Did you know that the average American will spend roughly a third of their life at work? That averages out to about 90,000 hours over a lifetime. Many of us have horror stories about work that involve annoying bosses or fellow employees who just won’t shut-the-hell up when we’re trying to work, but this newsletter/podcast is about REAL horror stories in the workplace--stories that have to do with ghosts, the supernatural, and the unexplained.
As a paranormal investigator, I’ve seen my fair-share of haunted offices, stores, and other places of business. I’ve investigated haunted office buildings, a haunted spa, haunted clothing stores, and even a haunted firehouse.
I received the following email from someone on Facebook who wanted to share their workplace ghost story. And because I am a retired teacher, I think it’s the perfect story to start with. She wrote:
I’m a teacher at a high school in Westchester County, New York. The school was built in the early 1920’s, and I have been working there for well over 20 years. Although I haven’t had a huge amount of paranormal experiences on-the-job, two incidents stand out that I thought you might be interested in.
One day I was talking to another teacher in a hallway outside of her classroom. Her room was at the end of the hallway so as we were talking, I had a clear view of the entire hallway which runs the length of the school. As we stood there talking, something caught my eye down at the end of the hall. It was a dark shadow figure in the shape of a person, and I watched as it slowly walked across the hall. It came from the custodian’s room on the left, and I could see the full figure of a person--head, shoulders, arms, torso, and legs. It wasn’t a menacing shape, it just looked like the shadow of someone walking across the hall. It wasn’t solid black, but more like a smokey grey that I could see through. This figure went across the hall and made its way to the hallway across from the custodian’s room. The figure didn’t vanish, it simply kept walking down the hall where I lost sight of it. Creepy, right?!
The second incident took place in the auditorium. My classroom is near the backstage door, and I needed to put something on the stage. As I opened the door, I heard beautiful piano music coming from the auditorium piano. The piano isn’t on the stage; it’s in the middle of the auditorium halfway between the stage and the doors at the back of the room. The music that was playing was classical music, and since we have a lot of very talented young musicians in the school I assumed that one of them had cut out of lunch and that they were playing the piano.
I quietly closed the stage door and walked down the hall to the side entrance to the auditorium. I wanted to tell the student that they should be either at lunch or in class, but I didn’t want to startle them by coming out of the stage curtains. The music was still playing as I walked up the stairs that lead from the main hallway to the auditorium. It took me no more than three steps to get to the top of the stairs and to open the door to the auditorium, but as soon as I put my hand on the doorknob, the music stopped. I opened the door, but there was no one in the auditorium. As I said, the piano was in the middle of the room against one wall, so it was a good 30 feet from the doors at the rear of the auditorium and from the stage. The only other exit was the one that I had just walked in. There was absolutely no way that anyone could have ran away that fast, or hid in the empty auditorium. This happened years ago, but every time I pass the auditorium I think of it and wonder who the ghost was that was playing the piano that day.
The following stories were told by audience members at my library lectures. The first was told by a woman at Reed Memorial Library in Carmel, NY. She said:
I’m a Certified Nursing Assistant, and I work in a nursing home. I usually work the 3PM to 11PM shift, but one night I was asked to stay over for the 11PM to 7AM shift. At around 2:30 in the morning I was changing one of the patients and I had the door open. There was only one other nursing assistant and one nurse working with me that morning. The nursing assistant was off the floor, and the nurse was sitting in the dayroom down the hall. I was changing the person when I heard a sound like “Huhh”, and out of the corner of my eye I saw somebody walked right past the door in the hallway. I thought it was either the nurse or the other nursing assistant. I came out of the room when I was done and I walked down and checked the two rooms at the end of the hallway. No one was there. I didn’t think anything of it, but later on I told some other people I work with and they told me that they also experienced the same thing.
Other things have happened in that facility. In the bathrooms are call bells, the kind that have a little switch next to the toilet and you have to pull it down to ring for assistance. There have been times where there are two patients rooming together who can’t get out of bed, and their bathroom call-bell will be pulled down.
Another nursing-related ghost story was told by a woman who attended a lecture at the Somers Library in Somers, NY. She said:
I was a nurses aid in Somers Manor nursing home before they built the new facility. It was just the nurse and me on the night shift, because that’s how they staffed it. Most of the patients were not really conscious; they were very senile and had dementia. This particular night, the other nurse went to dinner I was there by myself. A little while later I started hearing the patients getting restless, which was very unusual. We had turned the lights down low because the patients were sleeping, and I looked down the hall and I saw an orb -- a very white, light orb that I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. And it went right down the hall, I got chills, and it went into one of the rooms where there were about six patients. I rushed down the hall and I started to walk into the room. I just got to the doorway and then it disappeared. I know I saw it. It was big, around the size of a beach ball. And I didn’t see just a quick glimpse of this thing. I saw it for about 45 seconds to a minute. I watched as it floated down the hall. I’ll tell you one thing, I couldn’t wait for that nurse to come back from dinner!
