Ghost Hunting Read online

  Frank was a tough guy by all appearances and professed not to believe in ghosts, but he was clearly starting to get paranoid. He related one instance to us: he had been standing on a table in his barn when he felt something shove him, causing him to lose his footing and go crashing to the ground. On another occasion, he’d been standing in the house’s main hallway when he felt something push him from behind.

  But those hadn’t been his only bad experiences. Doors that had politely remained open for his wife had closed on him when he walked by. He had woken up sometimes in the middle of the night to see something standing over his bed—often enough that he had taken to sleeping downstairs on the couch.

  Interestingly, Erica wasn’t plagued by any of this activity. What’s more, female friends would say they felt extraordinarily comfortable in the house, while men who visited felt nervous and distinctly unwelcome.

  For reasons she couldn’t identify, Erica felt that she knew the spirit’s name. She called it Michael.

  Once the interview was over, we began setting up our equipment—camcorders, high eights, and digital recorders—pretty much wherever Frank had experienced activity. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any luck at first. No EVPs, nothing on video, no personal experiences.

  Then Grant, who was going upstairs to the attic, felt something grab his leg. Naturally, he thought it was me. I do that to him sometimes when I’m kidding around. Suspecting that I had done it in this case as well, Grant turned to sock me in the arm—but no one was there.

  He finally found me two stories below, talking with Erica and Frank, and gave me the shot he had been saving up. “You grabbed my leg,” he told me when he saw the puzzled look on my face. “I did not,” I said. And the homeowners backed me up. Grant still thought I was pulling a fast one, so he checked the camera in the room where we were standing. Sure enough, I had been down there for some time.

  Something else had grabbed him.

  Encouraged by Grant’s experience, we continued to seek out evidence of the entity Frank had described. Hours went by, but as before, we were stymied—until we went into the second bedroom, the only room in the house with no reported activity.

  No sooner had we opened the door than we saw a shadowy mass in the corner of the room. It wasn’t shaped like a man. In fact, it wasn’t shaped like anything. It was like a heat mirage, the kind you see coming off a hot summer sidewalk in the distance. Except that it was pitch black.

  Approaching it, Grant and I reached into it and felt an almost Arctic cold. It seemed to us there was electricity in there as well, though not enough to give me any serious kind of shock. Then the mass disappeared.

  But it wasn’t gone completely. A moment later, one of us spotted it in the bathroom a few feet away. Again Grant and I tried to touch it, and again we felt a terrible cold, like the inside of a meat locker. This time when it vanished, it returned to the bedroom where we had seen it originally. When we followed, it went past us like a stiff wind—and wasn’t seen again the rest of the night.

  In the wee hours of the morning, we packed up and headed home. The next day, we went over the footage we had taken. Unfortunately, we hadn’t managed to get the black mass on videotape. However, we had captured some rather interesting EVPs.

  One of them said, “Get out now.” Another said, “Leave here.” And a third, recorded when the entity had left the second bedroom like a harsh wind, said, “Get down from there. You’re wasting your time.” The words were whisper-thin but unmistakable.

  We also did some research on Frank and Erica’s house, which turned up a nugget of interesting information. A man named Michael had indeed been a previous resident of the place, but not recently. He had lived in the house a couple of centuries earlier. Michael’s wife had cheated on him with another man, causing him to murder her in a fit of jealous rage. The man with whom she had cheated had then killed Michael, completing the circle of tragedy.

  If the supernatural entity in the house was Michael, it was no wonder he didn’t like seeing men there. Of course, he might have been hostile to women too, considering what his wife had done, but he seemed to have a soft spot for them.

  We offered Erica Keith’s services as an exorcist, figuring she would want to get rid of the spirit. But she said she wouldn’t mind hanging onto it. After all, the spirit offered her comfort while her husband was away down in Florida.

  Which left Frank in a difficult spot. His wife had gotten attached to a paranormal entity, and as far as we could tell the feeling was mutual. We suggested that Frank cut a deal with the spirit: he would leave it alone if it left him alone.

  Frank felt funny about the idea, but he couldn’t live with what was going on. In the end, he agreed to talk with the spirit. Soon after, the hostile incidents stopped, and to this day the spirit seems to be abiding by the deal.

  * * *

  GRANT’S TAKE

  It was a strange triangle that developed in Erica and Frank’s house—a man, a woman, and a ghost. I’m not sure I could have lived with it, if it had been me. But it kept Frank from getting hurt, so who are we to judge?

  * * *

  THREE WIVES OCTOBER 2000

  Sometimes we feel so victimized by supernatural entities in our homes that we forget who the real victims are. That was what happened in the western Rhode Island home of Becky Jones, an elderly woman who called T.A.P.S. out of pure desperation.

