I love it when our group goes to a location and get an audible voice during an investigation. An audible voice is one where you can hear it live with no help from equipment. Sometimes it is weak where maybe only one person can hear it and then it can be verified by listening to the audio recorders. I especially love it when the voices are really loud! The weekend before last the Society of the Haunted was at a location in Tulsa Oklahoma and got a very loud audible voice. We were all separated throughout the house when it happened. It sounds like the man is saying “wild sh*t, nothing but wow or wild” and most of us heard it. You can hear me saying “what was that” immediately after we heard it.

All of us then got busy rewinding the recorders to listen. I was sitting at the top of the staircase, Ken was downstairs in the front room at the bottom of the staircase and the homeowners were in the living room right off the foyer. All of us caught the voice on the recorders. We think the entity was in the foyer where Ken was probably the closest. A few of our members thought perhaps it was residual because of how mechanical sounding that it was and that it sounded almost like it broke through a barrier of some sort. I have not gone through all of the collected evidence yet to give my full opinion yet. It was really cool to be there and hear the man or whoever it was first hand! It is also rare to get really loud audible voice so we felt blessed.

An audible voice is not an EVP even if you catch it on your recorders. EVP stands for electronic voice phenomenon and cannot be heard audibly. You can only hear it through audio playback. So I bet you are wondering what an audible voice really is. It is an audible manifestation which you hear similar to an apparition which is visible. I believe the EVPs captured moments before the audible voice were building up to the manifestation that occurred. I need to review more of our video footage to see if any camera angle caught a physical presence as well.

Now let me share this audio with you. When we played back the audible voice we also caught a few EVPs right before the audible voice. Here is the first one which is a laugh

laugh

The next EVP that was caught sounds like a child with an English accent saying daddy

daddy

This is the audible voice wich sounds like it is saying wild sh*t nothing but wow (or maybe wild)

wild sh*t nothing but wow (or maybe wild)

Here is the full audio clip so you can hear the sequence

Ken’s device-cut-laugh to what was that

We are scheduled to go back to the property in March to see if what else we can find. Watch our website for more audio from this investigation

As case manager it is my job to screen our clients and make sure we have legitimate claims to investigate. I take it personal if anything goes wrong. Over the years we have had 2 cases stand us up. One time the owner was on the phone with us telling us she had to cancel as we were on her doorstep. I had called her the night before to make sure and she had said yes she was looking forward to us coming out. Last week we were stood up in a strange way. The client had told me she was older than she was and everyone in the house was experiencing the activity. She said everyone wanted us to come out and help. She even wanted to be a member of our group and would like us to interview her.

On the night of the investigation I get a call from the group telling me that the grandfather answered the door to say she was at the movies with friends. There was no activity in the home. If there was anything his granddaughter was experiencing she brought it in herself. He also spoke in a way that he wanted us to help her.

I was floored! How can someone get by my screening? If you look at how many places we have investigated over the years my track record for setting up investigations is good. For the most part we go to legitimate homes or businesses where the people believe they have paranormal activity. We may debunk that activity but they genuinely believe they have a ghost before we show them what is happening. Sometimes we go out and find evidence that what they are experiencing is real.

Those two times we were stood up make it harder on me in the screening process. I now have to ask more questions. Being stood up could make it harder on the group to believe we have a real investigation in the future. How do I get the group to travel out of state to help someone who seems to be real if we ever get stood up? Knock on wood that both cases were local where we didn’t spend very much in travel expenses.

1410 Seawall Blvd,
Galveston, TX 77550

A few weeks ago I was in Galveston on an investigation. We decided to stop at Denny’s. IHOP and Denny’s are places my group can go to in the middle of the night to talk about what happened and grab a bite to eat before heading home. Places can be clean or dirty, the help is decent or bad and the food is ether good or bad. Well this night we hit rock bottom.

For starters we waited forever for a table. We were seated next to the women’s bathroom which was apparently dirty. The waitress did not come for 20 minutes so the manager took our order and gave it to the waitress. We watched a manager chew out several employees a few feet from our table but not our waitress. Why he didn’t do this in the area back is beyond me. The manager was holding a large drink from whataburger! Why? Is the food that bad here that he cannot even eat the free food I am sure he gets?

When the food finally came out I was surprised that it was decent. This still didn’t explain that whataburger drink that the manager was carrying around in front of all of the customers. The food was cooked properly and everything tasted ok. Still the behavior of the staff and the cleanliness of the place left such a bad taste in our mouth. Our cups ran dry with nobody came to check on us until we were getting up.

When we got up to leave and pay at the counter we waited for another 15 minutes. One of the waiters was standing looking at us talking to a customer at the counter the whole time. There was a new group of people that had come in when we got up to leave. They stood next to us in an almost empty restaurant waiting the whole time to be seated. That same waiter at the counter was looking at them too. I never saw him come to help them. Actually when we paid that group of people were still waiting and had not been helped yet either! As soon as I could I logged into urbanspoon to give a review and could not find this particular location. I will never eat at this location ever!

