My Paranormal Life

An Almost Average, But Sometimes, Paranormal Life

By: Carol J. Farrell Contents

*** Please note: the content of this book is in its original, unedited format as Carol had it during her final iteration on January 11,2016. Printed for sharing during her Celebration of Life event. ***

• Dedications and Gratitude • Foreword • Chapter 1 – Pg. 9 My Beginnings - My Family • Chapter 2 – Pg. 17 First Contact • Chapter 3 – Pg. 28 Going Forward into Adulthood - The Domovoi • Chapter 4 – Pg. 32 Return to Paragon and the Family Farm • Chapter 5 – Pg. 34 Bob's Beginnings • Chapter 6 – Pg. 38 Teaming Up for the Paranormal • Chapter 7 – Pg. 52 Closer to Home • Chapter 8 – Pg. 58 Everyday Happenings • Chapter 9 – Pg. 69 Seeing Specters • Chapter 10 – Pg. 73 Cats See Things • Chapter 11 – Pg. 81 Grandma Ruth Makes an Appearance • Chapter 12 – Pg. 85 Paragon Paranormal Gets Organized • Chapter 13 – Pg. 88 Prayers of Protection • Chapter 14 – Pg. 90 Indiana Investigations • Chapter 15 – Pg. 144 Our Favorite Investigation-The Thomas House Inn • Chapter 16 – Pg. 155 Not Just Ghosts! • Biography

Dedications and Gratitude

I must start my dedication of this book to a true devotee of the spirit realm, my father, Thomas Rohland, who passed into that dimension in 1986. Dad was a man who believed in the spirits and the Almighty Spirit above all. He challenged me throughout my life and believed in me by never doubting and accepting my spiritual capabilities as real when the weird events in my young life needed explaining. Dad permitted and encouraged me to read and explore the paranormal world to help me know that I wasn’t alone in my abilities. One of my greatest wishes is that my Dad still be with me on our human plane and be able to enjoy the excitement I now have with Bob and our paranormal undertakings. I also think Dad would be surprised by the new openness and curiosity of the general population toward accepting supernatural sciences, quite unlike his in era. I must also include my beloved cousin, Sonny (Carl) Hess, who loved to narrate his ghost experiences to his much younger cousins and even today, encourages my interests in the paranormal. (Sonny also allowed me to read his “FATE” magazines – also much to my Mother’s chagrin.) I would also like to thank one of my most trustworthy enthusiasts, Roberta Marshall, who has always been a sounding board for my personal stories and philosophies about the weird incidents which have surrounded me. Roberta, who we fondly call “BB”, is an individual who is extremely honest and uses her straightforwardness to appraise my paranormal events and evidence, and sometimes it’s not always what I want to hear. But most of all, this book is dedicated with love and adoration to my true soul mate, my remarkable husband, Robert Farrell. I see him as man of great dedication toward me because without his devotion and encouragement I would not have been able to retire earlier than most people do and at whose persistence I can now share with others some of my life experiences through my writing. Bob was willing to let me recount his assorted personal paranormal experiences in my manuscript and even now, enthusiastically assists me and my paranormal team, Paragon Paranormal – Shadow Chasers, in our many ghost-hunting and other paranormal explorations.

But, it must also be acknowledged, I just as optimistically support Bob during his exciting, sometimes all night, Big Foot expeditions! (I’m still wondering what he will do with a Sasquatch if he ever catches one!) Bob and I make a great team!

Foreword

Greek philosopher Socrates is famous for his quote “The unexamined life is not worth living.” When he said it, this wise man was on trial for heresy because he encouraged his students and followers to challenge the accepted principles and beliefs of the time and to think freely. Because he had been found guilty of such heretical doctrine, Socrates was informed he must make a choice between solitary incarceration for the rest of his life as an exile to a prison island where he would live by himself with no one to teach or interact with, or select the ultimate seclusion of all living humans, death. The renowned theoretician’s decision was made with courage and gallantry; the Greek philosopher is now remembered as the casualty of ancient history’s most notorious cup of poison hemlock. I accept the challenge of Socrates. I have decided to examine my life, past and present, to determine if I am on a path that encourages and challenges my beliefs for the future. No one’s life is free from problems and strife and sometimes the answers to these situations come from unusual places and people. Socrates chose death as his path to a new challenge. Ironically, I’ve chosen the living world as my path to examine what lies between and beyond death. The challenges will be as they come, and I intend to confront them with modern science and the courage to accept changes if the path demands it. The world’s beliefs in the science of physics, motion, time and gravity is rapidly changing. Almost a century ago Albert Einstein presented his “Theory of Relativity” to the world and redefined time and space as dimensions which are flexible and yet woven together to create a four-dimensional fabric. Einstein’s “fabric” pervades the universe and is the basis for his premise that time and space is the source of gravity which is created when the fabric bends and warps around large objects, such as the sun, thus drawing smaller objects toward them, for example, the planets of our solar system. Einstein’s theory has its shortcomings because it doesn’t account for an expanding universe or the motions of galaxies. It also doesn’t explain some of the motions and behaviors of the sub-atomic world, called quantum mechanics or quantum physics.

Scientists today have started to rethink Einstein’s theory of time and space by dismissing the “fabric” and thus time, as a fundamental dimension. The rethinking of Einstein’s theories brings me back to the paranormal sciences; there are those individuals who believe and those who disbelieve, and the difference is based mainly on their comprehension within their learned limitations of human existence and their level of understanding of our world of math, physics and biology. We use our five senses to examine our universe and our brains force us to comprehend within the boundaries of those measurable senses, because without them, the world would not have a perception of stability. Even our most sophisticated computers and machines are within the boundaries of the human brain’s grasp of reality because we, as biological entities, are the programmers. Most humans struggle with themselves asking at what point and with what proof the unfathomable, in this case the paranormal, will be accepted by them without a need for a justification or explanation. Some people never find the point or the proof for personal acceptance of such occurrences. Currently, Einstein’s theories are being unraveled because some of the most gifted of our scientists are not satisfied with his theories analysis. There are many well known scientists pursuing with challenging research, reasonable justifications of Einstein’s old theories and how they affect our universe. There are just as many of us who are not well known also seeking answers to the mysteries of the so named paranormal sciences. So I ask – Do the failures of our most elite quantum physicists and theorists to confirm without a doubt the nature of their sciences now make the subject matter of Einstein’s theories and quantum mechanics both “paranormal sciences” because their field of study “cannot be proven”? Even Einstein had doubts about his work. Sir Charles Darwin is not to be left out of the conversation when asserting a commentary concerning the paranormal viewpoint of life and most notably the “soul”. The soul, according to my old Oxford Dictionary, is described as “The immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life”. The best way to state my conviction in an immortal soul is best explained through the non-scientific side of me as an article of my Christian faith in an Almighty Creator.

Personally, I prefer to consider my soul as the “breath of God” as contained in all humans, or, as a life-force beyond mortal existence. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution distances man from God by declaring humans are just more evolutionarily advanced hairless apes. The paranormal consideration in this case is the need to explain the human soul and its existence outside the living body; uncontained human or inhuman souls are considered to be ghosts or spirit apparitions in paranormal nomenclature. So, I ask, can this fundamental ingredient of life be seen or photographed, and does it have actual mass that can be measured in some way? And, is it possible for the soul to exist outside the biological body? Duncan McDougal, from 1901 through 1907, investigated the possibility that the human soul was measurable by human methods. Wanting to understand more about what happens after we die, he sought to determine if the soul continued to exist as a separate entity or personality after the demise of the brain and body. After six years of study and facing many obstacles including a lack of proper equipment and dying humans willing to be his subjects, McDougal published his analysis in which he declared the human soul was measurable, it had mass, and weighed approximately 21 grams. Needless to say, not many other scientists in his day (or now) considered his data and conclusions acceptable research and remained cynics of his findings. Although his results are interesting, as a research scientist who regards most paranormal science as just another branch of mainstream science, I think that McDougal’s methods were unreliable for high-quality results and additional study needs to be carried out to back up his report. With today’s modern equipment, the study of the soul should be reinvestigated to obtain more dependable results. To me, when I first started my quest, the bottom line to a truly scientific paranormal investigation was simply to seek the answer to the question which asks if ghosts or spirits are truly disembodied human souls, inter-dimensional beings (including demons), or aliens from another world. I tended to dwell on the spiritual realm and the afterlife. All of it directs me to the fact that paranormal investigators must not forget the other areas of the so-called paranormal sciences which many non-believers call the crypto-sciences.

Crypto sciences look into the existence of such creatures as angels or demons, Bigfoot, fairies, and even the ever-elusive Loch Ness Monster. We must also include the fringe sciences which consist of “out of place” artifacts or historical anomalies, extra sensory perception, remote viewing, the Bermuda Triangle mysteries, people who disappear in a blink of an eye, those who die from spontaneous combustion, as well as unusual objects observed on the moon, other planets and throughout space. The list goes on and on of these paranormal subjects, not just ghosts, that the accepted science studies cannot and in most cases, is not willing to make an effort to investigate or rationalize. Skeptics commonly say that just because you see it doesn’t mean it actually exists, but I believe that with the quantification and a true scientific assessment of paranormal data, these subjects can become so. When we (including the many doubters) are all able to witness and understand the paranormal, our human race will all ultimately accept today’s supernatural topics for what the subjects actually are – all just as normal as any other natural science. Unlike Socrates, I’m not trying to change anyone’s beliefs concerning the afterlife with this book. I’m just presenting a narrative of some of the highlights of my personal life and how the paranormal has had a fairly constant impact on how I have experienced and always perceived my almost average, although frequently paranormal life. This is for you Dad!

Chapter 1. My Beginnings - My Family

Countless people ask me how I embarked on my study of the paranormal and do I really believe that some houses are haunted, and souls roam this reality instead of going immediately to heaven. It’s hard to explain my lifelong fascination and my beliefs, but I’m going to try. Do you love a good mystery in print or on the screen? Do museums stimulate you? In your younger years, did you eagerly read each book of the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew mysteries? Did you ever wonder what was the actual reality behind the President Kennedy assassination, who is buried in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier or how the ancient Egyptians managed to construct the great pyramids with only primitive tools? What about the “lost” civilizations of Atlantis or Mu, the Bermuda Triangle, Sasquatch or Yeti, time travelers, aliens and their flying saucers, or the source of the glowing orbs often seen in cemeteries? Was Edgar Cayce for real? Have you ever come upon a mystery so intriguing that you were prepared to wait most of your life, past the time when your family was raised and income and living conditions were steadfast, before finally embarking on a path to seek out the answer? I have and am now pursuing my desire to find some answers. It has been since my childhood that I have had the urge to search for “weird stuff” and to explore our world for the answers to the mysteries of what I now know as the paranormal sciences, especially ghosts and weird animals. The most excellent group exchange of ideas in my memory was the times when my friends and family were debating the spirit realm or other bizarre and out of the ordinary topics. These conversations were sometimes followed by trips to the haunted cemeteries, sneaking into old churches and abandoned buildings to hunt for the spirits, or maybe a midnight drive along dark, gravel roads hoping for a glimpse of the secret creatures which are rumored to lurk in the shadows. We wanted to have the thrill of being frightened by something other than bats and rattlesnakes.

Plus, there was this other “thing” which my Dad told me never to discuss - even with my Mother, siblings and devoted associates; my surreptitious ability to have the sense of hearing spirit voices (not schizophrenic!) and to see an occasional denizen of the shadow realm. I was assured by one of my esteemed psychology professors that these experiences were just “heightened intuition skills” and that I am just really good at reading faces and body language. This does not explain why I sometimes know in advance who is phoning or about to stop by my home. I do not claim to be a psychic and am not analogous to the likes of a Theresa Cavuto, Chip Coffey or Suzanne Greer, who have untold psi skills. And, I do not have the ability to actually read minds - or foretell futures with my Tarot Cards as some of my friends think I do. Laughing at myself, I commonly think my talents are no more than those of Johnny Carson’s “Great Carnac”. But, maybe my old professor was correct in opinion that I am no different than any other human with great instinct or powers of observation, and I am just a good “guesser”. That is the “thing” my Dad told me not to discuss. So, ignoring my limited psi capabilities, how can I explain why I’m so fascinated in the paranormal? (When saying the word paranormal, I include all categories of the strange and as yet unknown sciences.) I blame it on my heritage; family is where it’s at. Let’s start with my parents. I grew up with a “Pennsylvania Dutch” father who was a staunch believer in our Almighty God, angels, demons, heaven and the afterlife, and even those not so mainstream accepted elementals, such as fairies and trolls. Even the elusive Bigfoot or Sasquatch was one of his fascinations. Dad was also a faithful subscriber of the iconic paranormal publication, FATE Magazine, as I am even now. His subscription to the then monthly periodical with all the magnificent colorful illustrations of fairies, ghosts and monsters on the front covers helped to motivate my interest in the supernatural and out of the ordinary natural sciences. (Also, Dad always gave FATE the credit for giving me the incentive to learn to read at the age of four.) From his family’s rich German culture and its traditions engrained in his upbringing, and the Fate subscription, Dad taught me things I had no way of learning in my everyday schooling.

I think most of Dad’s Pennsylvania family grew up with the same beliefs as he did, since I have an older cousin who still loves to relate the true stories of deceased family members who still exist among us. Unfortunately, I don’t remember my maternal Grandmother Connie; she passed away a few months after I was born and my Dad’s “Pop”, as his children called him, lived three states away so my siblings and me only saw him during short stays once each year when Dad piled all of his offspring in the overloaded family automobile and ventured to central Pennsylvania to vacation for a few days with the relatives. While I do remember Grandpa Rohland, the memories are sparse. I remember that he always shook my Dad’s hand and never was a hugger. I remember he put his arm around my shoulders one time and that was as close to any affection he ever willingly showed for any of his grandchildren. I was also told by my parents that Grandpa Rohland had been known as quite the character around Huntingdon for his crazy antics, not all caused by the onset of his Alzheimer’s toward the end life. Many local residents knew him as a dog lover and the many generations of pedigree Jack Terriers he bred and sold. Other people around the town identified him as the original owner of the parcel of land south of Cold Springs Road where the Huntingdon High School is now located. To others, Grandpa Rohland was just the crazy old man who stood on the corner in the downtown area and whistled at the pretty girls. But what I remember most about my Grandpa Rohland is that he constantly told me I looked exactly like his long-departed wife, Connie. The last time I remember seeing him was when I was about sixteen and those are precisely the last words I remember him sharing with me. Dad was also the one of my two parents who loved the late Saturday night horror movies and allowed all of his children to watch them with him. He talked of the mystical world of the supernatural and spiritual subjects and pointed out many houses and other locations he thought were haunted places as we traveled. He helped me to feel the ghostly energy at the many old Civil War battlefields we visited on vacations. Looking back, he taught us to be unafraid of the unusual and the paranormal. Dad was a tough disciplinarian, but Dad was fun to be with. It wasn’t just the spirit realm for Dad. He loved nature and the mysteries associated with it.

He loved to guide us in our search for ancient sea fossils and told us crinoid stems were “Indian Beads”. He had us searching for unusual rocks or crystals in the limestone and creek beds on our property. Every quartz crystal we found was a diamond and red garnets were rubies. He even convinced a couple of his children (yes-me!) that we could find gold nuggets in locations where I was later to learn in my geology classes that none could possibly be located. Dad kept me occupied with the unusual, the mystifying, and the paranormal all his life and was always there to support me through my numerous adventures and encounters. My mother, a number crunching banker, never talked about the paranormal, possibly because it frightened her. Mom could not explain the supernatural, so she avoided and disregarded the subjects and all conversations about it. She never encouraged any of my psi talents and constantly told me to ignore my intuitions about events and people because others would think of me as “weird”. Even so, I have many wonderful memories of Mom reading to us from her favorite mystery books on rainy Saturday afternoons and encouraging us to think for ourselves. Mom was tough when it came to schoolwork, attending church on Sunday, keeping our rooms clean, pulling weeds in the garden and saving our pennies for a rainy day. But, she also knew where she could purchase all the best ice cream cones, root beer, and Coney dogs along the route from Paragon, Indiana to Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. Upon reflection, I can say that both parents encouraged me, but my Mother kept me grounded in everyday life while my Dad opened other worlds to me. Combined, their influences are most likely why I sought an education in the earth sciences, an actual accepted science, as a life career. Once I discovered that the earth science field of study included many areas of the physical sciences, such as geology, oceanography, meteorology, astronomy, biology, chemistry and physics, I knew that my future was ready for the taking. Earth science, mainly geology, was a very broad branch of learning where I could fuse the mysterious universe with evolving sciences and perform investigations in my many areas of interest. Both parents were happy with my education decision, especially my Dad who saw my earth science education as a path to the answers of many questions he had had all his life and to expand his knowledge to new amazing realities.

To truly indulge my mother, I also obtained a secondary education endorsement, or teaching degree, along with my science degree. But, when I come to the decision not to teach school after the first year and landed a lucrative position as an earth scientist with the State of Indiana, Mom didn’t seem to mind her eldest daughter’s unexpected change in her career path and actually seemed rather proud of me. My maternal grandparents’ habits and beliefs also had a definite influence on my passions. My mother’s mother, Grandma Ruth, was a staunch Christian, and a compassionate, loving woman with a firm opinion of right and wrong; this is probably a result of her Scotch- Irish heritage of long ago and the Quaker beliefs she was raised by. She had lived through some of the hardest times which had faced our nation, WW1, the Great Depression, a couple of horrific flu pandemics, WW 2, the Korean Conflict and even Viet Nam; each having a great impact in one way or another on what most people would call a non-descript farm wife in rural Indiana. Through all of it, Grandma did what was essential for her family and her nation. She scrimped and saved enough of all their hard-earned pennies to pay cash for a farm in the midst of the Great Depression. To assist in the war effort, she worked ten-hour days at a tomato canning factory in Bargersville, Indiana during WW 1, and when she wasn’t working there she made bandages for the Red Cross. She raised chickens, sold eggs to the hatchery; home canned the harvest of her extensive garden, pieced quilts, sewed aprons and bonnets, made lye soap and hooked rugs out of old rags. Nothing went to waste in Grandma’s house. Throughout her life she also shared her talents and the rewards of her skills with other families less fortunate as she made and repaired clothing and gave food to the poor. I think I can absolutely say Grandma Ruth was one of the two most no-nonsense people I have ever known. Even with all the trials and tribulations during her earthly existence, Grandma Ruth was also a definite believer in the supernatural and she occasionally related to me her life experiences with “balls of fire” and “flashing lights”. One particular story Grandma told without the shame of caring who knew about the incident was concerning the “small balls of fire” which streaked out of the kitchen, through the dining room and exploded into nothingness in front of her in the living room of the house where I now live.

Grandma had the ability to see orbs just as I do, because I too have seen the “balls of fire” in her house. She never talked about any of the shadowy figures Bob and I occasionally see in her old farmhouse, or the voices which startle us once and a while, so I’m unclear how extensive her talents into detecting the supernatural actually were or she just preferred not to speak of it. Unknown to Grandpa because he would have greatly disapproved, Grandma contracted the services of what she called a “fortune teller” a couple of times. I remember her revealing to my Mother the results of the readings, but Grandma tried to keep the knowledge of her visit away from the rest of her family knowing that they, just like Grandpa, would not approve either. My Mom did not speak well of Grandma’s psychic outings either, but I was absolutely fascinated! The second most grounded person I have ever known was Grandpa Mont (short for Montgomery, but his grandchildren were not aware of his full name until many years after his death.) People who were acquainted with him thought he was practical and unpretentious because he was quiet around people he didn’t know well. His mother died in a house fire when he was only a few years old, but otherwise, like Grandma, he had experienced the same family events and national woes. As a young man and before he married, he had traveled for a few years with a steam thrasher “harvesting crew” throughout Iowa and Nebraska, reaping the wheat on the high plains until he settled down in Morgan County, Indiana, joining the family of his brother, Marion. Shortly after his move to his brother’s home, Monte became a marshal of the small village of Morgantown. Morgantown is where and when he met my Grandmother. Her family, the Gregg’s, had a large farm on the east side of town, barely located in Johnson County and Grandma’s brother had a local butcher shop, so it wasn’t a long period after their marriage that Monte gave up the marshal’s position and started working with the Greggs on the family farm and saving for his family’s future. It was his destiny to be a farmer and Grandma was destined to be a farmer’s wife.

Grandpa Mont had a genuine love for farming and woodworking, but best of all; Grandpa loved to tell a good joke and was known to occasionally pull a silly prank on Grandma. He had one joke that he told more than once but everyone always fell for it. With a perfectly straight face Grandpa would tell his friend and acquaintances that he had started saving his second million in the bank. Most believed him; Mont wasn’t known to boast about serious things like finances because he was known as a frugal person. Then, while waiting for a reaction from his audience, his blue eyes would start dancing as he surprised them with the announcement that he had simply given up on the first million! Yes - he loved a good joke. Grandpa was not a church person – he left that to Grandma, but as caring and loving he was to his family he also had a big heart for his animals on the farm and treated them with respect; all his milk cows had names. Some of the pigs had names against Grandpa’s better judgment because “you just shouldn’t give names to something you are eventually going to eat.” I know he also loved all fifteen of his grandchildren and would occasionally pass along a nickel or dime for ice cream from his tiny black pocket leather-clasp coin purse, and once a year, he would give his grandchildren a silver dollar for their birthday. He would also pass along an occasional silver dollar for a tooth, but it had to be a big one, such as an incisor. He crafted small wooden tables, stools and other furniture in his woodshop, all simple in design such as the man he was. Most of these items were constructed of solid black walnut from a hefty tree he had salvaged with his tractor, towing it home one summer day from the shore of the White River. He was so excited about the tree he had spotted while farming that he would not tell Grandma where he was going that day, just that he had a big surprise for her. She was almost afraid of the consequences, but relieved when she saw the salvaged tree because Grandma knew that there would be many finely created walnut wood possessions in her future. Grandpa Mont grew up in the northeastern mountains of Tennessee located in the region where the borders of Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee converge near Bristol, Tennessee. It’s an area where in 1910, mountain life was hard, and the residents had to work hard to just get by and raise their families.

At the age of 16 years Grandpa made his exodus from the Appalachian Mountains and his large family for better work opportunities in Nebraska and Iowa’s farm country, but he never forgot his humble upbringing. There is no doubt a tradition rich in folklore among the Appalachian mountain dwellers, mostly descendants of the British Isles, northern Europe and the local Native Americans. Knowing these stories, Grandpa would attempt to scare me with his accounts of the specters and haunts of the mountains, then just laugh it off and jokingly tell me the stories were all tall tales. Being such a matter-of-fact person, I theorize Grandpa was not so much a believer in his family’s tales as Grandma was in hers, but he still was first-class at intriguing this granddaughter with his ghostly mountain narratives. Grandpa lived a long life but the last five were especially hard on him and the last four were spent in a nursing facility for those who could not live alone. We had a small family party for his 93rd birthday at the residence where he was staying; just cake and ice cream - treats he never turned down. When I asked him what he wanted to drink he said firmly and without hesitation, “Coffee”. Knowing Grandpa as well as I did, I replied, “But you don’t drink coffee. How about a glass of milk or a cup of hot tea? You never drink coffee!” His answer was firm and to the point, “I’m old enough now!” Needless to say, Grandpa got his coffee, but with lots of cream and sugar. Grandpa Mont was 93 years young when he passed over to join Grandma in the spirit world. He was only six weeks from his 94th birthday with his mind still remembering many of the years he had experienced in this world, but his body was very weak. I will always wonder if he would have requested coffee with his 94th birthday cake and ice cream. As you can tell, I still miss having my Grandpa Mont and Grandma Ruth in the physical world.

Chapter 2. First Contact

My personal experiences with ghosts and the spirit realm actually started when I was about eleven years old and I moved along with my parents and four siblings to an old Victorian house on the edge of the small town of Paragon, Indiana. I do not recall any events happening before that time which I could call paranormal, so I think the old house and its spirits was the catalyst for my sensitivities. Built around 1880, the mighty eleven room structure had been a home to one of the prominent families of the town, but after being sold and resold, the property had also been greatly neglected. Mom and Dad took on the task of renovation literally from the top down. They began with a new roof, new plaster walls, wallpaper, carpets, reinstalled the pocket doors which had been carelessly tossed in the attic, added insulation and siding, all new plumbing, moved the kitchen to a different area, and added an entirely new bathroom; there was no end to the work that needed to be done before our family of seven could live there comfortably. When he had finally had enough of stoking wood in the four wood-burning stoves needed to keep the house just barely comfortable in the winter, Dad, along with my brothers, eventually dug out a new cellar under the house to install a behemoth coal furnace. The old structure was modernized and renewed, but still retained its glorious late Victorian appearance. I think the renovations are what stirred up the spirits in the old house, but until all the work finally slowed down did the noticeable spirit activity begin – at least for me. I do not remember any of my three brothers talking about any incidents occurring while living there, just my little sister, who was frightened by some of it, and my Dad. Since he became an adult, my older brother Gary has hesitantly spoken of instances of paranormal activity he experienced in the old house to his own son, but not to me. A rural farming community, Paragon, Indiana, had plenty of children my age and things to do to keep us out of Mom and Dad’s sight, that is, when we weren’t doing our chores around the house and yard. Almost all of my duties were inside the old house since my Mom worked two blocks away at the Paragon Bank all day and Dad hardly ever got home from work before 6:00 in the evening.

It was my responsibility as the eldest daughter to keep the house tidy and maybe even prepare the evening meal for our family if Mom had to work late. The rest of my siblings took care of everything else and were often outside, even on Saturdays, playing or hanging out with their friends, while I was inside doing my assigned tasks or doing what I liked best, reading and drawing. I spent a lot of time in the old Victorian house by myself – or so I thought for the first two, calm, years. Paranormal events in my life started gradually and in the most mundane ways. Our parents never allowed us to keep pets in the house, but my sister and I would sneak our cats or kittens into the house occasionally when the parents were not at home during the day, but mostly my sister and I would let the animals in late at night, after Mom and Dad had gone to bed. Our bedroom was on the ground floor and it was easy for the cats to jump up the few feet onto our window sill and come through the old windows which easily slipped open. Our kitties (one for each of us!) knew they would be warm and safe for the night, plus, we loved to have the soft furry cats snuggle down in bed with us in the old cold house. I had one very affectionate feline that I had named Butterscotch because of the creamy light-yellow color of his long fur. He was a frequent visitor to the window sill and often came in to sleep with one or the other in our twin beds. He was hefty in bulk and purred like a loaded freight train going uphill – in other words, very loud, when he was satisfied with his situation. A constant hunter of mice throughout the neighborhood, Butterscotch lived for only a few short years before he became a victim of the traffic on Border Street, the thoroughfare in front of our house. He was a hit and run fatality which required immediate burial at the edge of the flower garden. Even though his carcass was dead and buried, Butterscotch lived on. For several weeks after his demise on the street, he would crawl up on our beds to sleep with us. We heard his distinctive purr, and we felt his heavy paws walking around on our beds trying to find his sleeping spot for the night. I have to admit, his visits frightened us a little because we knew that Butterscotch was dead and buried in the flower garden near our window.

When my sister and I finally told our parents about our encounters with the ghostly cat, Dad just laughed and told us to be glad Butterscotch still wanted to see us, but Mom told us to forget it because it was our imagination. I know my sister and I did not imagine the occasional nightly excursions by the spirit of Butterscotch because it happened too many times. Looking back, I now realize that was the first indication of my Mother’s denial of the existence of ghosts or paranormal events and Dad’s acceptance. It was definitely my first bona fide encounter with a spirit, let alone an animal spirit, and I realized from the experience with Butterscotch that cats and dogs can be directly connected with the spirit realm. When I was about fifteen I had a different sort of experience with the paranormal in the big house on Border Street. It was a typical early evening in the summertime; the time before twilight when the sun is falling toward the western horizon, occasionally hiding behind a low- level cloud causing bright oranges, reds and pinks to color up the sky. Paragon’s few streetlights were just starting to light up. The house was not quite dark inside but would be before many more minutes had passed. I started to walk into my bedroom taking the shortcut through my parent’s room and past the upstairs entrance when I saw it. “It” was a bright column of light, slightly pulsating, in the size and shape of an adult human in the standing position in the center of my bedroom. I paused and stared at it for a few seconds, entranced by the solid, yet glowing object. I squinted and blinked my eyes to make sure I was not imagining the entity, then slowly backed out, turned and took flight to the kitchen where Mom was working. I told her what I had seen, and she followed me back, retracing my steps carefully, both of us fearing we may run into it. Of course, the bright, glowing form was no longer there. She told me it was my imagination, and most of all, to forget about it. This was Mom’s second denial of an experience which was later to change my life and place me on my search for the answers to paranormal events. I obeyed my mother and did not tell my Dad about the incident that night, but I know that I did later in life. The light-filled specter was something I will never forget because the manifestation is burned into my memories where it is as clear as if it just happened yesterday. I know that I was fortunate to get a good look at a spirit from the other side. If the specter had ever appeared to me again in the house on Border Street, I know I would

19 have been more prepared for it the second time. During the eight years our family lived in the old Victorian house, several events such as lost items which would reappear in a different location, low whispers, soft knocks, those noticeable shadow movements out of the corners of our eyes, and the generally creepy “feelings” which occurred to make us look over our shoulders more than once. Once and a while a door would audibly unlatch and come open on its own, especially the heavy wooden door between my bedroom and the bathroom. Even as a kid, I found the occurrences unnerving but tolerable thanks to my Dad. My most significant supernatural recollections of the old house were audible. These memories concerned the tinny-sounding music which played in the upstairs rooms the moment I was alone in the house - except for the one occasion which I will relate later, when my Dad and Mom heard it. When I was alone, and no matter which room I occupied, the radio-like music would drift down the stairs and throughout the old drafty house. Along with the indistinguishable tunes, I would occasionally hear unintelligible voices mixed in, all sounding like an old-time radio broadcast. The ethereal audio broadcasts all seemed to be just at the edge of my human hearing capabilities in decibels and wavelength. My brothers shared the upstairs and I constantly checked their bedroom to find out if they had left a radio on, but because the music and voices sounded like an old time AM radio transmission with a slightly off-station, interference static, or electronic crackle sound to it and not the sounds of the day, the Beach Boys, Beatles or Mo Town, I knew it was not their carelessness. Never frightened but always curious, I would follow the sounds up the stairs and on every occasion, they would cease just as I got to the point where I could see along the floor and into the hallway which ran directly into a large bedroom. I could never make it to landing at the top of the narrow steps and onto the hallway floor before the sounds stopped. I tried several methods of sneaking up the steps, quick, slow, and even crawling on my hands and knees crouching as low as possible to hide myself (sorry - I was a teenager but doesn’t that put an image in your mind!) and pausing on each step for a few seconds all the way to the top. Even with all my ingenious ways of approaching the top of the stairs, I continued to have no

20 luck in catching the phantom spirit listening to his radio. There were times when I was sure that my Mother thought I was borderline crazy. (I think I remember her actually saying it once!) My Dad knew better, but even he questioned the radio sounds and voices since there was never anyone in the house with me to back up my claims - until the eventful night both parents heard the sounds. It was just after midnight in the early fall of 1969 and all were in bed when my Dad and Mom came into our bedrooms and told us to immediately follow them outside – the house was on fire! After he had his family safely tucked away in the family station wagon, and against Mom’s protests, Dad re-entered the house for some reason. Fortunately, the town’s volunteer fire department showed up at this time also, and while some of the men pulled out hoses and ladders and other gear, the fire chief and his assistant followed Dad back through the rear door and into the house. Since there was no smoke to be seen or smelled and no apparent flames shooting out of the windows or through the roof, they all thought the structure was safe enough to re-enter. After what seemed to be hours (although I’m sure it was only a few minutes) to all of us sitting impatiently in the car, Dad and the fire chiefs all exited the house and had a huddled discussion with the volunteers who had already unloaded the necessary equipment and prepared everything to fight a fire. Then, after the discussion, the firemen reloaded their equipment and drove away in their little red trucks. Dad appeared at the car door, told us that it was safe, to come back into the house, and to go back to bed – there was no fire found anywhere in the structure. There was to be no explanation that night for any of us as to what happened and why the fire department had been called. The next morning, my Dad had already departed for work when we kids woke up, so we left for school still confused as to the events of the previous night. Mom gave us no explanation of the events, but when Dad finally got home from work he told us everything. He said that he was rudely awakened just after midnight to what sounded like a fire - the crackling noises – and after shaking Mom awake, immediately started to investigate.

