W.E.E. Ghosties revisited old town Winchester on our own to get a better feel for the place. It is an easy location to visit often so we will most likely be back as we feel strongly that given the right circumstances it could produce results. For a brief summary of our visit along with a few photographs and upcoming EVPs please visit Winchester Revisited page of our Investigations.
West Virginia Penitentiary Investigation
W.E.E. Ghosties visited the West Virginia Penitentiary in April, 2008. For a complete account of our investigation visit our WVP Investigation page. This a four part series that includes a detailed account of the visit, EVPs, links to photographs and tips for planning your trip.
Electronic Voice Phenomena: Product Review
I ran a test of the RCA RP5030 Digital Voice Recorder this morning. It sells for $47.00 at WalMart and $30.00 at Big Lots. Perfect for Mac users as well as PCs. For Mac simply connect to your computer via included USB cable. The icon appears on the desk top, double click to display the available folders and choose the mp3 you wish to listen to in iTunes. I will run on a test on Windows later but I am sure it will work fine with just a few more additional steps. Of course I will post any EVPs that we happen to catch.
What is an EVP and how do I record one?
What is an EVP and how do I record one?
EVP stands for electronic voice phenomena. Essentially it is unexplained sounds, noises and most often words that are interpreted by paranormal investigators (ghost hunters) to be a recording of a “ghost voice.” Electronic voice phenomena falls within the broader catergory of Instrumental Transcommunication (ITC) where a ghost or spirit uses a device or instrument to communicate with the living. Examples are tape recorders,digital recorders, televisions, lights, fax machines or computers. Think the little girl talking to the snowy television screen in Poltergeist.
It is reported that Thomas Edison studied the possibility of EVPs for years and concluded that if spirits actual did exist and were able to communicate with the living that they were more likely to do so through this scientific medium rather than through a ouija board, seance or other paranormal means.
Most EVPs consist of one or two words but may be a string of words resembling a sentence. I say resembling because quite often to people will hear two entirely different things when listening to the playback. To the best of my knowledge a sentence is the most that has ever been recorded. To date no one has been to record a conversation with a ghost.
When attempting to capture an EVP it is best to place the recorder in the center of the area you are conducting the experiment, perhaps on a chair. Try not hold the recorder or walk around with it as it will pick up “whispers” of your clothing, footsteps and breathing. Make audible notes of interference that might be picked up on the recording so that you can identify it as such later during playback. These can be a dog barking, a conversation between two people in the same room, a car passing by or weather related interference such as rain, wind or thunder.
If you would like to conduct an interview of a potential ghost, ask it questions as you would of a live person just be sure to make them short and simple. Be sure to give your “ghost” time to respond. Wait several seconds before asking another question. You can be specific in you interview such as: “How did you die?” “Are you unhappy?” “Why are you here?” or you can ask random questions that reflect your surroundings.
Good luck!
Ghost hunter’s Diary
A few of you know that I’ve been ghost hunting for far longer than I’d like to admit to. While rumaging around for a story outline today in my files, I found some articles that were published while with my ghost hunting group in Washington, D.C. years ago. I thought it would be fun to share what a bit of this investigation was like:
XXX House, Maryland 2003
I went on an investigation last month to a house that my group had been to previously. I had heard the stories of full-body apparitions, whispers and hot spots and now wanted to see what all the fuss was about. The night was perfect, an electrical storm had been brewing for days making the air crackle and the night sweaty. The house was a stone’s throw away from a marsh in the Chesapeake, the smell of rotting vegetation adding to the ambience. If there were spirits to be found, how could they resist?
Lights flashed in this house. The owners blamed it on the spirit of a woman murdered there over a year ago in their basement bedroom. They showed me where they had replaced the bloody carpeting next to their bed and I had to quell my imagination from seeing faces stare back at me in their mirrored closet doors. We set up infra-red cameras in the hallway, where the owner had encountered her several times and waited. We interviewed the family again. And waited. A bulb in the kitchen track lighting flashed off and on, the other six in the track remained steadfastly bright as I grilled the owner about faulty wiring. And we waited.
