A residual haunting is a playback of a past event in that same spot that when it occurs it happens at the same time of day and does not interact with you. The apparitions you see are not intelligent spirits but are recordings of the event which is usually of an emotional nature or is traumatic/violent. The recordings can be captured and imprinted on stone like slate and other materials like iron nails or quarts and many times have an underground water source. There is an unknown environmental condition that happens to record the event.

When the playback happens it is energy being dispersed which can make doors open or shut, you can hear noises or see a ghostly apparition repeating the event. We do not understand what the environmental factors are that will allow a playback to happen. Perhaps a heightened emotional state of a live person or high humidity and barometric pressure play a part but we don’t know. If we did understand we would be creating that condition over and over again not to mention studying it in-depth to understand it.

Many famous hauntings are really residual and not what we call intelligent. The most famous is the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall who was photographed by Captain Provand and his assistant Indre Shira while they were photographing the historic Raynham Hall for Country Life Magazine in the late afternoon of 19th September, 1936. This photo was the first known capture of a spirit. Lady Dorothy Walpole is the person thought to be the Brown Lady. She still walks the staircase looking for her 5 children. She was born in 1686 and “officially” died of smallpox in 1726.

Her tragic story is that her father refused consent for her to marry her first love Second Viscount Townshend. Dorothy was married off then began an affair with him. When her husband found out he ordered that she be kept locked in her apartments at Raynham Hall and for further punishment refused for the children to be around her. Unofficially she died of either a broken heart or a broken neck after being pushed down the grand staircase at the age of 40. Such tragedy!

Another example of a residual haunting is the Treasurer’s Grand House in York, England which dates from the 17th/18th centuries. This is the one example I use the most to explain what a residual haunting is to clients. The city has been there since 71 AD when the Roman Ninth Legion built a fortress with 6000 soldiers. The house stands within the area of the old Roman barracks. The Minster Treasures lived in this house until the Reformation. The last Treasurer was William Cliff in 1547 because there was no longer a need for a treasurer. The area of the house where you can see a residual haunting is in the cellar. There when the conditions are right Roman soldiers will march two by two through the wall into the opposite wall. These soldiers never interact with anyone but only march where you can see it and hear it. Apparently over the years the soldiers legs have gotten shorter where it looks like they are waking on their knees. I know you are wondering why they are on their knees! One day the cellar was excavated and the Roman road was found two feet beneath the floor.

The Tower of London’s ghost of Queen Anne Boleyn is another great example. Ann could not bear her husband Henry VIII a son. He became convinced their marriage was cursed. He had his eye on Jane Seymour who eventually became his wife and gave him a son (Edward VI – 1537-1553). In order to get rid of Ann she was falsely accused of treason, witchcraft, adultery and even incest with her brother. Five men who were accused of being with Ann eventually confessed under torture and were executed on Tower Hill on May 17th 1536. Anne Boleyn was executed two days later. This was a very emotional and violent series of events which have led to the residual haunting.

The guards known as the ‘Yeoman of the Guard’ have watched the towers since 1509. They have many stories of seeing the ghost of Ann. One guard reported watching Anne lead a courtly procession across the tower green and on towards Tower Hill where she had been executed. Another story is that of a group of guards who saw her appear so close that one of them was able to poke into the apparition before it faded right in front of them.

Sometimes a house will be remodeled but the activity of a residual haunting will remain the same. The spirit will now walk through what was a door but is now a wall. They will climb stairs that were once there but have since long been gone due to something like a fire. This activity continues to occur under the right conditions and usually the same time of day each time it is noticed. If they ever demolish the Raynham Hall staircase I am sure under the right conditions people will continue to see the brown lady only this time she would be floating down on what would have been the stairs.

I hope you now have a better understanding of what a residual haunting is and know that there is no reason for anyone to be afraid off residual activity. It is an amazing event where we can witness the past just like watching a movie!