Although he and Mom smelled no smoke, it sounded to both of them like the fire noises were coming from within the attic area on the backside of the house close to my brothers’ upstairs bedroom. That’s when he decided not to take any chances in the old house, had Mom evacuate all of us to the family station wagon in the backyard, and proceeded to call the Paragon Volunteer Fire Department which was located only a couple of blocks away in the small town. As predicted, the local volunteers arrived quickly and since they still did not see flames or smell smoke, several of them armed with axes followed my Dad back into the house. Once in there, the men walked and crawled through the attics, but the crackling and hissing sounds were no longer to be heard, and there was still no smoke to be smelled or fire to be seen. From our vantage point in the car, we could see the firemen moving around from room to room since the electricity was still on and occasionally the light beams from their flashlights would reflect off the roofs. The fact that they found nothing really bothered my Dad – he knew what he had heard. Mom heard it too. It was several years later, after my older brothers and sister had left the nest and I had just graduated from college, that my youngest brother Gregg, Mom and Dad moved to a newer, smaller house on the other side of town, that my Dad finally spoke to me in confidence about the incident. He concluded that in the years since the “fire in the attic” incident, he had decided, with no misgiving in his opinion, that the noisy disturbances which alarmed him and Mom that night was the white noise of a radio transmission which was “off-station” or “off- air” and could have been ethereal or ghostly, like the radio transmissions I had always claimed to perceive when I was alone in the old house. I could not believe what I was hearing after all those years since my experiences! Being an experienced ham radio operator, and citizen’s band radio aficionado, Dad knew radios. He finally acknowledged to me what he heard - the blare of white noise from a radio transmission, and although she would never discuss it, Mom heard the same sounds that strange night.

Someone finally believed me about my paranormal radio experiences and it was the one

22 person I always knew it would be – my Dad! I always wondered why I wasn’t selected to hear the attic noises too that night. There was an intriguing motive why Dad brought up the topic concerning that mystifying, yet almost forgotten, night; Dad had received information (it was about six years after my family relocated) that our old Victorian house in Paragon burned to the ground in the wee hours of the morning– from an attic fire! Not all of my childhood was spent with the paranormal, but there was one particular day when I thought a totally new strangeness had entered my life. The occurrence of this event was possibly 1965 or 1966, but the year isn’t really that important, not as much as the day, which was sometime on one of the Saturdays in May, prior to the Memorial Day weekend. It was about noon and Mom and Dad were at work, and I was at home alone watching over my youngest brother, Gregg, who was about four or five years old at the time. Gregg was amusing himself at the edge of the vegetable garden playing in the loose soil with his Tonka trucks. I had stepped into the house for some reason when he suddenly came running through the front door, slamming the screen door, and shouting at the top of his lungs for me to come outside – there was “a flying gas-can!” His excitement first made me think that someone was trying to harm him. I was only a young teenager, but I was also very protective and would allow no one to hurt my baby brother, so I followed Gregg back outside to see what was alarming him. A quick look around the yard assured me there was nothing in sight which could possibly be a danger to him, but Gregg was looking up, jumping up and down, and pointing toward the cloud filled sky and shouting, “Flying gas-can, see the flying gas-can”. I looked up, and from behind the clouds and the thick green foliage of the yard’s silver maples came the generously proportioned, shining “flying gas-can”. All I could do was laugh at his excitement and his description of the airborne object.

I presume to a small boy who had been hearing about unidentified flying objects almost all of

23 his short life, Gregg thought we were being descended upon by little green men in their flying saucers, but it was just the bright sunshine reflecting off the shiny aluminum of the “Goodyear Blimp” slowly making its yearly trek to Speedway, Indiana, for the Indianapolis 500. Little green Martians be damned - no UFO’s for us! Although he barely remembers the event, Gregg still gets ribbed, at least by me, about his experience after all these years and I am fondly reminded of it every time I see a dirigible. Of course, Gregg’s observations that summer day was the start of my family unit’s futile search for UFO’s and proof of alien life. By family unit, I mostly am referring to my younger brother, my sister and myself and Dad, but not so much Mom. Even though our hunt started in the middle 1960’s, we were a few years late in joining the rest of the nation. According to Frank Edwards, a former evening news personality and an almost forgotten Fortean author, everyone, and I do mean everyone, in Indiana and the surrounding states (especially Michigan) were witnessing flying saucers and unidentified aircraft in the skies everywhere and at any time and had been for twenty years. We brought out Dad’s old WW2 binoculars, convinced him to purchase a couple more pair of the least expensive ones we could find, and spent the whole summer laying on an old blanket in the backyard staring up at the stars. If it wasn’t too oppressively humid on some starry nights, Gregg, my sister and I, pitched Dad’s other relic of WW2, an old, musty smelling, green army tent. We would lay on the ground with our heads stuck through the opening, so we would not miss the UFOs we were so confident we would eventually see sometime during the cricket deafening hours of darkness. Every now and then my parents would join us and maybe we would drink hot chocolate or an iced down Double Cola or Orange Kool-Ade and eat popcorn to help pass the time. Needless to say – we were not lucky enough to find any extraterrestrials in the sky, except for the non-living sort. Being the ultimate science nerd, I used that summer to teach my parents and younger siblings the heavenly constellations and the origin and mechanics of meteorites. And, lucky for us, that season there were several first-rate August nights for the yearly display of the magnificent Perseids meteor shower. There were only a few shiny objects flying over that we could not explain. It was only a

24 few years since the commencement of the space race for our nation and satellites were being sent overhead on what seemed like a weekly basis - so we were sure the speeding points of light we did notice were most likely just satellites. Plus, we lived on an approach pattern for landing incoming planes at the Indianapolis Weir Cook Airport and any of the questionable items were probably just small planes. There was an outbreak of excitement for a couple of weeks during the summer of our mighty UFO search. Neighbors reported seeing bright red and white, flickering lights flying overhead close to the south end of town. It had the whole town of about four hundred citizens looking toward the skies each night until the local law enforcement caught up with a couple of young men, local tricksters, who were strapping flares to helium balloons and launching the “UFOs” under the cover of the high cornfields southwest of town. Their alcohol aided pranks were enlivening and kept our hopes high, but sadly, there were to be no little alien ships for us during our summer of sky watching vigils. Other summers that followed only occasionally brought us back into the tent in the yard and as the years progressed, my siblings grew older and became more interested in the activities usually associated with young adulthood. I never lost my interest. While the government investigation supposedly culminated late in 1968 with the era of the research for the Condon Report and publication of the “official” findings in the government’s release of Project Bluebook, my family and I never stopped looking into the heavens. I have seen what I would call unidentified flying objects because I have encountered sky objects that made me look twice and was still unsure as to what they were; but those self- experienced sightings would not fall into the realm of a “flying saucer” or “flying triangle” in my opinion. The extraterrestrial subject matter is still one issue I need to examine more closely, or maybe have an actual encounter. Just for the record, during my college years, and because I was taking a course in astronomy, I read the U.S. government’s official report, Project Bluebook.

The study was worthy of note and tedious at the same time and seemed to be very biased

25 toward not trusting anyone, not even their own U.S. Air Force highly trained pilots, other aerospace experts and some respected university scientists. The report did not make me, a mere student of the earth sciences, cease my probing studies concerning the UFO phenomena or keep me from constantly gazing toward the skies. If anything, the investigation just made me more curious as to why our government, through the US Air Force and the Defense Department, would go to such lengths to, in essence, dub so many United States citizens deceitful or untrustworthy. The question I ask is who are the deceitful ones concerning the UFO phenomena - the public or the government? In addition, what critical data was left out of the official report that would induce a distinguished Ohio State University and later Northwestern University professor of astro- physics, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, to switch positions and become an advocate in the search for proof of the existence of the crafts the general public had labeled “flying saucers?” When the study first started in 1948, about the time of the Roswell mystery, Dr. Hynek was known as a staunch believer in the theory that all UFO sightings could be easily explained. As the study advanced he became discouraged by the persistent negative attitude of the military investigators who would not give the saucer theory a chance to exist, even though there were some incidents which were definitely not merely explained away as just “Venus or Jupiter.” Throughout the many years of the assessment, Dr. Hynek, regardless of his own scientific opinions and observations, was pressured to please the government officials and military men he was working with. In 1966, there were numerous sightings in Michigan and Dr. Hynek became a well-known public figure for announcing to the world that the sightings were “swamp gas”, much to the embarrassment of the reporting residents of Michigan and Dr. Hynek himself who was pushed into a corner to have natural explanations for all the reported incidents. By 1968, when the Air Force’s report was released in Project Bluebook, Dr. Hynek had developed an open mind to the subject of UFOs; just the opposite of the government’s “official” released findings concerning their existence. I still haven’t observed any object I would define as the classic “Unidentified Flying Object”, or flying saucer, but I’m still looking and trying to learn all I can about the anomaly. Finally, in 2012, a friend and I joined the Mutual UFO Network, MUFON, to learn more about

26 the subject. Maybe being a member of that organization will attract those little green aliens to me because as I said before – I’m still looking! As kids, teenagers and young adults get older; we tend to forget many of the little incidents which occurred while growing up that reminded us that life is full of twists and turns. Thinking back, I think I gave my guardian angels and spirit guides a daily workout. Some incidents could have been very hazardous such as when we broke mercury thermometers to obtain the silvery liquid to coat dimes and other objects, or when we all licked the cow salt block in the pasture. It could include such scary incidents as the Friday afternoon a huge globe light dropped from the sixteen-foot ceiling of the old high school I attended and missed me as well of another classmate walking alongside me, by just a fraction of an inch. The falling light fixture was so close that when it shattered we felt the glass scrape our legs. The loud noise brought everyone out of the classrooms to see what happened. It happened so quickly that we both initially thought someone had thrown something at us. Then, there was the time I was seven years old and fell about eighteen feet from a upper roof beam of our barn and landed on the only broken bale of hay in the building – which kept me from getting seriously hurt. Plus, I must not forget the time my dear old Dad gave me a “new” bicycle to ride only to discover, after Sir Isaac Newton’s gravity on a steep downhill ride pulled me into a blackberry thorn crammed ravine, that the bike had no brakes, and of course it might have been helpful if the tires had some air in them too. I’m sure that if my Mom and Dad were around that they could contribute many other hair-graying events. Among the many lessons I learned from my formative years, it’s that life is fragile, and certainly precarious. I’m positive there are many events which occurred during my early years that I have forgotten, but occasionally some odd occurrence, a person’s name, or long misplaced artifact or newspaper articles which will bring old recollections back to the forefront. I always laugh when I see the bumper sticker that says, “Don’t drive faster than your Guardian Angel can fly!” because I am sure that my spirit guardians have been using rockets to keep up with me, even to this very day!

Chapter 3. Going Forward into Adulthood – The Domovoi

Strangeness continued to be an integral component of my life into adulthood. During and after I graduated from the universities and established the foundations for my career, I was distracted away from the paranormal as I concentrated on launching my worldly positions, both professional and personal. The spirit realm was not to be forgotten and as I already stated, we tend to forget the minor phenomena, but there are always those extraordinary incidents which leave us wondering “what just happened”? One such event occurred during the late summer of 1981, a time when I was not mentally encouraging any supernatural experiences and was completely wrapped up my material existence. I was a newlywed with lots of new family and temporarily living in the Bedford, Indiana, community where I was acquainted with only a few of the town’s inhabitants who were not kinfolk to my husband. We were living temporarily in an old rickety house owned by his mother and unfortunately, it was right next to her home and in town, both situations not to my liking. I was not thinking about spirits, I didn’t have time for them. I was still employed by the INDOT’s central laboratory on the east side of Indianapolis, about a 180-mile round trip drive and lucky for me I only had to make the drive once or twice each week. It was a long drive from Indianapolis to Bedford after working all day in the office or lab, but mostly all week on the road with the drilling crews, and I was not content trying to deal with a mother-in law who was very accommodating but exasperating at times. My husband and I desired a home away from her home and preferably out in the quiet countryside. About six months after I married my first husband, Herbert, I purchased an old house in Fayetteville, a small village that is mostly just a crossroads, five miles west of Bedford, Indiana. Fayetteville is the hub of a scattering of houses along old State Route 158, with many large old family farms surrounding it. During those years it also had an old fashion general store, a one- man barbershop, a volunteer fire station and a small elementary school. Herb was a Bedford native, but he too was quite fond of the enchanting rural community and its citizens.

It was with excitement and anticipation that I moved the last of my belongings out of storage

28 and to the one of the most country-folk friendly and pint-sized communities I have ever had the privilege to live in. The structure was of an undetermined age although I would guess it was most likely more than one hundred years and had been originally been built as a typical two room abode, but over the years it had been modernized with two bedrooms, a large bath, and a utility room and both front and rear porches, to make it a small, but comfortable house. It was as cozy as the neighborhood. The residence had been empty for almost three years after the death of Mr. Eggers, the previous owner. His heirs had tried to sell it quickly, and even after reducing the price several times they still had no buyers – until I came along. I love old homes with character and so was immediately attracted to the small tin roofed structure, the bargain price and the residents of the Fayetteville community, so we bought it. I would like to say the dwelling had a lot of spirit activity, but it wasn’t to be so. The house was friendly to us. It made us feel good just to be home. And, I think the reason for that was because of the one and only paranormal incident I can recall which occurred the second week after we moved in. I had taken a few vacation days away from my geologist position with the Department of Transportation (still in Indianapolis!) to finish up the move and get boxes emptied out, the kitchen organized, and the small bits and pieces associated with life put away. Herb was at work and I was alone in the house. It was a hot, humid, August day and because the only room which had an air conditioner was our bedroom, I saved the work in that room for the hottest part of the day and cranked the old decrepit appliance to the maximum setting. Around 4 p.m. I had finished emptying all the containers except one. I was definitely not sleeping and was working in the cooled bedroom sorting through an ancient dilapidated hatbox of Herb’s family’s old pictures and other ancestral artifacts. I had carefully spread the assorted items for him to see on the quilt which topped the bed. I heard the front doors open and close, and then the sound of heavy boots tread across the oak boards of the living room floor. The footsteps then passed through the other bedroom, which also had hardwood floors, and

29 then enter onto the linoleum floored bathroom where the sounds stopped. After entering the bathroom, there were no further noises such as one might expect from a man just getting home after a long hot day at work. Naturally, I thought it was Herb. Because of the noisy air conditioner in the bedroom, I remember loudly shouting an enthusiastic greeting to the individual who entered, “Welcome home! I missed you. It’s been a long day here without you! Come to the bedroom, I’ve got some pictures to show you.” Herb never came into the bedroom from the bathroom and didn’t respond to me which was unlike him. Concerned that I didn’t hear him making the usual noises in the bathroom I went to check to see if he was okay. I opened the adjoining door between the bedroom and bathroom and looked in to see that no one was there. I looked all through the house - nobody. No one was in the house except me, and the front doors were still locked. I stepped outside and looked around the exterior of the house and the yard – nobody. That was the moment when it became apparent to me that possibly the small house in Fayetteville was haunted by some former male resident. I was not frightened, but thought the incident intriguing; after all, I was raised in a house with paranormal activity. When Herb came home at his scheduled time, around 5:15, I related the event to him, but he assured me that he had been at work all day. I already was certain that he was not the one who came home at 4:00 – but somebody did, and that individual still had his work boots on and had gone directly to the bathroom! I always wanted to hear a repeat of the phantom boots moving through the house during the eight years we lived there, but never did. Plus, there were no other paranormal incidents at the house in my memory. I will always think that the reason that house felt so warm and inviting is because I welcomed that ethereal visitor, or former resident, into my home that day and he always watched over us while we lived there. I always wondered who the spirit was. I had little knowledge of the history of the old house except that it was one of the earliest structures ever built in Fayetteville and had not always been used as a residence.

But, I prefer to think the spirit was the previous owner, Mr. Eggers, who had lived there for

30 many years prior to passing away but was still in residence. I learned that every house and sometimes its residents, needs watching over; whether this be from the living or the spirit realm. A dear Russian friend educated me concerning the Slavic tradition of a “Domovoi”, a house spirit which is connected to a house and sometimes to a family. The Domovoi watches over the house and keeps the structure and the family residing in the house safe from intruders, whether living, elemental, and even from the spirit realm itself. When a family moves into a new house, they must introduce themselves to the resident Domovoi and explain to it that they will be living there, ask for acceptance and be allowed to stay. Tradition says that even visitors who are staying overnight with the family should ask to be accepted or the Domovoi will attempt to scare the guests into leaving. Maybe the old Fayetteville house had a resident Domovoi, and me, who is not Slavic and was not aware of the Slavic beliefs and ritual at that time, unknowingly followed the correct protocol to be accepted by the spirit. I’ll never know for sure about the Domovoi, but I do know that I was attracted to that historic structure from the moment I set foot in it and always felt safe during the seven years Herb and I lived there. There was even a bit of sadness when we finally moved away, and I said my final good-byes to the structure and its spirit.

Chapter 4. Return to Paragon and the Family Farm

In April of 1989, Herb and I left Fayetteville behind and moved forty-five miles north, closer to my family and to Herb’s doctors in Indianapolis. He had become ill with cardio- vascular disease and could no longer work because he was constantly in and out of the hospitals. The timing for our move was a good thing because it corresponded with the completion of the sale of my Mother’s family farm in rural Paragon, Indiana. Fortunately, I was able to afford and very pleased to purchase the old homestead from the rest of the heirs following the death of my Grandfather Monte in the fall of 1988. Spiritual activity in the farm house took a break for several years with no mentionable activity other than a few orbs and Grandpa Monte making an appearance on a Saturday afternoon. I think most of the spirits were waiting until my unsettled life of having a full time job, a sick husband, and a farm to take care of, calmed to a more manageable situation. By this, I mean a period where the spirits could capture more of my attention; this did not mean a total absence of strangeness. Another of those “What just happened?” moments occurred one hot summer in the early nineties. Herbert, along with my Uncle Floyd, both loved the weekly Saturday night auction sales. I hardly ever attended the smoky, noisy, smoky, crowded, smoky, event (it was really smoky!) and in agreement with my Aunt Ruby’s decision, we let the boys have their excitement and the girls stayed home. Herb would drive the two miles to Uncle Floyd’s house and they would ride together. On this particular Saturday, there was a strong thunderstorm building in the west and Herb thought it would be to their advantage leave a little early in order to get a parking spot closer to the auction barn, so as he was leaving, Herb asked me to call Floyd and inform him that he was already on his way. I dialed their number; a local number but with a different prefix, and the phone rang several times with no answer. I hung up and hit the redial, trying again because I knew they were home. Finally, after two attempts, a small boy answered the phone, and because I recognized his voice, called him by name. It was my seven-year-old nephew, Gary James, or as we called him, “Bubby”.

I told him that Herb had already left and was coming earlier than planned to pick up Uncle Floyd and to please let him know. Bubby said he couldn’t tell Floyd, so I asked to speak to Aunt Ruby. He said neither of them was there. This alarmed me since both were elderly and they had already planned out their evening. I asked Bubby where they were, and he responded ”At home I guess”, and proceeded to inform me he was at the Martinsville, Indiana, Police Station! My next questions were “What are you doing there?” and “Did you dial my phone number?” He responded by saying he had not dialed my number but had merely answered the police station’s phone because it kept ringing. Bubby was there with his mother, Mary, who worked in the city hall for the Martinsville Water Department, and because it was boring in the water office, occasionally visited with the police officers in their dayroom. No officer was present when the phone began ringing, so like any seven-year-old would do, Bubby answered it. I told him to be a good boy and quit answering the police department’s phone and hung up. I pushed the redial button to confirm I had dialed my aunt and uncle’s phone number, and sure enough, Aunt Ruby answered the phone on the first ring, sweetly emphasized I was late with the message, and that the men had already departed. She said her phone did not ring on my first two attempts. I know absolutely that I did not dial the Martinsville Police Department’s dayroom phone number, (which I didn’t know) and additionally, to have my young nephew there at that minute to randomly answer their phone was really an episode of weirdness. Even after all the years that have passed since then, I’m still scratching my head over that event. It wasn’t until I made a decision to write this book that I realized just how many paranormal experiences touched my life and how all-encompassing the incidents have been to me and to those around me.

Chapter 5. Bob’s Beginnings

Before I go any further with my life’s events, I must acquaint my readers with the history of my second husband, Robert; also know more frequently as Bob. The way we met was rather unusual with a little of the supernatural thrown in, but the spirits of our universe definitely wanted us to be together. My psychic told me so! Bob grew up living next to his mother’s parents of Danish and German ancestry, both aware of the spectral folklore of their homelands, but they did not share it with Bob. His father’s family never spoke of the paranormal either, an unusual fact because they were of Irish and Scotch decent and everyone knows the Irish and Scotch like to relate the ancestral folklore. I guess the Scotch characteristics, more pragmatic than idealistic beliefs, were the principal perspectives that determined their outlook on life and in the raising of their children, and the fact that the hard times they lived through required diligence just to survive. Another factor could be that neither side of his family was particularly religious and did not attend church as did most American families of that generation. Not having the rich family traditions or folklore such as I experienced when growing up to nurture his point of view, Bob relates his own stories of unusual events which happened to him throughout his life. Some of his narratives sound like tall tales to me, but there is always seems to be a witness to reinforce his claims of his paranormal experiences. It didn’t take long after we were married that I realized Bob has a wonderful gift for seeing the spirits who have crossed back into our world. This is a gift which other members of his family do not have, or at least were and are not now, compelled to talk about. With the knowledge of his abilities, and the experiences we have had together, it has become easier for me to accept his unusual accounts of seeing haunts. So, I guess, after looking back, it’s not so remarkable that Bob and I were drawn together as husband and wife and to seek out the paranormal as we do. I have often said to our friends and supporters, Bob and I make a great team, and the spirit realm seems to approve our relationship.

In 1976, Bob’s parents decided to move from Indianapolis to a small gentleman’s farm near Monrovia, Indiana. Accessed down a quarter mile, tree-lined, constricted gravel drive, the twelve-acre plot originally was comprised of an antiquated and dilapidated, pioneer style log cabin at the end of the road and a basement dwelling near the front of the property line. Bob’s parents moved two mobile homes onto the property; one next to the basement dwelling location for his maternal grandparents Ralph and Margaret, and another for them near the foundation of the hastily dismantled log cabin. His oldest sister, Marcia, later moved another mobile home to a spot farther back on the property after they completed an extension of the gravel road. The transformations to the property appear to be the trigger that generated Bob’s paranormal experiences since he did not experience any unusual events while living in Indianapolis. His first notable experience was near the location where the log cabin was originally situated. Bob was around seventeen years of age – not a child. While sitting in the yard early one evening, near dusk when the sun was just starting to set behind the western tree line, he heard a rustling noise over his shoulder. Sun to his back, he turned to see a gold colored mist, roughly in the shape of a large man coming from about thirty feet away, within the lines of stones which marked the former log cabin’s foundation. The energy was moving slowly, and was advancing his direction, seemingly in a menacing way. My husband, even in his late teens, was a big guy and not one to back down from a fight, especially with something which was vapid and glowing – so he headed toward it. The golden entity disappeared in an instant. Bob’s actions must have frightened it back into the realm it came from because the energy has never been seen since by any of the residents of the property. The family has always assumed it was the ghost of a man who supposedly hung himself near the cabin many years ago, or Mrs. Neal, the previous owner of the property. Some of Bob’s early paranormal experiences were not of the ghostly type, but of his claims that a Bigfoot or Sasquatch roamed the woods near the area around Monrovia. Most of his experiences with the fabled man of the woods were centered around his home on the property and the adjoining dense forest.

The forest held many clues to the creatures’ existence; saplings broken five to six feet above the ground, areas where it appeared “nesting” had occurred which included structures or blinds made out of sticks and branches of leaves, and the strange warbling calls supposedly made by such man-like creatures. But Bob did not even need to seek out his Bigfoot – the creature came to observe him at his house many times during the time of the waning sun for several summers in the years between 1989 and 1995. After the deaths of both grandparents who live on the twelve acres, Bob moved into their mobile home then eventually replaced it with a garage with overhead living quarters. He built a wood deck along the south side of his new home on the second floor which gave him a panoramic view of his yard and the woods. Within this view was a small green utility shed, located between his house and the tree line, but closer to the forest. Just after the sunset, in the twilight of the early evenings, Bob’s Bigfoot would come up behind the small building and softly hum or warble as if letting Bob know of his presence. All other animal noises would cease at this time causing an unnerving silence in the area, and Bob’s two old Labradors would not come out of their kennel doghouses. Occasionally, the hairy man of the woods would move slightly from behind the ten-foot-tall shed just enough that the observers could easily estimate his height at about eight feet. After a few minutes observing his human targets, the beast would surreptitiously slip back into the thick foliage and the forest sounds would return to a normal level. The last time the Sasquatch made his presence known was when Bob, three of his family members and his two dogs, were walking along a trail in the woods. The foliage was thick down both sides of the path and it was difficult to see very far into the woods. It was getting dark and they were hurrying to get home since two of the hikers were children and they had no flashlights. Suddenly, there was a loud groan and growling noise from behind the thick wall of foliage and they realized they were being stalked by something considerably larger than them walking parallel to their path. The noises of the woods ceased also at this time. Picking up their speed, the human male party of four, including Bob, almost sprinted out of the woods and into the safety of his yard with the creature smashing through the woods beside them.

The dogs were nowhere to be seen since they had run toward the house at the first sound. Fortunately, the tale ends here since the creature ceased his stalking when the group reached the open grass. Bob never again saw, or heard from, his Bigfoot visitor after that incident. Bob never told many outside of his immediate family about the Bigfoot encounters for fear that someone would come to harm his woodsy friend. He used his experiences to learn as much as he could about that particular crypto-animal and unconsciously, also made his first step into the science of paranormal research. Although he had experienced what he called a Bigfoot, when I first met him Bob considered himself a skeptic of ghosts, shadow people, electronic voice phenomenon and demon possession, or anything supernatural. This is as it should be for a paranormal investigator. A good investigator just doesn’t accept what others say and Bob knew he would require an enormous amount of evidence or proof that such entities exist alongside the accepted sciences. Before we were married, when I started relating to Bob a number of my childhood paranormal experiences and those events which occurred over the last several years, I could tell by the look on his face that he had trouble accepting my reasoning. Just as my Mother constantly gave me her negative viewpoint of paranormal activity during my pre- adult years, Bob would politely remind me he was a disbeliever and all my experiences with spirits were figments of my imagination. He held this opinion that until our fateful stay at the notoriously haunted Myrtles Plantation.

Chapter 6. Teaming Up for the Paranormal

I decided to begin a more public and active paranormal life in 2005. I would call it the beginning of a crossroads or a watermark, to my lifestyle. Up until then, my personal friends and work acquaintances always considered me a quiet and unassuming individual who really did very little to draw attention or make waves, as the old cliques say. My actual reaching out to the spirit realm had been limited to four visits to a psychic medium, at the old spiritualist settlement known as Camp Chesterfield near Anderson, Indiana, and teaching myself to read Tarot cards as a entertainment project for my friends. But, I was now living in a truly haunted house and the spirits seemed to be calling to me, so it was time to revolutionize my everyday life. Hanging out in haunted places came a lot easier to my husband Bob and I than most of our friends and family thought it would. I, being a 35-year veteran in science and foundation engineering as a geologist and with Bob's many years as a mechanic and working in auto parts retail, deciding to make ghost hunting and paranormal research a significant undertaking was not particularly on our to-do list as a retirement goal. We both have been professionally trained to look at things and situations in an analytical way, but as I have mentioned, the weird and inexplicable has always captivated both of us throughout our lives. It had become my belief that with modern human views becoming more acceptable to the possible reality that greater than imagined parameters of the paranormal sciences truly exist, and with fresh technological advances in paranormal research, there may now or in the very near future, be an accepted method or course of action to scientifically prove the existence of a more spiritual realm. In the spring of 2006 I decided it was time for this mainstream scientist (or so I call myself) and my practical, sidekick husband to no longer be an amateur and to seriously investigate the topic - the many facets of the paranormal field were definitely calling to us.

Besides, the ghost hunting experiences of the professional investigators on the cable reality shows looked so thought-provoking and exciting, that Bob and I had to give it a try no matter what the sometimes-obtuse opinions were of our friends and family concerning ghost hunting or other types of paranormal investigations. Don’t laugh, but we initially trained ourselves where to look and how to use the necessary ghost hunting tools by watching the paranormal groups on Travel Channel's, A&E's and the Sy-Fy Channel's ghost hunting reality shows. Being science oriented, I particularly enjoyed the Kreck Brothers and their “Ghost Lab”, the show I considered to have the best equipment and the most scientific approach to investigations geared to the haunted. Bob and I watched everything that was aired. We studied the groups investigation techniques and made note of their equipment and how to use it, all the while making a list of their ghost hunting locations, including the places where there seemed to be no haunting or paranormal experiences. We set up our rules about not ever playing tricks or pulling pranks on each other during investigations, made the decision we would just investigate to compile scientific data and not necessarily ghost “bust”, and acknowledged our faith in Almighty God Yahweh and learned to protect ourselves with prayers of protection. We read every book we could find on the subject and started to practice using our basic ghost hunting equipment in our own home, church and local cemeteries, until one day, we decided we were ready to spread our spirit web. With voice recorders, cameras and EMP meters in hand, Bob and I jumped into our mini- van and headed west on a short vacation to try our luck at a location already deemed to be “haunted” by the television ghost hunting professionals.

The Crescent Hotel Our first major undertaking was in the late fall of 2005 to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, to the picturesque Crescent Hotel. The Crescent has had an unusual and somewhat unpleasant history - an unfortunate occurrence for the innkeepers and advantageous for all of us ghost hunters.

The four-story building was initially built in 1886 as one of America’s grand hotels, catering to the wealthy who desired the high magnesium spa baths and the crisp country air of the mountains. After the great decline of the spa business after 1900, the hotel fell on hard times and the structure was sold to become the Conservatory for Young Women which survived until sometime in the early 1920s. In 1924, the school was reopened to become a junior college admitting both men and women, but it only endured about ten years before the old edifice was vacated again. In the period from 1937 to 1940, the slightly deteriorated yet magnificent limestone structure became the Baker Hospital, or Baker Institute, as it was called at the time. The sanatorium accepted hundreds of patients diagnosed specifically with cancer. It was administrated by a dubious character who claimed to be a physician, Dr. Norman Baker, who in reality offered no viable cure to anyone who came for assistance. Baker just took their money and let his patients anguish and die. The many bodies of the cancer victims were set aside in a basement area, and only taken out at night so that the other patients and their families would not see the actual number of deaths taking place in the fancy hospital which was supposed to give them optimism and hope for a full recovery. Finally, in 1939, the Federal Postal authorities and the Arkansas State Medical Association caught up with the swindler Baker, closed down his hospital, and incarcerated the phony doctor of medicine for four years in Leavenworth Prison for hoaxing his patients. Even though the man had scammed an estimated $4,000,000 from his primary source of revenue, phony cancer cures, the authorities were unable to bring him to trial for those scams. For some reason, law enforcement could not charge him precisely with the crimes against his patients, but since Baker had used the U.S. Postal Service to mail out pamphlets to advertise his phony cancer “cures” the officials were able to convict him of hoaxing his patients through mail fraud. Unlike his many duped patients who could have been treated for their diseased bodies and maybe restored to health at a reputable hospital, Norman Baker died a so-called, peaceful death, at his home in Florida in 1958. The old hotel had a rough history but was reopened as such in 1946 and gradually; much of its grandeur has been restored by the latest series of owners who valued the beauty of the Victorian structure.