A teacher was in the audience at a lecture I gave at Reed Memorial Library in Carmel, New York. She shared the following on-the-job ghost story:
I work at a school in New Jersey which was once the home of a very famous family. I’ve had many things happen in the room that I teach in, but most recently I was giving an evening parent/teacher conference and the door to my room kept opening, and the mom was getting really annoyed by it. So she got up and went to go close it -- these are very tall doors -- then she went to sit down. She sat down and all of a sudden she said that someone pushed her chair. I watched her chair rock back and forth with considerable force and the woman said, “Oh my gosh!” And her husband said, “Are you OK?” and then HIS chair got pushed the same way!
Another teacher and I have also smelled a candle, but of course there are never any candles lit in the school. This isn’t the smell of a modern scented candle; it’s just like the smell of a wax candle. We’ve both smelled this in my classroom, and right outside of it. The first day I ever taught in the room I felt a swish of air or something go right past my leg, and I knew right away it was some sort of a presence.
We think of daycare centers as being places buzzing with activity, but we rarely think of the activity as being paranormal! After a lecture I gave in Sherman Library in Sherman, Connecticut, a woman share the following story with the audience:
I worked at a daycare in Tucson Arizona, and the buildings were made up of two different houses that were kitty-cornered to one another. So you walked into the front door of the daycare and there was a staircase that went up to where there was a storeroom and the staff restroom. The kids never went up there. It was about 6:30 in the morning and there were two teachers in the school when the first little boy showed up for the day. He walks into the front door and looks at the stairs and says in Spanish, “Quien es ese?” which means, “Who is that?” And the teacher says, “Quien is quien?” -- “Who is who?” And he said, “La Mujer!” -- “The woman!” And the teacher said to him, “There’s no woman up there. It’s just me and the other teacher, and she’s right there.” And the boy said, “No, the woman on the stairs. She’s there every day. She says hello to me every day.”
In the same building, one time the same teacher was there with the last couple of kids at night and she heard something that sounded like a bowling ball rolling upstairs. One of the dad’s walked in to pick up his son and he said, “What’s going on up there?” The teacher said, “I don’t know. I’m the only one here with the kids”. He said, “Are you sure? Because there’s definitely somebody up there.” The dad goes up, looks all around, but there was nobody there.
Some of my favorite on-the-job stories come from electricians, plumbers, and carpenters. They often work in old houses, so they sometimes find themselves in ghostly situations. The following story was told by a plumber during a lecture at Danbury Library in Danbury, Connecticut:
I’m a plumber, and working in some houses you get like an eerie feeling in old houses. But this was in Harold Leever Cancer Center. I was working at night. We would go in after everybody had their chemo; so we had to work at night and get done and make it look like we weren’t there. So, my apprentice and I went up. The nurse said, “Everybody’s done. Go ahead. You can start.” We go up there and we’re starting to get ready, getting our cart and our tools. And we look across and I would say about fifty-feet away from us we saw a man go into one of the patient rooms. And I said, “I thought everybody was out of here.” And I go to the apprentice, “You seen that guy go in there?” And he saw him too. So we walked down there, and we go in that room, and it was cold and every hair on the back of my neck and my arms stood up. But there was nobody in there. We both saw the same guy. Bald, tall, glasses, suit-and-tie on. We told the nurses about it the next time we went to work and they were like, “Look at this picture. Does it look like this guy?” And we were like, “Yeah. That’s the guy.” It was a doctor who had passed away a few years earlier. I’ll tell you, it was the freakiest thing. And what was so cool was that my apprentice had seen the same thing.
Another hospital related ghost story was sent to me from someone on Facebook who had an amazingly creepy workplace story he wanted to share. He said:
I work at an eye bank, and I've done corneal procurements on thousands in my time--and one literally spoke to me once! None of my colleagues believe me, of course, but it really happened.
On this particular day, the eye bank I work for sent me to procure the cornea from a deceased woman who was listed as a donor. When I arrived at the hospital I let myself into the morgue. Usually I'm escorted, but back then they just gave me the key. I found the correct donor in a multiple freezer unit and wheeled her into the autopsy suite. I turned the lights on, set up my equipment and started prepping her. I was definitely totally alone in the room.
