made our way all the way to the basement. Although Brigitte’s friend had the door slammed on her in one of the basement rooms, and had heard the voice say, ‘Get out’, none of us felt very much in this area of the house. The only thing anyone picked up was Kathy who said she heard a ‘wheezing sound’ while she was walking around the basement.
     At the end of the investigation we chatted with Brigitte about some of her experiences and reminded her to stay positive. Although living in a haunted house can be unnerving, ‘ghosts’ cannot harm people. I let her know that it would take a few weeks for me to go through the recordings to search for EVP, and that I would send her any spirit voices that I might discover.

The Evidence
     Scouring hours of recordings is seriously difficult work. I spend days and days listening closely to the recording with headphones for any areas that might contain EVP – Electronic Voice Phenomenon. These voices can be as quiet as a whisper, as loud as a speaking voice, or sometimes they are heard talking over our voices during the investigation. It took a full two weeks to go through the recording, and I was rewarded with three very strong EVP.
     The first was recorded in the upstairs office in the original part of the house. You might recall reading that the three of us had uneasy feelings in the small converted attic space of this room. As I listened back to the recording, I could hear the four of us telling each other of the negative feeling that seemed to be emanating from the attic space when suddenly a whispery female voice chimed in saying, “Douse the light”. This voice is quickly followed by a male voice saying “Answer me”. The phrase “Douse the light” is archaic, and the voice I picked up made me think of a young girl who is urging someone to quickly extinguish an oil lamp. The meaning of the male voice saying, “Answer me” immediately after is a mystery. Kathy, Karen and I picked up strong negative energy in that room, so the message may involve an incident from the past where a man and a woman had a heated, or even violent altercation.
The second EVP was also recorded in the upstairs office. In it, you can hear a whispering voice say "Help me" while I'm asking a question about the room. The office itself did not feel negative, just the small attic space. It's possible that the spirit came from that space asking my help.
   The third EVP was captured in the hallway of the old section of the house. This is the area where Kathy felt someone push her against the wall, and where Brigitte had the dream of the little girl trying to push her down the stairs. Fittingly, the EVP is a male voice saying "You fall down".
You can hear these three EVP at the bottom of the “EVP Examples” page.

The Clearing
     A few weeks after conducting the investigation we returned to do a clearing of Brigitte and Andrew’s home. The purpose of a clearing is actually three-fold. First, if there are active spirits present, the clearing will help move them out and lead them to “the other side”. Second, a clearing will help remove negative and residual energy from the home. Residual energy is an imprint from the past that continues to have an influence in the present. The third purpose of a clearing is to bring positive energy back into the home.
     Kathy, Karen and I met with Brigitte at her house and discussed what the clearing would entail. Brigitte was eager to participate in the clearing, so the four of us lit incense sticks and got to work.
     First, Kathy lit a white candle in a crystal bowl filled with Kosher salt to absorb negative energy and to encourage healing. She then read a prayer asking for God’s intervention in helping clear the house of unwanted spirits and negative energy. After putting on a CD of healing music we made our way through the house, slowly and methodically clearing each room. While I won’t go into the specifics of what is said during a clearing, the basic message is that any spirits who occupy the house must leave and go on to be with their loved ones on the other side. Along with this is the visualization of God’s light filling the house with love and dissolving any negative energy.
     We cleared every corner of every room, from the basement all the way up to the attic. Curiously, at one point the four of us felt a sudden blast of cold air while clearing the master bedroom. We actually got goosebumps from the unexpected chill that hit us simultaneously. Although it’s not rare to experience a reaction from spirits during a clearing, it’s often a bit of a surprise when it actually happens. It’s actually an indication that the clearing is working; a sign that the spirit has moved on.
     The clearing took over an hour to complete, but by the time we were finished the house felt amazing. We all experienced a profound sense of serenity and peace, and an almost palpable feeling of lightness seemed to have settled on the home. At one point Brigitte commented that it felt so good that she finally realized just how negative the house felt to her prior to the clearing. She felt that she finally had a home that was hers, not one that was shared with spirits and negative energy.
     We reminded Brigitte that a clearing is just the first step in healing a home. The rest would be up to her. We suggested that she do a mini-clearing once a month whether she felt the house needed it or not. We also gave Brigitte instructions on how to make a healing spray out of fresh, white sage leaves and other herbs to use both in the house and on herself. In addition, we told her about on the benefits of using Kosher salt as a clearing agent, and how to properly dispose of it in order to help keep the space clear.
     Although it may take time for a clearing to fully take hold, Brigitte and Andrew are well on their way to life in a home filled with peace, love and serenity.

The Bronxville Public Library

On May 17, 1942, the residents of Bronxville, New York were thrilled to attend the dedication of the village’s new public library. The building, designed by architect Harry Leslie Walker, was an adaptation of residential Georgian architecture. With its pine paneling, oriental rugs, lush draperies and comfortable chairs, the library had a home-like atmosphere. In order to stimulate an interest in both literature and art, paintings were donated to the library by residents. These were hung in various rooms, and an art committee was formed to oversee the monthly art installments that were exhibited in a room dedicated to that purpose.
     In the 74 years since its opening, Bronxville residents have enjoyed the library’s fine collection of books, works of art, lectures, and family events. It’s not known exactly when odd things began happening in the library, but the librarians have had many experiences that they shared with me during an investigation I conducted in 2016. One librarian was an eyewitness to paranormal activity soon after getting a job at the library.
     “I had only been working here a couple of weeks and I was on my first night shift. I had been working in the teen room and was leaving through the stacks when I hear something loud clunk to the floor. I went back toward the teen room, turned the corner, and there lying in the middle of the floor was a book. It had fallen off a shelf, and I could see the empty spot on the shelf where it came from. I had just walked through that area, and there was no way that this book was hanging off the shelf. I got the feeling that someone was letting me know that they were here in the library with me. I quickly finished my work and at the end of the night I literally ran out of the library. I turned all the lights off and ran downstairs. Everyone asked, ‘What’s wrong?' I just said, ‘Don’t worry about it’, then I got out of there as fast as I could!”
     Another librarian reported hearing voices in the teen room stairwell. “There is an emergency stairwell that leads from the teen room down to the basement. The door used to be open to the public, but the library finally installed an alarm on it. If you try to get into the stairwell from the basement or from upstairs, the alarm goes off. One night after the building was closed for the day, one of our librarians heard talking coming from the stairwell. It sounded like two people having a conversation. She used her key to check the stairwell, and the talking stopped. No one was there. She said that she heard the sound of people talking in the stairwell on several occasions. Each time she checked, the stairwell was empty and the talking stopped.”
Other areas of the library are also reportedly haunted. One librarian reported hearing something very strange coming from the radiator in one of the administrative rooms. “It was a snowy day around Christmas, and we had closed the library early. Betty (not her real name) was in one of the administrative rooms by herself. As she sat doing her work, she began to hear music. At first she couldn’t tell where it was coming from, then realized that it was coming through one of one of the radiators. It sounded like hip-hop music! Betty looked outside, but no one was there. She went all the way downstairs, but not only was there no one in the library, the music couldn’t be heard in any other room. She just heard it in the administrative room. She went back to the room where the music was still coming from the radiator, then it suddenly stopped.”
     One of the librarians was working in this same room when she noticed that one of the computer chairs was spinning slowly by itself. It’s the type of chair that you can turn around in, but no one had been near the chair. The librarian came running out and called in several members of the staff to show them what was happening, and they all saw the chair moving by itself.
     Two librarians experienced unusual activity in the attic. “Years ago there was something rolling around up in the attic. We couldn’t figure out what it was. We heard the sound of something rolling back and forth up there. It sounded like a metal pipe rolling back and forth across the wood floor. It was weird. We went up to take a look. When we went to investigate the noise stopped. We looked all around the attic, but we couldn't find anything that would have made that sound.”
     I conducted an investigation of the library on March 24, 2016 and was joined by my friend, Maureen Amaturo. Maureen is not only a talented writer, she is very intuitive and has had a number of psychic experiences. Prior to our investigation, I had encouraged Maureen to ‘reach out’ to see if she could obtain any information about the upcoming investigation. As we entered the library, she shared her precognitive impressions with the librarians.
     “Two visions came to me on two different nights. The first one was of a young man who looked to be between 18 and 25 years old. I could draw his face. I knew exactly what he looked like. Dark hair, fair skin, freckles, dark eyes, and he had this intense look of surprise like he was coming at me — almost as if through a windshield, but there was nothing else there but him. The look in his eyes was like he was just so surprised.
     The second image I got was of a woman. It was almost as if I was looking at a 1960s color photograph, like I was looking at a snapshot of a woman dressed for an event or an occasion. Something like a wedding or Easter Sunday, like in the 1960s when getting dressed up for Easter was a big deal and you wore your hat. The woman had on a deep pink, sequined sparkly dress with a scooped neck, short sleeves, white wrist gloves, a small purse. She had short hair, lipstick, was wearing a pillbox hat and she was looking at me. She had an elongated space between her nose and her top lip, and thin lips. She was going like this (Maureen imitates the look she saw in the vision) being playful.”
     A Tarot card reading I did prior to the investigation echoed some of the information that Maureen had picked up on. My reading revealed the presences of a young man. I explained to the library staff, "The knight of wands is an energetic young man. He’s the subject of the reading. A practical joker, trickster type of a person. which would account for knocking the book over or poking someone. I wouldn’t be surprised if people feel poked or if things are moved. This young man is immature, a restless spirit. The reading also shows that this person is actively trying to communicate with people. When things move or are knocked down, those are spirits trying to get your attention. It can also be a practical joker. According to the card reading, this young man had a hard life and died suddenly.”
     We began our investigation in the reading room on the main floor. The reading room is a beautiful space with floor-to-ceiling windows where patrons can read, and in one corner of the stacks is a portrait of a library patron affectionately known as “Miss Aimee”. This woman was very active in the library, and some feel that Miss Aimee is responsible for at least some of the paranormal occurrences. Although no unusual activity has been reported in this room, some librarians simply don’t like to be alone in this area of the library. I’m not surprised, as the feeling that one gets when entering the area is downright eerie.
     Upon entering the stacks Maureen said, “I’m getting chills and goose-bumps over and over again.” This didn’t surprise me, as I felt the typical heavy, “creepy” feeling that one gets when entering a haunted location. The feeling was strongest near the portrait of “Miss Aimee”, and faded as we moved away from it. At the end of the row we barely felt any energy. Ironically, as we made our way through the stacks I noticed the book titles, “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, and “Ghost Walk”. As we approached the painting of Miss Aimee Maureen said, “I get a sense that the spirit who is here with us really liked this area of the library. I get a real sense of happiness here.” There was no feeling of a presence in the large room with the windows. All of the energy was concentrated in the stacks near the portrait.
     One of the most poignant parts of the investigation was when Maureen first spotted the portrait of Miss Aimee. As we walked to the back of the stacks and saw the painting, Maureen stopped in her tracks and exclaimed, “That’s her! That’s the woman I saw in my vision. But she was showing herself to me when she was young.” As I examined the painting, I could see the resemblance to the woman Maureen described. Although the woman in the portrait is very old, the space between her nose and upper lip is noticeably elongated. She has short hair and thin lips like the woman in Maureen’s vision, and there is a hint of a playful look in her eyes. I am convinced that Miss Aimee paid Maureen a visit prior to our investigation.
     We left this area and made our way to the teen room where so much activity had been reported, but neither Maureen or I felt very much in this room. We conducted a lengthy EVP session, but it didn’t yield any evidence. It is not unusual for reportedly active areas to be quiet during investigations. Our stay in the library was just a few hours. The activity reported by the library staff occurred over a period of years, and was experienced by several different people. We may have been in the library at a time where spirit energy was low. It’s also important to keep in mind that spirits don’t always stay in one place. They wander around. It’s very possible that they were not present at the time that we were investigating the teen room.
     We continued our investigation by visiting the lower level of the library, but apart from some weak energy in the room where the DVD collection is housed we didn’t feel very much in this area. We returned to the room that housed the portrait of Miss Aimee and conducted an extensive EVP session. Our feelings about this room were correct, as I captured two excellent EVP during the session. In one clip I encourage the spirits to tap a device that is sensitive to touch or movement. I say, “If you touch this box it will show us that you’re here.” Immediately after I say this a male voice can be heard saying, “I’m here”. At another point I say to the spirits, “Jump in and talk any time that you want” and a male voice answers, “OK!”. It is very possible that this is the voice of the young man that Maureen saw in her vision, and who I picked up on in my Tarot reading.
     The Bronxville Library is a fantastic place, and one that no one should be frightened of. The library has a warm, inviting atmosphere, paneled reading rooms with comfortable chairs perfect for curling up with a good book, beautiful art work, a children’s library filled with books and fun activities for kids, and a state-of-the-art room where lectures are presented. I was lucky enough to give a lecture there, and I was delighted with the large turn-out and warm reception I received. The spirits who roam the library seem to love the place as much as everyone else in Bronxville does, which is why they might have lingered so long after their passing. If you get a chance to visit the Bronxville Library, take a few minutes to wander the stacks and say a quick hello to Miss Aimee and the mysterious young man. If you’re lucky, they might just say hello back to you!

You can hear the EVP recorded during the investigation at the bottom of the "EVP Examples" page.

Layers of Ghosts, Layers of Time

     I was watching a crime show recently where several people had witnessed a crime and an artist was called upon to make a sketch of the suspect based on their descriptions. The sketch was fed into a computer and it matched with a man who had a record a mile long. The criminal was caught, and the case was closed. If only paranormal research was that simple.
     While many of my investigations center around the sighting of solitary spirits, there are those cases that involve not only the sighting of several different spirits in the same location, but several different types of activity. Although cases of multiple spirits are difficult to untangle, they are certainly interesting, and they hint at layers of time intruding upon the present. The case of “Layers of Ghosts, Layers of Time” is one of those cases. The investigation has left me thoroughly intrigued as I continue to try to unravel the layers of sightings and activity witnessed by a family.