Today, it’s a gracious and magnificent inn with a deep sense of it’s historic past – and not just in the architecture. A number of the spirits of those victims who passed on while patients of Norman Baker as well as the ghost of the despicable “doctor” seem to have stuck around to haunt the inn. Inn workers and guests, many who were not aware of the haunted reputation of The Crescent, have been witness to many of the specters. The basement area of The Crescent, now a utility and storage location where the unfortunate cancer victims’ bodies were stored, has been deemed a very active paranormal location and has the specter of what appears to be a hospital attendant or military man in residence. In several of the guest rooms throughout the hotel some guests report seeing flashing orbs or lights and hear the whispers of past patients and nurses. Guests and hotel staff report they often feel the cold spots of spirits who are trying to manifest. The phantom figure of an old-style, or traditionally dressed nurse pushing a gurney down the halls and through a non-existent door has been seen by more than one witness. Because there seems to be no interaction between the haunts and the living, the inn’s phantoms are by and large deemed residual energies and will continue to reenact their movements until The Crescent no longer exists. With the history and the many claims by other paranormal groups, especially from a well-known professional group on a reality show, “Ghost Hunters”, the Crescent Hotel seemed to be prime hunting ground for our first outing and a guaranteed success for our initial hunt. Unfortunately, the spirits were avoiding Bob and me on the one and only night we were guests. We left with no ghostly experiences and no evidence, and a great disappointment in our first official paranormal investigation. The most activity we experienced was watching the hotel cat lay in wait for a non-existent squirrel (ghost squirrel?) around the lobby’s fireplace. Two things we did learn from the Crescent experience was that we need to stay more than one night at each location, and preferably, not over a weekend. The fact that there was a rowdy wedding party in attendance which resulted in the hotel staff closing off part of the facility to us didn’t help either.

Bob, being the impatient man that he is, was so irritated with the situation, he even suggested we scare the hotel’s ghost tour as they stood outside our door (we did not). Obviously not including ourselves with the hotel’s boisterous, established ghost tour, we waited until all festivities were quieted down for the evening (or morning as it was) and checked out the paranormal hotspots on all the floors of the hotel, but nothing came through for us. There were no voices on our recordings and nothing in our photos, and neither of us were touched or pinched. It was definitely amateur night for me at the Crescent, and Bob was still a skeptic. As I said, the Crescent Hotel was a great disappointment for us, but we didn't give up on our plans to find some evidence of spectral entities, so we headed back home to Indiana to purchase more ghost-hunting equipment and continue our training, read, read, read, and seek out more locations to investigate.

The Myrtles Plantation It wasn’t long before we made an easy decision about where our next out-of-state ghost hunting experience would be after reading about the experiences of a previous owner and seeing several documentaries concerning that particular area on the ghost hunting shows on television. Our second major exploratory paranormal trip was to consist of two nights at the Myrtles Plantation Bed and Breakfast, in St. Francisville, Louisiana. This beautiful southern plantation had been on my short list for a return to ever since we had visited the area, but not because of the haunts, but the laid back and relaxed atmosphere of the location. The amazing coincidence is that Bob, Jamie and I had actually been taken to the old residence with a Cajun friend of ours while enjoying an excursion of plantations and antebellum homes throughout Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a few years previously. At the time of the first visit I was unaware of the documented paranormal happenings at the place. After visiting old friends in the Greenwell Springs area, Bob and I stopped by the old plantation for lunch one day in December of 2006 and made reservations for the following May. I took many photos all around the outside of the house and headed back to Indiana to make plans.

When reviewing the history of the St. Francisville area and the plantation itself, there is plenty of rationale for a variety of spirits to be in residence. It should first be taken into account that the high knoll alongside the Mississippi River where the plantation and house is located was sacred burial grounds of the indigenous Tunica Indians. The land has committed to memory the death rituals of the Indians, toils and sadness during the years of slavery, the untimely deaths of unfortunate soldiers during the war years and of the many others who resided on the property, including the children. The original mansion was built in 1796 by General David Bradford, famous for his role in the Pennsylvania “Whiskey Rebellion”. He developed it into a successful cotton plantation which required many slaves to work the fields and care for the property. The plantation was seized by the northern army during the waning days of the Civil War and luckily, was not dismantled or burned by them. Although there are stories which claim over ten murders or deaths at the property on the property, only one, that of Col. William Winters, has actually been confirmed by historical records. In recent years the old plantation house has been converted into a successful bed and breakfast which is amicable to all who want to seek out the spirits, relax in a setting full of southern charm or sample the local cuisine at the plantation’s eating place inside the old carriage house. The location has also become a popular place for weddings and reunions because of the moss-covered picturesque oaks and its long, inviting verandas around most of the antebellum mansion. The present owners have built a section of newer accommodations for guests who are not attracted to staying in the old house and there is even a caretaker’s cottage and smaller slave cabin for overnight guests. The Crescent Hotel had disappointed us and we fiercely hoped the Myrtles would live up to its reputation. Wow- did it ever! Our experiences were a life changing experience for my husband. Bob and I didn’t have to call out for the spirits; I think they were waiting on us.

With a lot of personal experiences during the time we were there, the paranormal action started at 3:30 in the afternoon, within an hour of arriving, in our second-floor room in the oldest section of the plantation house, a room most commonly known by the innkeepers and guests as the “William Winters Room”. This was the first time I realized that sometimes we’re not aware the activity we are hearing or observing is paranormal until after the event is over and, in some instances, much, much later. Our encounters started with a shared audio phenomenon of a door opening in the adjoining room, many footsteps on the hardwood floors, followed by laughing and playing children. It also sounded like an adult female present talking with the children, although the words were muffled enough that we could not discern what was being said. The spirits footsteps were heard again after a solid ten minutes of activity as they apparently exited the room. This was followed by the sound of the door closing, leaving the room in silence. Like I said, this was all in the adjoining room, separated from us by only an old wooden door. During the entire encounter, both of us thought that one of the two elderly ladies known to occupy the adjoining room had come back from their touring trip of St. Francisville, and had returned with a couple of children, possibly grandchildren. I made the comment to Bob during the time of the occurrence that I didn’t realize there was more than one double bed in any of the rooms, and maybe the staff had brought in roll-away beds for the kids to use. When the two elderly ladies actually did return from their excursion, about three hours later, I inquisitively inquired about the children we heard. Needless to say, we were shocked to discover that they had no children with them and the two ladies were just then coming back from their tour of St. Francisville. The revelation of what the ladies were saying actually brought some shock as well as smiles to our faces as we realized we had experienced our first unworldly encounter at the Myrtles Plantation! Our logical conclusion was confirmed when the hotel staff informed us that no children were staying at the Myrtles. The fact is that the room was unoccupied by living, breathing humans at the time of the occurrence. Upon further investigation, we discovered that historically the location had been the bedroom and playroom for the two small children said to have been murdered by a slave named “Chloe” in times past.

And unfortunately for us, amateurs that we were, and because we were not expecting anything so soon after arriving, Bob and I had no voice recorder running during the event to document it. That was only the beginning of our encounters with the paranormal on our first day at the Myrtles. Later, in the early morning, around 1:30a.m., while sitting on the patio with two new acquaintances from Mississippi, the apparition of a Confederate soldier was seen to materialize, move a few yards along the fence by the pond (I would say walk, but he had no legs below the thighs) then promptly dissolve into thin air. Our second night, thinking the Confederate soldier might be a residual phantom, we, along with the others who observed the apparition the night before, hung out in the patio area at the same hour of the early morning watching for it. The spectral Rebel did not return on the second night, so we felt ourselves fortunate to have observed a full body apparition on our first night at the Myrtles Plantation. I also think this incident was the awakening of my skeptical husband’s spiritual side. Earlier in the evening of the second night I took many photos of the inside of the mansion, especially in the front foyer area where the main staircase is located. There were quite a few people present so it was a noisy situation – too noisy for EVP’s. Everyone present had their cameras flashing in the large mirror on the wall which some claims to hold the image of a child if observed correctly, and around the clock which has been heard to chime even though there are no working parts inside of it. Around 10:45 pm, everyone had moved their activities outside by the pond except a Lorraine, a young lady from New Martinsville, Louisiana, and me. We were alone, or so we thought. It was close to 11:00pm when I snapped a picture of the red carpeted stairs and Lorraine excitedly told me that I had gotten an image of some sort on the photo. I immediately snapped another from the same position. Upon observing the images, I found the almost perfect, pearl-like orb on the stairs, around the area of the seventeenth step. The second photo had the same orb moved slightly to the right of the stairs and dissipating. What is so exciting about the seventeenth step?

It is said by the inn’s historians and others that the seventeenth step is the specific location where Col. William Winters died in his wife Sarah’s arms, after being shot by an unidentified assailant on the front porch. It has been reported for years that the incident is hauntingly repeated night after night at 11:00 pm, on the seventeenth step. We believe the orb is related to the Col. Winters’ assassination, right time of day, right location - and I have a photograph of the orb! Later that night, or should I say early morning around 2:45 am, after we had already gone to bed, Bob and I woke up at the same time to experience an unexpected extreme cold in our room which, after looking back, I now think was definitely paranormal. It was a hot and humid early May in southern Louisiana, and we had set the air conditioning in our room on 72 degrees. I turned on the light in the room and the temperature on the thermometer on the air conditioning controls showed a cold 62 degrees. It was an impossible ten degree drop! We were new to the ghost hunting pursuit and I should have immediately associated the cold with the possible presence of Chloe, her young charges, or one of the other many specters known to call the second-floor room as their own. There was nothing to be seen in the area as far as any paranormal activity when we turned the lights on, so Bob and I just turned off the air conditioner at the thermostat on the wall, pulled the quilt over us and dropped off to sleep as we waited for the room to warm back up. The bone chilling cold seemed to be a precursor to the incidents which were to occur less than thirty minutes later when the whole mansion was completely evacuated by its guests as a disgusting odor that can only be described as the putrid stench of death, filled the entire mansion. We had already gone back to sleep after the radical drop in room temperature, but the smell which at first smelled like someone smoking a cheap cigar quickly became pungent and biting to my hypersensitive nose and eyes. It was also so odorous and strong-tasting to the mouth that my “sensitive stomach” husband actually “tossed his cookies” at the sensations. Both of us were desperate to leave our room. When we finally got our clothes on, we quickly ran down the steep steps and exited out the back door to join the other guests in the patio area. A few of them were also ailing from the experience. All we could ask each other is “What was that all about?”

We’ll never know, but my paranormal senses say the spirits did not particularly want any guests in the Myrtles Mansion that night. I came home from the Myrtles with photographic representations of some of the many spirits, including a very distinct one I believe to be “Chloe” the most famous of the specters who call the southern plantation home. The photo was taken from the parking area alongside the side yard and facing north toward the mansion. In the photo are two small gray female figures, which at first glance appear to be statues in the yard, but, after looking at the progression of the photos taken all around the house, we observed that there actually are no statues in the south yard between the parking area and the house. When comparing the two figures in my photo with a famous one taken by the current owner of the Myrtles, Anita Moss, either one of them could be “Chloe” since both are small and appear to be wearing turbans on their heads. Out of all of the photos taken over the two days stay, this is the only time they appear in the photos, and this particular one was taken at high noon, in the full sun. The Myrtles experience further transformed my formerly skeptical husband into a believer in the realm of the afterlife and made him more determined than ever to pursue the elusive voices and shadows at haunted locations with me. Bob actually stated on the twelve- hour drive home that he was wanted to return soon to the old plantation and was willing to take on any experience, even the horrible odor, that the spirits of the Myrtles could give him. My feelings can only be described as satisfied and driven for more proof of the paranormal. We were both ready, and anxious to expand our ghostly excursions. The twelve-hour drive to return to the Myrtles would have to wait until we had journeyed to other haunted locations; as of the writing of this script, we haven’t gone back to the old plantation yet, but we will eventually.

Historic Lowe Hotel Approximately 211 nautical miles north of Cincinnati, Ohio, and 262 nautical miles south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on the southern bank of the beautiful Ohio River is the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

Point Pleasant is a simple country town which, like many other small towns, has seen better days in its downtown area and industrial base. Its citizens are friendly in a “Mayberry” sort of way, but also very knowing and worldly because of its past and geographical location in the crossroads between West Virginia and Ohio. The municipality was made notorious by the 1968 collapse of the “Silver Bridge” over the Ohio River on December 15, 1967, killing 46 travelers. It is also the known as the home of the Moth Man legend, which the locals embrace by promoting a Moth Man Festival each fall. Moth Man, called such by his appearance which to me resembles a bat more than a moth, is thought by some of the locals to have been either the cause of the bridge’s collapse, or was attempting to forewarn the residents of the forthcoming danger. Reportedly, the winged creature was observed flying around the Silver Bridge the night it collapsed but has not been seen in the area since the accident. The story of the seven-foot flying phantom is fascinating to everyone involved in paranormal subjects because it involves MIB (Men in Black), UFO’s, mysterious killings of animals, and even conjures up the unshakable 1777 curse of Chief Cornstalk on the local settlers. A 2002 movie based on the legend as portrayed in a collection of findings by local Point Pleasant resident Jeff Wamsley, and a book written by paranormal researcher John Keel, blends the actual happenings with the Hollywood appeal and made the Moth Man come to life for a whole new generation of curiosity seekers. Theories of his origins range from outer space, inter-dimensional, inner earth or a product of government research in the TNT area. The tales fascinated us so much that Bob and I took the tour of Jeff Wamsley’s Moth Man Museum in downtown Point Pleasant, and then drove around the former government munitions manufacturing plant that locals call the TNT area and its abandoned North Power Plant, where most the incidents with the mysterious red-eyed, winged creature, occurred. We did find the TNT surroundings extremely spooky because we sensed like we were being watched the whole time we drove around. Moth Man and Point Pleasant is one bizarre subject that we plan to investigate more thoroughly on future trips to the region. As interesting as I find the Moth Man and its associated strangeness, our initial key destination to investigate in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, was the Lowe Hotel.

The four-story hotel, built in the middle of Point Pleasant and adjacent to the Ohio River by the Smith brothers, Homer and Griffin in 1901, and originally named the Spencer Hotel. The Spencer Hotel was well known for its luxury accommodations which included an elevator, excellent food, and as a venue for occasional staged entertainment in the fourth-floor ballroom. Although I could find no real history of any “going-ons” in the hotel, I’m sure, like other river stopovers, that the hotel was considered a place for river travelers to rest with table gambling and be entertained by the ladies during their overnight stays between Cincinnati and Pittsburg. The Lowe family purchased the four-story brick structure early in 1930 soon after the collapse of the stock market and conducted business there until 1990 when it was obtained by the current owners, Russell and Ruth Finley. Russ and Ruth have modernized the old structure and added their personal touch through the many unique antiques, lighting wall hangings. The couple, along with their daughter, personally run the front desk, answers the phone, and takes time away from their busy schedules to hang out with their guests in the lobby in the evening. The Lowe is the most grandiose building in Point Pleasant, and still retains much of the charm of the late Victorian with a beautiful old ceramic fireplace in the inviting reception area, high ceilings on each floor, and transoms over the guestrooms heavy wooden doors. There are comfortable sitting areas with large couches and antique furniture scattered throughout the inn for guests who do not like to stay in their rooms and prefer to visit with other guests. It must be noted - no guestroom window has a bad view, especially the rooms which face the river. Bob and I love to go to see the river town, the inn’s owners and the distinguished old structure, but our objectives are to seek out the ethereal phantoms of the inn which were elusive to one of the better-known television reality groups who declared the old hotel “not haunted”. I always say you should get up in the morning with the intent to learn something new during the day, and we did that at the Lowe. Bob and I discovered three things when we first visited there; the Lowes definitely has spirit activity as is evidenced on several of our photos (which challenges the reality series professionals finding) and, Bob attracts and can observe some spirits, less audio, while I am more in tune to hearing their voices, less visual.

Our photos taken at the Lowe Hotel in 2008 show many orbs; a series of photos taken during our first visit and obtained in the river-facing suite we occupied, show a progression of three ping-pong sized, bright white, spheres (commonly called orbs) developing out of a wall near the nightstand of our bed and slowly moving across the room. I have never captured anything so dramatic anywhere else. A photo taken of Bob sitting in the front lobby has a bright orb over his head, but in another photo taken a few minutes later that night, in a location to Bob’s right within a watercolor drawing of a building (an architectural rendering) appears an almost white image of the head of an nasty looking, bald, elderly man and right next to him, a girl’s head wearing a bonnet. Anxious to have a closer look at that corner of the lobby and the watercolor drawing to possibly debunk the images captured, we returned in 2009 to find nothing to debunk – the painting was there just as it was in other photos taken in 2008, just no ghostly images of the man and girl this time. We could not recreate the photo with the images. After speaking with the daughter of the owner of the hotel and showing her the photos I had taken, she showed us a picture snapped a few years earlier by a guest during a wedding reception in the fourth- floor ballroom. In the photo of the smoky ballroom, there was a faint image of the head of a young woman wearing a bonnet amongst the semi-formally dressed guests. At least we know of one specter who likes to hang around the Lowe! It would have made our trip even more spine-tingling if the bald-headed man was in their photo too. Our visit in 2011 was only one short night and the predictable orbs were flying in and out of the walls and doors on the third floor where we were staying. It was late when we arrived, and all the immediate area sit-down restaurants were closed except for McDonald’s, which is not our favorite meal at any time. As a result, we decided to order pizza and salads from the local Domino’s and have it delivered to the hotel. To help out the delivery man, Bob decided to meet him in the downstairs lobby and instructed me to stay in the room which I gladly did. My husband had only been gone about five minutes when he came back to the door and asked me what I wanted.

He had heard someone call out to him, “Bob!” as he was about to get on the elevator and since we were the only guests in the old four-story hotel, he naturally thought it was me. It wasn’t. Now the spirits knew his name and were talking to him. I’m usually the audio sensitive one. I hear the spirit chatter, but it was a quiet night for me; evidently, they only wanted to talk to Bob who was starting to develop his spiritual powers to an even greater range. The incident unnerved him a little, but it just made us more curious as to who were the spirits and why they haunted the Lowes. Bob and I have since been back to the old hotel in Point Pleasant several more times and have never been disappointed with our stay although some of our explorations revealed more spirit energies than others, but that’s the unpredictable manner in which spirits behave. We consider The Lowe Hotel as continuing research into the paranormal realm and we will keep going back until we find out the identity of the grumpy old bald man in the lobby photo and hopefully capture his image one more time. Who knows, maybe on one of our expeditions we’ll even experience a Moth Man encounter or see the spirit of the angry and vengeful old Indian, Chief Cornstalk?

Chapter 7. Closer to Home

Before I can share the stories associated with the paranormally active house we now live in, I think it’s important that that I should provide you with some of the history pertaining to the property. The farmstead was originally my maternal grandparents’ home, bought by them a few years after the beginning of the Great Depression of 1929 as a result of another farmer who was not as fortunate or maybe not as hard working or frugal as Grandma and Grandpa Brown. The previous owners had lost their farm to the bank, and lucky for me, my grandparents had scrimped and saved enough to pay cash for it at the bank’s foreclosure sale. Originally comprised of around 320 acres which was slowly whittled away over the years, the 120-acre property also had two barns, a small one which was comprised of large corn cribs, and another barn which was one massive enough for Great Grandpa Gregg’s cherished oxen team, several milk cows and a couple of horses. The big red and white trimmed barn also included a milking parlor, tool room, equipment storage area with a grain silo connected on the northwest corner. The upper level of the huge barn also stored the hay to feed all the animals. In addition to the barns, the farmstead had two large chicken houses, a seed shed, a wash shed and a three-vehicle garage. It was the quintessential farm for the rural area in south central Indiana, and the era. The old two-story antebellum mansion was an Italian style home, with a double veranda across the front and long windows with shutters all around the front and sides. A “newer” section had been added on the backside which doubled the size of the original home. This addition had been built over a water well in the cellar making it one of the first homes in the area having “running water” although there was no inside toilet or bath facilities in the house. The family’s toilet facility was an old outhouse a few yards from the main structure. It too was a typical farmhouse, although a bit larger than most houses in the rural areas of Morgan County.

The house had been devoid of human habitation for about ten years and the fact that it had been greatly neglected helped give it the appearance of a “haunted house” to passer- bys. This impression all changed after two months of hard work. The men of the family labored on the main structure’s repairs, installing electrical wiring and running a couple of water pipes to the kitchen and plastering walls, while the women painted, wallpapered and cleaned. Hanging new drapes and laying out new area rugs on the refurbished plank floors gave the house a renewed appearance and ultimately made it the showplace it deserved to be. Now deceased, an elderly neighbor of mine named Merrill Vickery (who was in grade school with my Mother during the 1930s!) was a witness to the transformation of the spooky old house. Being too young to assist, he sat in the yard and watched the men and women as they brought the old house back to life. Merrill told me that it was magical to see the daily progression of the work on the old residence and the way each person, including many neighbors, pitched in to help renovate. My grandparents lived in the old house for about 23 years, until just after the time all four of their children left the nest. During the 23 years in the house there were many changes in all their lives as well as the many political changes in the United States and the world. Not the least was the end of prohibition and the country’s economical struggle out of the Great Depression of the 1930’s, the famous December 7th attack by the Japanese on our United States naval base at Pearl Harbor and the resulting events of World War II. Finally, many miles from the farm in Paragon, Indiana, Korea had erupted into civil war in the early 1950’s, about the same time as the world was introduced to “flying saucers”, another out of this world invasion. A lot of changes came about in 23 years! World War 2 brought employment to many and my family was not left out. My mother, Jean, and my Aunt Betty left home for employment at Navel Avionics in Indianapolis (manufacturer of the Norton Bomb Sight) working for the war effort. Both sisters married servicemen prior to D-Day in Europe. The last one to leave was my youngest uncle, Harry, who was in the United States Air Force when the Korean Conflict erupted.

Sadly, during this time, the old house had also been the site of the death of my maternal Great-Grandfather George Gregg and Great-Grandmother Belle Gregg. In the early 50’s, after scrimping and saving, Grandma told Grandpa that it was time for a new and more modern house. “Up to date” was her unyielding instructions to Grandpa because her new house had to have “real” plumbing which meant an indoor bathroom with a flush toilet, a big bathtub, as well as a “real” enameled kitchen sink and central heat, not wood stoves. Modern amenities are what the beautiful antebellum home lacked, plus there were now only two, past middle-age, people residing in the sizeable old house. The building of a new home resulted in the end of an era. So, Grandpa and my Uncle Floyd, along with a few helpers and the designer, created a new home for Grandma. Being a sentimental couple, it was sad for both of them, especially Grandpa, to see the old domicile completely torn down, so to please himself, Grandpa retained a section of the east end of the old house and incorporated it into the new structure as its kitchen and breakfast room. The main section of the new house was built in the southern style with large airy rooms and plenty of windows for cross ventilation. It also had an up-to-date bathroom, modern kitchen with cabinets built by my Dad and Grandpa, central heat, full basement, and washer and dryer hook-ups. It was 1953, and my grandparents were finally in the twentieth century. After the passing of both grandparents, I came into possession of the farm by purchasing the shares of the other heirs. Uncle Floyd and Uncle Harry and Mother were all happy to see the homestead remain in the family. I’m a very sentimental person when it comes to ancestry and heritage and my dream of finally owning the family farm was a watermark in my life. It was a purchase which thrilled me to the depths of my soul. I was elated as well because this meant that finally I could now move from Fayetteville, Indiana and closer to my work in Indianapolis. The move would save about 45 miles per trip, one way. As stated before, my first husband, Herb, a Bedford native, was not well and although he was mobile and able to do many things, he could no longer work a full-time job so had taken “early retirement”.

The move was also beneficial for him because it was closer to the doctors and hospitals he required, and it was closer to my family who I knew I would have to depend upon for help as Herb’s health slowly deteriorated. Other than the previous mentioned strangeness involving the telephone call to my Uncle Floyd’s house in Paragon that was answered by my nephew at the police station in Martinsville, ghostly appearance of Grandpa Brown, and voices or noises from the basement, the paranormal activity in the house was barely noticed except for a few small happenings. All those could possibly be explained as forgetfulness such as missing keys, doors found open that had been shut, lights on that had been turned off, and items falling that were known to have been secured in place. And, I repeat again, the small balls of light that were often seen flying around from room to room. As I think back, very few shadows or voices were apparent during those years. At any rate, during those times I was not thinking in paranormal terms and for an event to be considered unusual it really had to be out of the ordinary. Remember that I mentioned that Grandpa’s spirit visits occasionally? The first time I saw him was about four years after Herb and I moved into the house. The apparition appeared to me on a bright Saturday afternoon. Grandpa was standing in my living room, all dressed up in his best brown trousers, blue shirt, short brown jacket, his Fedora pulled down ever so slightly toward his eyes He was clean shaven and ready to make the weekly trek to take Grandma to Martinsville to shop. I bet that if I was standing closer to him I could have seen the twinkle he always had in his blue eyes along with the tiny lines that appeared when he smiled. Without a doubt, I also bet I could have smelled the scent of Old Spice - if I had been closer to the apparition. Grandpa did not say anything, but I am almost sure he saw me standing in my dining room looking directly at him as he was looking at me. That loving spirit of an old man who was so close to my heart just smiled softly and dissipated slowly. I’ve only seen him one time since then, but I often feel his loving spirit in the house. I feel his spirit more so when I go into the old brick chicken house he had converted into his beloved woodshop. In May of 1997, Herb passed away at the St. Francis Hospital in Indianapolis.

He had been a patient for five weeks and not released because the physicians were unable to find the cause of a persistent low-grade fever. The doctors were constantly performing blood tests, MRIs, and CAT scans looking for a cause, but could find nothing. They finally moved him to another floor, which I later found out was the location for terminal patients. Although they did not tell me, maybe at Herb’s request, they had given up trying to find the cause of the infection. I thought he would be released within days since he was in good spirits and constantly complaining, as was his way. Because he was in the hospital so often and so far from his family in Bedford, Indiana, other than my family and my co-workers, Herb had very few of his relatives visit him during his long stays. This all changed the weekend before he passed away when it seemed like everyone who loved him showed up at the hospital, especially on Sunday afternoon. On the following Tuesday, after I left my Indianapolis office which was only ten minutes from the hospital, I stopped by St. Francis to check in on him and to stay for a few hours. (This was my routine everyday he was in the hospital.) Herb was not in his room and his room mate’s family said they had wheeled him out on a gurney for x-rays after he had fallen out of bed. I found out that they were prepping him for surgery and demanded an immediate explanation of what had happened. The x-rays had revealed a problem with a previously replaced aortic artery where it ran through his intestine. A hole had developed between the two and there was an exchange of fluids – his body was full of sepsis from intestinal material directly entering his bloodstream. This was the cause of the persistent fever, and he was dying. There was only a 10% chance of Herb surviving even with the surgery to repair the hole, but no chance at all if the surgery was not performed. Herb was still lucid. A strong man and gambler all his life, he made the decision to proceed with the surgery. His body was unable to fight off the infection and ultimately his body was also unable to accept the anesthesia required for the operation; the doctor stopped the procedure three hours into it. Herb’s vitals were almost non-existent, but the doctor wrapped him up in a warm pressured blanket and put him on life support until all of us who gathered at the hospital could say goodbye.

Everyone had their turn to enter his room, and many of them told him to fight death and come back to the living world. Unlike them, I had seen the pain and suffering he had gone through the last six years of his life, and especially during the last year, and last day. I had heard his prayers asking God to relieve him of his suffering. I insisted the rest of the family leave me alone with him, then bent down to his ear and told him he had suffered enough, God is answering his prayers and it was okay to go on to Jesus and the light – his dad and brothers were waiting for him. I assured him that all of us would be okay here and to worry no longer about us. Immediately after I whispered into his ear, the medical instruments displaying the conditions of his blood pressure, breathing and heart rate, started to indicate a prompt decline; the heartbeat and blood pressure bottomed out to confirm that Herb had understood me, and had passed over. As far as I am aware, Herb did not see any spirits the day he died or in either location we lived. He was raised in the Church of God and spirits were not an acceptable subject to talk about, unless it was the subject of The Holy Spirit. When I was married to Herb, I kept most of my paranormal experiences to myself, but my house spirits were peaceful and calming during that time too. Herb was silent during life about the subject of the spirit world, but he didn’t stay quiet after his death. I do think that God forewarned his absent family and advised them that Herb’s time was short by using methods only God can do. I will always believe that He guided all of them from Bedford to the Indianapolis hospital the Sunday before Herb passed into the spirit realm. Herb’s earthly remains are buried at the local cemetery, just about a mile from my house, but I know his spirit still visits me at the house because I’ve seen him, and so has Bob. A year after Herb passed over, I married “specter - seeing Bob” in May of 1998. Up until we got married, Bob had no idea of his special abilities of seeing and hearing spirits. When Bob came to the farm to live is when the paranormal energies around my house really became more dynamic. The property’s supernatural entities met with Bob’s entities and together they all had a new playground and new living creatures to enthrall! A whole new world opened up to Bob and me too, in a way.

Chapter 8. Everyday Happenings

After Bob and Jamie’s arrival to the farm, the first indication that the house and the rest of us were in for a paranormal awakening, occurred within the first few weeks. The house was stacked with boxes and furniture from their move – it was a muddle I thought would never go away, but we slowly unpacked boxes and managed to move the excess furniture and other items around so we could dine at the table in the breakfast room and have some leisure time in our chairs in front of the television. All three of us were settled in for the evening in the living room enjoying a program on the tube. The house was quiet except for the din of the television when all of a sudden we heard a loud crash from the kitchen. Normally, we can see in a direct line through the dining room and into my galley kitchen from the living room, but the excess furniture and totes blocked the view. Fearing the worst, all of us headed that direction to see what caused the loud racket. The cabinets had not fallen off the wall as I had feared, but in the middle of the floor lay three cast iron skillets, still all nestled together, precisely as they had been sitting on the shelf. Somehow, the three, heavy, solid iron skillets, had somehow moved from the location in the middle shelf of the microwave cart where I stored them and travelled 2 ½ feet to the middle of the floor and were still grouped together. Knowing physics as I do, and the laws of gravity for this world in which we live, there was no possible way the objects moved on their own to that position. Even the laws of gravity do not affect items sitting in a flat, static position until some type of energy is applied to move them away from that spot. The event had to be paranormal. I repeat, it certainly is not characteristic for three inanimate objects to move without some type of force acting upon them. My personal opinion at the time and still is, was that it was either Herb, my first husband, who moved the skillets as a welcoming proclamation to Bob and Jamie who came to live with me, or the house Domovoi who was just checking in with the additional two new residents to let us all know that he’s still watching over us.

During the month of June, Jamie went to stay with his mother for the rest of the summer and so Bob and I were left alone in the house for a few months. The situation was further extended when Jamie decided he wanted to go to the same school as his half-brothers, so we relocated him to the ex-wife’s house. During this time without a twelve-year-old to worry about, Bob and I managed to get some of our house more organized by moving out some of my older furniture, odds and ends and replacing some items with newer pieces. Jamie’s room was the the room Herb occupied during his last few months of life so we definitely made some changes with the walls and furniture to more suit the needs of a teenager when he came home for the weekends. Early morning thunderstorms are quite common in the Midwest during the summer and that summer was no different. The heat and humidity can make it hard to sleep, but we had the central air on; the house was cool as long as we kept the windows closed. Just after midnight, Bob got up to check around the house and unplug some of the appliances since the lightening was extreme. Before going back to bed, he went to make use of the bathroom and as he exited the little room, there was a bright flash of lightening which lit up the inside of the house, including the hallway which was directly in front of him. To his surprise, standing in the hall was Herb. If the lightening had not brightened up the area, Bob would have stepped right into him – or through him. For some reason, Bob waited until the next day to tell me about his experience with the spirit of my deceased husband. The appearance of Herb to Bob convinced me that the energy that moved the skillets to the kitchen floor in the weeks after Bob and Jamie moved to my house was most likely Herb, who in life, was loud and liked attention. The fact that Herb showed himself to Bob that stormy night told me that he is watching from the spirit realm over his earthly home and me. Although he has been in many of my dreams, I personally have seen Herbert only one time in spirit. I was sitting in my recliner working a Sudoku puzzle, intent on finishing it in record time, when I heard a slight noise to my right arm. Looking up and to my right, not even three feet from me, was Herb, in spirit. He had on nice clothes, his beard was trimmed, and he had both his legs. When he was buried, he only had his right leg, losing the left one three years prior to his death to the cardio-vascular disease which ravaged his body.