The woman had already donated other tissues in the O.R. before my arrival, and I was the last to work on her. As I was working, I was facing the entrance to the autopsy suite, but I was totally focused on the task. Suddenly, I heard a woman's voice with a distinctly New England accent ask plainly and clearly, "Who are you?" Without looking up I replied, "I'm James from the eye bank." There was no follow-up conversation. I assumed that some security guard had popped her head into the main door or something, but when nothing else was said, I looked up but saw no one. I say that the voice had a New England accent because the words all ran together, sort of like "Whowahyou?"
Completely puzzled, I could only draw one conclusion--The voice must have come from the spirit of the woman I was working on. Being the professional that I am, I decided to carry on with my work. Afterward, on the drive back to the office, I tried to interpret what had just happened. Thinking back on the experience, I wasn't sure if I heard the voice with my ears, or if it was in my head. But it seemed extremely loud and clear, albeit dislocated--as if it came not from her lips per se.
I considered researching if the donor was indeed someone who had grown up in New England, but I didn't pursue it. I tend not to delve too deeply into the personal lives of the cornea donors. I believe it to be inappropriate, so that's why I didn't investigate further. To this day I believe that the voice I heard came from her, from the woman I was working on in the autopsy room.
In 2018, I conducted one of the my favorite paranormal investigations ever at a firehouse in Tarrytown, New York. You can read the full story in the Case File section of my website, but here are a few excerpts that illustrate the type of activity that the firemen experienced while working in the firehouse.
The sound of phantom footsteps is a common occurrence in the firehouse, and everyone who works there has heard them. One firefighter, Jake, shared the following story:
“The other night I was in the engine room where the fire engines are parked,” he said. “I opened the door that leads from the engine room to the foyer and it sounded like I startled somebody and I heard them run up the stairs. It sounded like someone had been standing on the second landing, and then I heard footsteps shoot up the stairs. They went all the way up to the second floor and then stopped as if they were standing outside the meeting room door. I thought it might be a homeless person or something. One of the other firemen who also heard the running footsteps ran upstairs to check it out, but there was nobody up there.”
Another firefighter, Ryan, confirmed hearing the sound of ghostly feet in the firehouse. “You’ll hear footsteps going up and down the upstairs hallway all the time,” he said. Ryan also talked about the sound of furniture being moved around in one of the upstairs rooms.
“If you’re sitting in the engine room, right above is the meeting room,” Ryan explained. “It’ll sound like people moving the furniture around in that room. There are heavy, wooden meeting chairs up there, and when you drag them across the floor they make a really loud sound. So it’ll sound like people are rearranging the furniture up there, but there’s obviously nothing going. There’s never anybody up there when we go to check it out.”
One of the firefighters went up to the meeting room to demonstrate what the chairs sound like when they are moved across the floor. A few minutes later I heard the sound of one of the chairs being moved. It was a very loud, distinct sound; and one that could not be mistaken for anything else.
Jake shared a story that involved strange sounds coming from the kitchen on the second floor of the firehouse. He said, “One time, Bryan and I were alone in the firehouse. We took the elevator to the second floor and as we got out of the elevator we heard a cabinet slam in the kitchen, so we thought somebody was up there. We walked down the hall to the kitchen, and as soon as we opened the door we heard another cabinet slam shut. We looked around, but there was no one there. It freaked us out so we came back downstairs.”
Another fireman, Dennis, told us about the front door opening and closing on its own. He brought us over to the front door and explained, “This door is really heavy. It’s unlocked right now, but when it’s locked you have to punch a number into the keypad to get in. After you do that you’ll hear a click, and when you open the door it’s really heavy to open. One time I was alone in the garage, and there was no one else in the firehouse. All of a sudden I heard the front door open and shut, so I looked out the window but I didn’t see anything. Then, like a minute later, I heard it open again and I looked out the window and I watched the door open halfway, and then SLAM shut. So I ran from the engine room to the foyer thinking that maybe someone was in here, but no one was around. The door didn’t shut slowly the way it would if you just let it go--it really SLAMMED shut like someone outside was pushing it. There was no wind or anything that could have made it do that. The door is too heavy anyway and, like I said, you need a code to unlock it.”
The other eerie thing that the firemen report hearing is the sound of someone walking up and down the upstairs hallways accompanied by the sound of jingling keys. They describe it as sounding like someone has a large keychain on their belt that has a lot of keys on it, and that they’re jingling the keychain as they walk.
Dennis said, “There was an older firefighter, a real prominent guy named Ian who passed away a long time ago. Some of the old firefighters swear that the jingling key sound is Ian because he used to have this big set of keys on his belt. Everybody here has heard someone walking up and down the upstairs hallway, and the sound of keys jingling.”