     Caitlin and her husband Edward live in a beautiful home in Westchester County, New York. They share the house with Caitlin’s elderly father, her mother having passed away several years ago. The house has been in Caitlin’s family for over forty years, but they were not the original owners. They purchased the home in the 1970s from a family who had it built sometime in the 1950s.
     Caitlin contacted me because unsettling things were happening in the home. Objects would disappear, and then turn up in odd places. Some of these objects would turn up in places that had already been searched, others remained missing. Stranger still, things the family had never seen before would show up in unusual places. Once, a life insurance policy was found among some papers in a document folder where the family's important papers were kept. This policy had never been seen before, and was not in the document folder prior to it being found. Another time, Caitlin’s mother’s will was found in a secret drawer in a desk.
     An incident involving a doll was even more perplexing. Some time after Caitlin’s mother died, Caitlin decided to redecorate her mom’s former bedroom. One addition to the new decor was a small doll table and chairs at which sat two dolls. One doll was a regular girl-doll, and the other was the kind where the face can be swiveled around to show either a happy face or a sad face. Caitlin placed the dolls at the doll-sized table on the floor with the two dolls facing each other. The happy face was showing on the doll with the two faces. The next morning, Caitlin found the doll lying on the floor near the table with the sad face showing. The doll was far enough away from the table that it couldn’t have just fallen off the chair. It had to have been deliberately moved.
     Caitlin’s mom had recently passed, so Caitlin thought that perhaps her mom was trying to give her some sort of a message. Caitlin said out loud to her mom that she was taking care of things at home, that everything was OK, and that she shouldn’t worry. Caitlin put the doll back in the chair, adjusted it so the happy face was showing and left the room.
     The next day Caitlin entered the bedroom and found the doll was gone from the doll table. It was now sitting on top of her mother’s bed, and the sad face was showing. Caitlin was having Masses said for her mother, so she left information about the Masses on the bed and propped both dolls against the pillows. She made sure to change the face back to the happy face. The next morning, she found both dolls still propped up against the pillow, but the sad face was displayed once again.
     Caitlin thought that her mom might be trying to tell her that she was unhappy about some structural work that was planned for the house, so she put the plans for the house renovations on the bed and assured her mother that the house would be in better shape because of the changes. She said aloud, “Look at all the work we’re doing to the house!” The next day the doll was untouched with the happy face still displayed. Caitlin left the letter and the doll there for a week and there were no further incidents.
     Someone was certainly trying to get Caitlin’s attention. First it was the missing object, then the odd incidents with the doll. Next came the poking. Several times, Caitlin was woken up out of a deep sleep from being poked hard on her arm. The poking startled her out of her sleep, and it actually hurt. Upon inspecting the area, she was alarmed to find a large bruise on her arm. The poking occurred only at night, but interestingly it happened not only in her house, but also while she was visiting friends in Florida.
     We all hear odd sounds at night from time to time, but the sounds heard in Caitlin’s house were different. These sounded like muffled conversations, as if groups of people were having a conversation where the words were indiscernible. Of course, the outside of the house was examined to see if there was a party going on, but the sound wasn’t outdoors. The faint sounding conversation was coming from two different corners of the bedroom.
     Were there any sightings of spirits in the house? There were plenty. Several years ago, Caitlin’s father was lying in bed with his wife sleeping beside him and he was startled to see a thin man in a grey suit and tie looking out of the window. The man appeared to be in his 40s. He was standing by the window, looking out as if waiting for someone, or as if he was just checking out what was going on outside. The man turned around and started looking around the room. When he made eye contact with Caitlin’s father, he suddenly vanished. Caitlin’s dad would see this same mysterious man on two other occasions. All three sightings took place in the master bedroom, and in all three instances the grey suited figure was looking out the window.
     Then there was the sighting of the old man. When Caitlin’s mother was living in the house, she was sitting in the living room and happened to glance across the room to the office. The office door was open, and she saw a man that she described as being in his 80’s wearing a dress shirt neatly tucked into his pants, and he was wearing a belt. He was looking out of the front window. Caitlin’s mom was to see this man several times, always in the same room – the office. Once the man was dressed the same as always, but this time he was also wearing a sweater. Another time he was not looking out the window, but instead he seemed to be looking around the room as if searching for something. Caitlin’s mother would watch this man from the living room. He would turn, see her, and then suddenly disappear.
     These two men of different ages, and perhaps from different time periods, were seen in the house. But there was one more uninvited guest, this one far more chilling -- the woman in black. Caitlin’s mother walked into her bedroom one day and stopped dead in her tracks. Standing on the far side of the room in front of a curio cabinet was a woman dressed completely in black. This eerie apparition vanished before Caitlin’s mother’s eyes, but not before she got a good look at her. What she saw was truly frightening. The woman standing on the other side of the room was not only dressed entirely in black -- she looked exactly like a witch. Fortunately, this fiendish looking woman was only seen once.
     After receiving Caitlin’s email requesting help and speaking to her over the phone, I realized that her home was a hotbed of paranormal activity and I eagerly called on my friends Kathy O’Donnell and Karen Darby to join me on the investigation. I worked with Karen and Kathy for several years in the paranormal investigation group Katonah Paranormal, and I was anxious to see what kind of intuitive evidence they might be able to provide.
     Prior to the actual investigation, Karen, Kathy and I ‘reached out’ for intuitive data that we hoped would give us insight as to what was going on in Caitlin’s home.
     Kathy reported seeing an image of an older woman in a bathrobe standing at the bottom of a staircase. The woman was holding the bathrobe around her as if she was cold.
     Kathy also received the impression in the back yard of a Native American woman and child, as well as a man with a fringe coat and a musket. The three seemed to be a family. These impressions, as well as an impression that there had once been a Native American village nearby lead Kathy to believe that layers of residual energy were present in and around the house.
     Karen picked up on a very tall, thin man who she described as “a younger Dick Van Dyke kind of an individual. The word “huckster” came into play, as well as something to do with finances. As I listened to Karen talk about this man, I wondered if she was picking up on the thin man in the suite that Caitlin’s father had seen in the master bedroom.
     Interestingly, all of my intuitive impressions were related to finances. Several Tarot card readings pointed to someone being swindled or cheated out of money, or someone having gained something that they shouldn’t have; perhaps an inheritance that someone defrauded someone out of.
     The paranormal investigation took place on a Saturday afternoon in February 2016. Caitlin and her husband greeted Karen, Kathy, and me. We explained what the investigation would be like, and then revealed our intuitive impressions.
     The older woman that Kathy described as wearing a bathrobe seemed to be Caitlin’s mother who, when she was ill, would often complain about feeling very cold.
     Karen’s impression of the thin man could have been tied to the thin man in his 40s with the suit. Her hearing the work “huckster” may be related to the missing objects in the home - someone playing a trick on the family, or hiding things to get their attention.
     My impression of someone being cheated was right on target. Over the years, Caitlin’s family had a string of incidents where they had been swindled out of money and cheated out of financial deals. It is also possible that the spirits haunting the house were once involved in shady business dealings.
     During our walk-through the house we were able to pinpoint many of the areas of activity. A small office on the main floor had a lot of male energy, and we commented that a man spent a lot of time in this room. We found out later that this was the same room where the old man had been seen by Caitlin’s mother.
     The three of us felt energy on the stairs where Kathy ‘saw’ the woman with the bathrobe. On the second floor we all felt energy in the corner of one of the bedrooms. Karen described it as a ‘fluttery heart feeling’. This room, it was revealed later, was the room where Caitlin’s mother had seen the “witch”.
     One area in the master bedroom held a great deal of residual energy. Kathy singled out a particular spot where energy seemed to be sweeping back and forth. This was the bedroom where Caitlin’s father had seen the man in the grey suit.
     We also picked up on fairly strong residual energy in the corners of a third bedroom. These coincided with the corners of the room where Caitlin reported hearing voices.
     At the end of our walk-through we checked out the basement, but it felt clear to us.
     We determined that there is a lot of residual energy in the house from the previous owners. Although the thin man in the upstairs bedroom and the older gentleman in the downstairs office seem to have vanished when making eye contact, it is more likely that they vanished once they were finished looking out of the windows of those room. This would give the appearance of making eye contact when they were probably just looking away from the window in the direction of the viewer.
     One other possibility, though I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a theory, is that those sightings were essentially shifts in time. Imagine that 50 years ago the older gentleman is looking out of his window in his office. He finishes and glances into the living room and is shocked to see a woman sitting on the couch staring at him! Seeing her startles him, and the woman immediately vanishes. The man believes he has seen a ghost when in reality he is looking at someone from the future, and the future is looking at the past.
     The other layers to this mystery are the missing objects, the incident with the doll, and the poking. The paranormal team agreed that these are indications that someone is trying to get Caitlin’s attention. The most likely person would be Caitlin’s mother. It’s important to remember that spirits are just people in a different form. A common reason for spirit activity is unfinished business. It is likely that even in spirit, Caitlin’s mother still has concerns about her daughter, about the house, and about the family’s physical and financial health.
     The incident with the doll points to her mother’s concern with the work being done on the house. The life insurance policy that had never been seen before, as well as the copy of Caitlin’s mother’s last will found in a secret drawer in the desk both point to her concern about finances. The poking and the hiding of the household objects both hint at someone trying desperately to get the family’s attention. The message is simple: I am here, and you have to listen to me! She has given Caitlin all of the clues she can without being able to speak to her.
     Audio evidence was picked up during the investigation that gives credence to the intuitive information I received via the Tarot cards about shady financial deals and swindling people out of money. The EVP recorded in the basement was a male voice saying, “Vincent did more time”. I firmly believe that this phrase refers to someone named Vincent who did time in jail as a result of cheating someone out of money.
     The second EVP was recorded as I was explaining about the spirit I picked up on who was either swindled out of money, or who cheated someone out of money. In it, a spirit voice can be heard saying the name “Felice”. A spirit clearly went out of his or her way to say this name in reference to someone who was cheated. While not very much is known about the former owners of the house, it is possible that these names and phrases refer to their family members or even their extended family members.
     Our recommendation to Caitlin and her family is to continue to assure Caitlin’s mom that all is fine at home. Whenever activity occurs that seems to be trying to get Caitlin’s attention, we suggested that she say out loud, “Everything is fine here, mom. You don’t have to worry about us. You can go on and be with your sister and other family members now.”
     Apart from the areas of residual energy outlined earlier, the house has very positive energy. There was no need to do a clearing. As for the Native American spirits on outside of the house, they pose no threat and their residual energy will most likely fade over time.

Intruders from the Past

     When we think of a haunted house our minds usually conjure up images of a Victorian era home complete with antique furniture and creaky floorboards. But many hauntings take place in homes that were built much more recently, some even in homes that were newly built. But how do we explain reports of spirits who look as if they come from a different era appearing in newer homes? Sometimes a house is built on the site of an older building and the spirits are of the people who once lived there. Some spirits who appear to be dressed in old-fashioned clothing are actually relatives from the distant past trying to make contact with their descendants. And there are traveling spirits - those who once lived in a home nearby the one where the haunting is occurring. The following is a case where spirits from more than one era haunted a house built in 1985.

     I received an email from a woman, Fiona, asking for some help with the disturbing activity she and her family has been experiencing. Fiona reported that a group of ghosts haunted her house and that more than one person has witnessed these spirits over a period of several years.
     During the investigation Fiona explained, “My oldest daughter sees them the most. She has seen a male ghost -- an older man who seems very mean. She’s also seen a woman who also seems very mean and angry. She sees them downstairs, in the basement, and both seem to be from modern times. The little boy she’s seen on the main floor, and she has seen a little girl upstairs.”
     When I asked Fiona to describe how the boy and girl spirits were dressed, I was surprised at her answer.
     “The little boy is dressed in clothes that look like they’re from the 1800’s. They remind me of the kind of clothing that very religious Jewish families used to wear. The boy looks to be about 6 years old, the girl about 8 or 9. The girl is dressed in old-fashioned clothing as well. My husband said that he once saw her in a ruffled dress. He saw her walk across the hallway and into the upstairs bathroom and he thought it was one of our children. He got up to see who it was, but there was nobody there. He said that the girl had very long hair and that she looked similar to our daughter.”
     When I asked Fiona about the woman, she said that she was dressed in modern clothing. Fiona explained, "My daughter has seen a woman dressed in modern day clothing in the house. She has seen her wearing a woman's dress suit."
     What was more shocking was the sighting of this same woman outdoors by Fiona’s mother and her oldest daughter. They were in the backyard and something made them look up at the same time at one of the trees. There in the tree was the same woman who had been seen in the house, dressed the same way. When I asked if she was just sitting in the tree looking down, Fiona said, “No. My daughter and my mother said that she was actually hanging from the tree.”
     These chilling sightings weren’t the only type of activity occurring in the house. One of the children’s bedrooms gets icy cold for no reason. Things have gone flying off of the dressers, and glasses have fallen over. The children have changed rooms on several occasions because they have nightmares and vivid dreams when they sleep in that room.
Fiona continued, “When I am home alone there are a lot of strange noises, and I often have to keep the TV on otherwise I will get totally freaked out. I have heard what sounds like scratching on the windows and also the sound of someone walking around. When I was working night shifts, I would sleep during the day. My father would be downstairs and he would hear someone walking around in my room. Other times we’ve heard the sound of someone coming in the front door and walking up the stairs, but when we check no one is ever there. There is a baby gate at the top of the stairs and I’ve heard that gate open and close when there is no one upstairs.”
     In addition to the sound of footsteps, voices have been heard in the house. Fiona reported, “One night I was in the back bedroom trying to put the baby to sleep when I heard a girl’s voice say “Mommy”. I am certain it wasn’t any of the other kids. The voice was in the room with me.
     My oldest daughter told me that they speak to her and that they often whisper her name when she’s in the basement, so I set up a tape recorder. When I played back the recording I heard a very deep man's voice calling both her name and my other daughter's name. I also heard him yelling at them to “stop it” when they were fighting.
     If I call someone from my cell phone and have them on speaker phone in areas of the house that have more activity, the other party can often hear a man talking in the background.”
     The family has captured photo evidence as well. Fiona explained, “I have caught these entities in pictures. In one picture I saw the girls face looking over the railing to the stairs. In another picture, I saw the boy's shadow by the garage door. In another photo it looks like a close up shot of the man's face. He looks evil and the vibe I always get from him is that he is mad or very upset. He hangs out in the studio room in the basement and I never want to go in there, because I get the feeling that I don't belong in there. There was also a series of disturbing photos that my children took on their iPad. In the photos was a black blob that continued to get closer and bigger in each photo they took.”
     I enlisted the help of my friends Karen Darby and Kathy O’Donnell for the investigation. Kathy and Karen are both highly sensitive paranormal investigators who never cease to amaze me with their descriptive and accurate intuitive impressions. I kept all details of the haunting from them so as not to influence their findings.
     We arrived at the house on a Saturday and proceeded to do a walk-through of the house. As we ascended the stairs that lead to the second floor, we immediately experienced odd physical sensations. There was a feeling of pressure in our chests, and we all experienced a shortness of breath. Kathy complained of feeling a tightness in her chest, of having a sudden headache, and of feeling her heart fluttering. She felt that someone may have had asthma, or that they may have passed as a result of a heart attack. Karen described having a ‘smothered feeling’ on the top landing of the steps. I felt as if someone struggled to get up these steps daily, not only having trouble breathing but having a great deal of difficulty walking up these steps.
     The back bedroom where the children are reluctant to sleep was very interesting. My EMF meter, which usually reads 01 was registering as high as 77 in this room. Although we discovered that electrical lines run along the side of the house, it did not account for the fluctuating readings that occurred the entire time we were in the room. When the meter was placed in the center of the room, far away from the wall with the electrical lines, we watched as the readings inexplicably rose and fell from 30 to 77. This unusual behavior of the meter could indicate the presence of a spirit.
     We also were able to detect fluctuations in temperature. My thermometer registered a three-degree drop in temperature soon after we entered the room. The room kept getting cold, then warm again.
     The front bedroom was also interesting, not because we felt anything particular in that room, but because of what we heard. As we were talking in this room, the three of us heard something that sounded like a guitar strumming. We were unable to pinpoint its source, as it sounded like it came from all over the room. We made note of it and waited to ask Fiona if there was a child’s toy in the room that might have made the sound, though we really couldn’t explain why it would have done so by itself when we were in the room.
     The next room of interest was the basement. Although we did not feel anything particular in the large play area where the girls have heard the man calling their names, we did get strong, negative impressions when we entered a back office. I felt the energy of someone who used to hang out in this room a lot. Karen and Kathy felt that it was angry energy, and Kathy got the distinct impression of a man chewing on a cigar and looking out the back window. She said, “I just keep getting a picture of this guy, a big guy, fat, sitting here and he’s chewing a cigar, rolling it and chewing it. It’s pretty gross! As he’s doing this he’s staring out the window.”
     Karen said, “I’m sure that when Fiona’s doing laundry she doesn’t like to be down here. I wouldn’t be surprised if she sees things out of the corner of eye when she’s doing the laundry over there,” referring to the laundry room adjacent to the office.
     After the investigation I discovered that I had captured a clear EVP in the office. I had asked the spirit to tell us his name. The voice on the recording said, “My name’s Charles”.
     While we didn’t pick up any strong impressions from the laundry area, I did feel a pain and pressure on my ribs while we were in that room. It felt as if someone was slowly pushing their hand into my ribs, increasing the pressure slowly until it hurt, then slowly releasing it.
     We concluded the investigation and shared our findings with Fiona. The boy and girl spirits are clearly from another time period. We felt that they traveled from somewhere nearby. Spirits usually do this because someone in the house is sensitive. Fiona and her children all seem to be sensitive, as is Fiona’s mother who saw the girl outside.
     The chilling sighting of the woman hanging from the tree in the backyard cannot be ignored. It is very possible that this woman committed suicide, either in the backyard or somewhere near Fiona's home. Such a horrific end to someone's life is bound to leave an indelible psychic mark on the surrounding area and the spirits of suicide victims are often restless.
     The male spirit in the basement is the type that refuses to leave a location because he feels it’s his home. This type of spirit does not respond to the kind of clearing where they are asked to move on. Can you blame them? If someone rang your doorbell tomorrow and asked you to leave, you’d probably say, “Leave? This is MY home. You leave!”  Territorial spirits are stubborn, sometimes grumpy, but never a threat.
     Although we could have performed a clearing, homeowners are often best at clearing their own homes because they can keep on top of the situation. Fiona shared with us that she was skilled in performing simple clearings with incense, and we felt that if she continued to work on the upstairs bedroom the energy would dissipate over time. The energy on the stairs was residual and would also respond to Fiona smudging the area with incense. Although the male energy in the basement was fairly strong, it too can be handled with periodic clearings with incense. We gave Fiona some other tips, such as letting light and air into the rooms as often as possible, adding plants to the areas to reduce negative energy, and using salt to clear spaces. We offered to come back to do a clearing if the activity ramped up.