I guess once we pass over we become whole again – just like Jesus promised. The next few years were almost uneventful. I do not believe in coincidences and I am absolutely sure we both were protected by our guardian angels and spirit guides during those times. There was a close call of injury or maybe even death in March of 2000, when all three of us were within minutes of being involved is a horrific traffic accident which killed seven people, six of them children. If it had not been for a friend from Chicago who stopped us for a couple of minutes to say good-bye as we exited the parking lot from a meeting we had all attended, I am sure our Suburban would have been involved in the suicide driver’s accident and the body count would have been ten instead of seven. I thank him every time we see him for delaying us that day. In April, a month after the accident that killed the seven, I was involved in a head-on collision about one mile from my home. I was extremely lucky not to be killed but was injured to the point that I required four weeks away from my work. In 2005, a tornado just passed by our home, but damaged the roof and the corner of a new barn we had built in 2000, destroyed a van, but no one was injured. In 2006, another tornado which destroyed many local homes and businesses, traveled for a distance of almost 100 miles through Indiana. Its destructive winds narrowly missed Bob’s auto parts store in Martinsville by about eight hundred feet. At approximately twenty minutes later, the same tornado passed within a thousand feet of the government laboratory location where I worked on the southeast side of Indianapolis. Imagine that! Another incident is when I met a drunk driver on the inside lane, the fast lane, of a four- lane highway early one dark morning on my way to work. I was in the left lane passing a line of slower traffic moving within a slight curve in the road, so there was no sight distance ahead of me for more than a few hundred feet. Then, out of the darkness came a vehicle directly in front of me – headed southbound on the northbound lanes. Her headlights blinded me, but by instinct (or so it seems) I jerked my steering wheel to the right. Her car passed by me so close I remember seeing her driver’s side mirror pass by right next to my driver’s side window.

I just missed an impact by inches, and by God’s blessing, the traffic in the lane on my right side, had backed away to avoid what obviously appeared to them to be a head-on collision in the making. I had a hard time getting my car under control from the rapid change of direction and went reeling from side to side, but eventually was able to pull over and stop safely. I was fortunate, but an ill-fated individual driving about a half mile behind me was not so lucky; he was seriously injured when he collided with the drunken driver. My guardian angel must have been quicker than his!

Dreams Precognition is the ability to see into the future and those who have the talent are called clairvoyants, but most individuals, such as you and me, just take each day as it comes, which can be referred to as “the trial and error approach” of living our lives. Just as we think we have our lives figured out, an experience takes place which gives us a glimpse of a future event - but we’re not aware that’s what just happened. It’s hard to explain. My glimpse of the future occurred in a troubling dream in August of 2001, but it wasn’t until the middle of September I realized what the disturbing vision meant. Unlike most of my dreams, this one was short and simple, and in color - like watching a video. In the dream, I was standing at the base of a small knoll alongside a flat level elevation which appeared to be a road or a railroad track. I was unsure of the surface, whether it was a road or rails, because from the perspective where I was standing, I was looking slightly up at it. (I’m a short person, so I’m always looking up!) The level approach entered a dark (black) arched tunnel in the side of what I thought was a gray colored mountain of rock. Suddenly, from the left of the scene came an airplane flying in at great speed toward the opening. I remember thinking that there is no possible way the plane can fit into the tunnel and sure enough, the plane nose went in then the plane exploded into a giant red and yellow fireball as the wings hit the rocky sides of the entrance. The explosion was reminiscent of the scene in the first Superman movie when the planet Krypton exploded, lots of fire, debris, and sound. Then I woke up.

The mental picture bothered me so much that I wrote the details down in a notebook and told Bob and my co-workers about it for many days. The dream would not let me forget about the details of the airplane crash. I finally did put it behind me, kind of, and managed to get on with my challenging daily routine without talking incessantly about “the dream.” Exactly twenty-eight days after the nightmare, events in real life started to mimic my vision. My project for the day was in Fort Wayne, Indiana, about an hour and a half drive north on I 69 from the east side of Indianapolis where my office and lab was situated. I stopped near Anderson to fuel my vehicle and when I got back into the car, WFBQ, the radio station I was listening to, announced that there was a major happening in New York and the local Q95 personalities, Bob and Tom, were turning the entire broadcast over to ABC News. The whole day became surreal as the truth of what was occurring sank into my mind - September 11, 2001 changed many Americans including me. It was a watermark day for our American nation. ABC News was talking about the destruction caused by the passenger airliner, Flight 11, which had just crashed into the upper floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Building. As the announcer was talking the second plane hit the South Tower. Then, they announced that there had been an explosion at the Pentagon, later finally admitting it was another plane. We were under attack by unknown terrorists. I had only driven a few miles north on I 69 when my cell phone rang. It was my brother Kenny calling to let me know he was driving his tour bus to Washington D.C. and the Pentagon. Crane Navel Weapons and Ammunition Facility in Crane, Indiana, had a delegation of their employees at the Pentagon and it was imperative that they be extracted from the location as soon as possible. It turned out that they were in the damaged section of the building where the hijacked plane penetrated, and the men were very blessed to have gotten out alive when so many others had died. All I could do is tell Kenny, a former Marine, to be careful, and to stay in contact. We both agreed to pray for all the victims that dreadful day and for his and the working group’s safe return to Crane, Indiana. As the rest of the morning played out, I anxiously listened to the radio for more news.

After arriving near Fort Wayne’s Baer Field, we observed airplanes of all sizes landing in a continuous string and military planes taking off. I was standing in the middle of the interstate with my geotechnical drilling crew and other INDOT workers from the Fort Wayne District when the news announced that the “lost” commercial plane, Flight 93, had crashed somewhere in Pennsylvania, also a result of a hijacking by terrorists. We were later to find out that due to the heroic passengers, the plane had gone down into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. It was a rural location which resulted in no on-ground loss of life. It was frightening not knowing what was next and with no private or commercial planes in the sky, their absence gave the whole day eerie vibes. It was also frightening when the towers actually collapsed, and the body count was first estimated to be 20,000 to 30,000. (Thank God it was not.) The information concerning the attack on the Pentagon was almost non-existent until later in the afternoon and because I knew my brother was going there, I was truly concerned. When my INDOT drilling crew finished the investigation near Fort Wayne, I drove back to my office in Indianapolis. It was apparent that no work had been accomplished during my absence because everyone was tied to the television watching the events of the day. I wasn’t any less curious than my co-workers, many of them Muslim, and because I had not seen a visual of the incidents at the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon, I sit down to watch the broadcast. The videos of the planes hitting the towers evoked my nightmarish dream from August! It was all repeated on the news videos. The “tunnel” was actually a dark window, the perspective of looking up indicated the tall buildings; the speed of the planes flying directly into the windows from a flat or level approach, the gray rocks were the surface of the building, and the ultimate collision and fireball was comparable to the events in my dream. I cannot explain my precognitive dream, but that was exactly what it was as far as I am concerned. I do believe in a collective consciousness of the people of the world and have since found out that many other individuals had a similar foretelling of the 9/11 events. It’s unfortunate that we didn’t understand the visions.

Doppelgängers and Brother Kenny Sometimes my belief in the afterlife is on the silly side, especially for someone formally trained in the physical sciences. In 2006, my oldest brother, Kenny, was only three days away from his 54th birthday when he quietly passed away in his sleep. His death was sudden and totally unexpected and still makes me cry when I think about losing him so early in his life, and mine. I kept waiting for him to contact me from the spiritual realm. Now, Bob and I both think his spirit visits our house when I’m cooking one of his many favorite foods – chicken and noodles, chili, potato soup or cinnamon rolls. Home cooked food was important to him since he was on the road with his driving job so many days of the week. One of his favorite treats was the Little Debbie’s “Christmas Tree Cakes”. Each year, when the small tree shaped cakes were released for sale to denote the beginning of the Little Debbie Company’s Christmas bakery line, Ken would excitingly call and ask me if I knew what day it was – “Christmas Tree Day!” Of course, by then, he had already bought and placed several boxes in his suitcase to take with him as he drove his “Star of Indiana” tour bus throughout Indiana and the eastern United States. The first year after his death I terribly missed his inevitable yearly phone call about the arrival of the Christmas cakes. Deep in my heart I had high hopes on the first-year anniversary following his death that the phone would ring, and Kenny’s ethereal voice would say “The cakes are in”, but of course, it never happened. Instead of waiting for the call, I have since taken the matter into my own hands to satisfy my desire – and his. As soon as the cakes are available at the stores, I purchase a couple of boxes and deliver them to his grave at the cemetery. Bob and I place a treat on Kenny’s headstone, each say a prayer, and partake of a “Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cake” with my brother, or at least in his memory. Surprisingly, the wrapped treats have remained on the grave for many months because of the amount of preservatives in it, or until my nephew or niece, removes them from the stone. To my knowledge, Kenny has never eaten one of the cakes that we left, but apparently neither has the cemetery’s resident squirrels or mice.

It makes me wonder if Kenny’s spirit is protecting the cakes from the rodents or is he protecting the rodents from the unhealthy additives in the cakes? I bring up the topic of my brother Kenny because of a paranormal experience he had which involved me, but in an ambiguous way. Kenny saw my doppelganger. Doppelganger is the German word for spiritual twin or mirror image as referred to in German folklore; a situation where a soul or spirit splits and is seen in two places at once. Tradition says that to see your own doppelganger is a harbinger of death - or maybe just bad times. Kenny was always on the road, traveling in his bus or other conveyances, from his terminal’s location near Bloomington, Indiana, to places all over Indiana, the central United States, and occasionally, the eastern states. When the doppelganger event occurred, he was in Indianapolis, Indiana, driving a car with Cook Industries officials from the Indianapolis International Airport to downtown, then to Bloomington, when he saw my double. It was a Wednesday in July, most likely 1988 or 1989. It was also a warm summer afternoon on an overcast day, and traffic was light on eastbound Interstate 70 near the Harding Street interchange. Slowing down to make the exit to West Street my brother noticed a white, Indiana Department of Transportation station wagon, coming up alongside him on his left. Knowing that I was assigned such a vehicle as a field geologist for the materials lab division, he slowed down even more, saw my double (although he was absolutely sure it was me), honked to get my attention, and waved. He said that even his client sitting next to him in the front seat saw me and asked him who I was. My apparent double in the station wagon returned Kenny’s gesture with a smile. After these acknowledgements and exchanges, they all continued on their way. Now, the paranormal steps in to confuse all of us. It was not me. Even though my brother swore he saw me, his rider saw me, and we exchanged greetings – it was not me. He looked directly at my doppelganger, and supposedly, the doppelganger directly back at him. There was no doubt it was me; the face, the wave, the vehicle – all me, according to Kenny. But, it was not me, or at least my physical body. I was working and staying that whole week in the northwestern part of Indiana we call “The Region”. That area is about four hours drive northwest of Indianapolis, east of the Chicago Metro/ Whiting, Indiana, area.

I had the drilling crews and traffic control crews I was working with, local utility representatives and other engineers to back up my assertions, as well as the receipts from the hotels and restaurants. I made every attempt to provide evidence to my brother that it was not me, at least not the real me, on Interstate 70 that crazy summer day in Indy. To his dying day, I was never able to thoroughly convince him that it was my doppelganger. He knew who he saw that day, his oldest sister, Carol. Kenny, being not only a practical brother was also a two tour Viet Nam veteran, combat decorated Marine (Purple Heart), and former police officer, who soundly rejected my doppelganger theory. I was sure that Kenny would make psychic contact from the other side someday. Bob and I knew we could feel his presence in our house and vehicles at times. We always thought it would be reassuring to get a message from him. The message we had been waiting for came through in the fall of 2014; it was through a psychic friend of ours at a ghost investigation in The Tivoli Theater in Spencer, Indiana. Contrary to his beliefs in doppelgangers, I knew Kenny would have enjoyed participating in our ghost hunting excursions and his message through Jeff was that he went with us to all our paranormal investigations and vacation travels. Kenny also reminded me that when we were growing up we played “Hide and Seek” quite often and he was really good at it. Now, he’s playing the ultimate “Hide and Seek” game in the spirit realm and we’re always trying to find him; Awesome for us all.

Lost Inn In June of 2008, our home's basement was damaged by flooding from the heavy runoff of a 12” rain event which occurred over a two-day period. With no electrical power and the runoff water from the surrounding hills rapidly rising in the basement and around our vehicles and buildings on our ancestral farm, we decided to abandon our home and took refuge at the Lost Inn in Mooresville, Indiana, for about five days. Unbeknown to us when we checked in, the room we were given at the then ten-year-old hotel had a restless spirit. She made herself known on the second day we were there by constantly turning the television on and off until we finally unplugged it, and “buzzed” our cell phones during the nights even when they were turned off.

When the events first started to occur, we tried to debunk them with the obvious solutions. I called the front desk to check if any of the rooms located on our end of the hotel were occupied by other guests who might have a television remote tuned to the same frequency as ours and was unaware they were affecting our television. No guests other than us were staying on our wing. We checked our cell phones to see if they affected the television - nothing. We even checked our amateur radio (ham radio) transmission from our vehicle to see if the transmission signal from it affected the television as some citizens band radios are known to do if they are transmitting with too much power - nothing again. Since we could not debunk it, we decided the event was paranormal. The major occurrence was on the third afternoon at the Lost Inn. We returned to our room to find it very, very, cold although the room’s air conditioning was not turned on and it was in the high 80’s and very humid outside. I opened the window rather than turn the heat on to warm up the room. Bob decided to take a hot bath. He closed the bathroom door and got into the tub, then closed the shower curtain to help hold the heat in the water. He was not sleeping and in fact, had started to read a magazine. Within minutes of climbing into the tub, Bob excitingly yelled out my name and asked me where I was. I answered, informing him that I was sitting in a chair, rapped in a blanket to get warm, and working a crossword puzzle next to the bed. That wasn’t exactly what he wanted to hear. Lost Inn’s resident ghost had decided to introduce herself to Bob as he was taking a hot bath by pressing her left hand three times against the translucent shower curtain. His first thought was that it was me because of the small hands, although he actually knew there was no way I could have opened the door to the bathroom without blocking the light from around the mirror over the sink. The event was without a doubt, a paranormal phenomenon. Once this incident had occurred, we then became certain that the extreme cold experienced in the room was a paranormal event too. The spirit used the heat in the environment to help her manifest in the bathroom. Lost Inn’s female spirit continued to entertain us until we checked out.

The hotel receptionist, knowing of prior complaints from guests of the ghost's antics, kept offering us another room, but we needed the distraction from the reality of the flooding of our home and really enjoyed the harmless entertainment of the resident haunt. Since our stay in 2008 at the then fairly new motel in Mooresville, Indiana, the Lost Inn has had numerous owners and has since closed down permanently. For some reason, travelers and other refuge seekers such as Bob and I, did not desire to lodge at the location. After checking different websites and blogs on the internet, I have since found other guests and former workers of the Lost Inn who had similar experiences with the “Ghost Lady”. I will always wonder if the specter of the inn may have been able to manipulate guests away from staying there even before they registered in. An even wilder thought - could she have been responsible for the failed efforts of the hotel proprietors to have a viable business? Maybe she was also nefariously responsible for the name of the hotel itself – “Lost Inn”.

We’ll never know.

Chapter 9. Seeing Specters

Bob's experience at Lost Inn was a major dose of paranormal “reality” and was another turning point for him. He no longer complained about my enthusiasm concerning the hunts. At this time, after we were forced to leave our home and ultimately make changes in the basement concerning how and what items were stored there, I also became more aware of the basement’s shadows Bob had been seeing. Suddenly, out of the corner of my field of vision, I would perceive movement and shadows that could not possibly be there because there were no living creatures in my sight. My special sight was sharpening along with my husband’s. I decided to look into possible reasons that I personally could now be seeing an increased amount of these specters, and I decided to start with a natural biological reason, my eyes. I had heard that some doctors and skeptics will say the shadows we sometimes see are merely “floaters” of cellular material or flashes of light in the eyes from a disease or some other far reaching biological reason. The fact of the matter is that humans actually do see slightly better through the eye’s corners or peripheral vision than we do directly straight ahead; a visual phenomenon of human sight which is evident in so many ways. When I came to the determination that I needed to inform myself more in the study of how the eyes receive light, I resolved to look deeper into that subject. I already knew that no animal can see in total darkness, even the owl, but I wanted to know why humans cannot see and be able to apply it to my research into the paranormal sciences. I performed an intense search, and utilizing my trifocals, I read almost everything the reputable doctors and researchers on the web had to offer. The information I found was interesting to say the least, so bear with me for a more detailed biology lesson on the light receptors of the human eye. I think the knowledge of how our eyes perceive light and dark is important to be able to understand why the shadows and other optical apparitions seen in paranormal investigation can be a true window into the realm of the paranormal. Bear with me!

Human eyes were given two types of photoreceptor cells along the backside of the eyeball on the retina. The cells are sensitive to a wide range of the visible light spectrum and are responsible for converting and transmitting the light energy signals from the optic nerve in the fovea centralis and on to the brain. They are called cones and rods, and they both perform different functions. Cones, located near the front of the eyes retina, are used for color reception (photopic vision) in a wide range of natural or artificial light waves, but do not perform well, if at all, in low level light conditions. The cone cells are sensitive and divided into three colors, red (64%), green (32%) and blue (2%). The blue cones, although being the least proportionate, have the highest sensitivity. The cones (unlike the rods) are less sensitive to light intensity, so daylight vision adapts more quickly when moving from an outside light condition to an indoor, more subdued level. The cones are the basis for our high-resolution vision. Importantly, the eye naturally moves constantly to keep the radiance from the subject being looked from falling on the fovea centralis where the bulk of cones reside. This innate movement is necessary to keep from “burning” or destroying the sensitive photocells and is why we should not consciously stare at the sun or any other bright light. Rods are located along the perimeter of the eye’s retina and are more numerous and more densely packed than the cones in the front of the retina. Rods are one thousand times more sensitive to light than cones, but are not sensitive to colors, and because they are so finely tuned, it has been reported that the human eye’s rods may only require an individual energy photon to be utilized in low light or when it’s relatively dark. The adjustment to optimum vision in darker conditions is obtained after a longer period of darkness than required for the cone’s response to light; fine-tuning to the darker conditions could be as much as thirty minutes or more. With the rods optimum vision and the darker environment there also comes a greater ability to detect motion as well as dimmer objects. I need to mention here that as I learned more about the cones, but especially the rods of the eyes, I realized why in paranormal investigations we mostly notice the shadow people or darker entities in almost total darkness.

I think it deserves to be repeated – the sensitive photoreceptors called rods gives us a greater ability to detect motion in darker conditions as well as dimmer objects! A good example of how the eyes rods work in darkness (called scotopic vision) is best explained when one is standing looking up at the night sky observing the stars, planets or the occasional meteor or comet. If looking directly ahead (you are using the cones in the front of your eyes) at a heavenly mass, there will be an illusion that it disappears or vanishes. Turn your eyes slightly to the left or right of the heavenly object, and it will mysteriously reappear because the densely packed rods have picked up the faint light in its peripheral vision. Averted vision (from the position of the cones to the rods) is more helpful when you want to actually detect something rather than just settle for a high resolution of the object. I remember using the peripheral vision method for looking at a particularly spectacular comet back in the spring of 1997, Hale-Bopp. The head of Hale-Bopp was so large that binoculars were not required, but it was still necessary to look slightly to the left or right side to see it and its wide sweeping tail in the northern sky. I had no problem enjoying the comet’s dramatic display by using the rods over the cones in my eyes. In 2008 our family doctor of optometry decided I needed to wear trifocals because of the increase in the amount of computer work required for my work, so I switched from bifocals to the dreaded three lenses. The change did improve my ability to read smaller print and prevented me from getting the afternoon headaches which was what initially took me to the eye doctor, but did it also improve my peripheral vision? The scientific answer is “no”. I think the new lenses may have helped me in an ever so slight way, by increasing the sharpness of the images I was seeing. Plus, now I know the new lenses could not help me to see better in darkened conditions since the number of photoreceptor cells is determined by heredity and not by any artificial means. I believe the paranormal or ghostly incidents, by occurring one right after the other, made me more perceptive of the presences and supernatural events going on around me. I’m convinced the events also sensitized Bob in the same way because of his ability to be a beacon of light to them. The spirits were there all the time just waiting to be noticed.

Although I learned about human sight and our limitations, I knew the cats in my life still had more heightened abilities to see in more darkened conditions. Their perception range is so much more than humans, that Bob and I depended some upon our cats’ reactions to the house spirits to warn us that someone, or should I say something, was about to enter the room. Cleaning up the mess from the flooded basement did indeed stir up the spirits in our home, where, although we had always had some activity in our “new” 60-year-old farmhouse, shadows, voices and whispers seemed to become more prevalent. As in other locations, and because of his abilities, Bob sees the shadows more often than I do, but as I said before, I hear the voices and he doesn't as much. Nothing I can call harmful or scary is moving around – just past relatives and pets, and maybe a couple of others we have not yet been able to identify.

Chapter 10. Cats See Things

Pets can be just like children to their humans; fun, sassy and hard-headed at times. Rockie and Midget were just like that – cats with no sense of being cats. As far as both were concerned, they were people too. Having the same mother, they were sisters, but not litter- mates, and as different as their coats of fur. Did I mention that they owned us? That was because we totally loved them, and they returned the favor with their antics and nuzzling, an occasional mouse or mole, a bug, and in Rockie’s case, a low flying bat. I have forgotten the name we gave to the momma cat that had given birth to the litter of four adorable little kits. Evidently the humans the mother cat originally belonged to didn’t think the feline family was as sweet as we did, because they had deserted them in a cardboard box in the middle of a curve in the county road about six hundred feet from our barn. It was well after 11 pm on a Saturday night when Bob, Jamie and me drove by the box, almost hitting it. Bob backed up very slowly before stopping when we observed the black and white momma cat and a kitten run into the adjacent soybean field. The other three kittens were too afraid to leave the container, so we moved the box off the road and into the field so other vehicles would not run over them. We did not take them to our house that night, but I think that mother feline had already developed plans for the future of her kittens and herself. The next morning, the momma cat had already deposited a kitten on our front porch, next to the door. She didn’t run away or act frightened of me when I went outside to see where the kitten cries were coming from, but instead proceeded to meow loudly and inform me, or so it seemed, she needed help. (That’s what I like to think!) Then she took off and returned to the box in the field to ultimately carry another kitten to the porch. Feeling sorry for the burden the little momma had in moving her babies one at a time, Jamie and I took off down the road to bring back the other two. The mother cat took command of these new humans who had entered her life – she seemed to have no fear of strangers and guided us directly to what was left of the litter. Those last two kittens were the most audacious of the litter because we didn’t have to carry them – they followed beside us and walked on their own to join their siblings in the new box I had prepared for them, on my front porch as the momma

73 cat insisted. The cat family was rescued by us because there was no other option. Her family was striking but one of those last two kittens was the most gorgeous feline I had ever seen. My decision was made as soon as I spotted her shyly peeking out from behind the stalks of corn where she was hiding until her mother returned with us, that kitten was to be my next pampered house cat. The mischievous little black and white ball of fluff with the dazzling blue eyes, which eventually turned green with flecks of dark amber, became my Rockie. Although all the kittens appeared healthy, they were not. All the kittens of the litter that was with her that fateful night except for Rockie, died in infancy from Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, also called “Kitty AIDS”, but even though I promptly had her vaccinated for the deadly disease and she survived, I think she suffered with it because she never weighed more than six pounds as an adult cat and although very feisty, ran out of energy quickly. Rockie was my baby. She loved Bob and Jamie too, but she was my little shadow. She was a black and white alley cat who adored me as much as I her. Rockie was born of a gorgeous short haired mother, also black and white in the pattern commonly called tuxedo, with a small black spot I called a “beauty mark” laying next to the nostril on the right side of her little white face. Rockie also had the beauty mark next to her nostril, and her small face and body reflected the same tuxedo as her mother but with much longer, sometimes irritatingly long, soft fur. Rockie’s name was a result of the fact that I did not know for sure what gender she was when she first appeared and assumed she was a male because of her antics in the high crown of the large maple tree in the yard. She would actually jump from limb to limb, like a squirrel – Rocky the Flying Squirrel – thus her name. When my vet informed me she was female, she became Rockie with a girlish “ie” instead of a “y”. Even though she was an independent minded cat, Rockie would willingly let me do just about anything I wanted with her. I trimmed her excessively long fur under her chin and underbelly with scissors while she lay perfectly still on my lap. She let me brush her teeth and wipe out her eyes and give her the nasty pink medicine when she needed it. She loved to play

74 with the laser light and slapped Midgie out of the way if she got too close to me. I’m pretty sure that Rockie loved me as much as I loved her. Midget, or Midgie as we often called her, was Bob’s cat, although he doesn’t particularly like felines and is really a dog person. Midget was the runt of the last litter of the little black and white momma cat (Rockie’s mother) before she disappeared, as farm cats often do. There were only two kittens born to her, a large bluish-gray male and a sweet little calico, and I emphasize the word little. Midget had topaz eyes with flecks of green and a cat’s medium length fur, and an absolutely beautiful calico combination of mostly white, with black and light brown patches. She, as did Rockie and her mother, had the same beauty mark on her nose and the same white markings on her face. Being the runt of the two, Midget’s momma must have decided her beautiful calico kitten was too small and ill to live long and decided not to care for her. She stopped feeding or grooming her when she was about four weeks old. Because he was taken care of, the gray male was gigantic by comparison, but he vanished one night from the old chicken nest that was their home in our barn to who knows what fate. Midget was left to roam the barnyard by herself, her eyes matted completely shut, blindly creeping through the grass and meowing loudly and hungrily for her mother. Luckily, Bob was working in the garage and heard her pitiful calling wails and rescued Midget to the house where he washed out her eyes and give her a bath. He placed her in our bathtub with a couple of soft towels and instructed me to try to feed her some milk. Luckily, she was old enough and hungry enough to suck the milk off the corner of a soft cloth and after a few days was eating the softest of food. She was small, but she was spunky. Because she had already rejected her, we never returned her to her mother, so Midgie also moved into the house to join her older sister Rockie. Did I mention that Midgie loved Bob? Midgie really loved Bob. She would meet him at the door when he came home from work and would crawl up on his big chest to be with him when he rested in his recliner. She would sleep on top of him at night, creeping into the bedroom, even though cats were not allowed, and if I allowed it, she would crawl down between us to cuddle under the warm blankets. I have reason to suspect there were also a few times she tried to push me out of bed with her feet, so she could have Bob to herself!

But that doesn’t mean Midgie didn’t love me – I was her buddy too. Maybe it was because I fed her, played with her and gave her treats, but I think it was most likely because she was entranced to hear me whistle or sing my off-tune version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Midget would come running and jump on my lap and stare at my face, then lick me when I voiced the tune. Rockie, being more mature, would come too, but she would slap my face with her paw to get me to stop! (Who died and made cats music critics?) They both loved me anyway, bad vocals and all. After Rockie was lost to who knows what fate and wasn’t around to jealously keep her away from me, Midgie spent more time sleeping on my lap and followed me from room to room as Rockie had done. But, I think Midgie still loved Bob more. Both cats loved to play inside and outside. Rockie loved to chase and pounce like a wild lion on a gazelle in the Serengeti when Jamie sent his remote-control cars to buzz by her. She was always breaking the antennas on them. She was also good at laying in wait, sometimes for days, for a mole to make a move from its run, and then she would drag it out onto the yard and kill it. Rockie was also like a champion tennis player as she jumped up and knocked flying bats, real bats, down out of the air. Bob and I were the recipients of the dead animals as she always proudly deposited them on the entry mats of the outside doors. Midgie wasn’t the great hunter Rockie was, but she could sure mess up the rugs on the kitchen floor and she was a climber extraordinaire as she daily harassed the birds nesting in the old pine tree in the front yard. Both cats would sometimes get so excited over their hunting victims that they would not properly kill them before bringing them to the doors. As a result, the two felines occasionally released some live animals into the house, including birds, bats, and mice for Bob and I to chase. Now, you are probably wondering why I spent so much time explaining our close connection with our indoor cats. As I stated before, I believe cats are more connected to the spirit world because of their expanded senses of sight into spectrums we cannot detect and a more acute hearing. The nine wonderful years Bob and I spent with Rockie and Midget proved that felines do indeed have these abilities. Saturdays are usually quiet days for me since my husband is usually at work all day. They are spent cleaning house, attending to laundry and other household duties.

When all this is complete, I usually sit back and have a cup of some type of hot beverage and watch the television for an hour or so before driving to Martinsville to have lunch with Bob. On one particular Saturday, I was sitting on my couch sorting out magazines on my coffee table and Midgie was sleeping peacefully on the couch next to me. It was quiet in the house, no television or radio. It was also during the winter, so the windows and doors were closed shutting out any outdoor noises. Suddenly, sleeping Midgie is on full alert. She jumped up to what could only be called a “pointer” position (like a hunting dog) and was looking intently at the center of the room, at a point directly in front of me. Thinking there must be a flying insect, maybe a gnat, I also stared intently to determine what the object of her attention was, but I saw nothing. Then Midgie began to make the low growl cats generate when they feel threatened, followed by the loud hiss and a showing of claws and fangs, all the while still staring toward the same location. Her fur on the nape of her neck was standing straight up and her tail was fully fluffed out. She hopped onto the stack of magazines on the coffee table, jumped to the floor, and ran into the dining room. When she got there, Midgie paused for a second looking toward the ceiling, then leaped onto my dining room table (where she was absolutely not allowed, and knew it), skipped across it and hurtled herself onto the top of my computer table sitting in the corner of the dining room. Pausing again, she then jumped to the floor and raced into the kitchen and to the top of the basement steps where she stopped, and where I, finally getting off my duff, found her sitting and staring down the steps. She had calmed down, but her tail was still fluffed and anxiously whipping back and forth, indicating extreme excitement or fear. For the record, I saw nothing and felt nothing during the whole episode, just the wonderment at the level of the small cat’s reaction to something unseen, but it did upset me. Because of her growls, I tend to think it was fear and not just agitation, although the little cat, barely six pounds at the time, was valiant and apparently felt it her duty to chase away whatever entity was in the room with us that Saturday morning. I wasn’t as brave as the cat. After convincing Midgie to go outdoors where Rockie already was, I immediately grabbed my handbag and car keys and left the house.

It was and still is, the only time I have ever been “spooked” at my home – and I blame it on the reactions of the tiny feline, even though she was the more courageous of us both. Rockie, true to her nature, didn’t get as excited as Midget when the spirits came around so my anecdote about her has far less animation, but it was an incident where we shared an unusual paranormal experience; both the cat and I were eye witnesses to a very unusual happening. It was time for us to go to bed. Bob was in the bathroom while I was alone, except for Rockie, watching the night’s final weather report on the television, around 11:25. I was sitting in my rocking chair with my back to the front door, which was closed and locked up. All the window draperies were pulled shut. The only light in the room was coming from the TV and the hallway. Suddenly, over my head, appeared a bright and intensely blue orb, approximately the size of a tennis ball. It moved quickly from the wall above the front door directly over my head, stopped in front of the TV about seven feet away, and “exploded” in a soft crackling sound. No sooner had that first blue light dissipated when another blue orb, identical to the first, repeated the phenomenon; it came from the same direction and burst the same way, at the same location. I initially thought I had imagined the paranormal experience even though I knew I had shouted to Bob when the first orb appeared and was already out of my seat when the second one materialized. But I’m absolutely certain the event was not a figment of the imagination because my feline, Rockie, was sitting directly between me and the hall, exactly beneath the location where the blue orbs dissipated; she was staring precisely at the position near the ceiling where the event occurred. Rockie had seen them also! A few seconds later, when Bob finally entered the room, both the cat and I were still staring in wonderment at the ceiling. I immediately tried to debunk the lights and opened the front door checking for someone with a flashlight or maybe a farmer in the field with a tractor or truck flashing headlights. It was winter and not normally a time when farmers are working, but it was also almost midnight and cold outside and as I already knew, no one was there.