Ryan was anxious to tell us about an experience he had in the upstairs rec room. He brought us to the room and said, “This is the old rec room where we used to sit and hang out and watch TV. We have the TV downstairs now because we didn’t like being up here ‘cause it kind of got a little too creepy. And the hallway that leads to the kitchen and this room is where you would hear someone walking. We would look over to see who was here, and no one walks through, or like you hear the keys jingling. There would also be times when you would hear the front door opening, and you’d go out to look out the window over there and no one else was here. If you open that door downstairs and you shut it, you’re going to hear it up here.”
Ryan had an encounter with something in the rec room that he never forgot. He said, “One day we were all sitting here in the rec room, and I was sitting right by the door. I was in one of these chairs, sitting right here. I was leaning back in my chair, but not to the point where I was going to fall over or anything, I was just leaning back a little. Then all of a sudden I felt someone grab me by my collar and pull me back hard, and I fell backwards. My chair totally fell backwards, and I fell on the floor. I jumped up thinking someone was there and that they had played a trick on me by pulling my collar and making me fall, but the door was closed. I had goosebumps and my hair stood up.”
The firefighters all have had unusual experiences in the firehouse, but one stands out from the rest--a full body apparition witnessed by two firemen. Jake explained, “But here’s the thing that really creeped me out the most. Bryan and I were backing one of the trucks out of the engine room one night, and the lights were on in the engine room. At night you can see into the engine room from outside when the lights are on in there. The garage door had closed and we were backing the truck up. Bryan and I looked at the garage door and we both saw a shadow figure walk past the six garage door windows. It looked like the head and shoulders of a man walking behind the glass, like a shadow. It was walking between the garage door and the truck.
I told Bryan to stop the truck because I thought it was like a reflection or something moving. And then this thing just continued to walk across the engine room, in front of the truck, then through the door that leads from the garage into the foyer. When it got to the foyer we both saw the full figure of a man walk into the elevator. There were no details, it was just a black shadow of a man, but the entire full figure from his head to his feet.
I didn’t say anything to Bryan until I saw the figure walk into the elevator. I was like, ‘Did you see that?’ And Bryan was like, ‘Yeah, I was just about to tell you.’ That was the freakiest and craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“How tall did the person look?” I asked.
“It was probably shorter than me, maybe around 5’ 10," Jake said.
“So just to clarify, you had shut the garage door?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Jake said. “The garage door was shut, and you have the six windows in there on the garage door. The lights were on so you could see in. It looked like it was walking between the garage and truck that was parked in there. So it was only cut off at the shoulders in there because that was just as much as we could see because of the size of the windows. And then it went right into the foyer. It was literally like someone just went to the elevator. And we both saw it, and I was really creeped out.”
Bryan joined us and told us about his experiences in the firehouse.
“I’m sure about the footsteps coming up the steps,” he said. “I’ll be coming in here some days and it sounds like somebody is literally running up the steps and I think it’s one of our members who sometimes stays here or something. And I’m like, ‘Alright, I’ll get him a cup of coffee or something.’ Nothing. I’ll go up and check. Nothing.”
“Are the footsteps always running?” I asked.
“Two times when I heard them on the steps, it sounded like somebody was on the last three steps with their feet scuffling around, like running up the steps. It’s sounds like, ‘Oh, somebody’s coming in. Let me run as fast as I can to get away so I’m not seen.’ I’d say I’ve heard the footsteps more than ten times, especially when we used to hang out up there before we moved the TV to the engine room.
I saw a figure walk through the engine room, past the windows on the garage door, then through the door into the elevator. Jake and I saw it clear as day, then it was gone.
I heard the chairs in the conference room moving around many times. I’ve heard the cabinets slamming shut in the kitchen upstairs. I went up to investigate, nobody was there. I’ve seen the front door opening and closing a couple of times when nobody was here. I used to sit in the engine room and I’d hear something like wet feet walking, and sometimes I’d hear keys jingling in the hallway upstairs.”
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.
I arrived at the spa early one Saturday morning and met one of the workers, Chiara. I asked if I could do a walkthrough of the place before being filled in on the details of the haunting and she allowed me to walk through the spa alone.
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 felt that a spirit often makes his way into the gift shop area 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 would get if you drank several strong cups of coffee, and the caffeine 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 something 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.
She said,“It started with me just feeling creepy down there. 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 rooms 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 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 a shoe. It looked like a man’s leg. Of course, I took a look in there, but the room was empty.
Another 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!”
One day, something very unusual happened in the giftshop area which was witnessed by two people. Chiara said, “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.
Chiara 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’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.”