If you have activity going on where you believe you have a haunting whether it is intelligent, residual or demonic in nature please feel free to contact the Society of The Haunted

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

Here is the story behind the Newport edition you have been waiting for. In the year that the movie Poltergeist came out on the big screen there was another similar drama playing out in a town in Texas. In the early 1980 a new housing edition went in called Newport. Sam and Judith Haney purchased a home in the Newport area of Houston. The family decided to have a swimming pool put in the back yard. As they began to get started an elderly black man showed up out of nowhere and told them that they was about to dig up human remains. The reason he gave them this information was that he knew they were buried because he had seen them years before. They decided the old man was crazy and started digging for the pool anyway. As they were digging the two bodies were just where the old man said they were. Scared they began doing research and found a man named Jasper Norton who as a young man had worked as a gravedigger. Norton told the Haney’s that their home and the surrounding houses were built on top of an old cemetery called Black Hope. He also told them that most of the deceased were former slaves.

They found out that last burial had occurred 1939 and that there as many as 60 people were in graves. Norton identified the two people buried in the Haney’s backyard as Betty and Charlie Thomas who former slaves. They had died sometime during the thirties. As they lived in their house the activity became more negative. They heard disembodied voices, an unplugged clock in the began shooting sparks and glowing, sliding glass door open but there was nobody there and the door was locked. The next morning after to door incident Judith couldn’t find her red shoes. When she finally located them they were outside miraculously sitting side by side on top of Betty’s grave. They also realized that the date was Betty’s birthday.

Unable to keep all of the information to themselves they had a neighborhood meeting. They found out neighbors whose houses were built on top of the abandoned cemetery also had all kinds of activity. They reported lights, televisions/water faucets turning on and off, unearthly sounds and apparitions. Sam and Judith decided right then to fight back. They sued the developer for not disclosing that their home was built over a cemetery. They won and were awarded $142,000 by a jury. The judge ruled on legal grounds that the developers were not liable and reversed the decision. He then ordered the Haney’s to pay $50,000 in court costs. Unable to pay and plagued with health problems they were frightened of remaining in their house. They made the decision to file bankruptcy and abandoned their home.

One of the other families lived right across the street with similar problems to the Haney’s. Ben and Jean Williams lived there with their young granddaughter named Carli. They reported activity that the house was cold year round, the feeling of being watched, toilets flushed by themselves as well as the garage door and other household appliances would operate on their own. They even had rectangular sinkholes open up in the yard and for whatever reason they couldn’t be filled in. As soon as she thought she would have the problem solved the sinkholes would reappear within a few days. Another oddity was Jean couldn’t get any new plants to live on the property even though she always had a green thumb. On their property they noticed strange markings on an old oak tree by the sinkholes. It was an arrow pointed downward with two horizontal slash marks beneath it. They attended the meeting and discovered their lovely home was built over the cemetery. As they began to research a long time resident of the area told them he had marked the tree as a way to identify where his two sisters were buried. The activity began to increase and they would hear phantom footsteps in the hall, an apparition hovering over them when they slept and six members of their extended family were diagnosed with different cancers where three of them died within that year.

The Haney’s were not the only family to try legal recourse. They were all told that without definitive proof of a cemetery on their property nothing could be done. Ben and Jean Williams decided to prove their home was built over a cemetery. So Jean began to dig in one of the sinkholes beneath the oak. When she became overwhelmed from exhaustion to her daughter Tina took over. After digging for about a half-hour Tina collapsed and was dead 2 days later. Jean was convinced their desecration of a grave had precipitated their daughter’s death. They decided to leave no matter what it cost them. The loss they already experienced was more than they could bear. They abandoned their house and escaped to Montana. After a period of time passed they later moved back to Texas.

Subsequent owners of their homes say they have noticed no unusual activity. They seem content to live in the houses even with the negative history. Would you buy a home here? If you google the story you will find some people report activity and some say they never experienced anything. The fire department will tell you there are more alarms that go off in the part of the neighborhood that covers the cemetery. Do you think some people are more sensitive than others and this is why the new owners do not have activity? Do you think that the Williams or the Haney’s would make up such activity to give them a reason to loose all the money they had invested in their homes? These are some the same types of questions my group puts to the test every day as we deal with homeowners. Is it real or imagined? Can we find evidence to back up the claims? I spent time in Newport on several occasions. I can tell you that the area has a strange vibe to it for me. The woods have shadows that dart about even when nobody is there. I believe the place to be haunted. I will be uploading photos and other evidence I collected while there in the future.