At first, a few members of the investigative group, including myself, had felt something in the house. Some felt a tickle on their skin; it skimmed and played with our senses until we almost scratched ourselves to get away from it. Another had the sensation of pressure around his head. As we busied ourselves for her possible appearance, our most sensitive investigator felt her watching from a corner. Now we were both waiting.
The children of the house went to bed, the owners stayed up as long as they could trying not to be in the way but still curious about the tools we had brought and how to use them. They were looking for answers more than we were, they needed to understand what was happening. Around 11pm, the house cleared. The air was not as heavy though the storm still rumbled in the distance, the faint caressing of our skin faded and we suspected that she was not going to give in to a command performance. Waiting until after 2am, her usual time to wander the house, we packed up for the long journey home to another state. We know this game well by now, it’s on her terms and we’re just following the allure of the mist.
Garnet, Montana – ghost town
One of my early experiences with the paranormal came from visiting a ghost town in the northwestern USA while on vacation. Now, you’d expect a ghost town to come with the prerequisite residual hauntings or at least a spooky outhouse. This town of Garnet, Montana, had its share of rundown buildings as it nestled in a wee valley in the mountains. A gold mining town, it once held the riches of the mountain in its palm and miners flocked to pluck it from between the fingers of the hillside. It grew fat and rich for a time but when the gold ran out, so did the miners. leaving behind a hotel, a general store, small houses and large pockets dug into the nearby hills (plus the aforementioned spooky outhouses).
My family wandered through what was left of the town, along with other curious tourists, trying to get a sense of what it was like in its heyday. Imagining dirty, desperate men coming from inside a mountain wasn’t difficult, what remained of their cabins told the story better than any signage the BLM had provided. Ruined furniture, rusted pans left scattered about filthy cabins and the feeling of failure permeated the broken walls of the houses, why wouldn’t there be a haunting? It seemed as if that was all there ever was here.
I entered the hotel slowly. Once there was grandeur of sorts, now it looked like a woman ruined by too many men and not enough self-respect. Plaster flaked from the walls and heavy tables stood in the middle of the first floor dining room, looking strangely proud of weathering time and being able to show off their wounds left by drunken gunshots and the flying glass of old arguments. I followed my family upstairs to see the rooms. They were partitioned off by Plexiglas so you could peer inside but not enter. In some of the rooms, the windows were left bare, sunshine squeaked in through the dirty glass and fell onto beds salvaged from the hotel and covered with old quilts. In others, the windows were covered, dusty light shone through the boards that swallowed the glass. These rooms held what seemed to be 100-year-old garbage. It covered the floors and rose up the walls, it smelled like decay and made you want to turn away. I, naturally, couldn’t.
As I got closer, my heart started to beat louder in my ears and my nose started to twitch. I felt lightheaded and wanted to run. I poked my head into the room and at once felt something rushing towards me. I am not particularly psychic, just enough to know when to get the heck out of a place! If I could describe it, I’d say it was pain, screaming and confusion coming at me all at once. I backed away quickly and my investigational gene kicked in. I checked out the other rooms to see if I experienced any similar occurrences and casually asked my husband if he had seen anything out of the ordinary. This man is as intuitive as a brick. “Nothing that a dustbuster couldn’t help…” he replied.
I knew what I had felt was unusual; I tested it again before we left the building. Again, my heart raced and my nose tingled but this time there was no attack of emotion towards me. I could feel that it sat huddled in the corner, amidst the rubbish and filth, and watched as I moved out of sight and down the stairs, escaping into the light.
Ft. Monroe, Virginia
Does stone absorb memories? Ask anyone who lives near a castle.
Many times the residue of misdeeds and human drama are imprinted upon the stone face, making it possible to playback visions of the past, what we know as hauntings. Such is the case for Ft. Monroe, Virginia, where the infamous and the innocent are found.