While it’s not always easy to figure out just why spirits from other time periods haunt modern homes, these types of cases illustrate that time doesn’t always behave the way we think it should. After all, the ghosts we see wandering the halls of our home just might think of us as the ghosts who are haunting their house.

The Haunted Bed

I’m often asked if a spirit has ever followed me home after an investigation. I’m happy to report that this has never happened, but I did unwittingly invite a spirit into my home once. The following is my personal story about a bed frame I purchased as a surprise for my daughter. Unfortunately, the surprise was on me!

The bed frame leaned up against the wall of the thrift shop, looking like something abandoned. I spied the headboard peeking out from beneath a tattered quilt that had been thrown over it. It was ornately carved and in perfect condition. It was obviously antique, but not being anything close to an expert on antiques I could only guess that it was at least 80 years old. I searched around behind the headboard and found the two side boards. They were in decent shape; in need of some cleaning, but nothing a little furniture polish wouldn’t take care of. After searching for a few minutes the saleslady helped me locate the footboard. It too was ornately carved and in excellent condition. There was a price tag on the footboard - $50. Fifty dollars for this beautiful bed-frame? What a steal! Without even considering how I would fit it in my car I, I paid for the bed and left feeling as if I had just won the lottery. Little did I know that the bed I had just purchased came with strings attached - it was haunted.

My daughter was at college and I decided to paint her bedroom and install new hardwood floors. Her old bed was falling apart and was of the ‘little girl’ variety that she had grown out of years earlier. The bed frame I had purchased at the thrift shop would look beautiful once the room was finished. After a few weeks work the room was painted, the floors installed and the antique bed frame assembled. The room was perfect. Or, at least it looked perfect. That first day when I stepped back to look at the finished room something seemed … off. I couldn’t put my finger on it. At first I thought that the bed needed to be placed against a different wall and the dresser moved to a different location, but after trying various configurations I went back to the original setup. The new hardwood floors looked great, the color on the walls was rich and soothing, the new rug provided a splash of color - but something was wrong. I shrugged off the feeling and took some photos to send my daughter at college. I texted her the shots. She loved the look of the room, especially the ‘new’ bed. She had a break coming up in a few weeks and couldn’t wait to come home to see it in person.

The night after installing the bed I had one of my typical bouts of insomnia. Rather than wake my wife up with my tossing and turning I decided to try to get some sleep in my daughter’s newly furnished room. I went down the hall to the newly renovated bedroom and climbed into the antique bed. It was very comfortable, but after a short time I noticed that something just didn’t feel right. As crazy as it may sound, I had a strong feeling that someone was standing right next to the bed staring at me. I turned over to look, but of course there was no one there. I turned onto my other side but the feeling persisted, this time as if the ‘person’ had moved to the other side of the bed. After trying to shake off this feeling I turned the light on and read for a while until I was good and tired, then finally fell asleep. I slept for just about an hour, but my sleep was plagued with horrible nightmares. My dreams were filled with strange images, people I had never seen before, and a feeling of sickening fear. I woke up with a start, thankful that the night was finally over.

I didn’t mention my disturbing night to my wife, but when I got home from work I found that the room was having an effect on her as well. Earlier that day she had folded some of my daughter’s clothes and had put them in her dresser. As she was in the room putting the clothes away, she started feeling very uncomfortable. She too felt as if she was being watched, and as much as she tried to ignore this feeling she just wanted to get out of the room and quickly left. She thought this was strange because the room looked so nice now, and she had never felt this way before about any room in our house. As the weeks went on, the feeling of being watched intensified and she avoided going into the bedroom. After a while, she stopped putting clothes away in my daughter’s dresser. She just left the laundry basket with folded clothes on the floor and made a hasty retreat.

I attempted to sleep in the room a few more times, but the feeling of being watched was overwhelming and the nightmares were becoming more and more disturbing. I found myself dreaming of strange people, being unable to find my way out of a house I have never seen before, and being taunted by groups of people without faces. During the day, it got to the point where just passing the room gave us the creeps and we took to keeping the bedroom door closed.

Now, you would think that a ghost hunter would immediately come to the conclusion that the bed was haunted, but it actually took me a while to put two and two together. The biggest problem? I never believed in haunted objects before! I remember watching John Zaffis’ show “The Haunted Collector” and, as much as I loved the show I found myself laughing at the simplicity of tracing a haunting to an object, removing it, and solving the problem. But here I was faced with the same problem. I had purchased a haunted bed and needed to do something about it. My daughter was due home any day, and I didn’t want to subject her to any of the bizarre nightmares and creepy feelings my wife and I were experiencing. However, it was too late to get a new bed so I thought I’d just wait and see how things went once she got home.

My daughter came home from college for the weekend and was delighted at seeing her new room. I didn’t tell her about the problems we were having with the bed. It might sound cruel, but I didn’t want to scare her and was interested in seeing if she had any feeling about it. As it turned out, she didn’t! Her sleep was undisturbed, she loved the bed, and she didn’t complain about the room feeling any different than before. Some might say that this proves that the bed was not haunted to begin with. Not so fast! Even in the most active haunted houses, some spirits resonate with certain family members and others are often not disturbed at all. The bed was obviously having an effect on my wife and me, but not my daughter.

After my daughter went back to college I decided to conduct an investigation on the bed the same way I would with any other haunted location. I set up my digital recorder, took photos, and tried to connect with the spirit who had attached itself to the bed. I had a strong impression of an old woman, laying in bed sick and unable to take care of herself. The phrase, “I fell down the stairs” repeated over and over in my head. In listening back to the digital recorder, I was surprised to hear a male voice saying, “Don’t drink”. I was sure that the spirit was that of an older woman. It’s possible that the voice was that of a close family friend who had died in an alcohol related accident just a few days earlier.

Satisfied that the bed was indeed haunted, I did a clearing using sage, holy water, sea salt, religious objects and prayer. Although it took over a month, I finally cleared the bed of the spirit. The room feels fine now, and I have spent spent several nights sleeping in the bed without being bothered by nightmares. Another satisfied customer!

The Haunting of Apartment A-1

I’m always amazed at the variety of places that restless spirits reside in. I’ve been called to do investigations at restaurants, barns, bars, mansions, historic homes, back yards, and raised ranches; but I’m always surprised when I get a call about a haunted apartment. It really shouldn’t surprise me at all, as apartments house more people over time than private homes do and therefore have the potential for more paranormal activity. And besides, when something ghostly shares an apartment with you, there are very few places where you can hide.

When Colin and his mother rented the sunny, three-bedroom apartment in Ossining New York, the last thing on their mind were ghosts. The apartment is on the ground floor, and is one of just four in a building which sits on a quiet street corner near a public park. But soon after they moved in, things started happening that first left them puzzled, then frightened.

Colin contacted me and asked if I might be interested in conducting a paranormal investigation at his apartment. He explained that one night he was awoken by three loud knocks on the wall next to his bed. These weren’t just light tapping sounds -- they were powerful knocks, loud enough not only to wake him, but so strong that he could actually feel their vibration as he lay in bed. The knocks came from the wall right near his head. Noisy neighbors? This would be an easy explanation, except for the fact that on the other side of this wall is the hallway in his own apartment. The knocks continued and were keeping him up at night. There was other activity as well, but knowing that I prefer not to be provided with too much information before conducting an investigation Colin refrained from going into detail.

I sent Colin a questionnaire just to make sure there was enough activity for me to take the time to conduct an investigation and it came back with a clear indication that there was something going on in his apartment that warranted a closer look.

I arrived at the apartment one sunny Saturday afternoon in August and was greeted by Colin and his mother. They had been renting the place for about a year, but for the past four months strange things had been happening that left them wondering what they got themselves into.

Paranormal investigating starts long before I enter a client’s home. Prior to every investigation I ‘reach out’ intuitively to see if I can pick up any precognitive impressions. These often come in the form of names, visions of faces or places I’ve never seen before, physical sensations that might be related to the way a spirit passed, or phrases that go over and over in my head. I share these premonitions with the homeowners when we first meet and ask if they have any importance to the investigation.

More often than not I get a wealth of information that is useful to the investigation. In this case I picked up a vivid pre-cognitive impression of a young woman in her late teens or early twenties. I could clearly see her face and her long blonde hair, but it was if I was seeing her through a purple haze or mist. She had on a headband, the type that you might imagine hippies wearing in the 1960’s, and she was looking up at me as if she were sitting on the floor. She seemed very frightened and I got the impression that she had died of a drug overdose, or that she was high and died very suddenly. The young woman was very confused because she wasn’t aware that she had passed, but she somehow knew that Colin could see her so she was constantly reaching out to get his attention.

I shared my impressions with Colin who gave me an odd look, but said nothing. I always ask my clients not to reveal the details of the haunting until I am finished with the investigation, but from the look he gave me I felt I had hit on something important.

I did a walkthrough of the apartment and felt strong energy in the bedroom where the knocking was heard. I also felt energy in the hallway outside of the bedroom, and in a sort of pathway that lead into the living room to the front door. It felt as if someone were constantly walking back and forth between the bedroom and the living room, walking up and down the hallway between the two rooms. In the bedroom there were two strong areas of energy: one near the bed, and another near a dresser on the far side of the room. I continued to pick up the image of the young woman with the purple hue, and could feel her sense of confusion and panic as she tried to figure out what was going on. I picked up the name “Meghan” and was fairly certain that she had died of a drug overdose.

I related my impressions to Colin and his mother and asked if any of what I shared meant anything to them. Colin told me that he was shocked when he heard my precognitive impression of the woman with the purple haze.

“Last night I was laying on the couch in the living room. I wanted to get some sleep, and I suddenly awoke and saw, really quickly, a woman wearing something purple. It was either that she was covered in a sort of a purple haze, or she was wearing something purple – a scarf or something. The day before that I was watching TV and I thought I saw a woman with a child near the front door; but then they were gone instantly.”

Colin told me that the areas where I felt the energy were the exact location where the activity was occurring.

“When I’m in bed, just as soon as I start falling asleep I start feeling this odd sensation near my hips. The best way I can describe it is that it’s kind of like a cat kneading up and down with their front paws. If you’ve ever seen a cat do that, you’d know what I mean. This happens during the day, at night, it even happens when I’m in the chair in the living room. When I’m in the bedroom, I can feel someone entering the room. First I feel a cold breeze, then I start to feel flushed in my face and my head, and I then feel someone sit on the edge of my bed.

“Prior to all of this my dog had always slept on my bed. Always. Then a few nights in a row he started getting up and looking in my closet. Now he won’t come in the bedroom at all. I’ve seen shadows near the window there (indicating the area where I felt the energy), and someone actually pulled my foot while I was in bed and I got startled. The time I felt my foot pulled I saw something that looked whitish. I saw it really quickly. Another time I saw a misty green thing.

“I’ve lived here for a year now. For the first 8 months it was okay, but then I started to feel uneasy in the apartment. Around 4 months ago a new tenant moved in upstairs, and that’s when things started happening down here. I don’t know why, or if there’s even a connection between her moving in and the activity, but that’s when it all started.”

I asked Colin to tell me about the knocking. I had felt strong energy on the wall above his bed and in the hallway, and I was sure that someone was trying to get his attention.

“It’s always two quick knocks, a slight pause, then one single knock. It’s always on the wall that the bed is on, but not always the same area of the wall. Sometimes it’s high up, sometimes it’s low, and other times it’s a little further over on the wall. It’s always the three knocks, and it’s loud. It happened again just this morning about at about 7AM. It used to be just at night, but now it’s doing the same thing in the morning, but even louder. The knocking doesn’t happen anywhere else in the apartment, just in my room.”

When I asked Colin if there was any other activity in the house he told me, “One night I was laying in bed and I heard a dog whimpering in my room. As I said, my dog won’t come in my bedroom anymore, but I got up to check if he was nearby but found him sound asleep on my mother’s bed as usual, so the whimpering wasn’t him.”

Colin also told me that his brother came to visit once. After ringing the doorbell, his brother heard a loud, demonic sounding growl coming from inside of the apartment just on the other side of the door. It couldn’t have been the family dog because Colin was out walking him at the time. Another time a small hooded figure was spotted in the bedroom, and also a creature that looked like a wolf. The wolf might be indicative of Native American energy.

I did a clearing of the apartment, and was satisfied that much of the negative energy had dissipated, but was still puzzled about the ‘purple haze’ woman with the drug problem I had picked up on. Was this a former tenant, and if so why hadn’t Colin heard about her before? He was friendly with his neighbors, most of whom had lived there quite a while, but no one ever said that anyone had died in the apartment -- though one person said that the former tenant claimed that the place was haunted.

Two weeks after conducting the clearing, Colin contacted me with some startling news. He had done some investigating of the neighborhood and discovered that a young girl had died of a drug overdose in the house directly across the street from his house. Her name was Meghan. Perhaps the “Purple Haze” Colin and I saw was symbolic. After all, “Purple Haze” is the name of a Jimi Hendrix song, and Hendrix had died of a drug overdose. The headband and “hippy” look I picked up on might also have been a symbol of drug use, though the girl might have really looked like this.

Spirits can travel, and they often travel to those who can sense them. I theorize that Megan had been going back and forth between the two houses, hoping that Colin can help her. After the clearing, the majority of activity in the house ceased, and the woman in purple hasn’t been seen since.

A Demon in Upstate New York

What follows is an absolutely harrowing tale of demonic assault. The women who experienced the activity first-hand have edited and approved the writing of this case file, but be warned – it is truly frightening reading, and not for the faint-of-heart.