Anyway, the orbs did not have normal characteristics of a conventional light, either from a flashlight or headlight, and could not have entered the house through the small window in the door. Grandma Ruth had often talked about the “balls of fire” and the orbs of light in the house and that night, I finally saw them for the first time, and luckily, my cat Rockie, who was never known to lie to me, confirmed my experience. Both cats had many episodes of staring at the walls and into other rooms, but we all got used to their behavior after a while and nothing else in the house seemed to scare them. They often played and slept together in the basement, not minding to be around the spirits which come and go. Unfortunately, both cats are gone now. They both walked out into the night and disappeared; Rockie first, and Midget about nine months later, probably victims of a night predator such as an owl or coyote. Their earthbound bodies are gone, but their loving spirits are still here - we are positive they are. Midget has made her spirit presence known to us a couple of ways. Bob has seen a full apparition of her laying on our bed – where she was not allowed in her living years, and I have seen her moving among the chair legs in the dining room where she like to sleep because of the warm air vent located there. On occasion, when the cats were here they would jump and climb onto the pantry shelves and knock items off as they found or created a comfortable spot to nap; even now, I will still find canned goods or other items on the floor in my pantry for no good reason, except ghost cats. Another time, although I did not see her materialize, I observed the corner of the quilt I had thrown over a new couch lift up as though Midgie had pushed her way from underneath the piece of furniture where she would often take refuge to escape Rockie. (Rockie harassed and chased her, much like older siblings among humans often do to their younger brothers and sisters.) Of course, when the bottom cabinet doors are ajar, canned goods are on the floor, or if the scatter rugs in the kitchen are messed up, I always blame it on Midget, and give Bob a break. Rockie’s spirit hasn’t been seen around the house as much as Midge, but I’ve heard a sweet and clear meow like Rockie’s more than a couple of times when I’ve been alone. I’ve without a doubt felt a cat brush against my legs and heard both of their distinctive asthmatic, rhythmic purring which often ended with a soft whistle, when no cats were around.

In life, Rockie would crawl behind me on my chair while I was working on the computer and lay down with her “motor running” or would lie next to the chair while I worked. Occasionally, if Rockie allowed it, Midget would do this too, so I’m not always sure which cat spirit is visiting me; I just know they are still around from time to time. I’m thankful Rockie and Midget loved their human parents enough to come back in spirit to be with us. I don’t even scold them anymore for messing up my throw rugs, leaving the cabinet doors open or knocking items off the shelves in the basement because it tells me they are still hanging around.

Chapter 11. Grandma Ruth Makes an Appearance

I had seen Grandpa Monte’s spirit a couple of times, and I was concerned that Grandma Ruth’s spirit would never make herself known to any of us who are now living in her home. It was delightful to see her when finally, one day in March of 2012, around the time of my birthday, she poked her head around the corner of the hallway and glanced at me sitting in the living room. Because the manifestation happened so quickly at first, I though it was my imagination, then a few minutes later the female face peeked at me again. The event was fleeting and because I was not wearing my glasses, I was not really clear in my mind it was my Grandmother and thought initially that possibly the materialization was my Mother, who passed away in 2003. She had similar facial features as my Grandmother. Her identity was confirmed when Bob clearly saw a full body apparition of an elderly female, gray haired, wearing eyeglasses, standing in the hall next to our bedroom door. His experience was about three days after my encounter and I had not revealed to him that I had actually seen the specter, but I had inquired if he had seen any female spirits. He knew my Mother, but not Grandma who passed away in 1975, and described the figure as an older lady who looked somewhat younger than my mother during the eight years he knew her (Mom died at the age of 83). The figure was wearing a dress covered by a long red and cream plaid colored apron with ruffles along the bottom, a large pocket and tied in the back. Colorful homemade aprons were typical daily wear for Grandma Ruth. His reference to the apron persuaded me to conclude that it was most definitely her! Easter weekend was a couple of weeks after Grandma’s initial appearance in the hallway. Although we have no small children around the house to make it necessary to perform all the accepted pagan rituals of Easter, we do honor the resurrection of Christ on Easter Sunday and have a few guests over for a late afternoon dinner. As is my tradition, I do all the cooking. I do this because I am very particular about the menu, the ingredients and the preparation, the cooking and final presentation of all the dishes. I also do not like others in the kitchen when I’m trying to work.

To help my cooking schedule go smoothly and help keep me from getting stressed out, I prepare as much as I can the day before the actual event is planned. So, on the Saturday before Easter, I was peeling boiled eggs for my “much in demand” deviled variety. After taking all the shells off, I always dab off the excess moisture with a paper towel, and then place the eggs on fresh and dry paper towels to air dry completely before splitting them in half and making the filling from the yolks. The drying eggs were laying on the countertop in my kitchen which gave me time to fold some laundry. I turned the television on to check on the condition of the world while I sorted through the clean clothes. The show I was watching lasted approximately an hour, and then I went into our bedroom to distribute the clothes into the closets and dressers. In all, I was out of the kitchen about an hour and a half and saw or heard nothing other than the talking heads on the television. When I returned to the kitchen, there it was; lying in the middle of the kitchen floor and in the middle of a thick throw rug - a boiled egg. The egg was intact, with no dents, no cracks, and nothing to indicate that it had fallen and bounced from the tile floor to the rug. There was no lint from the rug, dust off the floor; absolutely no clue as to how the egg had journeyed to the rug location from the dry paper towel located over one foot behind the slightly raised lip of the countertop. Bottom line – there was no physical way the egg could have rolled over a foot off the counter, up over the slightly raised lip, hit the floor and rolled or bounced about three feet onto the rug without having an outward sign of breakage or not be soiled. Someone or something moved the egg, and it was not me. Since I was the only other living being in the house during the event, I tend to attribute the boiled egg incident to Grandma. Possibly, it was another attempt to make contact with me since it seemed Grandma was trying to get herself noticed more during that particular point in time, although I now think she was probably here all along. Over the years, since living at the farm, I have had some difficulties with my hairbrushes. It’s not that they are not the right type for my baby-fine hair, but they keep disappearing.

I can say that some of the incidents may be simply forgetfulness or old age – but I think other energies are at work. There only are only two places that I keep my brushes; in my bathroom in a small basket and in my handbag. Occasionally, the brush kept in the bathroom will not be in its customary location when I’m ready to use it but will materialize in another locality in the house a few days later. In one of the most recent episodes the nomadic hairbrush made its appearance in my bedroom next to a jar of change I keep on my chest of drawers – a jar that both Bob and I squirrel away coins daily when we empty our pockets out in the evening or are changing clothes. Bob, who knew that my brush had been missing again, informed me it was there - this was after the brush took a four-day vacation to who knows what universe or dimension. I am absolutely positive the brush was not at that location a mere two hours before when I placed some coins from my pocket into the jar and am absolutely positive it was not there in the morning after my daily shower. Because of my beliefs about mirrors being possible physical passages or doorways between Einstein’s dimensions, I do not have a mirror in my bedroom, so I do not comb my hair in there. Now, since I’ve seen Grandma peeking around the corner of the hallway at me, I wonder if she’s the one who occasionally purloins and moves my brush; Grandma always kept her brush and combs on her dresser in the bedroom. I think Grandma is constantly moving objects around and we do not always notice the shifts, but in the fall of 2013, there was an occurrence which was very noticeable; I just wish Bob was there to see it. I was sitting in my rocking chair in our living room, sewing a tear in Bob’s pants, so because of the fact I was using a needle, I know I was not dozing. The house was shut up because it was cool outside, but not chilly enough to require the heat from the furnace, so there were no drafts from blowers or fans. All the doors and windows were closed, and it was very quiet and still in the house. Even though I was concentrating on my sewing, I became conscious of movement in front of me, in the hallway. A small piece of paper, a receipt from a store approximately 3x3 inches in size, was floating out of the hall and into the living room! When it got about four feet in front of me the paper dropped directly to the floor. Needless to say, I was awestruck!

In an attempt to debunk the paranormal aspect of what I had just seen, I immediately checked for drafts and just as I already knew, there were none. The paper had originated from the top of Bob’s dresser in our bedroom, and then travelled down the hallway and into the room where I was. Measuring the distance, which I found to be approximately 19 feet, my analytical mind tried to explain how the slip of paper maneuvered around the bed, the half- closed bedroom door and made the correct turn into the living room from the hallway. I could come up with no explanations for the event except that it was a paranormal occurrence of spirit teleportation. I witnessed teleportation! Even though I’m not completely convinced the spirit moving the paper so gracefully that day was my Grandma, I think it was because of what I was doing; I was sewing, a chore she loved to do on quiet afternoons. Since the initial appearance of Grandma peeking at me from around the corner of the hallway, we have seen her and felt her presence many times, especially in our master bedroom late in the evenings. Grandma Ruth still occasionally glances at us from the corner of the doorway into the hall. Bob thinks she has tried to talk with him but no definitive message has ever come through to either of us, although it seems like the activity increases around the time of my birthday and holiday events, so maybe she is acknowledging the occasion in the only way she can. I now think Grandma’s content with us living here, but I wonder why it took her so long to make her presence known and what brought her back to the living world to visit. I, my cousin Roger and my Aunt Betty (who was Grandma’s eldest daughter) were all present when she passed over, but the departure was quick and since she was in an induced coma at the hospital, we didn’t get a chance to say good bye. I’m not going to question my Grandma spirit’s motivation for returning – it’s just good to see her again.

Chapter 12. Paragon Paranormal Gets Organized

Our lifestyle was changing because of the increasing number of paranormal incidents. It seemed we could not escape the desire to learn more, and like a powerful opiate, it attracted other like-minded individuals to us also. After the initial Lowe Hotel investigation when our secret life was finally revealed to others, we made the decision to form a more professional team of investigators; especially when more of our family, friends and co-workers became aware of our unannounced hobby with the paranormal. Surprisingly, most were intrigued by our evidence and the experiences we encountered at the far away locations. Likewise, our old and new friends encouraged us to look more around our local neighborhoods at houses and businesses which seemed to have ghostly activity attached. It seemed that the individuals we encountered through word of mouth and the investigations we performed always knew of other locations that had a haunted history or another person with a paranormal story to tell. For several reasons, Bob and I agreed it was time to stay home more and target our searches locally and investigate locations off the normal list of haunted places where no other investigators had ever been. Our investigations revealed that there was an extraordinary amount of paranormal locations to explore in our local area in central Indiana. I decided we needed some assistance, thus, we needed more members than just a two-man group. A lot of our contacts for paranormal locations also wanted to assist in the ghost hunts, so finding dedicated individuals to assist was much easier than I thought it would be. It was amazing how many of our friends also wanted to help us investigate, but we still had a few acquaintances, including family members, who thought Bob and I had lost our minds and backed away from our adventures. So, we took those individuals who were eager to be trained in the paranormal sciences and equipment, and officially formed our loosely knit ghost hunting group. I deliberated for several weeks about a name which would most describe what we do, chase ghosts. Upon investigating, I found that so many other paranormal groups already had “ghost chasers” or “ghost hunters” in their title that I decided to use “Shadow Chasers”.

The name “Paragon Paranormal” describes where we are located (in Paragon, Indiana) and what we do, even though a group in northern Illinois already made use of the name for some unknown reason. So, the merging of the terminology seemed a more than adequate moniker for our group; thus, “Paragon Paranormal – Shadow Chasers” was created. To make it official, I started ordering business cards and ink pens to spread around local communities and just for giggles, license plates for our regular members to make it known to the world that they are investigators for “Paragon Paranormal - Shadow Chasers”. I did not then and still do not look for individuals who are “absolute believers” to be members of Paragon Paranormal but encourage skeptics to assist in our investigations. There is a definite need to debunk as much of the evidence and experiences as possible and that cannot honestly be accomplished if the every single one of our investigators on the crew is willing to accept all events as paranormal. After all, not all lights are spirits and not all sounds are caused by ghosts. We are looking for hard data, recorded in a controlled scientific manner, by trained investigators who are well grounded when it comes to paranormal events. Our core investigators are required to stay for the entire investigation, no matter what happens. I am proud to say that Paragon Paranormal’s investigators are all level headed, hardworking, family- oriented individuals. Other than Bob and me, they have included a plumber, EMTs, a factory maintenance tech, hospital worker, retail workers, a real estate salesman, waitress, stay-at- home mother and an attorney. As a result, I think we have a well-balanced team of investigators. I think a lot of interest in our group was developed by the timing, which was around Halloween, and the placement of our business cards at high traffic locations. The best marketing location at that time was the newly opened Tomato Pie Pizza Joint (even today, the pizza, Sammie’s and salads rock!) in Paragon, Indiana. Kim, the owner of Tomato Pie, was an absolute skeptic of otherworldly claims, and laughed at our hobby, but was kind enough to allow us to make her establishment our “unofficial pizza joint” where we could hold small group or client meetings during the downtimes at her business if our paranormal group needed to get together to plan out an investigation.

I am still amazed at how many doors would eventually open to us as a result of our “coming out” to publically search for the paranormal. Once we started asking around for local places in Morgan and Owen Counties to investigate, location suggestions started coming in at a fast rate from sources we would have never thought to ask, and we started receiving calls from some of the most unlikely citizens who were curious about our investigations. I did not realize how many individuals were seeking answers to the strange events in their homes and business. Word of mouth spread our existence like the spirit webs of our investigations and our sources included the local police officers, co-workers, waitresses, and, without a doubt, our own family. Bob’s close connections through his store also brought in entirely different clients strictly by word of mouth and even the local liquor store employees and vendors passed the word along. I had to face it –the declaration of our investigations was finally out locally. Ghost hunting and Paragon Paranormal – Shadow Chasers was now ready for its business of researching and documenting the unexplained!

Chapter 13. Prayers of Protection

After the incident with our cat Midge on that particular Saturday morning when I decided to leave the house instead of tackling the unseen spirit head-on as the cat did, and the additional fact that we would now be responsible for the fate of other people in Paragon Paranormal – Shadow Chasers investigations, I knew I must learn some powerful prayers of protection. They had to be uncomplicated and effective prayers that we could also teach to others who join us on investigations, including those who had requested the paranormal investigation in the first place. I wanted strong prayers that would help those feeling oppressed by the spirit world to feel empowered by the prayer’s words and would give them the spiritual energy to meet their ghosts head-on. I knew I could count on an acquaintance, Rev. Suzanne Greer, with the Indiana Spiritualist community at Camp Chesterfield, in Chesterfield, Indiana, to provide a prayer that was easy to remember and successful against harmful spirits. Graciously, Rev. Greer passed along her most effective appeal. Our paranormal group members are encouraged to recite this simple and effective request before each and sometimes if we think it’s needed, during our investigations. It’s not unusual for me to recite this prayer at any time of the day, when I’m feeling stressed, driving in rush hour traffic, or when I am about to meet a new client. I even include it in my evening prayers at bedtime each night.

First, envision yourself and your loved one standing inside of a “white tornado” which completely envelops your bodies from head to toe. Recite this prayer three times for full effectiveness:

“Let the White Light of Christ be above, below, and throughout me. May the power of Christ protect me from all which may do me harm. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,” Amen.

Bob and I have used Rev. Greer’s prayer on a daily basis since learning it, but in the last few years we have also learned another beautiful and uncomplicated, yet effective, supplication which should also be passed along. We also use this request for well-being along with the White Light prayer when we leave a paranormal investigation site or when we are just feeling anxious about life in general. Many of our investigators find this prayer easier to learn than the first one, but it doesn’t really matter which prayer is spoken, just use either one for protection from the evilness which can exist in the spirit realm. As with the White Light prayer, I prefer to recite this prayer three times also because three times helps me concentrate more fully on the words.

“The light of God surrounds me. The love of God enfolds me. The power of God protects me. The presence of God watches over me. Wherever I am, God is.” Amen.

When we are ghost hunting I constantly remind the investigators and homeowners that no matter how scientifically controlled our paranormal investigations become, even with all the specialized electronics, cameras and controlled environment situations, the enormous power of a prayer to our omnipotent Almighty cannot be denied. It’s amazing that even the non-religious individuals often say there is never too much protection from the unknowns of the spirit realm and like someone said about embattled soldiers in a foxhole, there are no atheists when the spirits are acting badly!

Chapter 14. Indiana Investigations

As stated before, traveling all over the United States to investigate haunted locations and other paranormal phenomena was very exciting, but also expensive, so I was happy when we decided to give our bank account a break and stay closer to the farm with our spirit web. Anyway, Bob was still employed and had to take care of his business because his vacation time was starting to dwindle, plus, there are always seasonal responsibilities around the farm which need attention. That was another reason why we finally made the decision to inform other members of our family and friends of our secret lives and tell them that we had been actively involved in paranormal investigations for almost five years at that point. Plus, we loved it when the local “haunted hot spots” investigation requests started rolling in!

Darla’s Farmhouse Gossip can be a useful tool in the paranormal business because people love to gossip. It is one means for learning where the haunted places are in areas where maybe a paranormal researcher is not so familiar with the local neighborhoods or former residents. But, if that area is your own territory, the one you call home, it’s usually wide open for investigation because you already know the gossip and the people who gossip know you. Growing up in Paragon, I often heard the hearsay about a couple of the town’s old commercial buildings reported to be haunted but I was also aware of several houses. Back in the 1960’s, to have a residence or commercial building deemed to be haunted was considered a detriment, so the owners did not talk about it – but renters and former owners did. A prime example would be our family’s old Victorian in Paragon. The abode was definitely a place of paranormal activity, but it wasn’t until the old house burned down that we had other residents of the community, including one other former owner, who wanted to bring up its haunted reputation and to discuss and compare experiences.

One place reported to be haunted was the old farmhouse our friend Darla bought in 2008. The beautiful two-story brick residence was built in the early 1900’s and had been owned by only one family, a well-established family of the area, until their great- granddaughters sold it in the early 1980’s to move to a warmer climate. But, this old place was not known around town for its paranormal activity until the “new” owners started renovating by making major changes in the overall layout of the rooms and stairs. Even through their occupancy at the place for about twenty-five years, no one in the family really came forward and said “this place is haunted” to anyone. However, the men who were hired to work on the renovations were local carpenters, electricians, and plumbers – and they spoke of bizarre experiences occurring with their tools and equipment which included whispers in their ears and clothing tugged during the times they were alone in the house. While the adult owners did not talk about unusual phenomenon taking place, their children and the visiting neighborhood children had other opinions. When Darla, a member of our church, bought the house, Bob and I were requested to assist her in trying to establish logical explanations for the many crazy supernatural events which were interrupting her quiet lifestyle. This was a project closer to home for us so we readily accepted. Paragon Paranormal had not officially been established and we were in the process of forming our loosely knit group, so at the time it was just Bob and me and an occasional friend who liked to help in our extensive investigation. At first, Darla though that the unusual occurrences were initiated by an old boyfriend who lived with her during the first six months she occupied in the house. He did not live up to his agreement to help her pay the bills associated with the house so she “booted” him out and immediately changed the locks on the doors. Not taking kindly to losing his free-living quarters, he stalked her for about four months while trying to talk her into letting him return. During the period when he harassed her, she had the local police and neighbors watching the house for intruders during the day while she was at work and late at night when she was there alone. Darla, at the advice of the local police, installed motion activated security cameras, both still and movie with night vision, for her protection from the old boyfriend.

The cameras did their job. He was photographed in the film lurking around the house, peeking into the windows and trying to break into the back door. Another picture showed him attempting to enter her home through the basement window. Evidence from the unbroken seals along the windows showed that the man never was successful in gaining access to her home. The police and Darla never caught up with him either and ultimately, he gave up trying to force his way into her home. Within a few weeks after installing the cameras and new locks, law enforcement officials reported that the stalker left Indiana to return to his home in Florida finally giving Darla some peace of mind. With the lurking boyfriend out of the way, the on-going activities she had attributed to her former companion in the old house took on a whole new implication – and that implication was that the unusual events which were still continuing were indeed supernatural. At long last, Bob and I could concentrate on finding other likely reasons to debunk the activities or declare them paranormal in origin. The incidents were varied and because of the complexity of the many phenomenons it was no wonder she thought it was the ex-boyfriend who was doing it. Darla came home from work one afternoon and found her box of cereal with strawberry flakes open on the counter in her kitchen, and the strawberry flakes but not the grain flakes, strewn in a straight line from the kitchen through her dining room. Another time all the kitchen cabinet doors were open and the items on the countertops moved to where they were teetering on the edge of the counters, where they could easily be pushed to the floor. A particularly unnerving experience was when she found the items from her medicine cabinet, all opened and piled into the sink in her bathroom. One particular event which occurred proved to her beyond question that it was not the former companion who was performing the odd occurrences; her pet arachnid (a big tarantula) had been removed from his enclosure, and the man was terrified of spiders and would never approach the cage. Another day, when she entered her living room she noticed a black military issue machete laying on the carpeted floor next to her treadmill; the machete which belonged to her then on active duty U.S. Army son, had been kept in an upstairs bedroom closet.

The day she found the machete Bob and I were there and had entered the house with her. We had also been investigating her residence the night before and knew the large blade had not been in that location during our site inspections. We knew then that we had to step up our investigation to find out who or what was bothering Darla, although she said that because the threat of the old stalker was removed she was now not particularly frightened to stay alone in her big house. The reason she was not scared - her little parakeet Peety. Peety got excited and chirped loudly when he was approached by living humans, but totally ignored Darla’s house cat. On the security movie camera set up in her living room, Peety was repeatedly seen to get excited as if someone was approaching him - although there was no living human form in the videos. Then, he would carry on his customary vocalizations with whatever had walked up to his cage. Peety also did this in the evenings when Darla was upstairs or in another part of the big house. If her canary Peety was not fearful of whatever spirit was in the house, then Darla felt she had nothing to be scared of either. The living room security camera picked up a great piece of paranormal evidence for us during a gray and snowy midmorning in early spring. A ghostly arm appeared in the shot. It was an arm wearing what appeared to be a long sleeved white shirt or blouse, no hand or torso connected, moving through the center of the living room toward the staircase and the birdcage with Peety in it. It was an amazing piece of evidence for all of us. The living room was the hotspot for activity. Darla often napped on her couch in that room and one afternoon was awakened to find a middle-aged gentleman, dressed in a black suit from the early 1900’s, bent over her and looking intently at her face. She got as a good look at him as he did at her. Darla had come face to face with her resident ghost and decided although he had made his presence well known by his antics; the ghost liked Peety and had really never done Darla any harm. Darla also felt that the unknown man was watching over her and the house and maybe had placed the machete in the living room as an indication to Darla that she needed a weapon by her side.

All Bob and I ever established as evidence of Darla’s haunting was the still from the living room’s security camera and several sharply defined bright orbs in the living room, the basement stairs and around Darla’s head as she moved throughout the rooms in the house. The house had established natural cold spots due to an inadequate ventilation system and we never could delineate any others in the big drafty residence. We never picked up any spirit voices on EVPs or had indications of high EMPs anywhere except around the electric box in the basement. There was no true scientific evidence of ghostly activity, but our gut feeling is the Paragon house is definitely worthy of being branded as “haunted”. Since the farm family who built the original structure is no longer alive and their descendents are no longer in the Paragon area, we were unable to check into a possible identity of the male apparition Darla encountered. But, I often wondered if the male spirit she saw and who talked to Peety was the house Domovoi and it was this Domovoi who kept the lurking former boyfriend from breaking into the home. Could the Domovoi also have been trying to protect Darla by placing the machete within her reach and releasing the pet tarantula the interloper was so scared of? (I know that Darla was never afraid of the spirits in the house, just the old boyfriend!) We’ll probably never have any additional first-hand knowledge about the haunting in the old residence since Darla moved out of the old farmhouse less than two years later. But, I have to share this bit of information - since the new family took up residence in Darla’s house, the rumors of it being haunted have resumed. This is a declaration by the two men who came to repair my refrigerator a few months after the new residents moved in, and why I love paranormal gossip. When the present owners discovered our paranormal investigation of their recently purchased home the man of the house contacted me to find out the results of our investigation. He declared that all the spirits had left with Darla since there had been no activity during the many months of remodeling that he and his family had performed on the old house. Maybe they did leave with Darla and are attached to her, but maybe they will make an appearance after the remodeling efforts are complete; we cannot wait to find out what happens. I’m betting he contacts me sometime in the future.

Thompson Road House Cindy, a work acquaintance of Bob’s, asked us to investigate her home, a rental property she was soon to move out of. The old 1900 farmhouse had been updated with two added-on bedrooms and a full bath and was in generally fair condition. The full basement housed the utilities but was unfinished and still had the original dirt and stone floor. The unimpressive abode was located far out of town but was not isolated because of several fairly close and newer homes built by the land’s original owner’s descendents. According to other tenants interviewed, the rural location always had some type of paranormal activity which included noises, shadows, and low growls and whispers. These were the same types of paranormal activity which were frightening Cindy’s family. When we discovered that a former tenant of the same house had moved out because of poltergeist style activity directed against him, our interest was piqued, and we became really anxious to investigate. Then, real motivation to investigate the location came when the information was given to us that there had been a gruesome and bloody murder in the old farm house in 1984. We scheduled a visit, loaded our equipment into the suburban and headed for Cindy’s. When we arrived, it was almost sundown. Lucky for us, Cindy, her 15-year-old daughter, and two former residents of the house, Barry and his wife Melissa, met Bob and I to help with the investigation. It was October 31st, Halloween evening, a weeknight, and all of our regular team members were at work or had other commitments. Cindy had been moving out of the residence over the past few days, a planned move due to economic reasons, and the house was now clean and void of any furniture or personal belongings. The atmosphere of the old residence was heavy, tense and dark. As per our request, the furnace and air condition units were shut down so as not to interfere with the investigation by giving us false hot or cold spots or to blast dust into the air from the vents giving us false orbs in our photos. (This fact became very important later in the investigation.) We did a quick walkthrough with everyone present, looking over the small home’s layout and recording statements about the previous residents’ experiences in each room of the house.

We were searching for the most likely paranormal hotspots. The only change I insisted on to the situation prior to the hunt was that Cindy returns her caged cat, Moonshine, back into the house. She had placed her in a cat carrier in the back of her truck and I thought it would be interesting to see if the feline would react to the spirits while we were there. To reiterate, it’s well known that cat’s eyes perceives light in spectrums beyond human eyes, so maybe Moonshine could give us a forewarning when a spirit is around - if we didn’t first detect it with our equipment, or our psychic skills. I know from personal experience that cats do perceive, and acknowledge the spirit world, but not always do they particularly like what they see. Plus, cats never lie; their reaction to their environment is always a genuine response, whatever that reaction may be. We had 100% cooperation from the attendees and no one seemed nervous or frightened to be participants in the investigation. But, to help everyone relax, we insisted that all investigators participate in our prayers of protection before we started. Since all present knew of the atrocities committed in the house against the murder victim, and we were unsure of the type of entities still roaming around the property, so no one in our group of amateur investigators objected to the prayers. Our new helpers assisted in setting up our cameras and recorders, and then we waited. We called out to Fred, the homosexual man who was brutally tortured, then murdered in the residence, and did some provoking of any other spirits which might pre-date Fred’s murder and still be present in the old house. Cindy’s cat played on the floor in the living room and would occasionally stare at the ceiling or walls then make a mad dash into the sunroom on the front of the house or down the hallway as though chasing something. Other than some small noises throughout the house which we debunked as the house cooling down from the rather warm day, no activity which was deemed to be paranormal was noted until about two hours into the investigation. Shortly before 9:00, we had all gathered in the living room for a group EVP session, when suddenly all of our instruments started lighting up and noises in the house increased. Moonbeam the cat stopped running around the house and stared at the kitchen ceiling and down the hallway from her location on the floor.

At the same time, in the area where we were all gathered, there was a definite, quick drop in temperature which was noted by everyone present. A seven-degree temperature drop was confirmed by our laser thermometer. The K-2 meters were in the red zone and the Mel-meter was almost spiking over six. Someone or something was definitely in the house with us! We utilized our digital cameras and started snapping photos around the room, near the investigators and down the hallway following the lead of the cat’s attention. The commotion decreased slowly as the activities in the paranormal world calmed down, but all of us, Bob, me, and our new investigators, were pumped to have experienced the ten-minute event. The rest of the evening was calm - for most of us. Upon reviewing the photos and video taken during the period of restlessness among those in the spirit world, I found many bright orbs near the heads of Bob and Berry, the only two men in our group. Additionally, there was only one bright orb in the hallway, another one which lingered in the kitchen area behind Bob, and one in a closet. All the photos which had orbs were taken immediately during and after the significant occurrence was over. The fact that only the two men in our group were surrounded by the bright orbs is particularly interesting since the man who lived there, Fred, the murder victim who was bludgeoned to death over a period of two days, was a homosexual and was killed by two other homosexual men he brought home with him from a bar in Indianapolis. Both men were convicted of murder, and one died recently in prison of natural causes. Could the orbs be Fred and his slayer? We unfortunately will never know and there will probably never be another paranormal investigation at the location. This incident reminds me to bring up my personal opinion on “orbs” as scientific evidence. The fact that the orbs did not appear in any but three of the photos taken that night before or after the high energy event is just another logical reason I do not dismiss orbs as substantiation of spiritual energy. Some in our profession dismiss orbs entirely as always just flashback from the camera’s flash on dust or water particles or even flying insects. We need to be able to determine the real evidence from the false and I think those other groups are just being lazy with the data or are afraid to hurt their reputation somehow by forming a paranormal hypothesis concerning some orbs.

So, until someone can absolutely prove to me that all those little bright balls of light are due to a molecule of water vapor or dust, flying insects, or flashbacks from the camera, then I will continue to evaluate the presence of orbs case by case. Going back to the investigation at Cindy’s house, there was only one more significant incident that occurred just prior to our leaving the site. Barry, who had been a previous resident of the home decided to return to the basement for one last investigation, by himself. (When he had lived there a few years prior to Cindy’s habitation, he had been the primary object of an incident in the bathroom where bottles of shampoo and conditioner sitting on the bathtub were thrown at him by something unseen.) His lone trek into the basement was relatively short. Barry immediately started taunting the spirits and before too long he was pelted with a couple of small stones and soon came running, and cussing, up the stairs and out the backdoor of the house into the yard. He was noticeably shaking. Upon questioning him, Barry said that when the stones were thrown toward him, and he cussed back at the spirit for throwing them, that he heard “something” running toward him across the debris on the basement floor. Needing no further encouragement, that was when he made his hasty retreat outside. Barry refused to re-enter the house and was still shaken by the incident months later. (Barry never went ghost hunting with us again!) Bob and I finished packing our equipment and we all left the residence after Barry’s incident. We always observe or learn something from each and every investigation and Cindy’s rental house was no different. First, investigators-in-training are always talkative, so EVP recordings taken by most newbie are almost worthless, as they were in this case. Second, it is very helpful to have individuals who have experienced the paranormal events at the location being investigated to help us pinpoint the hotspots. Third, to have someone on site who is familiar with the historical facts along with the geographical location is a bonus, as it was in this case. Yes - there is always something to be learned at each investigation because each investigation is unique. Even with the problems we had at Cindy’s house, it was still a good investigation and we did determine that her former home is most definitely haunted. By the time Cindy’s house investigation was complete Bob and I were starting to receive more phone calls concerning my research studies into the paranormal.

People I didn’t know were asking me questions about our night investigations and telling us about supernatural incidents which had puzzled them over the course of their lives or the stories of unusual events told to them by other family members or friends. My favorite stories from strangers always start with, “I’m a skeptic and don’t’ believe in any of this, but…” This is usually followed by a comment that a parent or grandparent told them about a particular incident followed by the comment that the individual “wouldn’t have lied to me.” I would love for our paranormal team to reinvestigate the old house and spend more time there, but that it not likely to happen since sometimes new tenants are living there – but apparently for only a few months at a time – or so I have been told!

Antoinette’s House As time went by and we made our hobby more known around the county by passing out and posting our business cards, even the employees at stores and restaurants started to recognize us as the “ghost hunters”. That was how we came to know Antoinette; she was always our server at our favorite breakfast hangout. I do not usually have a predetermined opinion about an investigation, but in the case concerning Antoinette’s house, I was confident it was just a case of her nerves getting the better of her and we would find nothing paranormal when we did our initial investigation. Her home is located far out the country in an area which historically, was just hardwood forests and farm fields until developed into mini-farms in the last thirty years. There was never a house or other building at the location where her three-bedroom residence now stands. It might also be noted that her husband built the home in 1992 at the edge of a hardwoods forest in an old wheat field, so no other family had lived in that remote location prior to his construction. When we first talked, Antoinette reported seeing a full body apparition of an “Indian Lady” in the dining area of her home, hearing the sound of heavy boots on her back deck and through her house and seeing shadows darting from room to room. There was also the matter of the buzzer on her dryer’s timer which occasionally buzzes at will and sometimes even at the completion of a load, even when it’s manually turned off.