This moated heptagonal stone fort faces the Chesapeake Bay on three sides, the water making escape remote and the isolation of its prisoners complete. It’s lonely casemates held one of the most illustrious prisoners of the Civil War, the President of the Confederate States, Jefferson Davis. Brought here in shackles after the war, Davis slowly grew weak within its walls. His wife, Varina, followed him here and pleaded to have him removed from the cell to a private apartment to die in peace. Both of their ghosts can be found at Ft. Monroe still, Davis in his cell and Varina is sometimes found gazing from a bedroom window towards her husband’s cell. Their imprints of dreams unrealized and the reality of war make their shades constant companions to the grief left behind. Other political figures make appearances too; the ghosts of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant roam Old Quarters No. 1.
Edgar Allen Poe, known as Edgar A. Perry before selling his enlistment in 1829, served four months at Ft. Monroe. While here, he wrote, “The Cask of Amontillado,” based on a ghost story of a Virginian military man walled up inside an empty stone building (see, I told you stone had long memories.) Visiting the area a month before his death, Poe read poetry on the veranda of a nearby hotel. After his death, he has been believed to have been seen in his former barracks, which is now located at Building #5.
What’s a good haunting without a good love story? Camille Kirtz, or the “Light Lady,” was murdered by her husband on Matthew Lane within the fort. While meeting her French lover, Camille’s secret was discovered by her much older husband. Hot-blooded and fast-acting, Camille’s husband shot at the pair, intending to wound the man but killing his wife instead. The Frenchman ran off and Camille now wanders “Ghost Alley” and a nearby copse of oak trees searching for her lover in vain. She has been seen many times since the Civil War as a radiant mist in the form of a woman.
Children have also found a home within these walls, serious illness was a fact of life in the early days of our nation, and many children did not live to see their tenth birthdays. Their innocent spirits are often trapped within the walls that sheltered them in life, as they unknowingly continue their journey after death. Two small boys have been reported at the fort, one in the upstairs of an old house next to the moat wall and the other in the basement of an enlisted man’s home. The latter child sometimes seeks out other children to play with when they visit the house, ghosts get lonely too…
Legalities of paranormal investigations
Any investigation dealing with public or private property should have ground rules; these should be written down and signed by both parties as to what is allowable and what needs to be left alone. Click on the link below for a good article on how to set up forms to protect your group and your client.
Martha Washington Inn
The Martha Washington Inn, in Abingdon, Virginia, hosts a number of ghosts left over from the Civil War. Built in 1832 by Congressman General Francis Preston, the house passed into the hands of the Methodist Church upon his death two years later. The church then founded the Martha Washington College for young ladies on its premises.
When the war reached their doorsteps in the mid 1860s, the college doubled as a hospital for the war wounded. One soldier, John Stoves, had been badly wounded and lay dying in what was to become room 403. Beth, a student of the college, tended to him and fell in love. As he passed from this life, she played the violin to ease his pain. Beth herself died a few weeks afterwards from complications of typhoid fever. Her music can now be heard faintly caressing the night, playing to her dead lover and sometimes accompanying her solitary visits to the room.
A phantom horse waits for his master outside the front steps, a Union soldier that was shot in front of the house in 1864. On moonless nights, the horse has been seen roaming the grounds searching for his owner and awaiting the call to ride home.
The basement holds the spirits of black slaves, they were kept in an underground chamber and some were buried within its stone walls.
Before being killed by enemy soldiers, a young confederate entered the house and ran up the stairs to warn of encroaching Union troops. Shot upstairs, his blood still stains the floorboards outside the Governor’s Room. A bellhop, who’s been with the establishment for over 30 years, tells that carpets that lay over the area develop holes over the spot where the soldier lay dying. Cold spots, apparitions and self-turning doorknobs have also been reported.
My favorite ghost is still looking for half of his head. Numerous accounts of a soldier hobbling with help from a crutch and leaving a trail of mud in his wake have been reported from a hallway of the Inn. Long past medical help, there is only speculation why he is here at the old hospital, a ball leaving only a hideous mangle of bone and sparse flesh had split his head. Perhaps he’s trying to turn off the damn violin…
