The Steinhart
Hello and welcome to SFPI. If it's your first time visiting please start here.
Philo writes: We were contacted by a tenant over at The Steinhart who reported seeing a tall man in a black top hat in his apartment since the day he moved in. "Dexter" felt certain there were spirits in his home, particularly in and around a certain closet. The Steinhart is a beautiful old building on the Register of National Historic Places and it has been an apartment hotel since 1910. Christina and I were excited by his report of a visual apparition. Having previously lived for several years only a block from there myself, in a haunted apartment of my own, I knew first hand what he was going through. We agreed to pay him a visit and investigate.
Arriving at The Steinhart we made our way up the grand stairs and took the classic elevator up to his floor. From the moment I entered his unit I could tell that something was amiss. There was an energy in the air, a feeling I'm quite familiar with. We sat down with Dexter and had a cup of tea and we talked about his experiences. I picked up on two spirits in the home during our conversation and we agreed to return a few days later to investigate.
Upon returning we began taking initial base readings with our instruments and found nothing significant anywhere in the apartment beyond the usual suspects, a microwave oven and a clock radio. Given that Dexter had made the decision not to put anything in that closet, possibly for good reason, Christina and I and our one crew member for the night decided to spend some time in there ourselves. Temperature readings were consistent with the rest of the home, but it wasn't long before Christina and I were both picking up on a male spirit. The name I was getting was John or Charles or John Charles and the surname Fountain or Fontaine came up as well. "I'm also hearing the name Debbie loud and clear," I told her and Christina immediately agreed - "I just got the name Debbie too." It seemed to be that the male spirit was entering the apartment through a portal in the closet and that he was looking for a woman named Debbie. He was associated with the building in The Steinhart's earliest years, the 1910's. It was clear that he didn't mean anyone any harm and that he wasn't even attached to the property, coming and going as he pleased. We conducted considerable EVP work in the closet and took a variety of readings all of which were inconclusive.
Leaving the closet I began to zero in on a female energy in the bathroom. Taking several photographs we were both a little surprised when the flash suddenly stopped working and our cameras ceased to function. Could this be Debbie we wondered? Entering the bathroom the three of us sat down on the floor. While we had very different experiences in there, what we agree on is that a female spirit was trapped in the bathroom, primarily getting up from the bathtub and running to close and lock the door, only to find herself back in the bathtub again and getting out to run for the door and that this cycle had been playing out since 1967. Not being a spirit on the same timeline as the man from the closet, we had our doubts she was Debbie.
My time spent in the bathroom was actually incredibly loud, a male voice screaming the name Lucy over and over and over. Meanwhile, Christina found herself almost immediately overwhelmed by the distress of our female spirit. Did she commit suicide in the bathtub or did someone kill her in this bathroom? We couldn't agree, but we were both clear she needed our assistance. Having done considerable EVP work and readings, Christina talked to her and we worked on opening a portal for her to move on. Moments later you could feel the energy in the bathroom begin to shift.
While our audio recordings at the Steiner did generate several odd and indistinguishable noises, we did not generate anything clearly registering as electronic voice phenomenon at this location. We have yet to attempt to check property records on The Steinhart for any of the names that we encountered. While our photographs didn't reveal anything unusual and our scientific tools failed to generate a single reading out of the ordinary, our personal experiences and clairvoyant readings within the home proved to be incredibly interesting. Most importantly, Dexter's experience of his home has now changed as a result of our visit. He writes, "I can't get over how different the bathroom here feels, the whole apartment really. It's like an entirely different home except for John Charles. Now that I know that he's just passing through too I'm finding the whole experience amusing. Thanks so much for coming."