I knew that I had to do something to help this poor soul, so I told Chiara that I would do a clearing. 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 relatives 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 for 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 captured 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".
As a paranormal investigator, I’ve seen my fair-share of haunted offices, stores, and other places of business. I’ve investigated haunted office buildings, a haunted spa, haunted clothing stores, and even a haunted firehouse.
I received the following email from someone on Facebook who wanted to share their workplace ghost story. And because I am a retired teacher, I think it’s the perfect story to start with. She wrote:
I’m a teacher at a high school in Westchester County, New York. The school was built in the early 1920’s, and I have been working there for well over 20 years. Although I haven’t had a huge amount of paranormal experiences on-the-job, two incidents stand out that I thought you might be interested in.
One day I was talking to another teacher in a hallway outside of her classroom. Her room was at the end of the hallway so as we were talking, I had a clear view of the entire hallway which runs the length of the school. As we stood there talking, something caught my eye down at the end of the hall. It was a dark shadow figure in the shape of a person, and I watched as it slowly walked across the hall. It came from the custodian’s room on the left, and I could see the full figure of a person--head, shoulders, arms, torso, and legs. It wasn’t a menacing shape, it just looked like the shadow of someone walking across the hall. It wasn’t solid black, but more like a smokey grey that I could see through. This figure went across the hall and made its way to the hallway across from the custodian’s room. The figure didn’t vanish, it simply kept walking down the hall where I lost sight of it. Creepy, right?!
The second incident took place in the auditorium. My classroom is near the backstage door, and I needed to put something on the stage. As I opened the door, I heard beautiful piano music coming from the auditorium piano. The piano isn’t on the stage; it’s in the middle of the auditorium halfway between the stage and the doors at the back of the room. The music that was playing was classical music, and since we have a lot of very talented young musicians in the school I assumed that one of them had cut out of lunch and that they were playing the piano.
I quietly closed the stage door and walked down the hall to the side entrance to the auditorium. I wanted to tell the student that they should be either at lunch or in class, but I didn’t want to startle them by coming out of the stage curtains. The music was still playing as I walked up the stairs that lead from the main hallway to the auditorium. It took me no more than three steps to get to the top of the stairs and to open the door to the auditorium, but as soon as I put my hand on the doorknob, the music stopped. I opened the door, but there was no one in the auditorium. As I said, the piano was in the middle of the room against one wall, so it was a good 30 feet from the doors at the rear of the auditorium and from the stage. The only other exit was the one that I had just walked in. There was absolutely no way that anyone could have ran away that fast, or hid in the empty auditorium. This happened years ago, but every time I pass the auditorium I think of it and wonder who the ghost was that was playing the piano that day.
The following stories were told by audience members at my library lectures. The first was told by a woman at Reed Memorial Library in Carmel, NY. She said:
I’m a Certified Nursing Assistant, and I work in a nursing home. I usually work the 3PM to 11PM shift, but one night I was asked to stay over for the 11PM to 7AM shift. At around 2:30 in the morning I was changing one of the patients and I had the door open. There was only one other nursing assistant and one nurse working with me that morning. The nursing assistant was off the floor, and the nurse was sitting in the dayroom down the hall. I was changing the person when I heard a sound like “Huhh”, and out of the corner of my eye I saw somebody walked right past the door in the hallway. I thought it was either the nurse or the other nursing assistant. I came out of the room when I was done and I walked down and checked the two rooms at the end of the hallway. No one was there. I didn’t think anything of it, but later on I told some other people I work with and they told me that they also experienced the same thing.
Other things have happened in that facility. In the bathrooms are call bells, the kind that have a little switch next to the toilet and you have to pull it down to ring for assistance. There have been times where there are two patients rooming together who can’t get out of bed, and their bathroom call-bell will be pulled down.
Another nursing-related ghost story was told by a woman who attended a lecture at the Somers Library in Somers, NY. She said:
I was a nurses aid in Somers Manor nursing home before they built the new facility. It was just the nurse and me on the night shift, because that’s how they staffed it. Most of the patients were not really conscious; they were very senile and had dementia. This particular night, the other nurse went to dinner I was there by myself. A little while later I started hearing the patients getting restless, which was very unusual. We had turned the lights down low because the patients were sleeping, and I looked down the hall and I saw an orb -- a very white, light orb that I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. And it went right down the hall, I got chills, and it went into one of the rooms where there were about six patients. I rushed down the hall and I started to walk into the room. I just got to the doorway and then it disappeared. I know I saw it. It was big, around the size of a beach ball. And I didn’t see just a quick glimpse of this thing. I saw it for about 45 seconds to a minute. I watched as it floated down the hall. I’ll tell you one thing, I couldn’t wait for that nurse to come back from dinner!