Of all the cases I’ve investigated, the following is by far the most disturbing; not only because of the bizarre and frightening nature of the activity reported, but because I quickly discovered that this was not a haunting – this was demonic possession. The women who contacted me were not imagining things. Both are highly educated women, and one is a psychotherapist. They were clearly in need of a demonologist. I am not a demonologist. Demonologists specialize in ridding a person or place of demons; non-corporeal beings who have never been alive and never will be.  Still, I was eager to help so I agreed to take down the details of their case, conduct an investigation, and to seek the help of a trained demonologist.
When Claire and her sister Linda moved into the senior living facility in Upstate New York it seemed like the perfect place for them. Both sisters were chronically ill. Their poor health left them unable to work and in need of low income housing. They felt safe when they first moved into the small apartment which had a back lawn and serene woods that they could view from their beds.
As the months passed everything was fine, until one day a new resident moved in down the hall; a man in his mid-50s named Carl. The sisters learned that he was schizophrenic, but he tended to stay in his apartment and was rarely seen by anyone in the facility. However, as soon as Carl moved in all hell broke loose in the sister’s apartment. It seems that the man brought something with him when he moved in – something evil that was bent on plaguing Claire and Linda.
It started when Claire woke up in the middle of the night and saw blood dripping from the shades. Although this vision quickly passed, it left her frightened. She had never had an experience like this before, and she knew it wasn't a dream. During that week and the months to follow, the women were regularly woken out of their sleep to view violent objects like knives floating in the room, or to see a hooded figure dressed in black. Over time this figure also appeared as a man without a hood, and sometimes even took the form of a large animal. One time the animal that appeared had a trunk. Although it had a trunk, it wasn't an elephant in shape, but more like a conglomeration of different types of animals. Both sisters would see these things at different times during the night. In the morning they would compare notes and were shocked to discover that the same visions were appearing to both of them.
The demon also tormented them through creating dreams which he entered, and where they had to fight him off. He gave them bizarre images of death when they were trying to go to sleep with their eyes shut but fully awake. He also would enter their bodies when they were sleeping, and they would wake to being held down and in a paralysis in which they had to fight him to get out of and open their eyes. These kinds of attacks were the worst type for them to endure since they were particularly frightening and draining. Claire described some other details to me this way, “He is very aggressive. He shows us murders, bloody objects or large spiders and insects - sometimes as big as a dog! A few times he has held us down and has gone inside of us for brief moments as if we were being possessed. Mostly he wakes us to show us the objects floating in front of us or gives us nightmares, which he is in. He has growled and we’ve heard the sound of dogs as well.”
Things were to continue in this manner for Claire and Linda for the months to come. The demonic, black hooded figure continued to harass them nightly and to keep them up by waking them over and over again in order to show them images in the room. He had the ability to do this; to actually force them awake to see these things. So they began losing sleep and their already weakened bodies began to deteriorate even more. This is the method of demons; to weaken the body of the person and then the mind in order to try to overpower the person and cause their demise. Demons are unlike other spirits who only seek attention. Demons are evil entities whose ultimate goal is destruction.
Sometimes the demon took the shape of a huge spider-like shadow that would crawl up the wall and slowly melt into it. The scenes of horror and visitations by the hooded man continued nightly for over a year, wearing down the sisters and affecting their health. Toward the end of the year a black shape was seen hovering over Linda’s bed, and both sisters have been held down in their beds at night. It also showed them a ghoulish looking little creature with fangs all along its mouth. The demon seemed to be growing in strength.
A Catholic priest was called in to do a blessing of the apartment, but it did no good. In fact, the activity increased. Attempts to use holy water or prayers only made the demon retaliate, as he would litter their dreams with even more disgusting images. Attempts to ‘clear’ the apartment of the entity the way I would normally clear a house of an unwanted spirit were also met with strong resistance. The demon had no intention of leaving that easily.
I conducted a brief investigation at the facility in October 2015. After doing a walkthrough of the apartment, I was able to pinpoint an area that felt very negative, and very strong. It was against one wall of the spare room, which is used as an office. This disturbing force can be felt coming through wall and extending out approximately 4 feet into the room.  Other than that area, the apartment felt clear. This didn’t surprise me, as demons don’t necessarily stay in one place. They come and go at will. I have a feeling that it retreats to Carl’s apartment during the daytime. If this is the case, then I am certain that it plagues him as well.
After nearly a year of trying to find help for Claire and Linda, a professional demonologist is scheduled to rid the sisters of this demonic presence. He is scheduled to arrive in late November (2015). I will post an update after the demonologist pays them a visit. I pray for the sisters nightly, and ask that you do the same.

Is this the ghost of the outlaw Claudius Smith? - Goshen, New York

A few years ago a friend of mine bought a home in Chester, New York. The house was beautifully situated on several acres of land, complete with horse stables and plenty of room for horseback riding. Although the house itself was bright and cheerful, whenever I visited I would feel extremely uneasy in the driveway and in an adjacent field. It was a feeling of dread and danger, and as soon as I parked my car I would hurry to the house where I would feel safe. One evening the feeling got so strong that I felt compelled to take a photo of the field next to the driveway. Upon viewing it I was shocked to see a human figure in the field wearing a crumpled hat walking away from the camera. He seems to have either a hood hanging down in the back, or a bag slung over his shoulder. My friend thinks the ghost might be that of Claudius Smith, an outlaw who was hanged in Goshen, New York (a town adjacent to Chester, New York) in 1779 and who was known to frequent the area where my friend's house was built. His wanted poster shows him wearing a similar hat to the one worn by the figure in the photo. Click HERE for information on Claudius Smith and to view his wanted poster. Is this the ghost of Claudius Smith, or simply the spirit of a farmer walking home from a long day's work in the fields?

This has gone on long enough! -- A Haunting in Westchester County, New York

When someone contacts me for an investigation, they don't just have a vague feeling that their house might be haunted. They usually have been experiencing unusual, disturbing, or alarming activity for a long time and are at their wit's end. A family in Westchester County, New York experienced terrifying activity after moving into their rental home. It took them several months to contact me. when you read their story, you'll wonder why they waited so long.
Shortly after moving into their home, the family began hearing a little girl saying,“Good Morning!". On several occasions they also heard her say, “Hello.” She sounded as if she was around three or four years old. In spite of the fact that she said ‘good morning’ the family would only only hear her at night, right around the time that the children, four young boys, were put to bed.
While sitting in the living room, the parents would often hear the children's toys being played with in the boys' bedrooms. They could hear the toys moving across the hardwood floor even though all of the boys were fast asleep
Each of the four boys were having terrifying experiences of their own. The youngest would wake up screaming every night and point at something in the room that no one else could see. The middle child was petrified of a "wolf man" that he saw in his room - something he described as a man's body with a wolf's face. The third child would wake up at 11:00 each night and go into the parent's bedroom to sleep because he was afraid that there was something in the room with him. The oldest boy would often feel someone poking him hard while watching television in the living room. On several occasions, while sitting on the couch with his mother, he would tell her to stop poking him. She would tell him that she was not touching him, but he would continue to feel someone poking him and blame his mother. Over time the activity became more alarming.
One morning, three deep scratches were found on both sides of one of the boy's ribs. These scratches could not have been self-inflicted, and there were no sharp objects in or near the child's bed that could have caused them.
But young children were not the only ones to witness activity in the house. In addition to the parents who heard the little girl's voice at night, a grown daughter witnessed the basement door opening and the appearance of a shadow-man standing in the doorway. There was a feeling of menace attached to this man whose image slowly vanished. On another occasion, a smoke alarm that had been securely attached to the ceiling above the staircase came off of the ceiling and flung itself at her. She was sitting in the living room at the time, and the smoke detector actually flew down the stairs at an angle toward her.
Paranormal occurrences such as these are usually tolerated for a while before I am called upon for help. After conducting an investigation and performing a clearing, the activity in the house calmed down - at least for a while.
Several months after the clearing I checked in with the family to see how things were going. Although the activity died down for quite a while, it started up again. The man in the basement is still making his presence known. A little girl with pig tails was seen outside looking in the window. When the husband went to investigate she was gone.
The little girl who said "Good Morning" seems to be gone, but a different girl's voice has been heard in the house - perhaps it is the girl with the pig tails. This little girl has been heard saying "Grandma", "I love you", and "Can you come here?".
More disturbing, one of the boys reported that his mattress was moving, as if someone were underneath pushing up. This same boy also sees a figure leaning against his dresser at night, just watching him. In addition, various family members have heard knocking on their doors, but when they check no one is there.
Some homes require several clearings before activity stops for good. There are many reasons for this. Some spirits are stubborn and refuse to leave. Other times a vortex or a portal is open somewhere in the house which allows spirits to enter even if a clearing has been done. Activity can also ramp up if a family is going through an emotional crisis such as illness in the family, the death of a loved one, a divorce, or the loss of a job. I offered to do another clearing and am waiting to hear back from the family.

Totally Unexplained: What one family found in their home

My favorite type of cases involve stories that cannot be explained. This one tops them all!
I was called upon to conduct an investigation at a private home in Stamford, Connecticut. The homeowners had been experiencing a number of disturbing phenomenon, but what they came home to one day was beyond anything they could ever have imagined.
The family had been out for the day and upon entering the living room noticed that a grill that covered the fireplace had been moved to one side, and the heavy cast-iron grate that held the wood in the fireplace was rotated sideways. There was no explanation for this as no one had been home at the time, and the family members were the only ones with a key to the house. The fireplace grill is made of heavy iron and it takes considerable strength to move it. Even if an animal had come down the fireplace, something that has never happened before, it wouldn't have been able to move the grill out of the way of the fireplace. But this was just the beginning.
As one of the family members walked upstairs to the second level of the house, they stopped dead in their tracks. At the top of the stairs was a perfectly formed mound of ashes! It was several inches tall and looked as if someone had molded it with their hands. The ashes were obviously from the fireplace, but how had they gotten to the top of the stairs? And who had formed them into a perfectly symmetrical mound? There were no tracks leading from the fireplace to the mound of ashes, nor were any trace of ashes found leading from the fireplace to the mound.
Was a spirit trying to send a message to the family? If so, what could it be? What significance did the mound of ashes and soot have? This mystery has never been solved.

The Vanishing

This group of four stories falls under the heading of "Disappearing Object Phenomenon" or DOP. Some attribute DOP to poltergeists, temporary invisibility, a dimensional shift, or even a time flux. Whatever the cause of the phenomenon, the following stories are fascinating and utterly baffling - and I was a witness to all four of them.

My mornings always start with coffee, and I take plenty of sugar in it. One morning I used the sugar bowl that is always kept on the stove and put it back in its place. I then went into the family room, about 15 feet away, and sat down to have my cup of coffee. A few minutes later my son walked into the kitchen and asked me where the sugar bowl was because he wanted sugar for his cereal. I told him it was on the stove, but he called over to me that it wasn't there. I told him that I had just used it and had put it back, but he insisted it wasn't there. I walked over to the stove and sure enough the sugar bowl was not where I had left it. There was no one else in the house at the time, so I assumed that I was mistaken and that I hadn't put it back on the stove - but where was it? My son and I looked all over the kitchen for the sugar bowl – on the stove, in the cabinets above the stove, on the shelves next to the stove, and on the kitchen counters. The sugar bowl was nowhere to be found. This was extremely puzzling, as I knew that I had just used it, but since we couldn't find it I took out a bag of sugar from the pantry and gave my son sugar for his cereal.
I went back in the family room which is in full view of the kitchen and finished my coffee. About 10 minutes later I walked into the kitchen to get a glass from the cabinet next to the stove and there on the stove in it's regular place was the sugar bowl! I actually gasped when I saw it. I call my son down from his room and asked if he had put it there, but he swore he didn't. He confirmed that the sugar bowl had not been in its usual place, and that we both had thoroughly looked all over the kitchen for it. Remember, there was no one else in the house at the time and I could see the kitchen the entire time I was in the family room drinking my coffee. The disappearance and reappearance of the sugar bowl is a total mystery.

The second story involves something a little bigger than a sugar bowl. A car! One evening my daughter borrowed one of the family cars to visit a friend in a neighboring town. Early the next morning I had to drive my son to the train station. We got into my car and drove up the driveway and both commented that my daughter must have stayed over her friends house that night because the car was not in the driveway. When I came home from the train station, I looked to see if the car was back but it was not.
Later that morning, my wife went for her daily run. When she came home I asked her if the car was back yet, but she said it was not. I was getting concerned because I hadn't heard from my daughter, so I called her cell phone. She picked up immediately. I asked her where she was and she said that she was upstairs in her bedroom. I asked her where the car was, and she said it was in the driveway. I told her it wasn't there, but she insisted that it must be because she parked it in it's usual spot when she got home the night before. I looked out the window and sure enough the car was sitting in its regular spot! It is absolutely impossible that three people could have passed the car without seeing it.

This next story is taken directly from an email that I sent to a friend immediately after it happened on 13 February 2012. I sent the email at 6:55 AM.

"Hi -- Just a quick but STRANGE story about my morning. I was in the bathroom getting ready for work. I had used a pair of scissors earlier this morning to cut open a package and they were still on the bathroom counter. I was worried that my 5 year old daughter would get a hold of them and hurt herself, so I took them out of the bathroom to the vanity just outside the bathroom door and put them in the top drawer. As I put them in the drawer I was thinking that I would put them right in the front rather than push them to the back of the drawer so my wife would be able to find them. I closed the drawer and went on getting ready for work. I shaved, brushed my teeth and finished getting dressed. Then, as I was combing my hair I looked over and the scissors were back on the counter in the bathroom! They weren't in the exact same place as they had been before, but they were in the same general location. I was really stunned. I clearly remember putting them in the drawer, and even remember noticing which way the points of the scissors were facing when I put them there."

The last story happened while I was at work. I walked into my office and sat down at my desk in front of my computer. I went to put my hands on the keyboard to login, but noticed that the it was missing. The monitor was on my desk, as was the computer itself, but the keyboard was missing. I went around to the back of the computer to check if it had somehow fallen off the desk. I noticed that the Port where the keyboard should have been plugged in was empty. I checked the floor under the computer to see if it was there, but it was not. I assumed that the technician had come to replace it for some reason, so I got up from my desk and moved to my colleagues computer. This computer was on the same desk, but facing the other way. Two people working at the desk would be looking at each other as they worked.
A few minutes later my colleague came into the office and I explained that I was using her computer because the keyboard to my computer was missing. A short time later I got up from my colleague's computer and went to my side of the desk to retrieve some papers. I was absolutely shocked to see my computer keyboard sitting in it's usual place! There is no way that I could've missed it, as I had sat at the computer looking for it for quite a while. I am positive the keyboard was gone. I never left the room the entire time this incident occurred, and my computer was right across from me the entire time it was missing. No one could have returned it without my having seen them as they would have to have passed by me to get to my side of the desk.

These four stories illustrate just how strange DOP is. People have reported objects even larger than a car disappearing, then reappearing later. There are often several witnesses to the phenomenon. Have you had a DOP experience? If so, go to my contact page and send me an email. I'd love to hear your story.

The Haunted Spa

I received an email from a woman who wanted to know if I would consider doing a paranormal investigation of the Day Spa she worked at in a small town in Connecticut. Of course I jumped at the opportunity, but I admit that it’s sometimes difficult to pinpoint exactly who might be haunting a business. Businesses often change hands or undergo major renovations. Two small stores may be bought up and become one large office space; a large space may be divided into smaller storefronts, offices, or other types of businesses; a pizza place might turn into a beauty salon. You get the picture. Luckily, the investigation turned out to be one of the most interesting I’ve ever conducted and I am happy to be able to share it with you here.

