February 2008 Archives

Hello and welcome to SFPI. If it's your first time visiting please start here.

Philo writes: When we heard from Mira, pictured, a resident who lives on Abbey Street, we were excited. Why? Abbey Street is a short one-block long road that runs smack into the fence surrounding the Mission Dolores cemetery. If you're not familiar with our City, all of the San Francisco cemeteries were removed and relocated to the city of Colma many years ago and with the exception of the military cemetery in The Presidio, the graves at Mission Dolores are the only other officially sanctioned burial grounds in San Francisco. Were the problems being encountered by Mira and her boyfriend isolated, or did they have something to do with their proximity to the Mission? We set up a time to find out.

At their home we learned that the structure is a two-story building. Our clients have lived upstairs for a few years and the downstairs home has been vacant for as long as they've lived there. "It's just creepy down there," Mira told us. "Most people don't even realize that there's a first floor unit even though it's obvious. Now that we're looking at buying the whole building from the landlord, we really want to know what we'd be dealing with. The unit gives everybody the creeps."

Heading downstairs we entered the home and were immediately greeted at the door by an unexplainable 16.0 level reading on our electromagnetic field detector. The kitchen was dirty and the furnishings throughout were mostly antiques that all still had noticable price tags on them, a bed, sofa, armoire, the works. Mira explained, "The owner bought all this stuff at an auction and it's been down here the whole time. It's as if he chose all this for the ghosts who live here." It was rather bizarre, adding a sense of the absurd to an atmosphere that was already noticably thick and dark. Christina mentioned to me, "It kind of feels like molasses in here." I was inclined to agree. "I'm getting a pretty steady 4.7 on the EMF in here now too," she told me.

I was drawn to the back of the house, particularly to a small room with no windows or outlets of any kind. In the next room the bed was ruffled up. Mira told us, "I was down here earlier and it wasn't like that." The bathroom door was open and the medicine cabinet was open. "It wasn't like that earlier down here either," she explained. I started taking photographs and shortly thereafter our camera battery died. Christina started feeling a little ill. Once we got a feel for the layout of the home it was time for lights out and we headed to the back of the house where the energy felt the thickest and sat on the floor to do some EVP work and readings.

It wasn't long before we were feeling encroached upon by an energy that was full of static yet very silent. I was able to make out a female present and soon noticed she had several female friends and one male friend. They were all seniors. Why were they hanging out in this home? The answer seemed to be that it was a good place to hang out, and soon we understood that they were indeed right. With the landlord having furnished the home and left it empty for years there were those associated with The Mission and the surrounding neighborhood that spent their nights there. "I'm getting the name Elizabeth," I told them. Christina replied, "I just got the name Elizabeth loud and clear myself." Listening to the audio recordings it was about that time the bangings began inside the armoire, only we wouldn't really become clear about this until later. The more aware of the women we became the more pleasant they felt, with a high level of Catholic energy about them all. They obviously weren't attached to the property, merely visiting on a regular basis, which made it clearer that something else was lurking below the surface.

"There's a Native American male here too," I informed them. I started seeing pictures of when Mission Dolores was originally settled and how he had died, that he quite possibly was killed on the property prior to the home ever being built. "Owww," I exclaimed feeling a sudden stabbing pain in my side. Explaining our purpose for being there and that we meant no harm he began to understand that we were not necessarily in agreement with the Catholic seniors and were really uninvolved non-judgmental parties. The energy in the room began to change somewhat, although the crew and I were struck by the irony of all the conflict in the space between these elderly Catholic spirits hanging out in the same home as someone who was either killed by the Catholics, or had died in such a way that he held them responsible. The only clear name I was getting was "John" but that his name had the letter M in it, something like "Mont..."

Soon we began focusing in on a woman named "Audrey." Audrey was a younger woman, a red head, and apparently she used to live in the home and had died in the home, possibly the most recent actual previously living resident. We were also getting a daughter's name, "Ruth." With the mention of the name Christina and I both were hit with a full body tingling sensation and a tremendous sense of sadness and loss. It seems Audrey had lost her baby and there was a great deal of guilt and grief surrounding her.

Everything in the house seemed to have been existing in some dysfunctional sense of balance and conflict and once these energies began to shift and move, a darker energy become apparent - a man of dark spirituality and alcoholism named Sam. "He's the most unpleasant spirit I've run into in a long time," I told Christina. "I'm also getting that he's connected to the graveyard, but not in it, very anti-Catholic, throwing a lot of negative energy that way. I don't think he's really attached to the property, but he's got this very dark anti-God energy that he's putting out. There's somebody in the graveyard he's attached to, someone who shouldn't have died, that the story isn't being told truthfully and the lies have really been what fueled his negative energy toward the Mission, religion and the world."

After working with Sam for some time we began to understand that this has been going on since 1927 and that he wasn't as big of a problem as he had previously appeared. He began to understand how his attachment to the resentment and injustice hadn't been serving anyone and the energy of the entire home began to shift and rise. We all got goosebumps, chills from the positively charged spiritual energy rushing into the home. Christina and I worked on helping spirits that wanted to move on do so and the house became increasingly lighter.

Our audio recordings of the home did not pick up any clear evidence of electronic voice phenomenon, nor did we obtain any other scientific based evidence. The recordings of the banging inside the armoire, however, are most interesting. Here's the first bang which Christina is talking over, and the second bang from the armoire which is quite clear. We will be doing further research into the history of the property soon.