She was not particularly frightened but wanted some answers because even though her husband and son had also heard the boots and the mysterious sounding of the dryer buzzer, they didn’t believe anything paranormal could be causing it and thought Antoinette was losing her sanity. To help her ease her mind and maybe give her some answers, early on a Monday evening, Bob and I headed out to perform a preliminary investigation. We were just going to interview her, perform a walkthrough of the residence looking for high electro-magnetic fields and take a few photos. Her family was present but chose not to participate while we were there and secluded themselves in an adjacent garage. They did occasionally come into the house for creature comforts and check to see the status of our investigation. Antoinette’s residence has an open floor layout and it’s possible to stand in the middle of the family room and see most of the rest of the house, except for the back hallway where the rear door, the laundry room, and the two of the bedrooms are located. We started to talk with her in the living and dining area and encouraged her to call out to the spirits when we became aware of low rustling noises in the master bedroom. I had placed a K-2 Meter on her bed and it was flickering up to the highest point on it. Bob quickly took the temperature in the bedroom and it was six degrees lower than in the living area where we were, only fifteen feet away. I immediately took some photos of the area. The first produced a very clearly defined orb over old antique armchair in the corner of the bedroom. The orb was not in any of the following photos. The noises also stopped at that time and we observed no more activity after that for the rest of the evening. Our voice recorders produced nothing but our voices in conversation with Antoinette. We left soon after, but I was determined to return when there were less living people mulling around and the environment was quieter to perform a more extensive investigation. About a week later I returned by myself to reveal the evidence to Antoinette. It was early on a Monday morning and we were alone – no dogs barking, no televisions, no teenagers and no husbands. I set up a couple of recorders and a motion detector in her laundry room where the spirits like to play with the buzzer on her dryer. Our minds no longer concentrating on the paranormal, we were both enjoying a cup of coffee

100 and discussing some genealogy research (my other love) that I had been doing concerning her family when we heard a rustling sound in her bedroom. I immediately snapped some photos. There was the orb again – right where it was last time in the corner of the bedroom and above the antique chair. The shy spirit was clearly in the first photo taken, but I think it came over our heads and into the area where we were standing since a photo of the living room also taken at the same time is blurred in one corner and a bright orb can be seen peeking through the fuzz. Again, the audio recorders revealed no ghostly voices and the motion detector did not activate during this mini-investigation. This really intrigued me! Did the discussion about her dead ancestors stir up the spirit over the chair? Were the spirits listening in? Or, was it the fact that we were doing some additional investigations? We set up an appointed time for PP-SC’s new medium, Patti (who you will hear about in a later chapter), to walk through Antoinette’s house and property to determine more detailed information about the spirit activity. This was a new quest for Bob and me because we had always done the sensitivity portion of the investigation ourselves. I guess it was a test of sorts to determine just how talented Patti actually was in conversing with the spirit realm. We were not disappointed! In the initial examination of the extensive yard, Patti also saw a white wolf and an old Indian hanging out in a section of Antoinette’s yard where her pet dogs will not range. This is a spot where Antoinette has also seen the white dog or wolf on occasion. In the house, Patti determined that a man named “Paul” was there and seemed to be attached to Antoinette. This was good news! Paul was a beloved uncle who had passed early in Antoinette’s life who had played with her and defended her as if she was his own. His untimely death did not halt his love for her and he wanted her to know that he was still hanging around protecting and guiding her through life! Since that time, the rest of her family has also decided there is paranormal activity in the house. Charles, her husband has heard the whimpers and felt the push of a beloved dog that died a few years ago. The boots are still walking through the house on occasion and the lights flicker for no reason once and a while.

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There is always something going on; the dryer buzzer still occasionally sounds off (even though taped to the “off” position), the toilet flushes and missing objects will suddenly appear in locations obvious to all of them, cells phones with no power source ring in the middle of the afternoon and early evening, and items are transported across the rooms. Plus, Antoinette has continued to see the spirit of the white wolf, the Native American woman in her central living area, an old farmer wearing bibs in the kitchen, and in the photos taken in her bedroom, the mysterious orb still appears above an antique chair. A mysterious whistle has been heard by both the residents and guests. Yes - there is definitely something unusual going on at Antoinette’s. Antoinette’s house is an investigation in progress for us. We will keep going back to obtain more data and in the mean time, Antoinette and her family will continue to document the never-ending paranormal goings-on, which now includes a beloved dog spirit named Hannah. Whisper Estates As with most of the locations Bob and I travel to investigate, we became aware of the haunted Whispers Estate in Mitchell, Indiana, from a paranormal documentary, “Most Terrifying Places in America.” The owners gave up on running the old house as a bed and breakfast and turned it into a commercially leased “haunted house” for individuals and groups who just want a night of fright. Van, the owner of the former residence, had a detailed website and other paranormal groups we contacted about their experiences strongly encouraged us to take our new investigators for a night of training at a place which already was confirmed as “haunted”. Mitchell is only about 65 miles from our home, so, taking the advice of others, we loaded up five new members of our now growing ghost hunting group, Paragon Paranormal – Shadow Chasers for a night of training and headed south to spend a night enjoying a truly haunted house.

It was not disappointing since paranormal activity started very soon after arriving at 8:00p.m.

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During our walkthrough with our hostess Gwen, who is also an empath or sensitive, most of us began hearing slight noises such as whispers and a growl. Along with other activity, these noises continued off and on until we left at 4:30 a.m. Whispers is an excellent name for the old Victorian house which was a doctor’s office as well as his home from the 1890’s to about 1940. It has a lurid past with rumors of a Dr. John Gibbons who was rumored to have molested his lady patients, performed illegal abortions, and even possibly assisted in the death of his own child and others. Late in his life, after the death of almost all the members of his immediate family, Dr. Gibbon’s faced admittance to an insane asylum when he admitted to hearing voices and seeing material objects move of its own accord in the old house. He was declared sane by the board of doctors who talked with him, but the torment never stopped until his death. But did it stop? The fact that Whispers Estate is positioned directly across the street from the local funeral home probably adds to the spirit activity in the house. Other than the doctor, the premier haunt and the one most ghost hunters would like to contact is Rachel. Factually, she was the adopted daughter of Dr. Gibbons and his wife Jessie. The report is that Rachel was taken on by the couple when her own parents were injured in an auto accident and transported to Dr. Gibbon’s office for assistance where they died. Apparently having no other family, the Gibbons took her in as their own. The sad story about Rachel is that when she was near ten years old, Rachel died in the house as a result of severe burns received when, supposedly, a fast burning Christmas tree fire or a candle left burning, ignited her nightgown. She succumbed after several days of suffering. Hearsay is that possibly Dr. John Gibbons helped her, in the Dr. Kevorkian style; depart this life after watching her suffer the terrible burns for several days. Van, the present-day owner of the house will not stay there alone overnight or during the day because of the experiences he has had. It is his assertion that he was severely injured when a force or entity pushed him down the stairs from the third floor, and furthermore, the continual voices, or whispers, door slamming, touches and other odd events unnerve him.

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Ghostly children, soft voices, dark shadows, growls and touching makes a great place to test new investigators. It is also a great place to test new equipment. We had just acquired a piece of paranormal paraphernalia called a Ghost Box, a newly designed device at the time. The Box, which supposedly allows spirits to use scanned radio frequencies to speak words, was very busy all night with interesting results. I had always been skeptical about the application of the Ghost Box with paranormal activity up to this night, but one interesting incident with the equipment at the Whispers Estate changed my mind. Our official investigation started at about 9:00 p.m. with the official walkthrough of the old residence with our hostess, then, we split into two teams with Bob taking one and me the other. My group went to the second floor and the others went to the basement. There were a few growls heard and a giggle or two, but no data was collected which I considered usable for my research. Our hostess, Gwen, went with the basement team and was scratched on her leg when she challenged Dr. Gibbons to come forward, but nothing else occurred. It looked as if The Whispers Estate was going to be a bust for the ghostbusters. Around 1:30a.m, all of us were together in a bedroom on the ground floor which at one time was used as the doctor’s examination room. It’s now called Dr. John’s Room and is a place where females report being touched or groped if they remain in the room for any length of time. It should also be noted that an unexplained “black mass” sometimes appears on photos from this room. The K-2 Meter began flashing into the high range as our group passed from the doctor’s waiting room and into the examination room, indicating spirit presence. As is required for a proper investigation, I had my voice recorder running and the Ghost Box was being monitored by our son, Jamie. We’re all thinking that finally, the action was picking up at the Whispers Estate and maybe the location will live up to it’s reputation!! When I listened to the EVP upon reviewing our time spent there, I was shocked by what I heard. On the recording I say, “We are entering the Dr’s boudoir, his boudoir” and a child’s voice clearly says “What’s that mean?” The Ghost Box responds with “French” and the child responds with “Alright”, and that is immediately followed by a different child’s voice also saying “Alright”. This was a breakthrough for us – three different spirits speaking in an intelligent conversation!

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But the incident did not end there. After we entered the room, all six of us decided to settle down for an extensive EVP session. Jamie sat down on the right side of the bed and Bob sat down on the left. Not to be left out, I started to sit down with Bob, not quite touching the bed with my body when suddenly there was nothing under me, because, at that exact moment it felt like something very heavy jumped onto the middle of the bed with them and caused the mattress to drop down several inches. All of us were immediately on our feet wondering what just happened to the bed. The bed sprang back to its original position and appeared as if nothing had occurred. The guys inspected under the bed to see if a bed slat or support had broken under their weight, but everything underneath was as it should be. We all laughed with nervousness, scratched our heads, and someone made the statement that is so common at active ghost hunts “What just happened?” We all carefully moved away from the bed thinking it might happen again. Only investigators Brian and Jamie were valiant enough to climb back on it during our now essential and intense investigation of the room. Then the Ghost Box, with presumably Dr. John speaking (although that was never confirmed) said, “Mattress drop.” It was definitely a paranormal event of the unusual kind, even for the Whispers Estate! Needless to say, I now believe that the Ghost Box can be used as a valuable tool in paranormal research and investigation. Around 2:30 a.m. when the darkness is the darkest outside, we all gathered in the dining room, our command center of operations, to take a break to examine evidence and compare experiences before switching equipment and reconvening into different groups. Our investigators were a little noisier than I really like them to be, but after all, it was a break time and there had been so much paranormal activity all evening to discuss with each other that Bob and I didn’t try to hush their conversations. Through the din all of us heard a loud noise on the back stairwell to the servant’s quarters, and Bob and Jamie, being the closest to the stairs, quickly investigated. Bob saw a small boy’s face looking over the railing at the top of the stairs, and then it immediately disappeared. Bob encouraged him to come back, but no such luck. Our hostess, Gwen, thinks it was Gary, the little boy who was known to have passed-away in the house.

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Whispers Estate is a location which seems to call you back. We keep thinking the next investigation will result in the ultimate EVP or video evidence which will prove there is an existence of a spiritual realm in a parallel universe and the spirits have the answer to the ultimate question that paranormal investigators have “What’s after death?”

Quillen Plumbing My nephew Bubb was all excited when he found out about our paranormal group and immediately started making suggestions for investigation sites close to our home. He is employed part-time as a plumber with Quillen Plumbing in Martinsville, Indiana (like the now famous plumbers with The Atlantic Paranormal Society) and a deputy on the Martinsville Police Force. It is because of his two occupations that he has come to be aware of several property owners who claim to have haunted locations. As soon as Mike Quillen, the owner of Quillen Plumbing, in Martinsville, Indiana, was asked about the activity in his company’s warehouse, he did not hesitate to give us permission to enter his property to investigate. My standing rule is that we never go to anywhere to perform an investigation unless the property owner first asks us to come, but in this case, it was my nephew Bubb, who is not only an employee of Quillen Plumbing but is Mike’s stepson (Mike married my ex-sister-in-law). Bubb had been subjected to paranormal encounters at the location when he lived in the compact efficiency apartment on the ground floor. Other renters, who resided in the same efficiency or in the second-floor apartment, also claimed unusual noises, shadows, and touching while living at the location, also never stayed there for a long time due to the peculiarities of the place. Bubb offered to find someone who knew the history of the old building and the results were interesting. According to a local historian, the Martinsville-kilned brick building, two stories with a high attic, was constructed sometime around 1850-1854 by a Prussian immigrant, Fredrick Axt. By trade, Mr. Axt was a tanner of hides and used the ground floor accordingly.

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Presumably, he and his wife Christiana (also Prussian by birth) and two children, Louisa and William, resided on the second floor and quite possibly, the two servants or helpers, John Schrader and Helen Aflerbach (both also Prussian born) that are listed as residing at the home in the 1860 U.S. Census, had rooms in the attic. A deeper probe into the U.S. Census data confirms Axe and his family as residents of the City of Martinsville location for about twenty- five to thirty years. The early history of Martinsville and its citizens is not particularly well known, but a tome titled, The History of Morgan, Monroe and Brown Counties, lists the Morgan County real estate tax records from 1858 and backs up the data pertaining to the business, thereby confirming Mr. Axt as the owner of a hide tanning business. The tax records also show that over the years the building has been used as a grocery store, furniture store, machine shop, electronics store and even a private residence on several occasions. Apparently, none of these businesses or residents stayed for a long period of time in the 169-year-old brick structure. Prior to his marriage, Bubb had shared the downstairs apartment of the old building for several months along with another male Quillen employee, Mike’s brother. During that time, both observed gray, hazy, shadows moving through the warehouse, as well as in and out of their sleeping quarters. They repeatedly heard footsteps overhead in the then-empty second floor apartment and muted conversations of incomprehensible words (possibly German?) during the times when the noisy street outside no longer drowns out the sounds – mostly after midnight. But most common were the delicate touches, received as they moved about the building. The Quillen employees described them as similar to the sensations one gets when walking through spider webs or when a few stray hairs brush against the neck or face. These were not only felt by the two men, but by others who entered the building even for a short period of time. Late one particular night, both room-mates were in their beds when a loud noise in the room caused them to wake up out of their sleep. Both young men observed the television remote suspended in the air, about a foot off the nightstand where it had been placed.

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As they watched, the object immediately fell back to the location where it had been teleported from. (I’m not sure because they will not admit it, but I think the men left their apartment and the building for the rest of the night.) After discussing the case with Bubb and Mike, it was apparent that other individuals who had reason to come into the old building had been spooked by the place too. Another local small business, an auto repair shop located across the street from the old tannery, leased a small room for storage of supplies for their auto interior restoration business. Apparently, the shop’s employees, all level headed and hardy men, refused to go into the storage facility to get supplies because of the eerie atmosphere at the location. Personally, I find it difficult to imagine that just the building’s “atmosphere” would keep those men from entering and something else had to have happened to them (touches and ethereal whispers perhaps) at the location that caused their uneasiness. After hearing the Quillen employee’s stories and learning of the Jim’s Trim Shop employee’s refusal to enter the building, our Paragon Paranormal team members were anxious to investigate to determine if we could collaborate some of the occurrences with solid data. We were delayed by the weather. Immediately after setting up the day and time with Mike and Bubb and requesting the young man who rented the upstairs apartment be given notice that we would be there poking around in his living area, the weather turned exceptionally cold and snowy. The lower level of the building where the focal point of the investigation was to occur is not heated, it being simply a warehouse for Mike’s business. Paragon Paranormal gave the haunts a reprieve and rescheduled the hunt to a warmer night that would not be so arduous on our electronics, and us. In March 2012, spring came early to the Hoosier state and because of our sometimes- wishy-washy weather patterns in the mid-east states we quickly scheduled a Quillen pre- investigation. The pre-investigation was to determine two things; what, if any, problems there were going to be from outside contamination of sounds and lights within the building’s downtown location, and if there was an actual requirement for a more intense paranormal scrutiny of the site, or an all-night hunt with all our people and equipment.

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If we could not do a proper search, we would not waste our time. We were looking and listening for anything which could be deemed paranormal, plus it was a good time to break in a couple of new investigators who were anxious to become members of our group. There were only five of us in the crowded building, so we gathered as a group and immediately recited a prayer of protection, simply because we did not know exactly what sort of spirits we were to be facing in the old structure. We did a quick walk-through and an EMF (Electro-Magnetic Field) sweep which revealed zero activity on the meter since all the electricity on the ground floor had been shut down by Bob before we entered the building. After calling out to the spirits, we told them what we wanted, and then split into two groups. I took the new members, Travis and Natasha, and Bob went with Cindy. (Cindy had been on two previous hunts with us, one at her home and to the Whispers Estates.) After a few minutes with the two new trainees and explaining the details of the “Spirit Box”, I split off by myself to take some photos, set out recorders for EVP’s and finally sit down to do some investigating on my own. After about twenty minutes all we changed locations and discovered that sounds traveled better that originally expected throughout the small two- story building and so, in order not to contaminate each others EVP’s, one group went outside, and the other group stayed in. We switched positions regularly during the evening’s investigation and finally, the last thirty minutes we all got together to exchange experiences and determine if there were any notable spirit responses. The activity in the 1850s building started quickly as we all heard the footsteps overhead in the vacant apartment. I think the spirits were coming downstairs to see what we were doing because the energies in the building increased after that. Our K-2s were lighting up! Travis was the first one touched. Natasha was next. They were together in the northeast room on the ground floor when Travis reported a touch similar to a hot poker on the back of his neck. We quickly examined him; there were no marks, but the hair on his arms was in the static position. About the time Travis was commenting to her about his encounter, Natasha felt a “brush” along her lower arm.

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The couple seemed almost too embarrassed to report to other investigators about the occurrences when I asked if anyone experienced any unusual incidences to discuss; they thought Bob and I would just pass it off as nerves or excitement because it was their first official ghost hunting experience. Maybe I did have that fleeting thought for a few seconds, but it quickly dispelled when the other two group members reported spirit contact. Bob reported touching and his arm hairs rising from spirit contact. In Cindy’s case, a continuous poking of her rear left ribs continued for about ten minutes during the same time they were hearing a shuffling sound in an adjacent area. It was a lesson to the new investigators that sometimes the spirits are very subtle in their responses and actual physical contact can sometimes barely be felt by the living. The EVP recordings were disappointing, because we had a lot of outside street noises and the neighbor’s dog which rarely stopped barking. We did obtain two recordings which I deemed ethereal. After a question concerning the type work done in the building there was a loud yell by a male voice which said “Hey – look!” The second EVP was in response to a statement made by Cindy during the most active period of the night when she commented about the noise in the corner of the room. The response was “No-No!” This was clearly a female voice. No mysterious shadows or mists showed up in the pictures taken at Quillen’s warehouse and no unusual images were captured on the videotapes except for one small, dull, orb bouncing behind Travis and Natasha as they walked down the central hall in the minutes before they were touched. In this circumstance, because the building was so jam-packed with remodeling and plumbing supplies and was quite dusty, I find it difficult to not believe that this particular orb was just dust - but I could be wrong. Of the many photos taken by our still cameras, not another single orb was evident or any other abnormality that we could not indentify as flashback flares, dust, or moisture droplets. Even with all our doubts, the bouncing ball of light could have been the energy of the spirit that touched them later.

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Quillen’s is a project that deserves additional research. The small amount of evidence we obtained during our few hours there, the personal experiences and the statements from Mike Quillen and the men who work or live there, seems to point toward a location with paranormal activity. Hopefully, during our next investigation, the environment will be more within acceptable limits to the parameters we need to do a proper investigation, mainly, no barking dogs and much later in the evening when traffic has ceased to be so active in the adjacent streets. Harmony School Through associates of friends, I was contacted by the parents of Taylor, a twelve-year- old girl, who attended the Harmony School in Bloomington, Indiana. Taylor had assigned a project to herself to present a power point presentation to her fellow students and teachers concerning legitimacy of the science of the paranormal and paranormal research. A relative of Taylor’s then obtained one of our business cards and called to see if we would assist her with the project. Harmony School was originally Elm Heights School when it was a part of the Bloomington School system. The three-story structure was built in 1926 as a neighborhood school in the Elm Heights residential area of the Vinegar Hill Limestone District, located just a block south of the Indiana University campus. The limestone faced building is typical of the time, with wide hallways, high ceilings, lots of big, bright windows, and a gymnasium with a performance stage on one end and no bleachers. There are many big airy classrooms and interconnecting rooms with lots of smaller closets to accommodate the students and faculty. Multiple stairways connect the three levels with a very small elevator to assist handicapped students. The original school also had an operating cafeteria and lunch room. In 1974, after the building was abandoned as an in-service structure by the Bloomington School system, Harmony School was founded by two free spirited individuals. Their vision was to reopen the building with a private Montessori curriculum, which they did after obtaining an economical lease. In 1985, along with the original founders, the parents of the children enrolled in the school were given the option to purchase the building from the government run system for $10.00. Needless to say, the parents bought the building.

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In 1974, there were originally only four students for the private school, but now approximately 200 attends. With an open curriculum, the school’s classes range from early childhood development to the senior year. Since it’s founding, more than 1000 students have attended with an exceptionally high percentage of that group graduating from Harmony and moving on to higher learning. Several graduates have returned to teach at the school and enrolled their own children. Being centrally located in the community and a symbol of cooperative spirit to many of the residents, Harmony School is a dynamic location for various community and private events. The school offers a youth community center for all children in the Bloomington area. A Saturday morning farmers market held in the gym is very popular with the city’s local gardeners and artisans throughout the year. The Harmony School or Elm Heights School, as it was formerly named, is so engrained in the history of the community that there have been some residents or students who loved Harmony School right to the very end of their earthly life and beyond; they desired to have their funerals in the small gymnasium in the heart of the building. It was PP-SC’s first school and everyone in our team was anxious to investigate the huge 25,000 square foot building. No one on the Paragon Paranormal crew except Jamie and I had ever been in the building, and I knew that with the vastness of the space and the many, many rooms, that we would need assistance from our student contact, Taylor, and her mother, Sandi. Trying to keep the paranormal investigation discrete from the rest of the students and teachers not directly involved with her planned presentation, Taylor recruited a fellow student, Brandon, a fifteen-year-old, and his mother Patti. I was particularly pleased Patti came to help since she is spiritually sensitive and an experienced ghost hunter; she and Bob could work together to find the areas with the most spirit activity. Paragon Paranormal was represented by seven investigators, with only one of them, Baxter, being on his first hunt. Taylor and Sandi were newbie’s, with Patti and Brandon being the only veterans in Harmony School’s delegation.

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Even before the official hunt began, all our females who took advantage of the ladies’ restroom on the main floor had feelings of being watched and stated the restroom was “creepy” and I heard soft whispers toward the back stalls. At that time, daylight from the sitting sun was still peeking in through the big windows and casting sinister shadows on the walls – it did appear and feel menacing, but a scientific paranormal investigation cannot be dependent on just feelings, we require real data to declare a location “haunted”. There was a lot of territory to cover in the 25,000 square foot structure and we would be spreading our equipment out more than I was comfortable with for a proper search. I was depending on our spirit sensitive investigators to find the most active locations, so the instruments could be moved to help tighten our exploration and obtain some acceptable paranormal evidence. After doling out the equipment, and conducting a short organizational meeting, we split into groups and spread our web over all the building. Several minutes were needed to take a note of any high EMF readings (high energy locations) due to the many electronics throughout the classrooms and to seek out appropriate spots for the camcorders. Because of high daily use and human energies in the locations, I had determined from our initial walkthrough that our main focal points for investigation were to be the small children’s development center, the gymnasium and the rooms on the lowest floor (basement), the ground floor ladies’ restroom and all the hallways in between. The spirits were waiting for us and it didn’t take long before they made their presence known. Bob immediately started seeing a small, approximately three to four-foot-tall, shadow moving in the main hall between the recycle bins, and the water fountain; all located in close proximity to the ladies’ restroom previously mentioned. This activity continued all night and our hot spots were later confirmed by the sensitive Patti when she arrived at the investigation. I, being the auditory sensitive, heard little giggles and the sound of children playing in the same hallway. Later in the evening, Bob also heard the laughter and was sure the spirit child, presumably a small female, followed him throughout the school as he moved from floor to floor.

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A group of us, mostly the newcomers, converged in the small children’s development area and encouraged the spirits to come out. There was nothing at first, just small noises in the corners occasionally and a random orb appearing in the videos and photos – probably just dust. We started provoking and challenging the spirits to touch us and pull our hair, when suddenly Brandon, who was standing in the door between the classroom and the activity room, was completely unnerved when he felt a firm tug on the back of his shirttail. A few seconds later, a couple of us heard a giggle from the area behind him; the sound was also picked up on my recorder. A photo taken at the same time showed an orb next to the door where Brandon was standing. Suddenly, Brandon shouted and jumped; his shirt tail had been pulled! Everyone was excited - we had some hard evidence of paranormal activity! Later, as our session ended, and we were noisily exiting the room, I heard another barely detectable giggle behind me which was evidently just for me, since no one else professed to hear the sound. It was also at this same time I first heard the faint sounds of what I can only describe as excited children playing or walking through the halls. From my very first visit to the school and our sponsors took us on our initial walkthrough, I sensed that the gym would be a great location for spirit activity. To me, it just felt like a good spot and it made sense because of the high energies expelled throughout the years in that particular area. Along with the many physical activities and ball games on the old wooden gym floor, the raised stage at the east end of the gym was where Harmony students and parents were presented with many theatre productions, graduations, political speeches and seasonal activities. Some of the drama creations were undoubtedly lively and powerful while others were poignant or heartbreaking. From ballgames to plays to graduations to funerals, we knew we had to concentrate our investigation in Harmony’s communal area. I set up a video recorder at one end of the stage and placed voice recorders in three corners. Bob had been seeing a small shadow, like a child, run back and forth across the stage, hiding behind a partition and chair in the middle of the stage, then running back to the stage’s north access stairwell. I wanted to get evidence of that child’s spirit.

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Because I had been hearing faint sounds in a particular area of the gym, Taylor decided to station herself in that very dark area, the northwest corner of the gym floor, one of the points the farthest away from the stage. From that unlighted and somewhat sinister position, Taylor could see all the activity of our group and maybe pick up an EVP or two by herself – brave for a twelve-year-old on her first investigation. The activity started quickly. The video recorder immediately recorded a pulsating orb dart across the stage and move toward Ariel and Braxton, the two seventeen-year olds in our group. No one visually saw the orb; it was recorded with our night vision lens. This was the first of several spheres of energy dashing around the stage during our investigation. Ariel urged the little shadow that Bob and Patti had seen earlier to move a small green ball they had positioned on an “X” in the middle of the stage. When Ariel and Cindy later reviewed their EVP recordings taken during that particular event, they discovered an intelligent spirit had returned an answer to her appeal for the spirits to move the ball. The recorder she and Braxton were using recorded a faint, but clear, “I can’t”. The voice sounded like a child’s, but a little more grown up than the diminutive spirit shadows which had been observed earlier. Finally, the action started all at once in the gym’ stage area, but some of the parameters of the encounter was not realized until the evidence was reviewed. The sequence of events is as follows: Orbs were seen on the video moving back and forth from the investigators to the props on the stage, the “Spirit Box” says the word “feel” then approximately twenty seconds later “occurred”, and then within ten more seconds, Braxton (who deemed himself a skeptic – until this happened) is touched on the leg by an unseen hand. During these two minutes of action, the K-2 EMF meter is flashing red, a sure indication of some kind of close and strong electromagnetic force close to it. The K-2 flashed red for an additional two minutes until the video evidence showed the orb activity in the area had ceased also. This is the kind of evidence we were looking for! We had an intelligent spirit making contact with us. It responded to a question, touched an investigator, energized and lit up the K-2 to the maximum setting, and made itself known by the spirit energy ball we call an orb.

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I felt like we had accomplished the very task our group had been requested to perform – to find out if the Harmony School had spirits present. When leaving Harmony School that night, I was very pleased with the investigation. We had accomplished our goal by using three untrained chasers along with eight experienced ghost hunters. We found spirits in a large school where skepticism of paranormal phenomena is widespread, and actually, I too, initially expected to find little at the location. Best of all, Paragon Paranormal added a medium-in-training by the name of Patti to its unofficial and unwritten association’s membership roster. Little did we realize at the time that with the addition of Patti as our group’s official clairvoyant would move our investigations up a notch in the public’s opinions. She would make Paragon Paranormal - Shadow Chasers more creditable as an investigation group and because she and her husband had already been investigating for several years, there was no need to train her on our investigation process or the testing and recording equipment. I like teaching new investigators but there is one drawback with some inexperienced or semi-new investigators; I find it difficult to get them to review the data in the manner which I demand – carefully and always more than once. I usually end up with all the recorders and review them myself because I am so afraid they will miss a good EVP or video and even photo evidence. But, I have a lot of patience, so I do the re-reviews. Harmony School was Cindy and Ariel’s third investigation and their photos were great. They took a series of photos in each area, so it was easy to compare the changes or situations in each room or hallway during the period the investigators stayed there. From the time when first entering a room to the time the session ends, the atmosphere in a location can change completely, and it’s scientifically suitable to have it recorded in at least one manner, but more is best of all. They had orbs in several photos with some determined to be dust, but there were several which were present during high energy times when we were experiencing activity with our electronic equipment, along with audible knocks and voice phenomena. The many voice recorders we used tended to pick up well in the classrooms, but in the expansive hallways and stairs, there was too much of an echo effect.

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The echoes also made it more difficult to determine where the audible spirit voices (in this case the sounds of children playing and shouts) were originating from, even to the point of being unable to determine if they were from the same floor the investigators were exploring. Even though the investigation was only a few hours, we had obtained more than enough paranormal evidence for Taylor to submit to her teachers and classmates and make her presentation a success. She may have even transformed a few skeptics who originally teased her for her choice of projects but were astounded with some of the data we collected as well as the narratives of our personal experiences. The data, when compared collectively, made it possible for Paragon Paranormal - Shadow Chasers to declare the Harmony School as “Haunted”. Most important, Taylor was happy, the school administrators and parents were happy with the investigation, and our group got to experience an unrestricted investigation in our largest building to date. Patti and Family Sometimes it’s not just places that experience paranormal attachment, but people and even whole families who can attract members of the spirit world. Fortunately for Bob and me, we met such a person and her family at the Harmony School investigation. Although I am not a student of auras, I just knew how special Patti was when I was blinded on a psychic level by an intense blue and violet aura around her as she walked into the gymnasium at Harmony School. Ever since our first hunt with Patti and her son Brandon that night at Harmony, there has developed a psychic bond among all of us. Patti and her husband Keith join us for most of our investigations and the results have been noteworthy in terms of finding the hotspots for spiritual activity in a place which we might otherwise have considered a waste of time, and vice-versa. Away from the investigations we all challenge each other with remote viewing exercises, discuss dreams, and yes – even try to pick winning lottery numbers. (The last one has not been successful!) Patti and I joined MUFON together in an attempt to drag the rest of the family out sky-watching during clear evenings.

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All the guys enjoy their nighttime Bigfoot expeditions that turn into bonfires and hotdogs for us sky-gazing and UFO watching ladies who do not pretend to like bugs and briars and simply refuse to traipse through the woods at night with them guys. It’s fun to share these unusual activities with friends who enjoy them also and are not driven to laugh at, criticize or berate each other’s beliefs in a bullying sort of way. Sometimes when the spirits refuse to let Patti sleep at night and mess with her dreams, Bob and I become her sounding board to try to figure out what the spirits want, who they are and why are they bothering Patti and not someone else. Her house is always active with old and new spirits who are just walking through and stop to check out the shining light of her psychic abilities. I did mention the shining light of her abilities, but for some reason those abilities also have never met a light bulb that they liked; Whenever Patti enters a room, she has been known to blow out light bulbs. This happened once when we entered a client’s home as soon as she stepped through the door. Of course, we all laughed, and then quickly told the homeowners that it just proved the spirits were glad to see us – or so we like to make others think. At least with this “curse” attached to her, we always know what to buy her as a gift for all occasions – light bulbs! Did I mention that Trish’s gifts are amazing? Even if I did, I’ll just say it again, over and over, because it’s the truth. She tests herself constantly and one of her skills I truly delight in is the remote viewing of the client’s homes or buildings we are investigating - before we arrive there. We keep the names and addresses from Patti prior to investigations and yet, Patti is so good at drawing the outside appearance and inside layout that if she has something wrong, I question myself if we are at the correct location! When we go on vacation, I sometimes ask her to sketch out her impressions of our geographical locations. There have been a few responses totally off the marks, which I attribute to the fact that we were moving, but most of Patti’s answers have been close enough for us to score as hits. The psychic connection is a definite connection for Patti and me. I had received a magazine which had photos of and explained how to build your own “Gnome Houses” for the yard.