A teacher was in the audience at a lecture I gave at Reed Memorial Library in Carmel, New York. She shared the following on-the-job ghost story:
I work at a school in New Jersey which was once the home of a very famous family. I’ve had many things happen in the room that I teach in, but most recently I was giving an evening parent/teacher conference and the door to my room kept opening, and the mom was getting really annoyed by it. So she got up and went to go close it -- these are very tall doors -- then she went to sit down. She sat down and all of a sudden she said that someone pushed her chair. I watched her chair rock back and forth with considerable force and the woman said, “Oh my gosh!” And her husband said, “Are you OK?” and then HIS chair got pushed the same way!
Another teacher and I have also smelled a candle, but of course there are never any candles lit in the school. This isn’t the smell of a modern scented candle; it’s just like the smell of a wax candle. We’ve both smelled this in my classroom, and right outside of it. The first day I ever taught in the room I felt a swish of air or something go right past my leg, and I knew right away it was some sort of a presence.
We think of daycare centers as being places buzzing with activity, but we rarely think of the activity as being paranormal! After a lecture I gave in Sherman Library in Sherman, Connecticut, a woman share the following story with the audience:
I worked at a daycare in Tucson Arizona, and the buildings were made up of two different houses that were kitty-cornered to one another. So you walked into the front door of the daycare and there was a staircase that went up to where there was a storeroom and the staff restroom. The kids never went up there. It was about 6:30 in the morning and there were two teachers in the school when the first little boy showed up for the day. He walks into the front door and looks at the stairs and says in Spanish, “Quien es ese?” which means, “Who is that?” And the teacher says, “Quien is quien?” -- “Who is who?” And he said, “La Mujer!” -- “The woman!” And the teacher said to him, “There’s no woman up there. It’s just me and the other teacher, and she’s right there.” And the boy said, “No, the woman on the stairs. She’s there every day. She says hello to me every day.”
In the same building, one time the same teacher was there with the last couple of kids at night and she heard something that sounded like a bowling ball rolling upstairs. One of the dad’s walked in to pick up his son and he said, “What’s going on up there?” The teacher said, “I don’t know. I’m the only one here with the kids”. He said, “Are you sure? Because there’s definitely somebody up there.” The dad goes up, looks all around, but there was nobody there.
Some of my favorite on-the-job stories come from electricians, plumbers, and carpenters. They often work in old houses, so they sometimes find themselves in ghostly situations. The following story was told by a plumber during a lecture at Danbury Library in Danbury, Connecticut:
I’m a plumber, and working in some houses you get like an eerie feeling in old houses. But this was in Harold Leever Cancer Center. I was working at night. We would go in after everybody had their chemo; so we had to work at night and get done and make it look like we weren’t there. So, my apprentice and I went up. The nurse said, “Everybody’s done. Go ahead. You can start.” We go up there and we’re starting to get ready, getting our cart and our tools. And we look across and I would say about fifty-feet away from us we saw a man go into one of the patient rooms. And I said, “I thought everybody was out of here.” And I go to the apprentice, “You seen that guy go in there?” And he saw him too. So we walked down there, and we go in that room, and it was cold and every hair on the back of my neck and my arms stood up. But there was nobody in there. We both saw the same guy. Bald, tall, glasses, suit-and-tie on. We told the nurses about it the next time we went to work and they were like, “Look at this picture. Does it look like this guy?” And we were like, “Yeah. That’s the guy.” It was a doctor who had passed away a few years earlier. I’ll tell you, it was the freakiest thing. And what was so cool was that my apprentice had seen the same thing.
Another hospital related ghost story was sent to me from someone on Facebook who had an amazingly creepy workplace story he wanted to share. He said:
I work at an eye bank, and I've done corneal procurements on thousands in my time--and one literally spoke to me once! None of my colleagues believe me, of course, but it really happened.
On this particular day, the eye bank I work for sent me to procure the cornea from a deceased woman who was listed as a donor. When I arrived at the hospital I let myself into the morgue. Usually I'm escorted, but back then they just gave me the key. I found the correct donor in a multiple freezer unit and wheeled her into the autopsy suite. I turned the lights on, set up my equipment and started prepping her. I was definitely totally alone in the room.
The woman had already donated other tissues in the O.R. before my arrival, and I was the last to work on her. As I was working, I was facing the entrance to the autopsy suite, but I was totally focused on the task. Suddenly, I heard a woman's voice with a distinctly New England accent ask plainly and clearly, "Who are you?" Without looking up I replied, "I'm James from the eye bank." There was no follow-up conversation. I assumed that some security guard had popped her head into the main door or something, but when nothing else was said, I looked up but saw no one. I say that the voice had a New England accent because the words all ran together, sort of like "Whowahyou?"
