March 2008 Archives

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SFPI investigator Christina writes: Richard had been living at his house on Chenery Street for over a year, but had yet to get to the renovation projects he had been planning since he moved in. His own architecture firm's projects had kept him busy enough, but now he was in love and highly motivated; he and his girlfriend were ready to expand their relationship and move in together. The first step was to expand their actual physical space.

The house was built in 1857 and was reputed to have been a schoolhouse around the turn of the century. Their number one project was to gut the old structure attached to the back of the house, most likely added in the 1960s. Neighbors told them it was once used as a chicken coop, but it had been completely boarded up for years. When Richard and Anita opened it up, they unearthed piles of dead rodents and dead cats and various other desiccated forms they chose not to look at too closely. The experience was unnerving. Their number two project was to empty the attic which had previously remained undisturbed and had accumulated many past tenants' abandoned junk. Having accomplished both of their projects that day, it was after the duo had opened up these two rooms that the house began to take on a very different and decidedly unpleasant air. Neither of them were happy with the lingering "dead" feelings in their previously unused rooms. The continued uneasiness and a persistent lack of any physical evidence of a living person being responsible led Richard to contact us for help.

Philo and I did a preliminary visit to the house and met with them to check out the space and get the full story of what they'd been experiencing. When we arrived their two Jack Russell terriers appeared generally frantic and remained so as we toured the home. Richard pointed out the spots that he was particularly disturbed by, primarily the chicken coop structure and the attic. What Philo and I noticed, though, independently, was that there was a concentration of overly still and stuck energy coming from the bedroom closet and in and around their bedroom window. Richard and Anita shared that while they had both previously experienced the sensation of being watched in the house, after the renovations the "peeping tom" experience had become much more frequent and it was this window in particular that disturbed them the most, often accompanied by a smell of cigarette smoke from an unidentifiable source.

Later, when Philo decided to climb the ladder to the attic floor above, the dogs' became even more frantic. I thought it was a forbidding sort of bark, accompanied with the sense of "Are you crazy? Why would you want to go up there?" What Philo picked up on was an absence, too much of one for a room that had been previously full of belongings. He said something was most definitely hiding.

We scheduled a time to return two weeks later when the house would be quiet; both Richard and Anita, and gratefully their dogs, would be spending the night elsewhere. The house had been empty and quiet all day and evening when we and two other crew members arrived at 1 a.m. After getting our initial bearings and baseline readings, we began our own tour in the dark around the house, checking out energy and getting familiar with the home's noises, including a set of windchimes located in the kitchen. They would chime a great deal and then later stop, a fact we attributed to a nearby heating vent.

When we left the kitchen and went back into the living room, both of us were overcome with full body chills. We had each stepped into different cold spots, quite unexpectedly. We could not find a possible source for a physical breeze that could have come in either. In any case, there was no movement in the air, just deep, cold stillness. That combined with the hair standing up on the back of our necks pointed to paranormal phenomenon. While nothing unusual was showing up in our temperature readings, we found we could literally chase the cold spots around the room with the EMF gauge and get distinctive readings, averaging around .5 in areas of the living room that were previously read at zero.

Suddenly, the energy jumped at Philo's body and he began to experience knife-like pokings and pains in the middle of his back. I could follow these pains that Philo was experiencing and get significant fluctuations in the EMF readings from .3 to .9 (compared to Philo's "normal" reading of .0 or .1)--the higher the reading, the greater the pain. We backed away from the energy and Philo began to communicate with it. The dead silence he heard in return was significant in itself; Philo, an especially sensitive clairaudient psychic, meaning he can hear paranormal phenomenon, was not getting a peep. He also began sensing a non-human presence, like a big dog. Soon, more shapes began to form, another dog and a man. Philo began to hear low growling, and an inarticulate groaning from the man.

Doing some EVP work I asked, "Do you like what Richard and Anita are doing with the house?" Suddenly the set of colored Christmas lights that had been left on in the front entry alcove went out. It was quite dramatic, but we suspected that they might have been set to go off on a timer. The electric outlet for the lights was hidden behind unmoveable shelving so we were unable to determine the cause. Philo asked if a spirit had made the lights go out, and a windchime rang once, loudly. He asked the spirit to do it again, and the windchime rang very loudly, twice this time. I saw a bright flash of light near the windchimes at this time. Moving over to the windchimes and determining that the heat was not blowing at all, I asked again if it had made the lights go out to see if we could get the same result, trying to establish a yes (two gongs) or no (one gong) communication. Suddenly, it got very cold and Philo heard the low, non-verbal growling again.