A huge fire destroyed one of the businesses in downtown Shawnee overnight. The business was Loco’s at 107 E Main St. which was a small antique shop and had only been open for about 9 months. The call about the fire came in to the department about 1 a.m. According to the fire chef the crew could not make an interior attack due to the heat. The fire was so intense that it collapsed the roof. It took almost 8 hours for the fire to completely be put out. Two other buildings sustained heavy smoke and water damage.

When I heard about the fire I ran to look up the address. I have been in many of the businesses along Main Street and have done investigations of several places. Loco’s it turned out was not one of my past investigations. I was still upset to see it destroyed. In previous investigations in this town we have found active hauntings and what we call residual energy. This residual energy is like a recording on a cd that happens for unknown reasons. When the conditions are perfect the recording can replay making anyone that happens upon it to think the place is haunted. I wonder if Loco’s had any activity? When they rebuild they may notice things happen in weird places like someone walk up a staircase that is no longer there.

It is sad when history is lost! It seems that lately several historic locations have caught fire. Just a few weeks ago Fort Chaffee Hospital Complex burned to the ground. The Fort Smith Fire Department has deemed that it was an accident. Members of the Kentucky National Guard who are fans of the show Ghost Adventures were doing training at Chaffee and decided to go see it for themselves. It is believed that one of them discarded a lit cigarette into a grassy area near one of the buildings at the Fort. The fire burned approximately 90 acres and more than 120 buildings. Back in February The Sisters of Charity of Providence school in DeSmet, Idaho burned down. The building was more than 100 years old and was a historical landmark. Reviewing the history showed two earlier buildings on the property were destroyed by fire in 1881 and in the early 1900s.

Today there is an old building 15 miles east of Springfield in Buffalo. The house was built around 1840 and it is now on the schedule to be burned down! If you care about history perhaps you will be upset enough to contact the people who will be responsible for letting it go! The house was a “12-mile house” for stagecoach drivers and their horses who would be traveling between Springfield and Decatur.
Drivers could stay the night and rest their horses before finishing the trip the next morning. Some historians believe that Abraham Lincoln may have even stayed there.

Apparently the owners donated house to the Buffalo Fire Protection District because they want it gone. It is scheduled to be used for live fire training in September when the weather will be cooler. The chef said they would like to burn it for training because it is in a sate of disrepair and an eyesore. They must get permission before they burn it though. I am hoping that they will not be granted their wish. The Historic Preservation agency can deem the house to be historic because it is more than 50 years old and has some type of historical significance. I am concerned that yet again we are going to loose another piece of history if the house is destroyed. Are you? I would love to be able to get inside the house and just sit. I think it should be made into a museum or saved in any condition. If you are as upset as I am please make contact those responsible:

Illinois Environmental Protection Agency http://www.epa.state.il.us/

Illinois Historic Preservation Agency http://www.illinoishistory.gov/

Chief Mike Thompson of the Buffalo Fire Protection District
114 S
Wells Street
Buffalo, Illinois 62515

The property manager Jeremy Crouch with Heartland Trust in Forsyth

1401 Koester dr, Forsyth, IL 62535

Springfield-Sangamon County
Regional Planning Commission
200 South 9th Street – Room 212

Springfield, IL 62701
Phone: (217) 535-3110

A reporter working the case is Jackson Adams from the Illinois Times

jadams@illinoistimes.com

We investigated a historic Arkansas Tuberculosis Sanitarium last weekend. It is nestled in the hills in it’s own complex as a self sustaining city of its own. Tuberculosis also known as consumption is highly contagious. Hospitals were built to handle the treatment of this disease which could take years before the person passed away. This complex had a municipal water/sewer system, a fire department, and even had a farm with dairy and swine in operation. It was built in 1910 covering almost 1000 acres of land. It was closed in 1973 after the discovery of antibiotics.

This was the second time we have been to the facility. Driving through the gates again brought up the mortality rates of the people that passed here. With 70,000 patients treated here combined with the mortality we were wondering what kind of activity we were going to get. We were told the whole complex offered many different types of activity. It was also said that sometimes people would leave empty handed where they believed that nothing was going on here.

We however did not go home empty handed. Through the night we all experienced different things. Cold spots, shadows, lights, sounds, door opening, whispering, feelings of being watched as well as being touched. We were running all of our equipment and were getting positive results. I just got done reviewing my photos and noted several pictures with anomalies which I will be uploading. I am going to be turning my attention to the audio next. I can’t wait to see what I caught if anything. Keep logging back on to see what evidence we caught

I had posted an article to the blog before. Go read Tuberculosis Sanitariums here

Also go see the photo gallery for the Sanitarium here

[singlepic id=7 w=320 h=240 float=right]One place that is very active according to several paranormal groups is located in Humble Texas and known as the 1960 overpass. If you read through the forums online you will read that people call this area the doorway to hell. You can read the stories of businesses that have failed as a result of the activity. One place was a dollar movie theater that failed because the employees would quit after encountering what they called a demonic presence. The place shut down and has been broken into by many times by thrill seekers wanting to encounter it for themselves. Today the dollar theater has been purchased and breaking in would land you in jail if you were caught. People don’t know what the ruins are next to the cemetery behind the old dollar theater.