   Healing Waters Spa (a fictitious name used to protect the privacy of the owners) offers massages, facials, acupuncture, reiki sessions, and other holistic, health-related services. I arrived at the spa on Saturday, October 16, 2016 and one of the spa’s employees, Chiara, let me in before the shop opened so I could conduct the investigation without distractions. In the front of the spa is a gift area where clients can purchase candles, incense, books, and other holistic and spiritual items designed for peace and serenity. I was soon to discover that the spirit haunting the spa was not the least bit serene, and he wasn’t afraid to make his presence known to the employees and customers.
     After turning on my digital recorder, I prepared to make my way through the spa. I got my EMF meter and camera ready and kicked off my shoes. I often conduct investigations barefoot in order to keep the sound of my footsteps from contaminating the digital recording, and to ground myself. Scientific studies have shown that when we are barefoot, the earth’s electrons are conducted to our bodies bringing it to the same electrical potential as the earth. Grounding myself in this way protects me from negative energy and to allows positive energy to flow through me.
     A long hallway runs the length of the spa with several treatment rooms on either side. The area closest to the gift shop felt clean, but I could tell that a spirit often makes his way into the gift shop and into the treatment rooms closest to the front of the store. I asked Chiara to keep the lights out for the time being, as I didn’t want any electrical current to influence what I was feeling, or possibly scare away any spirits that might be around.
     As I slowly walked down the dark hallway I began to get a familiar feeling — the feeling that a spirit was present. I often describe this as the feeling you might get if you drank several strong cups of coffee, and the caffein kicked in all at once. I get a shaky feeling inside, something like feeling afraid without actually being afraid.
     As I neared the end of the hallway it became obvious that someone was with me. It was a male spirit, and the name I was picking up was Andrew. The feeling of this spirit’s presence grew in intensity as I walked down the hallway toward the last two treatment rooms, and as I turned into the last room on the left I came face-to-face with a strong male presence. Although he didn’t seem angry that I was there, he was very reluctant to communicate with me. After a short time he moved out of this room and into the room across the hall. I followed him into the room and tried to pick up some intuitive information, but once again he moved out. Whoever this spirt was, he wanted to be left alone even though I was saying out loud that I was there to help him. I turned the lights on in these two rooms so I could take a few readings with my EMF meter. I took some photos, then made my way back to the front of the spa where Chiara was waiting for me.
     I told her about the male presence, and which rooms I felt him in. She confirmed that the rooms I had pinpointed were the rooms where things were seen and felt by employees and customers alike. Chiara joined me on my second trip down the hall where I conducted an EVP session and took some more photos, then we made our way back to the front of the store where I asked her to tell me about the activity that has been plaguing the workers and clients.
     “It started with me just feeling creepy down there,” Chiara said. “The room on the left side of the hallway where you are feeling the ghost — It’s that room that I always felt weird about. In the morning I come into the store and light the candles to get ready for the day, and it always just feels creepy down there. It’s right in the exact spot you felt it. It’s in those two rooms at the end of the hall. I also feel cold spots down there.
     One day I was in the first room, and I was about to come out to go into one of the massage room and I saw a man -- or rather, a large, dark shadow in the shape of a man. This shadow was very dark, but not solid black. I couldn’t see features, but I could see that he was was taller than me, around 5’ 8” or so. I saw it very quickly, but it was very clear.”
     Another day, Chiara saw something else that totally took her by surprise. “I was in the front of the store looking down the hallway and I saw a leg walking into Nora’s room. It was just the end of the leg, the way you would see it if someone had walked into a room and you just saw them taking their last step into the room. It had on pants and shoe. It looked like a man’s leg. Of course, I took a look in there, but the room was empty.
     One day, one of the reiki therapists walked a client down the hall to bring her into one of the treatment rooms. As soon as they walked into the room the client got startled. She stopped, caught her breath and said, “Oh, I thought someone was sitting there!”
     Patrons of the spa often report feeling a male presence. “One woman said that she sensed that there was a man, a farmer, in the back of the spa. This woman claims to be sensitive to such things. She said that this man was from a long time ago when this was all farm land.
     Another client said that she also sensed a male presence. I came into one of the back rooms where she had just had a facial treatment and she said, ‘You have a man in here! He was just sitting in here with me. He had on a fedora hat.’ I don’t know who she was picking up on, but I do know that there was a man who worked in this building for 30 years when it was a bar/restaurant. He’s now deceased. One day, just for fun, a friend brought over one of those devices that randomly spews out words. It’s called an Ovulous. When we ran it, it came out with the words ‘bar’, ‘party’, ‘beer’, and ‘drunk’. So, we were thinking that it might have something to do with the man who used to work in the building when it was a bar.”
     Chiara went on to describe some of the other unusual activity in the spa. “Things disappear all the time. They go missing and they never turn up again. The cords that we have to charge our iPhones keep disappearing. Over the past few months about 15 of them vanished and we never found them. The workers are the only ones who use them to charge iPhones. The customers don’t have access to them, so it’s not like someone is taking them or anything.
     About 4 months ago I was sitting at the desk with another woman and one of the lavender potpourri bags came flying off the shelf. It didn’t just roll off, it flew off and landed about four feet away. Another time the owner of the store was talking about the strange activity in the store when two ornamental pillows fell off of the table. No one was near them, and they had been about half-way toward the center of the table before they fell off.
     Our supply closet always locks by itself. You have to use a key to lock it, but whenever Carol comes to open it, she finds that it’s locked. There’s really no way that that can happen by itself because you have to turn the key all the way around to lock the door.
     One thing that happens all the time in the gift shop is that two heavy candles move by themselves. They move all the way from the wall to the edge of the shelves.” Chiara brought me over to two shelves on which were two large candles in heavy glass jars. “We find these two candles moved all the time. Sometimes it’s one, sometimes it’s both. One minute they’ll be pushed right against the wall, the next they’re all the way to the edge of the shelf about to fall on the floor. One time we opened the store in the morning and actually found both of them lying on the floor. But it didn’t look like they had fallen off the shelves. We found them all the way over near the middle of the floor. There’s no way they could have fallen and travelled that far. And there’s no reason for them to fall off the shelves anyway.”
     Before we left this area, Chiara made a point of making sure that both candles were securely placed back against the wall before continuing her story. Later in the investigation we both came from the back of the store and found that one of the candles had moved all the way to the front of the shelf. There were just two of us in the shop at the time, and we were together the whole time, so the movement of this heavy candle was a real mystery.
     Although the moving candles is baffling, it doesn’t compare to the bizarre thing that happened in the gift area one morning. “Nora was working in the front of the shop and I was in the back. I heard her call my name, and she sounded really scared. So I came running out and found Nora standing there staring and pointing at one of the tables. We have a large, very heavy metal decorative piece that’s roughly in the shape of large piece of coral. It weighs about 10 pounds, and it always sits in the middle of this glass table.” At this point Chiara walked over to the table and showed me the object. It was made out of shiny, silver and gold metal, and it was indeed quite heavy.
   Nora continued, “So I came out and Nora is pointing at the table, and I looked over and saw the coral piece was no longer in the center of the table - it was balanced in mid-air on the edge of the table! The entire thing was off of the table, and just a tiny edge of it was touching the table’s edge. It looked like something was either holding it up, or that it was levitating.
     So, as I ran out Nora is pointing at it and as soon as I looked at it it fell flat on the floor. But it didn’t just fall down, it fell at an angle so it ended up UNDER the glass table perfectly upright. And even stranger, even though it’s a heavy, metal object it didn’t make a sound when it landed. The way it was levitating, and the way it ended upright under the table without making a sound — it’s just not possible. We tried every which way to make it to that, but we couldn’t do it.” I tried to make the shell balance on the edge of the table the way she described, but there was absolutely no way to make it do that. It was simply too heavy.
   Although moving and levitating objects would be enough to frighten anyone, by far the most chilling occurrence was the sound of a man -- screaming. “This past week, three days in a row, Carol and I were right here in the front of the store at about 9:30 in the morning. The first day we heard a man screaming. It was really frightening.” Chiara imitated the sound she and Carol heard - a blood curdling scream. I asked Chiara where the scream came from. “It was down there at the end of the hallway,” she said. “Our first instinct was to help this man who sounded like he was in agony, and Carol actually started to head down the hall. Then she stopped and said, ‘What am I doing? There’s nobody here but you and me.’ It was a loud scream, definitely a man; someone in agony or in pain — almost like the sound a cat makes, but it was definitely a man’s voice. It was very scary.
     The following day we heard him again, but this time it sounded like he was calling out to us. He said, “Hey!” in a loud voice. The day after that we heard a woman’s voice say “Hello?” the way you would if you walked into a house or a store and you wanted to let someone know you were there. But of course, there was no one in the store at the time because we hadn’t opened yet.

   It was obvious that something needed to be done to help this poor soul find his way. Although I sensed that he was shy and reluctant to communicate, I was convinced that a part of him was anxious to be free. He just didn’t know how, or he was afraid to “go to the light” because he didn’t know what was on the other side. There was also something else that I was picking up on. A terrible sadness. I was puzzled by this, as I was sure that he was ready to leave.
     Right before I was to begin the clearing the spa’s owner, Ruby, arrived. I told her what I had picked up during the investigation, and the three of us walked down the hall to the room where I felt the spirit. As we walked into the room I said, “He’s been moving around all of the rooms at the end of the hall, but he’s in this room now. I’m going to try to get him to move on.” Just as I said this, the most amazing thing happened — soft music started playing all over the spa. The sound system had turned on by itself.
     “That’s impossible!” said Chiara. You have to log into the computer, go to Spotify, and choose the spa station.” We quickly walked back to the office where the computer was. Although the computer was turned on, no one had logged onto it.
     We walked back to the treatment room where the spirit was. Ruby and Chiara were still talking about how amazing it was that the music had started playing by itself when the music in the room we were in began to get louder and louder. The volume in each room can only be turned up by pressing the volume button on the speaker. We walked out into the hallway to check the volume in the other rooms. Every room had soft music playing except for the room where I felt the spirit. In this room, the volume was turned up loud. It was clear that “Andrew” had made his presence known, and that he might be persuaded to move on to be with his relative and friends on the other side.
     I asked Ruby and Chiara to wait in the front of the store as I conducted the clearing. For this clearing used a spray I made earlier that morning out of white sage leaves and rosemary, both of which have clearing properties. To this I added some holy water. As I walked around the room I said a number of prayers; asked angels, saints and spirit guides to help guide this spirit on his way. I then got into a meditative state and in my mind’s eye I opened a doorway of brilliant white light. The things we imagine become a reality in other dimensions, and this doorway was the spirit’s entrance to the other side. I said out loud, “It is time for you to leave now. Your family and friends are waiting for you. They have waited for you a long time, and they are anxious to be with you again.”
     At this point an unbelievable sadness washed over me. I actually had to hold myself back from crying. It was a feeling of complete hopelessness and sorrow. The message I got was, “No one is waiting for me. I have no one. No one is waiting there for me.” This explained the sadness I felt earlier, and the reluctance for this spirit to move on. Although he was in agony, he felt as if there was no one for him on the other side, and that staying where there are people would be better than leaving for the unknown. I explained to him that God is on the other side, and that unbelievable beauty and peace was waiting for him. I continued to urge him to leave, and felt that he might be willing but that he was still hesitating.
     In the end, I left the doorway of light open. I would close it remotely after a few days, hoping that “Andrew” would go through on his own. I made my way back to the front of the spa where Chiara and Ruby were waiting for me. “Did you finish the clearing,” they asked? “We both felt so sad when you were doing it.” It seems that the women had picked up the same sorrow that I felt when doing the clearing.
     I left the spa with little doubt that I had made contact with a very lonely spirit. Only time will tell if the clearing worked and if this poor soul eventually joined the multitude of friends and relatives he is totally unaware of and who are waiting for him on the other side. If Andrew is still there, I’ll be back to run another clearing until he finds the peace he deserves.

Listen to the EVP below that I captured at the spa. The first was caputred during my first visit. At the time, Chiara I were in the gift shop area and I asked her if she ever feel cold spots in the spa. Chiara said, "Well, down there, yeah," indicating the end of the hall. A male voice then comes in and says, "Come down".
The second EVP was captured during a return visit to the spa where I did a second clearing. The voice I captured while I was clearing one of the rooms says, "My name is Derek".

The Strange Case of Maria Sanchez

I received an email from a former client asking if I might be able to give some advice to a friend who was experiencing paranormal activity in her home. The friend, Maria Sanchez, is a 60 year old widow who lives just outside of Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Maria and her husband moved into their home in 2001. Mr. Sanchez died three years ago, and she currently lives with an adult cousin. Because of the distance involved, the best I could do was give her a call to get some more information about the case, and refer her to a reputable paranormal group in her area.
     I conducted a series of phone interviews and email exchanges with Maria, and I was concerned about the frightening activity she had been living with for the past few weeks. Neither Marie nor her cousin had experienced anything unusual until just a few weeks prior to our phone conversation. The activity in the home started suddenly and without warning. Objects moved of their own accord, coins and other items materialized out of thin air and were thrown on the floor, personal items went missing, and there was a sighting of a ghostly visitor.

[Note: Maria is Hispanic and speaks with a heavy accent. In order to preserve the exact wording of our interview, the following quotes are direct and reflect her accent. While I did have the option of re-writing the interview with corrected language, I wanted to maintain the authenticity of the dialog by preserving Maria’s original dialect.]