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The photos of the miniature slab wood and stick buildings were intriguing and the method of construction was something she and I could do without many tools and the men’s help. I looked at the pictures for several days and pictured us actually performing the work at her new home and in my backyard. Then, after about a week, I got the email from Patti, “What is it about lighthouses? I keep seeing lighthouses!” At first, I couldn’t figure out what she was asking about, but I soon realized she was speaking of the “Gnome Houses” which did look like lighthouses, and my heart’s desire to show the magazine to her. There had been no intentional thought transmissions on my part to her psychically, but Patti got the message anyway. This experience just substantiated my observation that she is a great medium and remote viewer. Patti’s house is like an an open invitation for the spirits. Doors open and close; shadows move up and down the stairs and along walls; spirit children stop by and play in her bathroom and laundry room; they knock items from shelves and throw small objects across the rooms and mostly, they keep her awake at night wanting her to notice them. Her family, including the four-legged ones, is there to witness these manifestations. We have had the pleasure of some events occurring during our visits, especially with the spirit sensitive Bob who also sees the little boy who will not leave. I hear their voices, especially in the downstairs bathroom where you are never alone, and we both have observed small objects flying off the front of the refrigerator. Moving is not an option for her family because the spirits will always be around her, attracted to her beautiful spiritual light, or maybe that gorgeous blue and violet aura.

Sarah’s House Our paranormal group was finally becoming an accepted organization in the local community. We were getting calls from the surrounding counties too, but Bob and I preferred to stay local. Friends outside of our ghost hunting group started talking to us about Sarah and the apprehensions she had expressed to them concerning a possible malevolent spirit in the old house she lived in.

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Our group’s guideline is that we only investigate private homes and businesses when the request comes from the owners of the property or the current residents, not from friends or family (especially children). When the call finally came from a frightened Sarah, a resident in Martinsville, alerting us to a possible child endangerment condition from a wicked spirit, we immediately arranged for the hunt with our group members, packed everything up, and went to her house. I felt like I was on a rescue mission. It was indeed a rescue mission, but not one as we imagined. The old house was in a condition I would call total chaos. In this particular case, my definition of chaos is two very large dogs, three cats, three kids, and four adults living in a two-bedroom house with one bathroom. There were too many live animals and too much stuff, meaning furniture, toys, electronics and other items related with modern living situations and no central heat or air conditioning. The old house on North Main Street had been built in 1900; at that time a desirable section of town. Closer to the town’s center there are many large beautiful brick homes built on the hill near one of the many large artesian well spas. Historically, Martinsville, Indiana was the “City of Mineral Water” and was prominent for its mineral baths throughout the Midwest. It was also known for the exceptional blue clay-shale deposits found in the hills north of town from which the dark red bricks and blocks used in the architecture of the town’s picturesque homes and magnificent government buildings were fired. When it was built, Sarah’s wood frame house, now covered with aluminum siding from the 1960’s, was quite small when compared to most houses on North Main in 1900. It was most likely constructed as a home for servants who worked in the larger homes or perhaps for workers in the brick industry. The building was built as a two-room family abode and had originally had a small second story. Over the years there have been many of the common structural changes to the building. Sometime in the past, three more rooms were built on; a modern kitchen and a bathroom added onto the rear of the house and an enclosed porch to the front. Off the kitchen, an open porch runs alongside the northeast corner of the house. There have also been some unusual changes.

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A previous owner removed the inner staircase for some mysterious reason, resulting in no available access to the second floor rooms inside the residence. Also, there are now no visible clues to indicate where the steps had been located since the original walls have been covered with cheap wood paneling and the previously high ceilings dropped and finished with fiberglass ceiling panels. The only entrance to the second floor is through a small opening, high up on the south side of the house’s exterior, accessed only by utilizing a very tall ladder. In the same bizarre manner, the cellar which is located under the “newer” rear section where the bathroom and kitchen are located has for the most part also been made difficult to get to. The former outside entrance which consisted of steps leading to the cellar, have been removed and filled in with soil and rocks. A small trap door in the floor of the bathroom closet is the only means of access to the space under the house. The unusual architecture of the house, the extended family, the many and assorted animals, the many television and computers emitting electromagnetic pulses, and the disarray of the contents in and around the outside of the dwelling all contributed to the turmoil and probably helped to advance Sarah’s belief that she and her family were being plagued by spirits in the house. Her husband was skeptical about the whole concept of spirits – but since he worked nights, he was the only person in the whole family who did not spend 24 hours each day in the chaotic environment. This investigation was not a good one. When we arrived at her house it was too busy. Sarah had banished her husband, father and children for the evening, but her mother, another female friend, the dogs and cats were still in the house and all the electronics lit up and noisy. It was my mistake not to wait until another time to perform the investigation, but I had two inexperienced investigators with us and I wanted to give them some training in a private residence atmosphere. Plus, my new people were acquaintances of Sarah’s husband they looked forward to helping the family find answers to their paranormal concerns. Sarah removed her two massive Pit-bulls before we entered. The three cats remained inside throughout the investigation as did seven breathing, active humans. We set up a camcorder on night vision in the bathroom where Sarah had fearful feelings of “being watched” and where the entrance to the cellar was located in the closet.

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There was nothing recorded on the camera except the cats and a couple of individuals who took advantage of the restroom facilities (off camera range thank goodness!) and some dust particles, or cat dander and fur. All five females present sit down in the kitchen to perform EVPs since it wasn’t really possible to do much else in the crowded house. Bob and Charles explored the rest of the house looking for “hot spots” with their EMF meters. The only electronic voice recordings (EVPs) taken during our investigation were from the first ten minutes we were in the kitchen; both were Class “B” and not the best quality of recordings in clarity and strength. The first was a weak child’s giggle in response to a question asked by Sarah and immediately following the giggle was a swishing sound like a child would make when playing with a toy airplane. The swishing sound continued for about two to three seconds. Sarah had inkling there was a small child spirit in the house. Her four-year-old daughter claimed to have a friend named “Kersa” that would play tea party with her, mostly at night. Kersa was also blamed for moving or “borrowing” her toys on occasion. An unusual incident with a helium balloon moving throughout the house as if guided by Kersa’s small spirit hands had unnerved Sarah and her family several weeks earlier. Sarah also had a belief that there was a dark, evil male spirit that would watch her while she showered and moved about the residence. Sarah got no support from her family when she voiced her concerns, especially her husband the skeptic. This claim, her fear that it may harm her or another member of her family especially her children and the fact that she asked Paragon Paranormal for help is what brought our investigators to her home and kept me from retreating from there after seeing the conditions she and her family were living in each day. Fortunately for her, we found no data or had no personal experiences to support her malevolent spirit claim. We did come to the conclusion that maybe her fears were a result of the high level of EMFs (electromagnetic fields) in the home and the fact that Sarah hardly ever had a break from her home environment. Being exposed to high EMFs was possibly causing her to have fear or paranoia, in this situation, a sensation of continually being watched.

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All in all, I think we helped ease the concerns Sarah had of a dark entity and confirmed the existence of the child spirit in her home. I suggested to her that it would most likely improve her situation if she would either move to a larger house or try to open up more spaces throughout the present residence (purge some furniture and stuff) and keep the larger pets outdoors. It’s not possible to clear out any family members since Sarah is compassionately caring for her disabled parents and her three children are pre-teen and younger. I also suggested she make an effort to have some quiet and alone time away from the frenzied surroundings, a difficult thing for her to do. Sarah’s house was definitely not one of our best investigations, but it was a noteworthy learning experience. There can be too many people and a too crowded environment to adequately perform the type of controlled scientific investigation I demand from my investigators because proper data cannot be obtained in chaotic conditions. But, I have to look at it in another way too; maybe the chaos is what the spirits in the crowded house needed to materialize and interact with the residents. A follow-up investigation of the abandoned old residence after Sarah and her family moved to a larger house in December of 2012 possibly could have answered a few questions. At present, the house sits empty, windows boarded up and less chaos evident in the cleaned-up and abandoned yard. We will never know if the old spirits are still there unless we are called back by new tenants.

Martinsville City Hall As I said before, as I was growing up in the small town of Paragon I would hear amazing rumors of paranormal activity. This included nearby communities as well as my own. My businessman father was a major source of this gossip as well as my school pals and teachers when I started to attend middle school and high school in the Morgan County seat of Martinsville, Indiana. Martinsville is a small town of approximately 17,000 residents, most of northern European and British Isles lineage, almost all are Christian, hard working and mostly middle- class family units.

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Originally Delaware and Miami Indian territory, fur traders initially invaded, then occupied the densely wooded and bear infested wilderness along the West Fork of the White River. Land hungry farmers followed and settled the area in the early 1820’s and along with other pioneers which included skilled labor and merchants, they established Morgan County after Indiana statehood was established. As a group, they eventually mapped out the plans for the county seat of Martinsville in 1827 and settlers slowly moved into the area. Even today, much of the business and industry in Martinsville is still geared toward the needs of the farmers. To others living there, Martinsville is just a “bedroom community” and they commute daily to Indianapolis, 23 miles to the north, or Bloomington, 15 miles to the south, for employment, but return every night to their homes and families. With all the colorful history of the local area going back to the early 1800’s, it is no wonder that rumors of paranormal activity appear to pinpoint many houses and buildings in the county, including the City of Martinsville. Just from information received from my family members I personally was aware of over forty years of haunting activity at the structure which housed the court, city council, and law enforcement for the City of Martinsville. When my oldest brother, Kenny was selected to serve on the Martinsville Police Department after his return from Viet Nam in the early 1970’s, he was the first person in my family to confirm to us the stories of the supernatural phenomenon in the Martinsville City Hall and its Council Chamber/Court Room. The city police department’s radio dispatch and dayroom is a relatively quiet area, but loud bangs and other sounds were heard throughout the night and day, in other areas of the City Hall. Then, when my nephew Gary was appointed a full-time position on the Martinsville Police Department in the spring of 2012, he started to relate some of the rumors from other officers about the long history of the ghostly goings-on in the structure as well. Other members of the city government, including the mayor and his staff, would talk of weighty footsteps along the wooden floorboards, the sound of chairs scraping the floor, and shouts or low murmuring voices in the upstairs chamber – when no one was in attendance.

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Although it was always in the back of my mind how desirable it would be, never in my life did I think that I would actually be ghost hunting at the seat of Martinsville’s government. I had been trying for months to figure out a way to approach someone who worked at the building to ask the mayor for us. Bob knew the mayor quite well through his political connections, but I was not as familiar with him as I had been with the previous mayor. But, I should have realized that my luck in obtaining special locations to investigate was still holding out - or maybe it was just coincidence. Then again, maybe it was the resident spirits at work. Seizing an opportunity one day when we happened upon Martinsville Mayor Phil Deckard and his wife at Paragon’s “Tomato Pie Pizza Joint” I presented him with one of our business cards. Mayor Deckard took a look at it, looked at me and said “Yes”. I did not even have to ask him if we could investigate - he just said “Yes”!! I inquired when we could enter; he said, “anytime you want”. When I said it may take more than one visit, he said “as many times as you need”. To me, it was a solicitation like none Paragon Paranormal- Shadow Chasers had ever had before, at least not since Harmony School. A Martinsville City Hall investigation was a golden ring that could not be refused! There was no doubt that he wanted us to give him a resolution to the haunting activity. I was on a roll, so I also inquired if we could also investigate the attached firehouse - Mayor Deckard said, “No problem – just enter through the unlocked connecting door.” We were in! Everyone associated with Paragon Paranormal wanted to help investigate the City Hall and old firehouse. Phil Deckard was on his third stint as the Mayor of Martinsville, and as a total, had spent about ten years in the highest office in the old City Hall building. Even though he did not talk about it, I knew he had probably experienced many supernatural occurrences while working late in his office and in the other areas of the building and also knew of paranormal incidents involving his employees. A two story, tile roof, brick and limestone trimmed structure built in a Roman-Gothic style; the magnificent building was constructed in 1917. The government building was built directly connected on the north side to the now abandoned old firehouse.

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There are many wide and lofty windows throughout the structure, all with venetian blinds of adequate size to block the sunlight or give a sense of privacy to any government high jinks within the building. Most of the floors are the original hardwood but are now covered in carpet in most areas to reduce echoes. A carpet-covered wooden staircase bisects the building on the north side. A modern elevator is also available in the newest attached section which also houses modern restrooms on each floor. All lights are overhead and bright enough to light up even the darkest of corners, but when the lights are turned off, there is an eerie glow from the weak streetlights outside around the closed window coverings. There is also a creepy feeling of being watched from the shadows, especially in the high gallery, and low indistinct whispers constantly murmuring in your ears: both conditions very exhilarating to paranormal researchers, and disconcerting to others who work in the building, especially at night. The mayor’s offices, the city police department’s radio room and command room, and the other locally elected bureaucrats have always had their departments on the first floor. Because we could not perceive any noises caused by the officers on duty or them from us in other sections of the building, it must be assumed that all the downstairs rooms are well insulated for sound. The insulation is so ample, that when the police changed shifts during the time we were investigating upstairs, the new shift had no clue we were there. (I know we unsettled the fresh on-duty officers when we stopped to inform them we were leaving the building. You should have seen the expression on their faces when we told them the reason why we were there!) The upper Council Room is also the location of the city’s traffic court and other civil matters which convenes almost daily, whereas the City Council usually meets only once each month, except in those rare occasions of special meetings. These assemblies can create high energy conditions in the City Hall, and probably has over the many years it has been the focal point for the community. Spirits love high human energy locations because it gives them power and the conditions in the Council Room and Gallery were perfect for paranormal activity.

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Located above the council room is a third-floor balcony or gallery, in a position where observers can get a bird’s eye view of the goings on in the massive space below. These days, as opposed to the past, the west corner of the gallery’s seating is used to temporarily store old reports, accounts, and communications, mostly of the street department. Stored in the east corner of the gallery are cardboard cartons of documents from an unknown department or maybe ancient court records. Still, even with the clutter of boxes and books, the all wood gallery is a great place to set and observe the environment of the whole chamber. It is also a spooky, dark place where sounds tend to be amplified and are easily heard in the chamber below. We started our preliminary investigation early one Thursday evening while it was still daylight. I say preliminary because the whole purpose of that particular night’s investigation was to determine if the location was truly active and if the City Hall would necessitate a complete night and incorporate more inhabitants for an all-out scrutiny. After informing the police officers on duty that we were in the building, but intentionally not informing them what our business was, we headed for the upstairs city chamber room and started prepping our equipment. We first performed meticulous scans for high electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) in our search locations and established the best positions for our recorders and cameras. While the rest of us were setting up, our clairvoyant Patti immediately went to work. Although she doesn’t fully acknowledge the enormous paranormal gift she has, I can say Patti is an exceptional medium. Sitting by herself on a bench in the main chamber, she was flooded with voices, but the most prominent one was very forceful and immediately identified himself as “Uriah Hinson” a “two-time sheriff”. Sheriff Hinson also informed her that he had been an active member of the community throughout his life and was one of the persons responsible for the city hall building being built. But, the spirit of Sheriff Hinson also asked if we could help him find his wife and daughter, but we could not help him at that time since there was no way to obtain the information from the library, which is located across the street from the Martinsville City Hall. This would require library time for family histories and an obituary search.

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A quick and futile search of the information on the internet only confirmed that he had been a sheriff, elected twice between the years of 1892 through 1896. After all the equipment was in place, the rest of us, five in all, settled down for our preliminary investigation and positioned ourselves throughout the main chamber and gallery where we could see each other and obtain the best viewing for the dark corners and maybe a few EVP’s of the spirits or ghosts who were present. It was quiet, and spooky, in the vast assembly room. Three of us went up into the high area, including Patti, Keith and myself. Occasionally I would change places with Bob and Cindy in the low chamber, but Trish and her husband mostly stayed with the spirits in the gallery. We were picking up the smell of flowers on occasion which probably indicated a female spirit and possible spirit orbs, but there were definitely ghostly voices whispering to Trish, all enticed by her bright metaphysical light. I was hearing the whispers too, and Bob was watching the small dark shadows move around us. Another spirit who wanted to be heard included a male who called himself “Hiram”. Hiram was a “dark” male entity that seemed to carry a grudge and informed Patti that our investigating group needed to leave the city hall; he did not want us there. When she was hearing Hiram, Patti was also hearing the sounds of chains clanging such as one would hear from shackles. This would make us assume that Hiram was a prisoner who had experienced bad times in the building sometime during the almost one hundred years of history of the building, or even before. From her seat in the gallery, Patti kept us informed of the voices she was hearing, especially grouchy “Hiram” who constantly repeated his insistence that we leave – he didn’t want us there. But, Patti had invaded his territory and his territory was in the western corner of the gallery. After the sun was completely down and the streetlights filtering through the tight blinds were the only illumination in the hall, we all began to see the quick, darting shadow moving up and down the wall from the west end of the gallery to the area behind the moveable chalkboard on the west side of the main chamber. Was this the spirit of Hiram moving up and down, trying to avoid our surveillance?

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As I stated before, Patti and her husband, Keith, stayed in the gallery practically throughout the entire preliminary investigation trying to make contact. We took photo after photo trying to capture the shadow, but the results yielded only one photo with a faint gray orb image on the still. Our digital camcorders would not stay on – something kept shutting them down, so we eventually gave up using them. The fact that we could not catch a good photographic glimpse of “Hiram” made him a target specter for our future investigations. But, we also knew there were other numerous unnamed specters in the area constantly talking in low whispers to our clairvoyant and the rest of us when they desired us to hear them. Then, after about three hours into the search, Patti was physically shoved by a phantom in the gallery. Maybe shoved is not the best word for the situation – “strongly guided away” from the dark corner of the west side of the gallery could better describe the grabbing of her arm by an unseen hand and leading her out of the corner toward the center of the second- floor balcony. Seeing the shocked look on Patti’s face and her explanation of what just happened we immediately started taking photos of her and the area in the gallery where the attack occurred. Her husband and protector Keith (who fortunately is an EMT) brought her to the lower chamber to help calm her down and examine her upper arm which was starting to “burn” where the spirit had touched her. Just as we suspected, there were finger impressions, three red and swelling fingers marks, which got more defined as we examined her. This was the first time Patti had ever been manhandled by the spirit world and she didn’t appreciate it at all and neither did any of us. The photos we took of the gallery revealed nothing – no shadows or presence except for Patti and Keith who was sitting approximately twenty feet from her. The photos of Patti’s arm clearly demonstrated the consequence of the spirit contact. After a few carefully selected and not so nice words for the gallery’s pushy ghost, we immediately packed all of our equipment, shook our fists at the fiend, and exited the building with the promise to all the spirits that Paragon Paranormal would return to City Hall in greater numbers and strength to expose them all.

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The decision to terminate the investigation was an easy one and we needed to evaluate the event before we put anyone else in harm’s way. Out of the building, we took one more look at Trish’s burning arm. The contact had produced no blood, but it still exhibited the three fingers of the ghost. But, we also had some time to get our thoughts straight, let some of the anger subside, and think about the attack and what it meant. We had a lot of questions. Why did he do it? Patti wasn’t doing anything but trying to contact him to find out his name, why he was there, and if we could help him. His response made us think he was truly evil. Was this just a scare tactic to make us leave? It worked! He didn’t really physically harm her when he could have just shoved her over the railing of the gallery to the chamber’s floor approximately thirteen feet below. Patti said the actual touch was like a parent would roughly guide a child by the arm from one point to the next. Could the “burn” have been from the energy of the spirit? Spirits and ghosts are thought to gather their strength from the warmth of the surrounding environment, so was the heat concentrated in his touch enough to make Patti move? Whatever the ghost’s intention was when he touched Patti, it worked, because we all quickly departed the building. We all said our prayers of protection to reassure us that no members of the spirit realm would do further harm or follow us home. The review of the night’s digital voice recordings did produce a couple of interesting results. One “Class A” EVP recorded in the Chamber Room was a young man’s voice which said, “Go back downstairs (unintelligible word) they done heard me.” The word we could not understand sounds like a name that starts with a hard “C” or “K”. Another EVP taken in the gallery was a female voice saying, “I have the right to choose.” A couple of weeks later we were back just as promised and just as I promised the spirits, there were more of us this time. As I did the first time, I informed the ghostly presence that we were there to learn from them and not to force them out of their home, but this time I also requested them to please not injure any of our group; I could only hope they would pay attention to what I was saying. So, they would hear us, we said our prayers of protection in the City Hall’s main chamber before starting the hunt. Later we found out that we should have

130 included the police dispatcher in our prayers that night. During our previous investigation we had spent some time in the old firehouse, but any spirits which may have been there when the firemen occupied the location left along with the firefighters to the new building. We, and Patti, felt nothing and no data was captured- not even an orb. For this incursion into the government building, we made the decision to not include the firehouse and to concentrate strictly on the Chamber Hall and its balcony. The building’s late-night atmosphere felt different – not as charged as two weeks previous, but still creepy. Patti sat down in the centrally located mayor’s chair and started concentrating on the spirits while the rest of us set up equipment and rescanned for high electromagnetic areas. As is common in haunted locations, some of the high EMF’s had relocated their position, but the predictable ones associated with electrical wires, outlets and electronic equipment were in the same locations as detected during the last investigation. Our first message was from some unnamed male spirit who, unhappy with our presence again simply said “I’m out of here – goodbye.” It could have been Hiram because we did not hear from him all night, but we didn’t make contact with Sheriff Hinson either. But the ghost who did make contact identified himself as “John”. John told Patti he wanted us to get out and leave him alone. It was Patti’s impression that John was the spirit in the dark corner of the gallery and maybe the one who wanted her to leave his area during our last hunt. (It came to our thoughts that Hiram might just be calling himself John, but that was just speculation.) We did not leave. Something had basically run us out of there before and it was not going to happen again. When the spirit had man-handled and pushed Patti, it made all of us more determined that it was not going to happen again; we were not leaving. The investigation lasted for about five hours. As before, we could not keep the video cameras and computers running for more than a few minutes before someone or something shut them down. We finally gave up and did not even try to operate them. The audio recorders were running constantly because we kept them in our hands where we could keep an eye on them, but, we did have to replace the recorders’ batteries two times during the five hours. Evidently, the spirits were anxious to talk but not be seen.

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More benign spirits came forward to Patti’s light during this visit. Some of the bullies had moved on after the prayers were spoken, (just my theory!) and were not present to intimidate the more kind and timid spirits. She heard from another gentle voiced male named “John”, another named “James/Jimmy/Jim”, a female with the initials “M.R.” and an unidentified female who wanted to contact someone named Phyllis. Our investigation lasted until a major storm moved through the Martinsville area. The general feeling about the atmosphere not being as “charged” changed when the wind, lightening and loud reverberations of an intense thunderstorm passed through about four hours into the investigation. Because of the storm’s damage and resulting activity on the street surrounding the building, there were too many sirens employed by emergency vehicles, so the last hour’s data was contaminated by the outside noises and had to be disregarded. EVP’s from the second investigation were more numerous than from the first and included whistles, loud whistles, not tunes. Another recorded whistle sounded like a bird chirping, but it was captured very close to the recorder which was in the center of the chamber. The most unnerving EVP for me was the soft, drawn out whisper of my name, “Carol” by what we think was a female spirit. Also detected were thumps and low, weak and unintelligible chatter of spirit voices who were unable to adequately relay their messages to us. When it was time to leave, we packed up our equipment and headed toward the front door of the City Hall building. I stopped by the Martinsville Police Department dispatcher and informed the officers who had just come on duty that we were finished for the night. Not the same officers as from the previous investigation, they questioned why we were so late leaving the building and I gave them some of my business cards, answered a few of their questions about the investigation, and left them scratching their shaved heads and staring at the cards. I should have included them in my prayers of protection that night, but who could have guessed that the police dispatcher would be spiritually attacked later. Two nights later my nephew, Gary, who is a Martinsville patrolman, called me at home to inform us about an incident which occurred about four hours after we left.

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After talking to Gary, I immediately called the dispatcher at his home as per his request to hear his story about his experience. As in most cases, the information relayed to me started off with a disclaimer, “I don’t really believe in ghosts, but…” In this case it was followed by “I now am considering changing my views about haunting, spirits and ghosts.” The true skeptics usually fall hard! Very early in the morning with no threatening activities being reported in the small city, the on-duty dispatcher, “Tim” was sitting with two other police officers discussing our investigation and examining evidence on our website, www.paragonparanormal.com. During the paranormal discussion the surrounding lights dimmed several times in the building; unusual because the police station does not normally have power surges impact them and weird because their discussion at the time was of Paragon Paranormal’s investigation and the ghosts found in their building. When the other two officers were about to leave for one last patrol before their shift changed, Tim C. felt a sharp pain, like a hot poker, on the backside of his upper arm. Not one to give in to pain, he completed his shift and headed home two hours later. As he changed out of his uniform and prepared to lay down for some much-needed rest, his wife asked him how he got all of the scratches on his arm. Sure enough – there were at least nine scratches, three sets of three, all on his upper arm, and they were still burning and hurting two hours after the attack. Pictures of the scratches showed nine, varying from three to five inches long, scratched on Tim’s upper right arm. No blood was apparent, but they were nasty looking to say the least. Tim was greatly upset by the event and has sworn to never deny their existence or speak badly about the ghosts at the Martinsville City Hall. It’s a hard lesson for a skeptic to be touched by ghostly events and no longer be able to honestly deny an otherworldly existence. Because of his experience with the nasty spirit, plucky Tim has since become an investigator for Paragon Paranormal-Shadow Chasers, although he clearly lets it be known that he never wants to be touched again by the unknown. “Tim” and his experience was a good example for the rest of the skeptics in City Hall and proved to Mayor Deckard he wasn’t so crazy after all for inviting us to do the investigation.

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Martinsville City Hall is an ongoing investigation for our team at Paragon Paranormal- Shadow Chasers and will be for years. The stories coming out of the government building never end, even from the skeptics who usually start their recitations with that word all paranormal investigators like to hear, “But”. Because of the city hall investigation, we were asked to present our ghostly evidence to the local Rotary Club for their meeting the last week of October – how fitting! A reporter from the local newspaper was present as well as local judges, attorneys and other businessmen. I saw this as an opportunity to bring Paragon Paranormal–Shadow Chasers to the forefront in our area, show our experience, and maybe gain a reputation as an acceptable group of individuals who are willing to help anyone who needs paranormal advice. We did get a very nice article in the local paper, front page too, but the reporter concerned most of his write-up with the attack on the dispatcher Tim’s scratches and with the photo taken of the face in the gallery. It would have been great if he had concentrated more on the actual workings of our investigation, but in all, I really appreciated his effort and our exposure.

Pam’s House and Bobby’s Gun Shop My youngest brother Gregg called me one evening to let me know that Bobby, a fellow I had employed during his youth, had opened a new gun and ammo shop nineteen miles away in Spencer, Indiana. Bob and I make constant visits to the small town to enjoy its unique small shops and home-style restaurants, so we decided to pay a quick visit to his new store. Bobby was only 17 years old when he was employed as summer help for the Indiana Department of Transportation, and he was given to my drilling crew to flag traffic for a couple of weeks in the area near his home north of Spencer. It just so happened that his parents had been good acquaintances of my Mom and Dad though the real estate industry – he sold them a home in Owen County. I had not seen Bobby for about thirty years, so it would be interesting if he knew who I was when I walked into his store. He did remember me, but only after I told him who I was and jokingly complained about his safety procedures during his traffic flagging career with my drilling crew. He made me aware that my brother Gregg was given the message, by him, asking me to stop by.

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Bobby was still the same old Bobby! It soon became apparent that in a roundabout way, Bobby’s spirits were calling us to the Spencer store. During the conversation with Bobby about our past experiences, my husband Bob was scoping out the small spirit peeking at us around the open staircase in the former living room now converted into Bobby’s gun store. I was engaged in teasing banter with Bobby, so did not see the curious little boy spirit who we now know as “Daniel”. Bobby made the mistake of asking me what I was doing to fill up my retirement time and I casually gave him a business card advertising our paranormal interests. He quickly looked at it, said he was a skeptic, but asked me to call his wife. She had been looking for a group like ours. Mrs. Bobby, or as we call her, Pam, was very interested in our investigations and asked numerous questions about our group. We immediately set up an appointment to talk with her about paranormal activity at the gun store and unusual occurrences at their home several miles north of Spencer in a rural area known as Hudson Hill.

The House A few days later Bob and I made the trip for the pre-investigation and interview at their country home. The house was a one-story ranch originally built as a one-bedroom bungalow during the late 1940’s; two bedrooms with closets were added in the middle 1950’s. Bobby and Pam had updated the kitchen and by taking out an old closet, enlarged the single bathroom in the 1990s. Upon entering the residence, we both felt spirit. My ears were buzzing as I entered the doorway between the kitchen and the family room where the wood stove is located, but no spirits were talking to me. There was a distant growl, but nothing scary. We detected an occasional faint whiff of tobacco smoke in a house with no smokers. I observed a tall indistinct shadow of male energy, barely noticeable, move from the dining room to the hallway in front of the bathroom then quickly fade out into the floor. That was the confirmation of spirit activity I needed. I spent the rest of the short time we were there doing the client’s interview with Pam.

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Bob had similar results, but his experiences were more detailed in the area around the bathroom where he saw the shadowy image of a man slumped on the floor next to the window. Bobby confirmed that a former occupant of the home had died of a heart attack in the bathroom. Even after the walkthrough with us, Bobby was still declaring his skepticism of any type of afterlife and was waiting for us to bring him some type of “proof” of spirits; in his own words, “Dead is dead.” He didn’t change his mind with the information we gathered that day, but the world was about to change for Bobby. Our short initial visit found an adequate amount of spirit energies in the house to warrant a typical investigation and we made the decision to bring in Patti, our “big gun”, for confirmation of the spirits we found. We set up a hunt for the following Sunday evening. We met with Patti and Keith at the Doodlebug Restaurant in Paragon to discuss strategy for Pam’s house without telling Patti any of the particulars of our visit. As she normally does, Patti had sketched a picture of the house which was right-on but was from an angle opposite of the driveway. She also had sketched a short wooden fence along the back of the porch which had been removed promptly after Bobby and Pam’s possession of the property; the almost forgotten fence had been in use when the previous owners lived in the house. It appeared that Paragon Paranormal was not the only ones planning strategy for the ghost hunt; the spirits were already contacting Patti. As soon as we entered the house, with Patti being the third on in line, the bulb in the overhead lamp blew out with a bang as she passed under it; Pam and Bobby’s spirits announced in a resounding way that they were aware of her entrance into their domain! Patti walked through the house unaccompanied, pausing in different areas, and then rejoined our group in the kitchen. Pam, Bob and Keith joined her for another walk around while I kept the talkative Bobby occupied placing voice recorders throughout the house, setting up the camcorders and taking still photos in the rooms we had previously determined to be the hotspots. Patti’s findings, and feelings, needed to be confirmed by Pam, and hopefully her findings would also be confirmed by hard digital data.

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Patti confirmed there had been a death in the old bathroom; an old man had a heart attack and collapsed next to the toilet. When the bathroom had been remodeled by Pam and Bobby, the toilet had been moved to another location and a window had been installed where the toilet used to be. Patti and Bob had both correctly observed the deceased man lying next to a toilet, but not at the present toilet’s location in the room; a confirmed hit! All three of us had detected the gray image of a slumped-over man sitting in the old recliner in the family room. His presence was an intelligent haunt and his energy moved around, but he was mostly in the old chair. Our K-2 meter was pegged to the upper limits of the instrument when Patti sat down in the old man’s location and asked the energy some questions while the recorder was running. We also observed a seven degree drop in the temperature during this event. “Who are you?” No answer was heard on our EVP recording. “Are you Jim, Bobby’s Dad? Heavy breathing was recorded on the digital recorder she was holding near the chair but was not Patti who was breathing hard. There was no verbal response to the question, but the K-2 was still measuring the maximum setting indicating electro-magnetic energy was present. It was time to ask questions and hopefully get some answers, so Patti started with the obvious, “Do you have a message for Bobby?” The recorded response was a breathy, drawn out male voice, “Yessssssss”. Are you Bobby’s Dad, Jim? No response, but we all knew the obvious. “Are you sorry for the way you treated him the last years you were alive? The recorded response, “I’m sorry”. This was also accompanied by harsh and heavy breathing. My empathic abilities were also picking up this hard breathing and I personally was finding it hard to breath and seemingly on the verge of a major asthma attack, so I backed away from the group and went into the kitchen. That was when Bobby told us that his father had died of a heart attack brought on by his emphysema; Jim had never stopped smoking even after the doctors diagnosed the disease and evidently was still smoking after dying as evidenced by the fact that non-smokers Pam and Bobby, and all of us while we were there, got an occasional faint whiff of cigarette smoke in the house.