Completely puzzled, I could only draw one conclusion--The voice must have come from the spirit of the woman I was working on. Being the professional that I am, I decided to carry on with my work. Afterward, on the drive back to the office, I tried to interpret what had just happened. Thinking back on the experience, I wasn't sure if I heard the voice with my ears, or if it was in my head. But it seemed extremely loud and clear, albeit dislocated--as if it came not from her lips per se.
I considered researching if the donor was indeed someone who had grown up in New England, but I didn't pursue it. I tend not to delve too deeply into the personal lives of the cornea donors. I believe it to be inappropriate, so that's why I didn't investigate further. To this day I believe that the voice I heard came from her, from the woman I was working on in the autopsy room.
In 2018, I conducted one of the my favorite paranormal investigations ever at a firehouse in Tarrytown, New York. You can read the full story in the Case File section of my website, but here are a few excerpts that illustrate the type of activity that the firemen experienced while working in the firehouse.
The sound of phantom footsteps is a common occurrence in the firehouse, and everyone who works there has heard them. One firefighter, Jake, shared the following story:
“The other night I was in the engine room where the fire engines are parked,” he said. “I opened the door that leads from the engine room to the foyer and it sounded like I startled somebody and I heard them run up the stairs. It sounded like someone had been standing on the second landing, and then I heard footsteps shoot up the stairs. They went all the way up to the second floor and then stopped as if they were standing outside the meeting room door. I thought it might be a homeless person or something. One of the other firemen who also heard the running footsteps ran upstairs to check it out, but there was nobody up there.”
Another firefighter, Ryan, confirmed hearing the sound of ghostly feet in the firehouse. “You’ll hear footsteps going up and down the upstairs hallway all the time,” he said. Ryan also talked about the sound of furniture being moved around in one of the upstairs rooms.
“If you’re sitting in the engine room, right above is the meeting room,” Ryan explained. “It’ll sound like people moving the furniture around in that room. There are heavy, wooden meeting chairs up there, and when you drag them across the floor they make a really loud sound. So it’ll sound like people are rearranging the furniture up there, but there’s obviously nothing going. There’s never anybody up there when we go to check it out.”
One of the firefighters went up to the meeting room to demonstrate what the chairs sound like when they are moved across the floor. A few minutes later I heard the sound of one of the chairs being moved. It was a very loud, distinct sound; and one that could not be mistaken for anything else.
Jake shared a story that involved strange sounds coming from the kitchen on the second floor of the firehouse. He said, “One time, Bryan and I were alone in the firehouse. We took the elevator to the second floor and as we got out of the elevator we heard a cabinet slam in the kitchen, so we thought somebody was up there. We walked down the hall to the kitchen, and as soon as we opened the door we heard another cabinet slam shut. We looked around, but there was no one there. It freaked us out so we came back downstairs.”
Another fireman, Dennis, told us about the front door opening and closing on its own. He brought us over to the front door and explained, “This door is really heavy. It’s unlocked right now, but when it’s locked you have to punch a number into the keypad to get in. After you do that you’ll hear a click, and when you open the door it’s really heavy to open. One time I was alone in the garage, and there was no one else in the firehouse. All of a sudden I heard the front door open and shut, so I looked out the window but I didn’t see anything. Then, like a minute later, I heard it open again and I looked out the window and I watched the door open halfway, and then SLAM shut. So I ran from the engine room to the foyer thinking that maybe someone was in here, but no one was around. The door didn’t shut slowly the way it would if you just let it go--it really SLAMMED shut like someone outside was pushing it. There was no wind or anything that could have made it do that. The door is too heavy anyway and, like I said, you need a code to unlock it.”
The other eerie thing that the firemen report hearing is the sound of someone walking up and down the upstairs hallways accompanied by the sound of jingling keys. They describe it as sounding like someone has a large keychain on their belt that has a lot of keys on it, and that they’re jingling the keychain as they walk.
Dennis said, “There was an older firefighter, a real prominent guy named Ian who passed away a long time ago. Some of the old firefighters swear that the jingling key sound is Ian because he used to have this big set of keys on his belt. Everybody here has heard someone walking up and down the upstairs hallway, and the sound of keys jingling.”