[singlepic id=1 w=320 h=240 float=left]Through my research I found “the ruins” to be an old kerosene refinery that was closed when the need for kerosene diminished. The area is in an unincorporated part of Harris county Texas commonly known as Bordersville. Humble had decided to pass laws making the area all white and forced all people of color out of town thus Bordersville was born. It was the most poverty stricken of the whole Houston metro area. The train went through the east side and this is where residents decided to have their cemetery. The cemetery is said by some to have been moved out of the way when the railroad came through. I found that it was never moved from it’s current position. It was never cared for and had fallen into a horrible state. It is today a secluded spot where the homeless have taken shelter on and off over the years. They could jump onto a passing train or jump off and stay at this location unseen.

In the years before commerce had taken over this spot was where the area train station was located. On December 13, 1922 there was a train wreck that claimed 19 lives and injured many others. The Southern Pacific train #28 was crowded to full capacity and was bound for Shreveport when it came into the station. There was a freight train stopped on a nearby track that happened to be too close. The engineer tried to stop the train before the collision and was not able to do so. All the destruction was caused by a 2″ pipe leading from a water tender to the boiler which had been stripped of it’s mooring along side the engine. This caused the pipe to break through the windows of the passenger train which was attempting to stop. The pipe burst through the windows releasing deadly hot steam and water. This sprayed the passengers and filled up the coaches with steam causing 19 to be scalded to death. The newspapers of the day reported skin had fallen off from hands and faces and was clinging on the backs of seats, window latches and laying everywhere.

In 2008 three privileged teenagers from nearby Kingwood decided desecrate a grave. Kevin Wade Jones and Matthew Richard Gonzalez who were both 17 as well as a 16-year old dug up a grave with shovel. They removed the skull of Willie Sims from his coffin and converted it into a bong in their home. Willie was 11 years old at the time he died on September 11, 1921. The teens were charged with misdemeanor abuse of a corpse and Willie was laid to rest again. They were unable to locate any of Willies relatives to participate. This is also the same area where the body of a child was found murdered. Secluded areas are usually places for crimes to be committed. I wonder how many other things happened here that we do not know about.

Perhaps the pain from segregation, poverty, tragedy and disrespect has the spirits of the area up in arms? Many times we find activity at sites with such pain. While I was investigating I had a sense of the tragedy of the past. To me it hung around like the thick humid air.
Sometimes I will go into an area and my senses will be heightened. Many people have experienced this but don’t understand what that feeling is. Your gut tells you that you need to leave. As a paranormal investigator I wonder if there is high emf provoking this feeling. Instead of going with “fight or flight” I pull out meters to try to collect the data. If I was by myself I would go with my gut instinct and leave because I know it is possible that I had disturbed someone and they were watching me from the woods. Perhaps I had disturbed something else that I couldn’t see. I am still reviewing evidence collected and will share what I find with everyone

Go see the photo gallery for 1960 Overpass

One dark stormy night while on an investigation I heard a noise. I turned to see what caused the noise and saw a shadow standing in the doorway. It darted away before I could take a picture. I hoped that the storms stirred things up. Most long time investigators have had some experience with storms generating activity. Everyone knows it is typical to begin a scary story by saying “one dark stormy night”. Why? Is it because we are afraid of storms or is it because there may be something else going on here? One theory is that electricity is needed for spirits to manifest. On active nights I have seen for myself that batteries drain, lights flicker and electronics malfunction. The atmosphere is charged from all the lightning

Let me give you some data on thunderstorms. In a typical thunderstorm approximately 5×10 8 kg of water vapor is lifted and the amount of energy released when this condenses is 1015 joules. This is the same magnitude of energy released within a tropical cyclone. It is also more energy than was released during the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Japan 1945. Lightning can travel at speeds of 140,000 mph and can reach temperatures approaching 54,000 °F. Lightning can occur with both positive and negative polarity. An average bolt of negative lightning carries an electric current of 30,000 amps. An average bolt of positive lightning carries about ten times that of negative lightning. The average peak power output of a single lightning stroke is about one trillion watts. During a positive lightning strike huge quantities of ELF and VLF radio waves are also generated. All of this energy usually makes for an interesting investigation!

We just had the luck to be at Fort Chaffee during a storm. The clouds were even rotating and diping. Logan called Marc to see if we were under a tornado watch. It turned out to just be severe storms. I was excited to see what would happen now that the environment was charged. The buildings also cooled down which was a blessing. We all noticed more activity after the storm passed then before. We had clear audible voices heard by all, bangs, knocks and cold spots. I have hours and hours of audio to review to see if we caught any evidence. I will soon post an article to my blog on my experiences here. For now I just wanted to share the information about storms