     When asked when the activity started, Maria told me, “Nothing happened until three weeks ago. They throw glasses on the floor, they throw the cups on the floor. They throw all the things from the kitchen counter on the floor. Do I see this happen? Yes! Right in front of my own face!
     “Another thing that happened, I have a metal thing in the kitchen that holds the paper towels. They throw that on the floor. Another time that take a cup in the kitchen and they moved it. I put the cup back again, and then they threw it on the floor.“
Another time I have tea cups on the counter, and they throw those on the floor. They fly right in front of my face, and in front of my cousin’s face too. The other day I was getting hot water and they throw a glass at me. They don’t hit me, but they throw the glass right at my back and it lands on the floor behind me.”
     I asked Maria what other activity she had experienced. She told me that pennies mysteriously materialize out of nowhere, and she has witnessed them being thrown on the floor right in front of her.
     “They throw me pennies. In my bed I lay down, and they throw pennies in front of my door. I don’t leave money all around the house, so I don’t know where these pennies come from.” Maria had some of the pennies that she had saved. All were from the 1990s. I wondered if the dates on the coins were some sort of a clue.
     I asked Maria if the pennies had been thrown at her, or if they were just thrown around. She said, “They thrown them on the floor, so I can hear the noise. I’m in the room, I hear the noise of the pennies, then I look and see the pennies rolling on the floor.” So, Maria has seen the pennies after they landed, but she hasn’t actually seen them falling to the ground. She also said that her cousin has witnessed the pennies being thrown onto the floor.
     One night when Maria was laying in bed, she heard something hit the outside of her door. She opened the door and found a bracelet laying on the floor. She said that it looked like a baby bracelet, one that had little plastic pacifiers attached to it. She had never seen this bracelet before.
     I asked Maria what else she was experiencing. She said, “The other day I was mopping the floor, and right in front of my eyes the garbage can cover rose up in the air, fell on the floor, and slid across the floor onto my feet. It’s up by itself, falls on the floor, then slides right to my feet!”
     “How far did it travel?” I asked.
     “It flew like six feet,” she said. “Right in front of my own face! And my cousin was there too.”
     Another incident happened in the basement. “I went to the basement and one of the lightbulbs in the ceiling was thrown out of the socket on the ceiling. They take it out from there and they throw it on the floor in my face too.”
     While listening to Maria tell the story, it sound pretty frightening. A lightbulb unscrews itself from the ceiling light fixture, then is thrown to the floor by invisible hands and shatters. But when pressed for more details, the story breaks down a little.
     “Did you hear the light bulb unscrew, or did it just fly off of the ceiling?” I asked.
     “No”, she said. “I see it when it’s laying on the floor and it’s on the floor in pieces.”
     “So, you didn’t see it happen in front of you then?” I asked
     “No,” she explained. “I just hear it when it’s flying and then the lightbulb was on the floor.”
     I wondered, can someone in the family be playing a trick on Maria? I know for certain that one piece of evidence was fabricated; not by Maria, but by a young cousin. It was a photo showing an evil looking face on the wall.
     “Tell me a little about the photo that you sent me? Who took the photo, and what were the circumstances?” I asked.
     Maria explained, “I was in the bed to lay down and my young cousin was watching TV. She told me laughing, ‘I want to show you a picture! I want to show you a picture!’, and that’s when the picture comes out.”
     “So, tell me again about that picture. Was it you who took the picture, or did your cousin take the picture?” I asked.
     “She take the picture. You can see her hands with the cell phone in the picture. And I was laying down.”
     “So, you were in the room when she took the picture?” I asked.
     “Yes,” she said. “I was right in the room with her.”
     “And was it right after taking the photo that your cousin said, ‘Look at what’s on this picture?’” I asked.
     “Yes!”
     After hearing that Maria’s young cousin was laughing about the photo, I was sure that something was up. I did some research and found a phone app that inserts eerie faces into photos. The app is just for entertainment, and is all in good fun. It was obvious that the cousin was amused by Maria’s belief in the paranormal, and that she had tricked her with the photo.
     I asked myself, even if someone had deceived Maria, does that mean that all of the activity was caused by deceptive family members? I don’t think so. Maria claims to have seen objects move right in front of her face. These include rosary beads being thrown to the floor, small bottles of holy water being thrown on the floor, and hangers falling off of a doorknob. She also reported that the TV shakes by itself.
     Maria told me that a few days prior to our phone conversation, her adult cousin who lives with her said out loud to the ghost, “You don’t scare me. I’m not afraid of you,” before going into his bedroom and closing the door. As the door closed behind him a cup flew off of the kitchen counter and threw itself against his bedroom door. There was no one in the room with Maria who could have been responsible for this to happen.
     Another curious incident leads me to believe that the activity is genuine. One night, Maria was in her bedroom about to pray. She was concerned about the activity, and she hoped that prayer would help. Maria took two pairs of reading glasses out of a drawer next to her bed, and put them on her bible which was laying on the table. She then went into another room and had a conversation with her cousin telling him that she was going back to her room to pray. When she returned to the room, one lens from each eyeglass frame was missing! It seems that something didn’t want her to pray, so it removed the lenses from the glasses so she wouldn’t be able to see.
     When asked if she had ever seen any visions of people in her house, Maria replied, “Well, at the beginning when all of this first started, when I first started hearing all of these noises, I wake up at night and I see a man sitting in my dining room. From my room I can see the kitchen. The man was in the dining room sitting in the chair. I just waked up to go to the bathroom and I looked and saw the man sitting in the dining room. And I said, ‘What are you doing there? What are you doing there?’ My cousin who was in the bedroom located in front of the dining room called to me, ‘Why did you just say, What are you doing there? ’ I told him, ‘I just saw a man; a paper man with sunglasses sitting in the chair.’”
     A paper man? At first I didn’t think I had heard her correctly so I asked Maria to describe the man she saw in detail.
     “He just have a regular shirt on, and like green sunglasses,” she said. “He was like a paper man. He was brown paper with the sunglasses on, but he was a man. And I yelled at him, ‘What are you doing there? What are you doing there?’ And when I was, you know, clear in my vision — he disappeared.”
     I asked, “Did he look familiar to you? What did he look like?”
     “No,” she said. “I don’t know him. He was like a paper guy.”
     In addition to flying objects and the sighting of the mysterious ‘brown paper man’, Maria said that knocks have been heard in the house. She explained, “Oh, they knock my door and they knock my wall too.” She said that the knocks come in groups of 6. Another time a church group was over at the house, and they all heard loud knocks on the outside of the house. Other sounds have been heard as well. Maria described these as sounding like someone clicking the countertop with their nails in groups of three.
     Maria said that the spirit seems to get angry when she or her cousin prays. “They get mad when we pray, and every time I pray something moves. My cousin was praying and the TV shakes so hard. This thing shakes the TV and throws candles on the floor, throws the holy water on the floor, all when I start praying. One day I was praying with my cousin together, and one of the salt shakers from the dining room table they fly, they hit the china and broke both of the china.”
     One night after getting off of the phone with Maria, I received an email from her which said, “Hello Barry. Three minutes after I finish talking with you, I was talking with my cousin and that thing throw me with a salt shaker in my head.”
     Spontaneous Paranormal Activity (SPA) is puzzling, so when a case like this comes my way I look for something that may have triggered the unexplained events. One reason for SPA is the introduction of haunted physical objects into the home. Most people don’t realize that anything purchased at a thrift shop, yard sale, or antique shop can be haunted. We associate hauntings with houses, but spirit energy can attach itself to any object. I always caution people to pay close attention to what they are feeling when they are interested in purchasing something that once belonged to someone else. Haunted items seem to call to us, practically begging us to bring them home.
     Another reason for SPA is the introduction of cursed items into the home. Yes, I know, we live in the twenty-first century, but it’s true; if someone means you harm, they can put a curse on an object and present it to you as a gift. This ‘gift’ can act like a Trojan horse filled with evil intentions.
     Even minor changes to the structure of a house can cause SPA. Home renovations can often jump-start spirit activity. Spirits who once lived in a home want it kept just the way it was when they were alive.
     Finally, I always caution against the use of Ouija boards or participating in any type of occult ritual. Engaging in such activities, even in jest, can result in horrific paranormal activity. Why do I think that Ouija boards are dangerous? Think of it this way: when you use an Ouija board you are essentially putting up an Open House sign which says, “I give any and all spirits, good or bad, permission to temporarily take possession of my body and to control my hands in order for messages to be spelled out for my entertainment. I have total faith that you will leave my body when you’re done with it, and that you won’t hang around my house afterward … even though you’re dead and probably have nothing better to do.” Get the picture? Don’t use Ouija boards.
     There seemed to be no reason at all for paranormal activity to start up out of the blue in Maria Sanchez’s home. Foreign objects were not brought into the home that could have been haunted or cursed. The home was not being renovated in any way. And there had been no occult interests, Ouija boards, or rituals performed in the home. In fact, Maria is a devote Catholic and she holds regular bible study and prayer meetings in her home.
     Although Maria’s young cousin played a trick on her by showing her a fabricated photo, that doesn’t mean that all of the activity is fraudulent. Obviously, without conducting a full investigation it’s difficult for me to come to any solid conclusions. Thankfully, a paranormal group from Rhode Island agreed to take the case. They conducted a short investigation and afterward prayed with Carmen. Maria reported that the house was quiet after they left, but she was waiting to see if it would stay that way. A priest is scheduled to bless the house in a few weeks.

UPDATE
The paranormal group who took the case blessed the house and the activity stopped for a few days. Unfortunately it started up again. Maria emailed me several updates, which are below. She also sent photos of some of the objects that are being thrown at her and her cousin, which you can see at the end of the update.

9 February 2017
Hello Barry,
Today is Thursday no work today because the Blizzard. I when to the basement to get some shovels and when I come upstairs from my hallways they throw to me a heavy little metal lion I have. They almost hit me in my head. I put that back in its place. I was in the kitchen my cousin was inside his room and they throw a piece of plastic at me, and a few minutes later it thew a penny at me. I try to don't pay attention.
Maria

I asked Maria about the piece of plastic that was thrown at her, and the next day she reply ...

10 February 2017
Good morning Barry,
The piece of plastic I have never see around the house. No, it did not hit me, but I am scared things come flying around the house. Everything he throw at me is old except the bracelet.
Thank you Barry they has to stop. I can not live with this Paranormal situation for the rest of my life.
Thank you
Maria

12 February 2017
Hello Barry,
At 9:15 PM that thing throw a vinegar bottle on the chair I have in the kitchen. A few minutes later I have the door refrigerator open and it threw a metal napkin holder on my feet. Then I was in my bedroom and it throw a glass cup from the kitchen at me. The cup fly inside my bedroom.
Maria

19 February 2017
Hello Barry,
I don't know what to do next. Paranormal activities in the house don't stop. It's happening to my cousin and me every day. One of the guys (from the paranormal group) came and blessed the house with oil and holy water. It calmed everything down for 2 days, but the paranormal things are back again.
A pastor came to the house he calm everything once again, but the activities came back. I know its a spirit inside the house. I feel him next to me a lot of times. I am afraid he move things and he can hit me. I had to put away the kitchen knife. The other day i was talking with my cousin and whatever is inside here threw a glass cup at his head and my cousin put his head down.
Barry, it is not my cousin doing this. It is happening to him too, and lot of things have been going on when he is not in the house. Early tonight the spirit threw a lollypop at me. It also throw bread, a box of crackers, candles, napkins and salt pepper shaker. I start to put holy water at kitchen and he touch my arm for the first time, trying to stop me from spraying holy water. Things are getting worse. I don't know what to do anymore.
Maria

20 February 2017
Hello Barry,
Last night after the the spirit touch me I feel very tired. My sister came home to get something and we were talking in the kitchen. The spirit threw a little decoration bottle I have in the kitchen on her back. When she was leaving, the spirit throw her with a glass ball I had on the dining room table.
Before that happen i was in my bedroom and the spirit open the sink faucet in cold water, and when I see the faucet open the spirit throw me with the empty milk gallon that I had on the floor. My cousin was inside his bedroom. I know is something inside my house, and that thing don't want to hear nothing about God.
Maria

20 February 2017
This is when the spirit throw the crucify in from of my bedroom door. (see photo below)

20 February 2017
Hello Barry,
Sorry to bother you but this is very scary. Right now I am inside my bedroom. I lay down on my bed with the door semi open and the spirit open the door totally and few second later throw inside my bedroom the metal napkins holder i have on the kitchen counter.

20 February 2017
Hello Barry,
The spirit throw me back again the napkin holder, and this time hit me in my feet hard.
Maria

25 February 2017
Hello Barry,
Today I went to wash clothes in the basement with my cousin, and we had to run back upstairs because the spirit throw me with bottles, lights (lightbulbs) and chairs. When I was in the kitchen, it threw throw a chair on the kitchen floor, and threw bottles of vinegar that were on the counter, and much more.
When I was in my room the spirit closed my door. When I had the door closed, he opened the door. He threw candles on the floor, as well as decorations I had. I don't know what to do anymore. I am scared and nervous. I can't sleep well because I am terrified. Today I am going to talk with the priest.
Maria

27 February 2017
Hello Barry. The picture I send you is just happened tonight. Finally the priest is coming home tomorrow at 5:30 or 6:00 PM. Pray for me.
Thank you,
Maria
(photos sent were a penny, glass, and broken white china plate)

1 March 2017
     Maria sent me an email saying that a Catholic priest came to the house, prayed, and did a house blessing. The priest told her that there is a "sad spirit" in the house who throws things to show her that he is there. The priest thinks that this spirit may be a deceased relative trying to communicate with Maria.
     I was impressed that a priest would be so open-minded about paranormal activity. The Catholic church does not normally view unexplained events in this way, and their view of heaven and hell are pretty straight-forward.
     Maria ended the email by writing, "Right now I am in my bedroom with the door closed and the spirit is in the kitchen in front of my bedroom. He threw 2 glass cups on the floor very hard."