Ryan was anxious to tell us about an experience he had in the upstairs rec room. He brought us to the room and said, “This is the old rec room where we used to sit and hang out and watch TV. We have the TV downstairs now because we didn’t like being up here ‘cause it kind of got a little too creepy. And the hallway that leads to the kitchen and this room is where you would hear someone walking. We would look over to see who was here, and no one walks through, or like you hear the keys jingling. There would also be times when you would hear the front door opening, and you’d go out to look out the window over there and no one else was here. If you open that door downstairs and you shut it, you’re going to hear it up here.”
Ryan had an encounter with something in the rec room that he never forgot. He said, “One day we were all sitting here in the rec room, and I was sitting right by the door. I was in one of these chairs, sitting right here. I was leaning back in my chair, but not to the point where I was going to fall over or anything, I was just leaning back a little. Then all of a sudden I felt someone grab me by my collar and pull me back hard, and I fell backwards. My chair totally fell backwards, and I fell on the floor. I jumped up thinking someone was there and that they had played a trick on me by pulling my collar and making me fall, but the door was closed. I had goosebumps and my hair stood up.”
The firefighters all have had unusual experiences in the firehouse, but one stands out from the rest--a full body apparition witnessed by two firemen. Jake explained, “But here’s the thing that really creeped me out the most. Bryan and I were backing one of the trucks out of the engine room one night, and the lights were on in the engine room. At night you can see into the engine room from outside when the lights are on in there. The garage door had closed and we were backing the truck up. Bryan and I looked at the garage door and we both saw a shadow figure walk past the six garage door windows. It looked like the head and shoulders of a man walking behind the glass, like a shadow. It was walking between the garage door and the truck.
I told Bryan to stop the truck because I thought it was like a reflection or something moving. And then this thing just continued to walk across the engine room, in front of the truck, then through the door that leads from the garage into the foyer. When it got to the foyer we both saw the full figure of a man walk into the elevator. There were no details, it was just a black shadow of a man, but the entire full figure from his head to his feet.
I didn’t say anything to Bryan until I saw the figure walk into the elevator. I was like, ‘Did you see that?’ And Bryan was like, ‘Yeah, I was just about to tell you.’ That was the freakiest and craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“How tall did the person look?” I asked.
“It was probably shorter than me, maybe around 5’ 10," Jake said.
“So just to clarify, you had shut the garage door?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Jake said. “The garage door was shut, and you have the six windows in there on the garage door. The lights were on so you could see in. It looked like it was walking between the garage and truck that was parked in there. So it was only cut off at the shoulders in there because that was just as much as we could see because of the size of the windows. And then it went right into the foyer. It was literally like someone just went to the elevator. And we both saw it, and I was really creeped out.”
Bryan joined us and told us about his experiences in the firehouse.
“I’m sure about the footsteps coming up the steps,” he said. “I’ll be coming in here some days and it sounds like somebody is literally running up the steps and I think it’s one of our members who sometimes stays here or something. And I’m like, ‘Alright, I’ll get him a cup of coffee or something.’ Nothing. I’ll go up and check. Nothing.”
“Are the footsteps always running?” I asked.
“Two times when I heard them on the steps, it sounded like somebody was on the last three steps with their feet scuffling around, like running up the steps. It’s sounds like, ‘Oh, somebody’s coming in. Let me run as fast as I can to get away so I’m not seen.’ I’d say I’ve heard the footsteps more than ten times, especially when we used to hang out up there before we moved the TV to the engine room.
I saw a figure walk through the engine room, past the windows on the garage door, then through the door into the elevator. Jake and I saw it clear as day, then it was gone.
I heard the chairs in the conference room moving around many times. I’ve heard the cabinets slamming shut in the kitchen upstairs. I went up to investigate, nobody was there. I’ve seen the front door opening and closing a couple of times when nobody was here. I used to sit in the engine room and I’d hear something like wet feet walking, and sometimes I’d hear keys jingling in the hallway upstairs.”
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.
I arrived at the spa early one Saturday morning and met one of the workers, Chiara. I asked if I could do a walkthrough of the place before being filled in on the details of the haunting and she allowed me to walk through the spa alone.
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 felt that a spirit often makes his way into the gift shop area 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 would get if you drank several strong cups of coffee, and the caffeine 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 something 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.
She said,“It started with me just feeling creepy down there. 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 rooms 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 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 a shoe. It looked like a man’s leg. Of course, I took a look in there, but the room was empty.
Another 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!”
One day, something very unusual happened in the giftshop area which was witnessed by two people. Chiara said, “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.
Chiara 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’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.”
I knew that I had to do something to help this poor soul, so I told Chiara that I would do a clearing. 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 relatives 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 for 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 captured 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".
I hope you’ve enjoyed these workplace ghost stories. If you have any others, I’d love to hear them. Please write me at barrypirro@yahoo.com.
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