We took turns checking out the bedroom and each independently saw an older woman in Victorian-like dress with a grey-haired bun. Philo saw her hiding in the closet. We heard an ominous-sounding rumbling that we couldn't identify. We asked about it and the windchimes started ringing in one/two formations in response to our questions. Unfortunately, the recorder turned off somehow before we started this conversation and we have no evidence of the amazing and bizarre "yes/no" conversation with the windchimes. We tried to replicate the experience with the windchimes when the heater was on and off later and the heating vent appeared to have no impact. We were warmed up now and ready to take on the most noted "creepy" spots. As we made our way back to the old chicken coop structure, Philo spotted who he suspected to be the peeping tom. Before comparing notes, I took a look and saw a man dressed like a physical laborer from the early 1900's, wearing a red plaid shirt. Philo saw an Irish man with red hair. We weren't quite sure if we were looking at the same spirit, but decided to meet up with whoever it was in the chicken coop. Now Philo could hear a clear clairaudient conversation, unlike the dead silence we met in the main house earlier. Philo heard a name, Mike Ramsey, the year 1935. Then he saw a man in the chicken coop, a different man than the red haired Irishman, this one being tall, dark haired, better dressed and more refined. Philo informed me that the man has been hanging around outside the house looking for the former owners, especially a woman he was in love with, and that he spent a lot of time in the chicken coop structure. He didn't want to run into her husband. This man, according to Philo, was our peeping Tom and that he appeared to be stuck in a time loop outside the house, never able to enter. He wondered if it was residual energy and noted that it didn't feel like it. Philo got an intuition to invite him inside the house to see what would happen. We both felt him move past us with a wave of emotion, mostly gratitude and amazement. My legs went numb in response to this rush of energy. Our last stop was the attic. Since our last visit, Richard and Anita had transformed the space even more into an inviting, cozy nook, with two skylights. The skylights seemed to be the perfect spot to open a portal and invite everyone to leave. As we settled in for this final phase, we took stock of who was who. Mike Ramsey was a name we encountered in relation to our peeping tom. There was also the Victorian-looking woman named El- or Em- something, and then there was the dark, cold, quiet, menacing presence from the living room with two menacing dogs. "But wait, there's also the red haired Irishman and he isn't on the same time plain as these others at all." When he said this, Philo heard a loud "Touché," which was an odd and dated comment that we both found amusing. The (ghost) dogs were agitated, barking like mad at Philo. The woman's energy was very still and very secretive, especially around an affair she appeared to have been having with a man who was still trying to meet up with her, all the while hiding from her abusive husband. The story filled out and we saw the triangular energetic standoff between the woman, the peeping tom who was her lover, and the dark and abusive husband in the living room with the dogs. It seemed to me that these three were still playing out--or staying stuck in-- this formation from their most recent lives.

Now, the formerly mute husband began screaming at Philo. We decided to open the portal and the woman went right away, with her peeping lover not far behind her. Awhile later, after telling the husband that there was no reason to stay now that they had gone, we both felt him move past us. He hesitated at the portal, and we assured him that his dogs would be able go with him, and that wherever he was going there would be forgiveness, that it would be better to move on to the unknown rather than stay stuck in a place of unchanging pain. He communicated that he killed his wife and had been afraid to leave for that reason. But he did leave, sending his dogs ahead, rudely poking Philo in the back one last time on his way out. The heaviness in the house lightened dramatically. The only spirit that did not leave was the working-man in the red plaid shirt, who seemed very enthusiastic about helping with the projects around the house. We respected his choice, since he did not seem to mean any harm, but we noted to keep an eye on him in the future.

The house was as clean as it was going to get in one evening and we were tired. We descended from the attic into a much-changed living room with clear, cheerful energy--a vast contrast to its former chilly grimness. The reunited woman and man popped back in for a moment and I heard, loud and clear. "It's Ella." I thanked her for clarifying her name for us. With a last look around, Philo said, "Richard's Jack Russells should be much happier now that the ghost dogs are not sleeping in their beds." We laughed and went home.

The next day Richard and Anita reported, "The house looks and feels fabulous." They said that they felt as if they had returned to a completely different house, and that their dogs--usually quite the frantic barkers--were uncharacteristically mellow, particularly after being in a kennel. "I didn't know the dogs could be this mellow," Anita said. Richard and Anita are enjoying their new attic meditation space and are planning on converting the old chicken coop structure into an art studio.