Go see the Black Hope photo gallery 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

Last weekend we had a full day of running around to different locations. This included picking up Lindsey Ladd from the National Paranormal Society to join us for our adventure. We had a preliminary investigation scheduled for the old Cushing Hotel now known as Cimarron Towers. Due to a cancellation we were able to make it a full evening. Let me begin by giving you a brief history of the town and the building. Cushing is known as the “Pipeline Crossroads of America”. The town’s most exciting era began on March 17, 1912 when an oil boom began. Twenty-three oil companies and five oil-field supply houses located there by 1915. The boom ended however sixteen companies still operated there in 1930. The town’s population had reached 9,301 which was the largest population ever. The need for a hotel was huge thus the Cushing Hotel came into existence in 1928. This was during an era where “Nations Business Magazine” had labeled it an unparalleled prosperity for the area in Oklahoma. In stark contrast the eastern United States most people were standing in line for soup. The area of Oklahoma was dry but farmers had a bumper wheat crop. It was such a big crop that wheat was literally everywhere including blowing in the street. This dropped the price of wheat from .68 cents a bushel to .25 cents in 1931. This made farmers go broke and abandon their fields. By the time 1940 rolled around the town only had 1,500 residents. Most people had left by then and only three refineries were active. The hotel was beautiful but was having a hard time staying open. One of the residents talked about the doorway into the hotel being grand and all the woodwork that was amazing. Today that woodwork is no longer there. The hotel which had once thrived now stood vacant from 1975 until 1983. The hotel had declined during those years and needed to have something done with it. It was purchased and remodeled into what is now the Cimarron Towers for senior citizens and the handicapped. Downtown Cushing is a quaint old town with the same buildings that have stood there for years. It takes you back to a different time until you notice the new cars that line the street.

We began the evening by meeting Andrew who was one of the tenants. He had invited us to come check out the building because of strange activity that had been noticed over the years. We interviewed him first and then he gave us a tour to different rooms and floors within the building. While on tour we stopped in different rooms where we talked to almost a dozen of the residents. Some of the residents did not want to be on camera or named. They had all felt and seen different things. One man had been pushed off of the toilet, was scratched and had seen things on his web cam. While he was away Hank Williams was playing in his room with the web cam recording. When he returned it appeared as if something was in the room mouthing the words to the song “Hey good looking” while bouncing back and forth. One woman reported to hear voices, shadows and had a general uneasy feeling in several of the areas of the building. Several residents reported that their dogs would growl at the hallway. They would get up to look and would find that nothing was there. . While we were interviewing residents I had become physically ill in different areas of the building. I asked others on the team and it was confirmed that we all were experiencing the same feelings. The feelings were nausea, dizziness and headaches. Some places I almost needed to sit down because I was so sick. I noticed Mike grab onto the wall a few times in some areas.

When the interviews were complete we began to investigate the building. We separated into small teams where we went from floor to floor running audio, video and taking photos. The building has 7 floors and has a basement as well. We also investigated the stairwell where we had heard that voices had been previously recorded by a resident. I spent more time in the areas where I felt sick. I saw a shadow once in the hallway appear like it went into a wall which was confirmed by Lindsey Ladd. I took a few pictures that I noticed had something which I couldn’t see well at the time. I watched Lindsey conduct an experiment where she was pulling energy to herself with my dowsing rods. She was asking questions of whatever entity that may bearound at the time and she was getting responses. A few team members had heard laughing coming from within the stairs and nobody had been laughing. One of the residents approached us and communicated to us that he had been scratched while showering. In the end it was a fun night as usual. We got to spend time in a historical location. We need to review all of the evidence before we make a conclusion. It seems at the very least that there is residual energy that seems to be lingering. Certain spots in the building hold more energy than others. From the scratching it also seems that they have an intelligent haunting going on.