It Came From the Ouija Board

Ever since the Garner family bought their home in Danbury, Connecticut, things had never been quite right. But it wasn't until daughter Abigail and a friend decided to try the Ouija board that strange things really started to happen. Like most teenagers, using an Ouija board was seen as just a game; but the spirit that came through was nothing short of terrifying, and the activity that followed would remain for a long, long time. Now a grown woman Abigail and her husband, James, share the house with Abigail’s mother and their three year old son, Andrew.
     Abigail contacted me because of the alarming activity in her home. A few weeks earlier, a reputable paranormal group had done an investigation and a house blessing, but the disturbing activity in the house had not abated. I arrived at the Garner home with my paranormal teammate and tech expert, Tom Holzer, on a Saturday evening in April of 2017. While Tom set up his scientific data collecting equipment, I did a walkthrough of the house to try to pick up any intuitive impressions, and to try to pinpoint areas that felt active.
     Apart from some residual energy in the livingroom, the first floor felt fine to me; but as we climbed the stairs to the second floor, I began to feel uneasy. It seemed that each step brought with it a sense of anxiety and foreboding. As soon as I hit the top step I knew that something was with us, and I voiced my feeling that this was an area where Abigail and her family most likely experienced paranormal activity. The feeling was strongest at the top of the stairs and outside of the bedroom door at the top of the staircase. Abigail confirmed that on several occasions she has seen a strange, dark figure at that exact spot.
     As I made my way down the hallway, I continued to feel the presence. It felt unfriendly and brooding, and I had the distinct impression that I was being watched. Abigail’s son’s bedroom was on the right side of the hall and, thankfully, I didn’t pick up any negative impressions in his room. The bathroom across the hallway also felt clear. It wasn’t until I entered Abigail’s room that I encountered the full force of the presence. I felt not only that I was being watched, but that whoever or whatever was watching me wanted me out of there. I mentioned to Abigail that one corner of the room had a particularly nasty feeling attached to it. In this corner was a small doorway near the floor that lead to a storage crawlspace. Little did I know, that crawlspace was where Abigail had conducted an Ouija board session years earlier. She confirmed that the majority of activity took place in their bedroom, and in the hallway where I had felt the presence.
     After the walkthrough I was ready to hear about the paranormal activity the family had been experiencing, and I was particularly interested in the Ouija board session that Abigail had mentioned in her email. I was curious to know whether or not the activity in the house started with the Ouija board session. She told me that although she had experienced a number of minor things throughout her childhood, such as seeing things out of the corner of her eye, most of the activity started right after the Ouija board session.
     It was Abigail’s senior year of high school, and she and a friend had decided to play around with an Ouija board. They set up the board in the living room and put their hands on the planchette. As the it moved under their fingers, the answers that they got to their questions were mostly “Yes” and “No”. Once the word “Hi” was spelled out. In addition to the messages spelled out on the board, both girls distinctly heard a woman’s whispery voice say, “Hey”, right in their ears. There was also a feeling of a soft whirlwind that blew quickly by. Abigail thought that this might have been the spirit of her grandmother trying to contact her, so she wasn’t frightened. If anything, she was happy that she might have been in touch with her grandmother. Overall, their first experience with the board was tame and, for the most part, positive.
     A few nights later the girls decided to try the Ouija board again, this time in Abigail’s bedroom. The small crawlspace in the corner of the room, a frequent play-place for Abigail as she was growing up, seemed like the perfect place to try out the board a second time. But this time, things were totally different. Abigail explained, “We had an OK experience the first time we used the board so a few nights later we were like, ‘Let’s try it again’. It was about midnight. My mom was home, so we went upstairs to my little cubby hole. That was a bad idea. The messages were spelled out on the board were “Get out”, “I don’t like you”, and “I’m gonna kill you”. Then we heard a bunch of swearing.”
     “Did you actually hear the swearing in the room with you,” I asked?
     “Yes,” said Tia. “It didn’t swear on the board, it swore out loud. It was getting mad at us. We heard the swearing right in the cubby hole with us. I don’t know if I can do it justice but it was like ‘YOU …’ then a bunch of curses. It was a deep, growling type of voice. It wasn’t the female whisper we had heard the last time we used the Ouija board. It was a full grown man’s deep voice, and he sounded very, very angry. We could also hear stomping in our bedroom and we peeked out and there was nothing there. It sounded like heavy boots stomping on a wood floor, and it went on for a long time. We came running out of the room screaming, and my mom was like, ‘What are you screaming at?’ She hadn’t heard a thing; not the man’s voice, not the boots, nothing.”
     After the Ouija board experience, things went from bad to worse. Abigail started feeling as if she was being watched. “In my bedroom door near the door knob there’s a little peephole that looks into the hallway, and when I felt like I was being watched I would sometimes look through that little peephole. Once day I had a really strong feeling that I was being watched, so I looked through the peephole to see if someone was in the hallway. I put my eye up to the peephole and looked through, and all I could see was a red eye looking back at me; a red eye with a black center, and it was looking straight at me. I totally freaked out.
     A few weeks later I was sitting on my bed and I felt a hand grab my left arm, and it actually left a print. Like, if you were to grab me really hard, you would see prints on my skin. It was like a really hard grab that held onto me for couple of seconds and then let go, but the print stayed for about five minutes. I even got to show my mom.”
     Abigail described another incident that took place a few months later. She explained, “One night I went downstairs to get a midnight snack. The curtains in the kitchen were closed, but not all the way and as I was standing in the kitchen doorway I saw someone outside looking in the window at me. It looked like a big man. I could see him looking through the part of the curtain that was open, and the rest of him was in silhouette against the curtains. I freaked because I thought it was an actual person, so I screamed for my mom and ran upstairs. We called the police, and then came back and it was gone. When the police came I told them what I had seen. They went through the whole house, then went outside and walked the perimeter, but they didn’t see anything. Not only that, it had just snowed but there were no footprints anywhere in the snow. Whatever was standing out there looking in at me didn’t leave footprints.”
     The activity in the house died down for nearly seven years, but as soon as Abigail’s husband and young son moved in with her, the disturbing events started up again.
     James explained, “One night, something touched me while I was laying down in our bedroom. I could feel knuckles pressing down into my chest, then running slowly down to my bellybutton. It started out slow and then near the bottom of my ribcage it moved really fast, and then it was gone. It felt like someone had put their fist on my chest, pressed down really hard, and then ran their fist down the front of my body. It didn’t leave any marks or anything but it was really weird, and it woke me out a sound sleep.”
     A few nights later, James was lying awake in bed. Suddenly, he saw a blue orb come out of the closet, float into the bedroom, travel across the room to the window, and disappear. Although the event lasted only a few seconds, it startled James. Light from the street is always blocked with heavy curtains because Abigail sleeps better with the room darkened. The blue orb that James saw wasn’t a reflection of any kind. It was floating a few feet away from the wall.
     Soon after James saw the orb in their bedroom, Abigail had an experience that left her fearing for the safety of her three year old son, Andrew. “One day I was giving Andrew a bath and he wanted to stand up in the tub and take a shower like a big boy. The shower was running, and I was holding him so he wouldn’t fall down when suddenly it felt like he got yanked out of my arms. I pulled him back toward me, and then he was pulled back again. It was as if someone was pulling him away from me toward the wall. I quickly swooped my hands under him so he wouldn’t fall back and took him out of the tub. He was so scared. Now he is terrified to be in the bathtub.
     Like many haunted houses, the Garner residence had it’s share of electronic oddities. One day the lightbulb in the kitchen ceiling fixture exploded with such tremendous force that it caused the thick glass globe that covered it to crack in two. A few weeks later a clock radio in the kitchen began to turn on by itself, and the volume would turn higher and higher. Although electronic devices are known to malfunction from time to time, the volume on this particular radio is controlled by a knob that must be turned manually in order to increase or decrease the volume.
     One night Abigail and James heard little Andrew laughing hysterically in his room. As James explained it, “A lot of strange stuff has been going on in this house, but I think this one was a visitation from my dad who had died in November. A month or so later, Andrew was in his crib sleeping when all of a sudden we heard him laughing hysterically. For almost three hours he was laughing, just non-stop hysterical laughing. I turned on the video baby monitor to see what was going on and there was a giant orb by his rocking chair. The next morning when he woke up he made this breathing sound (imitates heavy intake of air) and he was saying “Pop-Pop”, the name he used to call my dad. My dad had been on oxygen, and it sounded like Andrew was imitating the oxygen sound. That was the first and last time that he laughed like that in the middle of the night, and the only time I’ve seen an orb on his monitor. Just a side note, the batteries in the bear that was on that rocking chair kept dying. We would replace them, and a week later they would be dead. We would replace them again, and a week later they would be totally dead. Then all of a sudden, they’re fine. They stopped going dead and we haven’t had any problems with them since then. But it was right after seeing the orb that they started going dead. Weird.”
     One thing that makes me think that the Ouija board was instrumental in starting the paranormal activity in this home is the sighting of dark figures in the house. Abigail said, “One day was I was standing in the kitchen looking into the dining room and I saw a black head with red eyes. I just saw a head, a black head with glowing red eyes staring at me and then, poof, it went away. It was high up on the ceiling, it was upside-down, and it was staring straight at me.” When asked to describe the eyes, Abigail said, “They weren’t human. They don’t look like my eyes or his eyes or yours. They’re not that size. They’re bigger than normal, like the size of ping-pong balls.”
     Abigail also reported seeing large black masses in the house. “The black mass, it stands there and almost taunts me. It just stares at me.” When asked how long these sightings last Abigail answered, “Between five minutes, or until I run! You can just stare at it. You can have a staring contest with it.”
     I asked, “So, it looks human shaped with a head and shoulders?”
     “Yes,” Abigail answered, “it’s human-like, but a black mass without any features. Sometimes I get a feeling before I see it. I feel like there’s something watching me and then I see it. The feeling that I get from it is pure fear, dread. The last time that I saw it I was coming out of our bedroom and it was just standing at the end of the hall staring at me with those red eyes. It was standing right in front of the door to the room at the opposite side of the hallway.”
     Tom said, “I wanted to ask, when you see a black apparition or anything like that, are you seeing it directly? Are you staring at it, or are you seeing it out of the corner of your eye?”
     “I’m staring at it directly,” said Abigail. “The black mass, the eyes, they stared straight at me. I stared straight back at it and it didn’t move, like it wasn’t afraid of me. The black masses don’t move, the eyes don’t move.”
     Tom asked, “But you see those things dead center, not out of your peripheral vision?”
     “No,” Abigail replied,”not from my peripheral vision. I’ve seen other things in my peripheral before, but I see these things straight on.”
     “How about hearing voices or hearing footsteps around the house?” I asked.
     “I heard fighting downstairs in the kitchen one time,” said Abigail. “One of the voices sounded like that deep man’s voice I had heard during the Ouija board session, the other was a regular-sounding man, and they were fighting with each other.”
     “Did anything sound familiar about the voices?” Tom asked.
     Abigail replied, “No, and I couldn’t really understand what they were saying. It was all mumbled. They were yelling at each other to the point where I was like, ‘What the heck is going on down there? Did two people just break into the house, and now they’re having a fight about what to take?’ So after about five minutes of listening to these guys fighting I went downstairs. I could hear the voices as I walked down the stairs, but as soon as I turned to walk into the kitchen they stopped. I peeked around the corner, but there was no one there. Then as soon as I turned the corner, I heard footsteps running away.
     “Where did the footsteps sound like they went?” I asked.
     “They went into the dining room, so I came around through the other entrance to the room. I went into the dining room, but there was no one there. There was no way anyone could go out of the room without my seeing them.”
     “Did you think that it might be the neighbors?” I asked. “Did you look outside?”
     Abigail said, “I looked outside. There was nobody outside and all of the neighbors’ lights were out.”
     After hearing Abigail and James’ report, Tom set up some of his data collecting equipment in the basement and in the livingroom and I ran an EVP session in Abigail’s bedroom. Tom joined us briefly to install some data collection devices in Abigail’s room. These highly sensitive instruments are designed to detect changes in temperature and air pressure.
     Abigail sat with me throughout the EVP session, and at times it felt as if a presence was in the room with us. Other times, it seemed to have moved out. At one point Abigail commented that her left arm felt cold. I turned on my digital thermometer and aimed it at her right arm. It was 82 degrees. I aimed it at her left arm, and it was 77 degrees. There was no way to account for this 5 degree difference in temperature. In fact, Abigail’s right arm was facing the window and should have been colder than her left which was facing a wall. All of the walls read a uniform 71 degrees, so this was an interesting piece of data.
     Tom is an amazingly thorough investigator. He takes great care in the placement of sensors, and he pours over the data looking for anomalies that may either coincide with or suggest the presence of paranormal activity. A few days after the Garner investigation, Tom was reviewing the data from his temperature collecting devices when he noticed some unusual readings. Between the hours of 8:01-8:16 PM, during the time when I was conducting the EVP session, all of the sensors in the house recorded a 1 degree drop in temperature; but the readings in Abigail’s room dropped nearly 4 degrees in the same period. If anything, the temperature in the room should have risen due to the body temperatures of two people in an enclosed room. This drop in temperature seems significant, especially in light of the 5 degree difference in temperature on Abigail’s left arm during the same time period.
     The only piece of evidence that I captured during the investigation was an EVP recorded during the session in Abigail’s room. Although the voice is clearly female, the word or words she is saying are unclear. You can hear this EVP at the bottom of the case file.
     Toward the end of the investigation, three year old Andrew started pointing up at the ceiling in the dining room near the chandelier. When we asked him what he was pointing at he said, “Look! Look! The fat man, the fat man.” Could this be the same man that Abigail had seen staring at her through the kitchen window? A week after we concluded the investigation I received an email from Abigail -- “Andrew is back in our room. He screamed and said, "Fat man. Help!".
     Several days after the investigation, we received a number of emails from Abigail saying the activity in the home was escalating.
     One day Abigail had opened all of the windows on the second floor to air out the house. After several hours the house was beginning to feel chilly, so she went through each room and shut the windows. When she arrived at the bedroom at the end of the hall she was shocked to find that the window in that room was not only shut -- both locks were in place. She had been in the room just a few minutes earlier and was positive that the window had been open.
     One evening black mass was seen hovering over Andrew when he was in his playpen. The boy was terrified and Abigail grabbed him of the playpen and fled the room.
     Another night, Abigail was laying in bed on her using her cellphone. She looked up and saw a huge black figure at the foot of the bed, then felt a burning sensation on her lower back. She ran out of the room. The burning on her back continued, so she went to the bathroom and lifted her shirt to look at the area. Two large, red scratches were on her back. Abigail sent me a photo of the scratches which looked to be approximately 4 inches in length. These scratches mysteriously vanished the next morning.
     Tom and I returned to the house a week after the investigation to do a clearing. As Tom set up his data collecting equipment, Abigail and I talked about the clearing and about her family's role in keeping the house clear of negative energy. Just as all hauntings are different, all clearings are different. Sometimes spirits leave immediately and never return, other times they are reluctant to leave and further steps have to be taken. But it is essential that homeowners realize that they always have the upper-hand. The living are infinitely more powerful than any spirit who chooses to hang on, and more powerful than negative entities who are bent on scaring people and disrupting their lives. Fear feeds negative entities and spirits. Deprive them of fear, and they will literally fade away. Once a person realizes that dark shapes, noises, voices, and even scratches are harmless, they can begin to take back their home and their lives.
     In doing house clearings I rely on a number of methods. I don’t enter a house knowing exactly which ones I will use. The exact method seems to reveal itself to me when I am in the home. In this case, I began the clearing with a prayer to Archangel Michael against evil spirits and entities. I then made my way through each room with sage that had been blessed with holy water ordering any and all spirits and to leave and to never return, and reminding them that there is a place of beauty and light waiting for them on the other side. After finishing a room I blessed each door jamb and window sill with holy water, thereby protecting the room from reinfestation. As I cleared the last room, I ushered the spirits out of a window that was left open for this purpose, then blessed and sealed this window. Lastly, I said a special prayer that protected the entire house and called on the protection of God, and of all his angels and saints.
  By the end of the clearing I felt totally energized. The house felt clear and fresh, and Abigail was crying with emotion. Tom reported that the temperature in the house remained constant throughout the clearing, another indication that it was a success. I am confident that the Garner family are finally able to reclaim their home, and that they are stronger spiritually from the experience.

Someone To Watch Over Me

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. ~ Marie Curie
Do you believe in guardian angels? You might after you read the following interview. The activity that the woman in this story experienced happened immediately after she attended a lecture by a psychic medium. Apparently, someone on the other side was interested in contacting her at the lecture but didn't get a chance. So they did the next best thing -- They followed her home. Sounds scary? It's not. It's a very uplifting story of a group of caring souls watching over one woman's life, making sure that she is safe and sound.
Special thanks to my good friend Marie who joined me on this investigation. Marie is a highly gifted clairvoyant, and the intuitive impressions that she picked up during the investigation were accurate and insightful.

Barry: Hi Connie. What an interesting story you have to tell! Let's start at the beginning. You mentioned that the activity started right after you returned from a lecture given by a psychic medium at your local library. Can you tell me about that?

Connie: I came home from the lecture that night, and that was the first time that there was any inkling that something was either following me or ... I don’t know. I was lying in bed when all of a sudden I felt the bed shaking up and down. The shaking was just in the corner of the mattress at the foot of the bed. It was was if someone was doing this to me (pushes down on the bed with force several times rapidly). So I asked, 'What are you doing?' Then I said, 'Please don’t do that anymore,' and the shaking stopped. But the next minute I felt the same shaking in the middle of the edge of the mattress. I thought to myself, ‘What do I do now?’. It stopped for a couple of minutes, then started up again. I said, 'Look, now you’re scaring me. I’m really very frightened. I don’t know what this is all about and I’m finding myself beginning to cry, so please go.' And then they left, which I thought was very nice.

Barry: Did you know that they left because the shaking had stopped, or was there something else that lead you to believe they were gone?

Connie: I knew they had left because I had a sense that there was a feeling of vacancy here.
     That was one of the early things that happened. The thing that they do which I really, really appreciate is they let me know they’re here. They either have a bell or a gong type of thing that they ring. I can walk in a room and I don't even know they’re here, and I can get into bed and I hear this gong and I say, “Thank you for letting me know you’re here.”

Barry: It just alerts you to the fact that they’re with you?

Connie: That's right. Sometimes when it's after midnight, I'll be sleeping and the bell will ring right next to my bed and I’ll say, ‘Come back early tomorrow night or something.' And sure enough, they will be here when I come in to my bedroom the next night. But I don’t know if it’s one, two or three of them. I have no idea.
     The night after the shaking mattress episode I was in bed and I could hear this crinkling noise, like the sound of paper being crumpled in someone's hand. I listened and I tried to form in my mind where it was coming from. I had the sense that it was a man doing this, and that he was just playing with something made out of paper. Then finally I said, “It’s time to go, I’m really very tired.” And the sound stopped.
  I remember the next morning I woke up and there was nothing in sight that would have made that kind of a sound. But in the top drawer I have sweaters that are covered with tissue paper. That was the only thing that could possibly have made that sound. I opened the drawer and looked at the paper, but I couldn’t tell if it was disturbed because it was paper that had been used, so it wasn’t fresh and and neatly stacked. You had asked me if there was anything in the drawer that might have belonged to someone. There were some of my mother’s sweaters in that drawer.
     Another time, I came home one night from being out quite late and I walked into my bedroom and heard the bell again. I simply said, “Thank you for letting me know you’re here.”