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The paranormal activity around the old recliner could not be debunked by our group skeptic or any of us, including Bobby who still insisted that he didn’t believe in any of the supernatural, especially ghosts. The original reason for our paranormal group to come to the house to investigate had not been solved; dots of indigo blue dye appearing in unusual places. This seemed to concern Bobby more than the fact that his father, who he did not get along with in life, had made Bobby’s home his new “in perpetuity” home. There were no incidents of dots of blue dye while we were there, and none had been detected by Pam or Bobby for several weeks. Sometimes the paranormal remains a mystery no matter how hard we attempt to pick it apart with our new world electronic equipment and reach out to get the spirit realm to help us. There were a couple of other spirits there that day also. There was a speckled, red haired old woman who was sewing or doing embroidery work, moving from room to room, and the specter of the gentleman who died in the bathroom moving up and down the hallway. We all saw these and think the spirits are residual haunts. Bobby’s mother, who had been there on the day of our original visit, was noticeably absent. I think she is the one responsible for the dots of blue dye since they seem to appear during activities in the kitchen and on “womanly” items. Even though we had completed our investigation and packed up our gear, Bobby, who was intrigued by Patti’s skills as a medium, wanted to verify her marvelous abilities one last time. He asked if we would make a stop at the Hudson Hill Cemetery, about a mile from their home, to check it out. His challenge was for Patti to find his father’s unmarked grave in the three-acre graveyard near the old church. It was a spooky location. The sun was already sitting below the horizon on the rainy day and tendrils of fog were beginning to develop along the ground, making it difficult to see in the lowest sections of the uneven terrain of the old cemetery. Shadows were moving between stone markers and there was a energetic male spirit who shouted at us from the row of trees across the fence line, “Hey!” Was he not allowed on the consecrated ground of the old church? We didn’t realize just how eerie this graveyard could become as the sun set.

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As soon as we all exited our vehicles, Patti headed east into the farthest reaches of the holy ground. Bob and Keith drifted that way too but stayed out of her way. Bobby stayed with me in the driveway near the old church, looking at stones and making remarks about certain ones he knew and their historical significance to the area. He also kept his eyes on Patti’s movements. Within ten minutes of walking Patti stopped, pointed and shouted back to Keith and Bob, who shouted to us, that she needed confirmation that the place she was standing at was the grave of Jim, Bobby’s dad. There were no clues at the site to give her an indication that it was the correct location. The grave was almost three years old, had no headstone and no grass was growing on it; it appeared to be a fairly recently used burial lot. It was the correct location, the spot where Jim was buried. According to Bobby, even after all the evidence of spirit activity we found at their house, the fact that Patti was able to find his father’s unmarked grave it didn’t completely make him a believer in the spirit world and the possibility that things considered paranormal might actually be normal. Then Bobby says in the impish way he’s known for, he’s at the very least, a believer in Patti. As I always say, that’s okay; the world needs skeptics to help keep the rest of us grounded. Since our investigation there have been little changes in the activity at the residence. There have been no more dots of blue dye appearing, but there still is an occasional whiff of tobacco smoke, even though Pam told requested the spirits to smoke outside. They still see the shadows and hear an occasional groan or heavy breathing, but now they know it’s all harmless, and mostly just family.

Bobby’s Gun Store We knew this was going to be a great investigation even before it started. A child spirit had made itself known by peeking around the stairwell on the first day we walked into the store, and the buzzing in my ears was not all Bobby’s voice.

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We used the same investigative crew for the store as for their home, Pam included, with Bobby acting as the official skeptic and observer. When Patti walked into the old home turned gun store, she and Keith immediately went up the front stairs to the second level. Giving them some room for Patti to work, Bob followed after a few minutes while Gary, Pam, Bobby and I stayed on the main level. Downstairs, we could faintly hear the three softly mumbling and a loud door slam. After a short time, they returned down the servants back stairs to the main level with a preliminary report as to where the “paranormal hotspots” were on the second floor and any other first impressions. Patti reported seeing an older man in a white coat moving from room to room with a clipboard. She reported the odors of sterilizing alcohol and cleaning disinfectant. She also saw a middle-aged woman dressed in white moving quickly from room to room and a small pinafore wearing girl, about 7 to ten years of age. There was also a much older lady in a brocade dressing gown that shifted her ghostly spirit between the two upstairs bedrooms on the front of the house, pausing to peer out the windows as if she were waiting for someone to come visit her or possibly take her home. Patti’s impressions were all the adults were residual energies. The exception was the little girl who wanted to communicate and immediately told Patti her name, “Sarah”. That was when Bobby informed us about some history of the lovely old house; it had been used as Dr. Green’s, then later, Dr. Kay’s medical clinic for the first sixty years. Dr. Green had been the original owner of the beautiful hand-cut limestone building, but the good doctor lived across the street and only used it as his hospital. That explained the man and woman wearing white and moving from room to room. Patti was anxious to return to the second floor to attempt to make contact with the little girl spirit and maybe the old lady who she had already determined was a residual energy as was the doctor and nurse. The little spirit had followed her and Bob around and had closed a bedroom door behind them. (All of us downstairs heard the bedroom door slam upstairs when the group made the initial walkthrough.) Patti went upstairs by herself and the rest of us were downstairs on the main level. Pam, Gary and I were attempting EVPs in the computer room, while Keith, Bob and

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Bobby were all in the old dining room, now part of the store discussing guns, or something. Suddenly, we hear knocking on a door and a woman yelling indistinguishable words and thinking it may be someone at the back door of the building we sent Pam to check; no one was there. Keith, being the ever-faithful husband, asked us about Patti and we all immediately ran up the stairs to check on her. It was Patti making all the noise and she was really glad to see us! She had been beating on the door of the room I call the “green room”. She explained that she had set down on the floor in the middle of the green room to meditate to make spirit contact with the child ghost who we now knew as Sarah. After short while, Patti heard the open door slowly shut and the lock turn. When she went to test the door, she found out she was locked inside the room. While Bobby and Pam normally kept the keys in the doors of all the rooms just in case such an incident occurred, in this case the key was missing. Our medium became frazzled when she figured out the door was locked, other investigators downstairs could not heard her yelling out and her cell phone was at home. Thank goodness we heard her yelling! Sarah was dead too, but Patti had made contact with her and it’s quite a story. According to the little spirit Sarah, her mother had been a nurse for Dr. Green and the child Sarah had often come to the hospital with her mother. But, Sarah had not died the small child as she now portrays her ghost as but had actually lived into adulthood. She had fond memories of her childhood and the times spent with her mother, so she often returns to her most beloved time and place, as a child at Dr. Green’s Hospital, now Bobby and Pam’s gun store. Now we knew the name of at least one of the ghosts in the old hospital. There were others, such as the butler or attendant on the first floor and the old lady on the second floor but they didn’t identify themselves. Daniel was the exception. He prefers to reside in the basement but does occasionally wanders the halls and stairs throughout the dwelling, Sarah.

Little Daniel made himself known when Gary, Patti and Pam decided to investigate the

141 basement. Bobby claimed to occasionally hear noises down below when he was working in the store, but his opinion was that the noisemakers were probably just rats or mice; after all, he claims he is still a skeptic. Dropping down into the large and slightly damp basement is a long rickety staircase with a broken step at the very bottom; a hazard if there is something wicked or scary in the location and makes for a slow and difficult get-away, if needed. The walls are a continuation of the locally quarried limestone blocks used in the upper portion of the structure and the floor is concrete. The area is large and wide open with only the necessary supports, some building supplies and other hardware being stored along some of the walls. Windows along the north and south walls allow for some natural light as well as car lights from the street outside. When the three entered the basement, it was 11:00 p.m. and the outside noises were almost completely non-existent. The only light was the ambient light through the windows. Gary performed a quick sweep with the EMF meter and found nothing within the range which would naturally affect the investigation. It was time for EVPs when Patti felt a young male energy enter the area and observed him hiding behind the stairs and occasionally peeking around the corner. It was Gary’s first official investigation and he was anxious and a little apprehensive about standing in the dark basement when suddenly he felt a small hand, a child’s size, grab his left hand for a couple of seconds. It took the full two seconds before Gary realized what was actually going on – the spirit of Daniel wanted to make human contact by holding his hand. The unexpected event totally unnerved Gary, and it wasn’t long before all three left Daniel and the dark basement. As in all cases of any type of spiritual “touching”, we immediately photographed and examined Gary’s hand and small red spots the size of a small boy’s fingers were clearly noticeable. The burn from the spirit energy lasted for about an hour after the contact. I returned with all three to perform an EVP session and check out the little boy spirit for myself. We were greatly rewarded for our efforts when Daniel responded and confirmed his name when asked.

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Chapter 15. Our Favorite Investigation – The Thomas House Inn

As far as paranormal activity experienced, we were blessed at some locations, but not at others. But our favorite location I saved for last, because in our personal paranormal experiences, there is no place as delightfully haunted as the Thomas House Inn, of Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee.

The Thomas House Inn We love the Thomas House Inn. Not just because this Victorian inspired inn is a noted bed and breakfast listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is haunted, but because the proprietors have become like family and the inn itself is inviting and relaxing to us. The inn and takes us back to a more peaceful and genteel era. There are no phones or television in the guestrooms and some cell phones do not have a signal in the Red Boiling Springs deeply cut limestone and shale valley. Guests are greeted by Mrs. Evelyn Cole, the matriarch of the family, when they check in, and hugged by her when they leave. Co-owner and Chef David Cole’s specialty is in old fashioned southern recipes, home cooked, and served family style if the diners are a small group or buffet style for a large number. Chef Cole calls guests to the dining room with the ringing of an antique dinner bell which can be heard throughout the building. The hotel offers several sitting areas, a library, a small conference room, an antique “Toy Room”, a “Christmas Room”, a “Vintage Clothing Room”, and Ms. Evelyn's very special “Gone with the Wind Room” which displays artifacts and memorabilia from the 1939 movie and the antebellum era. Ms. Evelyn also has her special gift shop that is comprised of antiques and collectables. The dining room has a small stage and is still large enough for weddings, church services, and the weekend entertainment which is most often comprised of local talent, The Macon County Off- Off Broadway Players, including the talented Ms. Cherry Cole, whose husband Darrell Cole writes and directs some of the plays. Thomas House Inn stands alone when it comes to haunting experiences for us and apparently many other people who are not paranormal investigators.

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First reports of paranormal activity were whispered in the early days of the old inn when it was still the Cloyd Hotel. Cloyd brothers, Zachary and Clay, built their hotel in early 1890 on a rolling hillside in the valley of Salt Lick Creek in Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee. Another brother, Thomas Tyler Cloyd, managed the hotel. The Red Boiling Springs valley was well known throughout Tennessee and Kentucky for its mineral springs and the Kentucky-born Cloyd brothers, along with several other entrepreneurs, took advantage of the healing waters and developed the area as a summer getaway for individuals seeking the soothing relief the mineral baths offered at the many spas which were ultimately built there. Red Boiling Springs’ hotels and spas had a successful run until World War II, and following the end of the war's slow economy, many of the hotels closed. The Cloyd Hotel was then run simply as a rooming house or was completely vacant. For a few brief years it served as the home to a spiritualist cult which probably can explain some of the spirits who have made residence there. Finally, in the 1970s, it was bought back by Even Moss, a member of the original Cloyd family builders. Mr. Moss operated a boys’ home and camp on the property for a few short years. Following the failure of the boys’ home, the old inn was vacant (at least without living human habitation!) for a number of years and then eventually bought by the present owners, the Cole family, natives of Nashville. Evelyn Thomas Cole and her deceased husband Roy, their sons David and Darrell, along with Darrel's wife Cherry, have been operating the inn since 1993. The sons decided to name it in honor of Mother Evelyn's family, the Thomas House Inn. The Thomas ancestors were original settlers to the Macon County area and Red Boiling Springs.) From the beginning, the Cole family was determined to make their Thomas House into a successful bed and breakfast by offering Roy and David Cole's home cooked meals daily and weekend entertainment as a dinner theater in the large dining area on Friday and Saturday nights. A long, stone drive guides travelers over a bridge and up a gentle slope to the elderly two stories, brick facade inn, which sits on a hillside surrounded by broad trees, and flower gardens. In the middle of the walk-way to the front door, a gurgling fountain is available for a quick coin toss for good luck. This is all watched over by guests (and residents) who choose to relax on one of the two verandas.

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When guests walk through the front door, they are greeted by a sign which invites all who enter to “dine with the spirits” - a gentle clue to those who are not aware of the haunted status of the inn. Mother Evelyn, Darrell and Cherry decorated the inn with a Victorian theme and many beautiful antiques, giving it a restful, yet dark and mysterious atmosphere true to the age of the building and its spectral inhabitants. Rumors of the Thomas House being haunted wasn't even a consideration in the Cole's decision to purchase the vacant building, and at the time real estate labeled as “haunted” was considered a hindrance to a sale. It was not long after purchasing the inn before the many resident spirits began to make the Coles and their guests aware it was their home first. Darrell Cole was the first to have an inkling of what was to come. Soon after the purchase of the real estate, and within days of moving in, he began to have dreams of a little girl dressed in old fashioned clothing, with a bow in her long hair. He dreamed of her running up and down the hallways and playing throughout the inn. It was also in his dreams where she announced to him that her name was Sarah. Since then, mediums visiting the inn have told of a seven to ten-year-old girl who is the prominent spirit haunting the inn, whose name is Sarah. Occasionally, a photo is taken which has a ghostly apparition which the taker claims to be Sarah. More often, as with us, she is heard giggling, running up and down the halls and knocking on guest doors all hours of the day. Bob and I are crazy about Sarah! I cannot quit talking about our little specter! Ghostly Sarah could be the subject of a doctoral thesis written entirely about her. As the premier haunt of the Thomas House Inn there is a magnitude of stories to write about her interactions with residents, hired help, and guests. This spirited little haunt romps up and down the hallways at all hours of the day, singing and knocking on doors and has been heard carrying on conversations with other spirits, as well as with us warm blooded entities that pursue her. She has also been known to make contact people who do not seek her out and maybe who are not particularly aware of the many spirits which reside at the inn.

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In the fall of 2011, a middle-aged couple from nearby Gallatin, Tennessee, was just passing through the town of Red Boiling Springs, saw the sign for the inn, and decided to stop by. Owner Darrell Cole, the southern gentleman that he is, abandoned the chore he was doing to offer a tour to the couple. As they walked through the two floors of the inn, Darrell pointed out the interesting rooms and antiques, but, as his rule, kept the paranormal “hotspot” locations to a minimum. (Not all who enter the inn are believers in the haunting and Darrell didn’t want to frighten them.) During the tour, Darrell noticed the lady looking at the “Toy Room” display rather intently and he asked her if something was wrong. She said no, but before leaving the second floor, she cupped her hands around her eyes and peered a second time through the glass at the display but said nothing. The couple thanked Darrell for the tour and left. A few days later the same lady called back to the Thomas House to speak with Darrell and said she had a few more questions about the inn but seemed most inquisitive about the display in the “Toy Room”. She inquired if they had a life size doll sitting on the foot of the small bed. His answer- No, they did not have a life size doll, only small ones placed near the top of the bed and around the room. Darrell quizzed her about her question. She said that when she initially looked into the “Toy Room” that there was a life size doll in period clothing sitting on the foot of the bed. It was dressed in an old white, although slightly yellowed, dress and had white stockings and dark Mary Jane style shoes on her feet. Her hair was loose, slightly curled, medium brown, and came to just below her shoulders. Darrell told her again that there was no such doll in the display. Then, she informed him that while she was intently looking at the “doll”, it moved its foot. The occurrence shocked her. That was why she went back a second time to look at the display, and then found the “doll” was no longer there. As a previous unbeliever in the paranormal, it took her several days to build up the courage to call the Thomas House with her story and let them know she had seen what we believe to be the ghostly little Sarah. Another guest sent the Coles a photo taken as they were leaving of the outside of the hotel that has apparent “ghostwriting” which says “Sarah” and another photo of an unknown little girl with a bow in her hair (Sarah?) sitting in their car.

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Bob and I love to stay in guest room 37, also known as Sarah's Room, because that is where her apparition is seen most often. In room 37 we have been touched, had our blankets moved and collected one of our all time best EVP's of Sarah telling us “nighty-night”. But one of our most exciting experiences in the light green with white trim room involved teleportation or movement of an object by unseen hands. Since the room has two double beds, we always sleep apart when in 37. A nightstand separates the two beds, and I always sleep next to the door and Bob sleeps closer to the bathroom. In December of 2010, a cold night outside, but cozy and warm in our room, I decided to add an additional blanket to both of our beds; sometimes the old inn could be a little drafty and the quilts adorning the beds were not enough warmth. Bob put his blanket on right away, but I left mine folded and placed on the left side at the foot of my bed so that it was within reach in case I should require it during the night. We went to bed around midnight after having a non-eventful evening with the spectral world. As usual, I was whining about “driving all that way and the spirits were not cooperating with us” until we fell asleep. At 6:00 a.m. I woke up as is my habit, swung my legs off the right side of my bed to get up and found placed between the beds, in front of the nightstand, the green blanket I had placed on the left side of the foot of my bed the night before. Bob was rolling over by then and I asked him if he moved the blanket during the night. He stated firmly, “No - I did not touch the blanket.” I reached down and picked up the blanket and placed below it was Sarah's red ball. (This is a ball that guests use to “play” with Sarah during ghost hunting sessions and it does occasionally move on its own – something we have never observed ourselves.) The ball was under the folded blanket, lying between our beds! Prior to going to bed, the ball was observed by both of us to be under the chair in my corner of the room. We never moved the ball from under the chair, and we never placed the ball under the blanket between our beds. I love it when the spirits manipulate items – it just makes us want more paranormal experiences. Friends of ours, who are members of our small shadow chasing group, had a similar experience of teleportation at the Thomas House.

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Knowing it would be a late night, Brian and Sherry laid down for a short afternoon nap in room 37 (Bob and I do sometimes stay in other rooms!). Sherry chose the bed by the door and Brian the other bed next to the bathroom. Soon after laying down Sherry felt a hand brush along her leg, not a light touch, but firm enough to know it was there. Brian was already sound asleep and snoring with his back to her which confirmed it was not him that had touched her, an obvious fact since he was several feet away. When they woke up a couple of hours later, Sherry found a small, stuffed toy monkey placed behind her head, and again, Brian assured her he did not do it. Prior to their afternoon nap, the monkey had been on a dresser with other toys which guests bring Sarah to entice the little spirit to interact with them during the ghost hunts. When stepping back and evaluating the two situations of Sarah’s interactions with Sherry and me, my personal opinion is that maybe Sarah saw Sherry as a mother figure and wanted to please her with a small gift, whereas with me, she was just trying to stop me from whining about the lack of spirit activity or trying to make up to Bob and me for a disappointing night. The reason I think this way is because the first EVP we had from Sarah's room back in 2008 came after a night of very few responses and physical activity. During a 2:00 a.m. recording session, I specifically told Sarah and the other spirits that we disliked going to bed without hearing from them. The result was that a small childlike voice responded with a firm, but faint “nighty-night” EVP. The EVP and the teleportation of the ball and blanket proves to me that Sarah, or maybe a family of spirits in the Thomas House, enjoy having living humans in their home who want to make contact and pay attention to them. Some guests, especially children, claim to have seen and played with Sarah. Early in 2011, Tyler Cole brought his new wife, Destiny, and her two daughters by a previous marriage, to live in the private innkeeper’s quarters at the Thomas House. Their introduction of an extraordinary child, Melia, changed the paradigm at the inn somewhat. Destiny’s youngest daughter, Melia, is autistic and is limited in her communication skills, but is physically functional and loves to play in the hallways of the old inn.

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After a few weeks and finally settling down to a life in the Thomas House, the adults familiar with her body language noticed Melia seemed to be communicating with another person as she played. She would strike at the air in front of her with her hands and say “No, no, no!” a signal that she did not want to be bothered with or talked to, at least with real people. She would run in and out of rooms as if playing hide and seek or catch, and seemed content playing in the upstairs hallways or on the verandas by herself. As the months passed by, Destiny and Tyler noticed that Melia was spending an increased amount of time at the end of the north hallway (near Sarah’s room) even when the hall was completely dark. (This is the hall where Bob sees constant shadows near rooms 40 and 41 and is considered by visitors as very spooky.) Destiny, who keeps a very close watch on Melia, asked her what she was doing there so much. Melia responded by saying “girl”. Knowing that there were no paying guests staying at the inn, Destiny asked Melia to show her the girl and Melia took off down the dark hallway to the large rocking chair at very farthest point and again said “girl”. She pointed to the chair, and then offered the toy she had in her hands to the “girl” in the chair! Destiny quickly took Melia by the hand and left the area. Apparently, Destiny is not as comfortable with the ghosts as Melia, and Melia has a new playmate! In return visits to the Thomas House, we have heard children running up and down the hallways, giggling and talking. Visiting psychics have told of two other boy spirits, Jimmy and Billy, who are in attendance, as well as possibly another, smaller girl. I find it fascinating that the ghost kids like to vocalize. A small child was recorded singing a short few notes of what sounded like the opening bars of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” during another ghost hunting group's EVP sessions. On a weekend visit in October of 2011, while sitting in the dining room visiting with owner and cook David Cole, Bob and me both heard a distinctive small child’s voice singing a few words. David did not hear the sweet notes, probably because it was taking place from a point behind him.

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Another EVP taken in December of 2011, outside of the Christmas Room at the top of the staircase around 3:00 in the early morning, sounded like a boy-child, saying “NA-NA-NA-NA” very close to the recorder while three very experienced paranormal investigators, myself includes, sat fifteen feet away conversing about the apparent inactivity of the spirits at the inn that night. The ghostly children’s crowning vocalized event for me occurred one early morning in Sarah’s room, number 37. Bob and I had turned in for the evening around midnight, earlier than we usually do, because we had enjoyed a long sweltering day of tourism in the picturesque Macon County hills and we did not get the usual late afternoon nap which prepared us for “ghost hunting” late at night. I had even taken a nighttime sleep aide because I have a hard time sleeping in places other than my own home. Bob and I were both sound asleep in our usual beds, Bob close to the bathroom and me next to the room’s entrance door. Around 2:00 a.m., (we didn’t have a clock handy) a transformation of the environment in the room woke me up to a completely conscious, and totally alert, situation. The changes also had an effect on Bob, and he woke up too. Immediately from behind me, the voice of a small child clearly says, “Where’s my mommy?” Not moving, and still laying on my right side in the bed with my back to the door and facing Bob, who was slightly raised up from his pillow in the adjacent bed, I whispered to him “Do you see anything behind me?” My alert husband immediately responded, “A small shadow is positioned directly behind you, in the area between the bed and the chair.” A fraction of a second later he stated that the little shadow was gone and asked me what happened. He did not hear the spirit’s question which was clearly voiced in my left ear. And, as usual, we had no recording devices on while we were sleeping. It would have been great to have recorded the voice, but I am not absolutely positive who it was. The voice sounded too young to be an eight to ten-year-old girl, but since we were sleeping in the room most associated with Sarah, I will continue to say it was her. There were a couple of events leading up to the early morning contact and vocalization.

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On the previous night, Bob had felt something brushing his mustache; the event was unsettling enough that he got up from bed to see if an insect was making the ticklish movements. Of course, there was nothing there to make the itch. A couple more times that night Bob felt the same sensation. He figured it was just Sarah or one of the other children checking him out. The night of the contact, I had felt a sensation of cobwebs on my face right after I had lay down for the night and immediately got up to look for a pesky arachnid and its webs around the headboard of the bed. And, as with Bob, there were none. These were probably precursors to the appearance made later that night. The rest of the night was calm as the room returned to its “normal” ambiance – at least as normal as the Thomas House can be. The spirits residing at the Thomas House are not all children. An incident which occurred on our visit in October of 2009 was one of those where I didn't realize anything paranormal was happening until later analysis of the incident. It was early morning, around 6:30 a.m., and I know Bob and I were the only ones awake in the inn since the aromatic smell of Chef David's morning coffee had not yet drifted throughout the hotel. The inn was silent, Bob was still prepping for the day in our room, and I was snapping photos throughout the vacant rooms and halls trying to capture the elusive shadow people Bob frequently sees. In the east hall of the second floor, the “Hall of Pictures” as I call it, there are old photos and paintings of the Cole and Thomas family ancestors all along the walls as well as some empty guestrooms and the entrance to the Toy Room. First, the door to the hallway was “stuck” and I had to really put my shoulder into it to get it open which was unusual because it is always open. I stepped in and started taking pictures, talking to the spirits as I always do. A whistling sound as well as rustling or scratching noises started up when I was almost to the end of the hallway. I went to each of the closed doors of the guestrooms to determine where the whistled bird-like song was coming from but could not distinguish the source. Bob had come around the corner from our room at that time and I asked him to step in and to hear the sounds along with me to confirm I wasn't imagining it, which he did.

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Unfortunately, I had only my still camera and did not have my recorders with me or my EMF meters to back up my claim, but, it wasn't until later in the morning when inquiring about the “bird noises and scratching sounds” in the Hall of Pictures, and after David and Darrell Cole enlighten me that I had finally met their spirit called “Whistler”, did I realize the whole event was paranormal. The “Whistler” is known for following the residents and guests and whistling his unknown tunes into their ears. David claims “Whistler” will occasionally follow him as he walks through the dining room and into the kitchen. Ms. Evelyn has heard him on several occasions while working in the front lobby and says after her first unnerving encounter she now thanks him for the delightful, yet indistinguishable, tunes. We hope to meet him and record his songs some day. Since our first visit when we stayed in room 14 and constantly had all the energy drained from our equipment, picked up some orbs in the halls, front lobby and our room, and Bob received his first big hug from Ms. Evelyn as we were leaving, the Thomas House Inn has become our favorite haunted getaway and the Cole family have become good friends. We've experienced shadow people throughout the inn, been touched, heard spectral voices of children during the nights, a song from the spectral man the Cole's call “Whistler”, piano playing, flashing lights or orbs and feet moving through the inn’s halls when no guests were lodged except us. Bob has had his name called out in three different EVP's and the mysterious name “Ashley” was clearly recorded following a flash of light in the Christmas Room. The same young man’s voice, from the “Ashley” EVP, was recorded earlier on the same night in a session in Room 37. He was clearly taunting me because I pleaded with the spirits to “talk” to us and he came back with a firm “talk” spoken clearly and very close to the recorder. I think the spirits are starting to feel more comfortable around us as we are with them! Ghost activity at the inn is never-ending. Residents and guests have seen full body apparitions which includes a man in a large hat who often beckons to them to follow him, a former cook, and a nicely dressed lady from the 30- 40's era, an older lady in a dress who likes to look at the toys in the toy room, and a distinguished older gentleman who haunts the front lobby.

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A now defunct ghost hunting group from Murfreesboro, Tennessee recorded an amazing video of a spectral, full body image moving from the stairs toward the Christmas Room An astonishing EVP was recorded unintentionally during rehearsal of a musical group in the dining room in which a lady very clearly says, “step by step, slowly I turn”, an old Vaudeville act better known by its performance during our generation by Abbott and Costello and the Three Stooges. One of my favorite spectral photos was taken one late night showing a “winged, angelic-looking” entity in the dining room. There seems to be no end to the number of spirits at the inn. Since we first visited the Thomas House, the inn has been the subject of intense investigations by some well- known professional, paranormal groups, (as compared with our very small, amateur, group). From Penn State University came Ryan Buell and his group, “Paranormal State” courtesy of the A&E Channel. They brought with them Chip Coffey and Michelle Belanger, both very experienced psychic/mediums, to investigate the inn. The two mediums were not disappointed, and the group returned to the inn a few weeks later to use the inn’s facilities and haunts in a weekend training session for new investigators. In the summer and early winter of 2011, The Atlantic Paranormal Society, better known as TAPS, the group from the Sy-Fy Channel reality show who has been responsible for the explosion of the interest in the paranormal, visited, then performed an investigation, at the inn. They were not disappointed either, especially when little spirit Sarah spoke directly to Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, the founders of TAPS, in one of their finest EVP’s ever captured. They also captured the whistled music of the unknown man called the Whistler in two EVP’s. Bob and I hope to see an actual full body apparition some day at the Thomas House, (which I hope will be Sarah or the Whistler) and until we do, we will continue to make the five- hour drive to the mysterious inn in Tennessee. That gives us an excuse to enjoy the hotel, visit with the Coles and their spirits, and make more friends amongst the exceptional residents of Red Boiling Springs.

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Chapter 16. Not Just Ghosts!

With the help of Jameson, we launched our new website, paragonparanormal.com, on December 28th, 2011. I was in a rush because 2012 was fast approaching and I did not want to wait another year to get it started. And besides, we had all been informed by the experts on the Mayan Calendar, that in December of 2012, there were going to be “big changes” in the world as we know it. At least our website will have been up for almost a year by the time the world ended. I really did not think anything was going to happen, but it was a fun subject to discuss with friends. Just as I thought and gratefully the world did not end in December 2011 because we decided to formally expand our studies and research to other subjects deemed paranormal. Bob has had a particular interest in his large hairy ape-like man who roamed the woods near the area where he was raised and experienced himself on more than one occasion. Bigfoot or Sasquatch, (or Grass-man, Yeti, Skunk Ape, and Foulk Monster) are all names for this crypto-animal. I always believed in his sighting, but had difficulty wondering why I had never seen one during all my years spent outdoors, then in June of 2015, the 9’, hairy brown and gray monster walked out of the woods and crossed the road in front of me. Wow. Now, if a flying saucer would land on my lawn, life would be perfect. It’s been quite a life for Bob and me. We have had so much excitement and adventure since the first official hunt at the Crescent Hotel. We've traveled to other well known, and a lot of not previously known, paranormal locations We have investigated several private homes in Indiana, which, by word of mouth and because of the success of our investigations, resulted in our small Paragon Paranormal investigation group, to increase in numbers. (We are still small, and I intend to keep it that way, because I believe if there are too many members, managing Paragon Paranormal becomes a job!) As a group, we consistently add new research equipment to our toolboxes, train with the equipment, and compile our list of haunted locations. We have recently launched a website so that we can share our findings with other interested souls and they can contact us if they need help or want an investigation performed.

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There are open frontiers in the paranormal realm that we haven’t touched yet, but we plan to investigate and learn about as many of them as possible – if we live long enough. A bit of wisdom from a late-in-life paranormal investigator – be a skeptic and be rational (think with your head) and not so emotional (feelings have their time and place). Don’t accept an account of paranormal phenomena as the real thing until you investigate it yourself or check the results of reliable investigators – seek validation. This is literally like jumping into a dark hole without knowing if the hole has a bottom. But, still keep an open mind to the possibility that paranormal events can be real because some of them are and being a skeptic doesn’t mean that you cannot have passion for the subject. Always have a prayer of protection handy since the primary battle we humans face is good verses evil – even in the spirit world. God is always there for us and will answer your prayer. Good luck with your investigations! Now go hunting! Me? I’m starting my search for time traveler John Titor, but that’s another book if I can locate his time machine!

---CJF --- www.ParagonParanormal.com

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Biography

Carol J. Farrell

Carol is recently retired from a 35-year career as a senior geologist with the Indiana Department of Transportation’s geotechnical engineering section. She and Bob, her husband of 14 years, decided to utilize her skills as a scientific investigator and merge their six-year-old pastime of ghost hunting and a lifelong passion and study of the paranormal, into a more serious hobby, and so recently founded their group, Paragon Paranormal.

They live near Paragon, Indiana, on the family’s heritage farm with numerous spirits and assorted animals.

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