Barry: Is it always the same bell sound?

Connie: No, when I heard it right next to me, right next to the bed, it sounded like the type of bell that you would see at a hotel desk. The kind that you push the little metal thing down on top to ring for service. That’s what woke me up. I think they’re trying to do things to wake me rather than have me wake up and then be startled by them. To me it’s a positive thing that they’re doing. It usually precedes the feeling that they are here, and I say, ‘Thanks for letting me know you’re here.’ Another time the bell sounded more like a kitchen timer sort of an alarm.

Barry: You had mentioned that after the lecture, you heard a woman’s voice in your room. Can you tell me a little about that?

Connie: One night I got a sense that there was someone standing next to me by my night table, and that it was a woman. I wasn't afraid, but I knew she was there next to the bed and she seemed to be looking at something. I said to her, “What are you doing?” and a woman's voice said, “I just want to see what you keep at your night table.” That was what she said. She said it very nicely.

Barry: So, you’ve heard the sound of a bell, and the woman’s voice. Have they done anything else to let you know that they are around?

Connie: An interesting thing is, I have a doorstopper on the bedroom door and twice they closed the door behind them when they left. I keep the window open, but only a few inches and there would have to be a very strong wind blowing to close the door like that, which there never is. I don’t know why it is they would leave through the door when they can just leave anyway they want. Why would they do that?

Barry: I think that just as they let you know they’re here by ringing the bell, sometimes they close the door so you know that they've left.

Connie: The second time it happened the door slammed, and the third time I could hear the door very gently touching against the iron door stop. It closed very gently. I just feel that it’s a nice group. They’re milling around sometimes, and sometimes I say, ‘Go home’. They seem to leave, but I don’t always know. I mean, they’re quiet and not doing anything so who knows?
     Now, let me tell you the pièce de résistance. I was in the study sitting at the computer. This was 3 or 4 weeks ago. I’m sitting at the computer and something touches my arm and I turn and there is woman there. I couldn’t tell how old she was, but she was built, squarely built, not fat or obese. She’s got white, white hair. Beautifully coiffed, beautifully done, and I could only see what she was wearing from her waist up, I couldn’t look down below because I was sitting down looking up at her.
     But the thing that really scared the hell out of me was to look at her eyes, and she looked right at me. Her eyes looked like painted marbles, or else maybe contact lenses; but they were yellow, they were red, the pupil part. She looked at me directly and then she turned away and looked over toward the side of the computer.
     I said, ‘I would very much like to talk to you. I would like to ask you some questions’. Now, I figured that maybe she couldn’t speak, I’m not sure why I thought that, but I said, ‘If the answer is yes would you please just hit the table one time, if no hit it twice?’ I wanted to write the questions down that I was asking her and what the reply was, so I reached to get a piece of paper, and then she was gone! I got up quickly and I went from door to door. Nothing was open, nobody was there. It was quiet, she was gone and that was it. That was the only time I had seen her. This was about three weeks ago.
I thought to myself, ‘Who in my history might this woman look like?’ Nobody identical, but my husband’s father’s cousin resembled her. She was a model, and I only met her once. She was an impressive woman, impressive in that she was a fashion model when she was in her eighties. And her hair was white and it was done not unlike the woman that I saw in my room. She’s the only one that would come close to fitting that, and yet the face was not exactly the way I remembered her.

Barry: Let me ask you a few questions about this woman you saw. Tell me what she was wearing.

Connie: I assume it was a skirt she was wearing, but as I said I couldn’t look down because I was sitting. It was fairly colorful. It was a sort of a light blue and white. It had a blouse with a little jacket on it. Again, I’m not really sure about the bottom. But she was beautifully coiffed and I didn’t look to see if she had makeup or anything like that on.

Barry: Did she have an expression that you can describe?

Connie: She didn’t smile, didn’t move. Her face didn’t move at all. It was like a statue, but then she turned from me and looked over to the computer. I was wondering if there was something I could say that would hit a soft spot with her, or at least something that she would react to. But I didn’t try very hard then. That was when I was reaching for a piece of paper, and then she was gone.

Barry: Tell me again about where she was looking after she turned her head from you.

Connie: She was looking at the computer. She was standing right here to my right, she turned slowly. She turned her head when I said, “Can I ask you some questions?” As she turned her head, I thought that might be the beginning of a “No” from her (laughs). But she turned her head from me and looked toward the bottom right side of the computer. I looked at the bottom right side, but I couldn't figure out what she was looking at. Maybe it was just a turning away. I was taken by surprise. She wasn't there very long. I wonder why.

Barry: It takes a lot of energy for spirits to materialize, and they usually don’t last that long. You rarely hear of instances where someone sits and has a long conversation with a spirit who has made themselves known visually.

Barry: I want to ask you about the woman’s eyes.

Connie: They were amazing. Do you know what an Immie is? (Note: Immies were glass marbles streaked with color so they look as if they were made of real agate. Immie is short for imitation.) They were small marbles and they were very colorful, but they were not the big size. This woman’s eyes looked like that. Like the colors were painted on. I saw yellow, blue, red -- bright, bright happy colors. But she couldn’t possibly see through them, so why … but then again, maybe she could see through them. If she’s a spirit if she can see out there, maybe she could see through those eyes. I don’t know. But I was wondering, what is the purpose of showing me her eyes looking like that?

Barry: When you are shown something by a spirit that’s striking like that, it is usually symbolic of something. She wouldn’t show herself with these very strange eyes unless there was a reason. She must have been trying to get a message to you.

Connie: There is definitely a connection with my eyes. My ophthalmologist recently told me that I’m in the beginning stages of a degenerative condition with my eyes. I’m sure the message from that spirit has something to do with my eyesight. The colors of her eyes were so beautiful. I hope it was a good message -- maybe that my eyesight will be okay.
    These spirits have not been a problem at all, and I would like to get to know something about them as individuals, and how many there are. I know there’s a woman, but I don’t know who else. In my mind I saw a man standing there.

Barry: Did you get a sense that the woman that you saw was the same woman whose voice you heard next to your bed that night?

Connie: No. Oh no. The woman that I saw one didn’t smile. She didn’t move or anything. The one that I heard sounded friendly and healthy, and much younger. A much younger voice than the woman I saw would have had.
Connie: Oh, by the way. During the night I heard a noise on my nightstand and the next morning I found some writing on a little pad I keep by the side of the bed.
Barry: It looks like a number. 1,500. When did this happen?
Connie: Sometime within the past month. I have the paper right here. Here it is. You can see the number. I can't tell if that's a 6 or a 5, but it looks like 1,500.

Barry: I’d like to ask Marie what impressions she might be picking up on.

Marie: I had a strong impression that there’s a woman in her late 20’s that visits. I very clearly saw the essence of a woman with long brown hair. She seems to be looking for someone she can’t find. Then I picked up different levels of spirits. There is at least one man who knew you at some time in your life, and another man who knew you many, many years ago. He was in love with you for years, ever since he knew you when you were in your twenties.

Connie: That's really interesting. Do you see that picture over there, the one in the frame on my dresser?  That’s my husband. He died in the 1990s. I know that he’s still around me. I’ll never forget one time that I went to Staples to get some paper and things, and I had a discount card that I just couldn’t find. I looked in the house, I searched every drawer, the wastepaper basket, all over the car, all through my purse and it just wasn’t anywhere. So I drive over to Staples and I'm about to go in and I say, “Goddamn it Al, if you are anywhere that you can hear me, why didn’t you help me find that card?”
     I went into Staples and loaded my cart, and when I went to pay, the boy at the checkout said to me, “Do you have a card?” I said, “I used to, but I can’t find it.” And I opened my purse, and there was the card sitting right on top of all of my things in my purse. Right there on top. So that was the first time that I wondered if he’s still around watching over me.

Barry: The sense I get is they’re all protective of you. The statement, ‘I just want to see what you keep on your night table’ sounds very cryptic, but you have to think of it logically. If someone is out to watch out for you, they would be very interested in what’s on your night table for your own safety. It’s as if she was saying to you, ‘I want to make sure you have what you need. I want to make sure that you can call somebody if you have to, that you can see by using the flashlight. I want to make sure that you’re safe.’ I think that that’s what this is ALL about. All of these visitations are spirits who are interested in your safety. Some may be the spirits of people who knew you at one time, but they are all watching over you to make sure you’re safe. I’m sure of it.

Connie: Once a person dies and their spirit moves on, do they come back?

Barry: Yes. Sometimes they come back to help people out.

Connie: Well, I have to tell you this. My mother was a widow living in the Bronx, scared to death to live by herself. And since her side of the family was Swedish, and I grew up with my grandmother living with us who spoke Swedish, she kept calling me and telling me the latest place that she had hid the bankbook, or where the newest place where all the things were that she hid. And then the next week she would change it, and it would be under the ironing board underneath the cover. And I don’t know those words in Swedish! I said to myself, 'God, if anything happened to her I would have to go through everything piece by piece'.
     So, I’m living in in Bedford and we get a phone call from a neighbor who was concerned because my mother hadn’t taken in her papers that morning. Something’s wrong. So I called my mother and there was no answer. So Al and I went down and found that she had died.
     After that, of course I had to go through her apartment and go through all of her things. I went through it as carefully as I could and gave some stuff to the Salvation Army and moved the rest into my garage where thought I’d go through things very slowly.
     One morning the kids left for school, my husband left for work, and I was upstairs in the family room, We had brought one of her couches up into the room. There were pillows to match the couch, but when I went to fluff them up all of this dust and rubber stuff came out. They were in really bad shape. I took three of them downstairs to the garbage and put them in the pails because I knew the collection was going to be the next morning.
     That night I dreamed of my mother. She was in her grave, and she was in the coffin. And she’s trying to get me to hear her to understand her, and I don’t know what the heck she’s saying. All I know is that she’s really terribly frustrated. So the next morning I went downstairs and thought, 'Something’s wrong'. I went back downstairs to the garbage and took out the pillows. They all had zippers for the lining, and I opened them up and there was $15,000 worth of war bonds hidden inside, and they were all made out to me! So, I guess I do believe! I know that there are different ways of communicating.

Barry: Well, again. If you think of the way your mom communicated, she communicated through an image, not with words. A lot of times the message you get is symbolic. Your mom didn’t say, 'The bonds are in the pillows'. It would be nice, but that’s not what she did because that’s often not the way they communicate.

Connie: I really wish I could talk to them.

Barry: You can. When you know they’re around, when you hear that bell, say out loud, ‘I know that you’re here, but I don’t know what it is that you want. If there’s some way that you make it clearer to me what it is that you want, then please do so. Otherwise, I just appreciate you being here and watching over me.

Connie: You know, I can remember when I was between 10 and 12 years old and having the sense that I was being followed in a room, that there were people all around me. I kept saying, 'I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to see you'. And I never let anybody in at all. Now that they can all come!
  Thank you so much, Barry and Marie. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. Now I want to learn more about all of this, to understand it better. Thank you so much. Now come on and let’s have something to eat and drink and be merry. Okay?

The Uninvited

Most people would never consider contacting a paranormal investigator when buying or selling a home -- but they should. Sometimes that charming house you have your heart set on comes with uninvited guests. The Dalcro family had just moved into their Orange County home when things began to happen that made them realize that the house they had just bought wasn’t exactly empty - it came with a ghost or two.
First there were the odd sounds that couldn’t be explained, like the sound of typing on the computer keyboard at night when everyone was in bed. Then there were the footsteps. Around midnight for more than a week straight, the sound of footsteps were heard running up the stairs.
Then things started to get really strange. Mrs. Dalcro explained, “When we first moved into the house, toys would turn on and off. TV sets would go on and off. The fire alarms would come on when my husband went to work. After my third daughter was born, the mobile in her crib would come on by itself, and she would be staring as though she was looking at someone. One night I was in bed while everyone was asleep and I saw the lights come on in the downstairs kitchen, then go off again. I called one of my kid's names to see if she had gotten up, but there was no response. A few minutes later, the lights went on and off again. When the lights came back on a third time, I asked my husband to go downstairs and take a look because I was worried that someone had broken into the house. He walked down the stairs that lead to the kitchen and as soon as he walked into the room the lights went out. He came back upstairs and said, ‘That was the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.’”
But strange noises and lights turning on and off were the least of their problem. The unwanted guests were beginning to show themselves. Mrs. Dalcro said, “My eldest woke up one morning and asked me why I was in her room at 2 AM going through her drawers. I asked her what she was talking about, and she said that she saw the back of a woman that looked like me opening and closing the dresser drawers as though she was putting clothes into the drawers.”
The two younger daughters saw someone as well, a man they described as being in his 40’s wearing a plaid shirt. Then there was the woman. One of the girls went into the kitchen to get a drink and saw a woman standing at the bottom of the stairs. She described the woman as wearing a Victorian era style dress with her hair in a bun.
Another time, Mrs. Dalcro was outside holding her youngest daughter in her arms. “My daughter looked up at the house and said, ‘Tori, what are you doing?’. Tori is her older sister's name. I looked up, but there was no one there. She then quickly clutched onto me and buried her head into my shoulder.”
Spirits will try to get our attention any way they can. One day, the eldest child was in her room when a book flew off of a shelf and across the room. In that same room, a closet door would mysteriously open by itself at night. This was witnessed by two of the children and was a frequent occurrence.
Spirits also get our attention by touching us. Mrs. Dalcro said “It often felt as if someone were putting their hands on my head. It wasn’t a scary feeling. It actually felt very peaceful and comforting. It would make me stop whatever I was doing, and the effect was incredibly calming.”
Although the family loved their home, sharing it with so many uninvited guests was becoming too much for them. They put the house on the market. Although the real estate agent brought many potential buyers to the home, no one seemed to want to buy it. It’s very possible that people were reacting the presence of spirits in the home. I conducted an investigation and a clearing and all activity in the house ceased. A few weeks later not only did the house sell; there was a bidding war between two buyers and the Dalcro's ended up getting a higher price than they anticipated.

My Wife's Historic Double

Has anyone ever told you that you look just like someone they know, or that you look exactly like a famous celebrity? Apparently everyone has a double, but not every double is from the time period we live in. If you look online you’ll find scores of photos of celebrities who look like people in old photographs and tintypes. I’m no stranger to this phenomenon. While on a family vacation, I stumbled upon a painting that left me speechless.
My wife and I had taken the kids on a trip down South and stopped by the Wright Brothers National Memorial museum in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. We viewed the outdoor stone monuments, then made our way into the museum and viewed the various exhibits which included a wall displaying paintings of famous aviators. My daughter suddenly exclaimed, “That lady looks just like Amy!” At first I looked around the room thinking there was a visitor in the museum who resembled my wife, but my daughter said, “No, the painting!” I looked and was stunned to see that the woman in the painting bore an uncanny resemblance to my wife. I quickly called her over and asked, “Who does that woman look like?" Without missing a beat my wife said, “She looks like me!” I took a photo of the painting and it became a topic of conversation for years.
I recently came across the photo and decided to see if there were any photos of Louise Thaden online. I figured that the painting might look like my wife, but a photograph probably wouldn’t resemble her. It would be too much of a coincidence. Not so. My wife really does bear an eerie resemblance to the famous aviator.
Is this proof of reincarnation? Perhaps not. But it makes me wonder whether or not our double is out there somewhere, either in this time period or from somewhere in the distant past.

Painting of aviator Louise Thaden - Wright Brother's museum, Kill Devil's Hill, NC.

My wife (Center) with photographs of Louise Thaden.

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The Haunted Spa

It Came From the Ouija Board

Someone To Watch Over Me

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