  While rummaging through her attic, Becky had seen three apparitions at the same time. Frightened to her marrow, she’d gotten out of there as quickly as she was able, and she’d resolved not to go up again. But she seemed to have awakened something.

  The next day, when she’d entered the large old barn in her backyard, she’d felt the place start to shake. There had been no wind to speak of and nothing hitting the barn from the outside, but it had shuddered as if the earth were quaking beneath it. Again, she’d had to escape as quickly as she was able.

  Afterward, her dog had taken to barking loudly and urinating at the entrances to the attic and the barn. And at night, she’d heard crazed laughter from the attic, as if someone had been up there. Finally, she hadn’t been able to stand it anymore, and she’d reached out to us.

  Usually, we’re right on time for our investigations. This time traffic held us up, and we arrived later at Becky’s house than we had intended. As we hurriedly worked to unload our car, wanting to get set up before dark, I happened to glance at the small, round window in the attic. There were faces up there, watching us. Heather saw them too. I grabbed a camera and snapped a picture of them.

  But when we went up to the attic, there was no one there. Going back downstairs, we saw that the faces were gone, and we resumed unloading our car. Once we were done, Keith and Heather sat down to talk with Becky, while Grant took a video camera out to the barn. I followed him out there a moment later.

  I was still thinking about the faces as I entered the barn, so I wasn’t prepared for the incredibly loud growl I heard or the force that pushed me back out again. A moment later, Grant emerged and told me he had been inside and he’d heard the growl. It had been all around him, like thunder. The barn had shaken so hard that he’d fallen to his knees.

  In the house, Keith, Heather, and Becky could hear screams coming from the attic. They called us in to tell us about it, and we told them about what had happened in the barn. We also said we weren’t going to let it stop us.

  As we entered the barn a second time, there wasn’t any growling or shaking, but I felt a pressure in the air that made me extremely uncomfortable. Grant had the same feeling. Nonetheless, we stayed long enough to set up a couple of cameras.

  Then we did the same thing in the attic and went back downstairs. For a couple of hours, we waited for the growls and the screaming to resume, but nothing happened. You would never have known there had been such a racket in there earlier.

  While Grant and Heather stayed in the kitchen to hold Becky’s hand, Keith and I went up to the attic to check on our camera. We fo
und that the battery was dead, though it had been fully charged when we left home. Since we didn’t have a spare, we packed up the camera—at which point our flashlight went dead as well, plunging us into darkness.

  We could feel a presence with us in the darkened attic. It was unmistakable. Then I heard the whispered words, “Martin, want out!” They sent chills up and down my spine. Descending from the attic, I asked Keith if he had heard the voice. He said he had.

  In the morning, we left Becky but assured her that we would be back as soon as we could analyze our data. When we went over our video footage, we caught a few moments of a form approaching the camera in the barn. Also, our still picture of the attic window revealed some shapes, if not actual faces, that shouldn’t have been there.

  Obviously, something had happened in either the barn or the attic or both. We just didn’t know what. It wasn’t until we researched the property that we began to get some answers. We learned that the man who’d built the house had mysteriously lost not one but three wives. Then he’d gone insane and killed himself in the barn.

  Though we had no real proof, we surmised that he had locked his wives in the attic one by one until they’d starved to death. Then—and again, this was supposition—they’d haunted him until he’d gone mad and taken his own life. In any case, these spirits weren’t going to be easy to make a deal with.

  Our only real recourse was an exorcism, which Keith was happy to perform. Afterward, the house became quiet again, much to Becky’s relief.

  * * *

  GRANT’S TAKE

  I had never before experienced anything like what happened in Becky Jones’s barn. It was worse than an earthquake, from what I’ve heard about them. It was more like being in the eye of an incredibly loud and tumultuous storm—and not knowing if you were going to survive.

  * * *

  INTRUDER NOVEMBER 2000

  When T.A.P.S. embarks on an investigation, we look for natural explanations before we entertain the possibility of supernatural ones. We try to debunk claims of ghostly entities and occurrences. That sets us apart from other ghost-hunting groups, who go in with the preconceived notion that a place is haunted.

  Don’t get me wrong—I believe in the supernatural. I think there are ghosts all around us. I just don’t think ghost hunters are going to advance our store of knowledge, or our credibility with the public, if we label everything a haunting.

  We explain our position to our clients in advance. After all, eighty percent of the time we have to tell them they’ve got a loose floorboard and not a spirit of the dead. Usually that’s enough to put their minds at ease, and we feel good that we were able to help.

  When Deena Jackson asked us to investigate her Uxbridge, Massachusetts, town house, we responded immediately. After all, Deena had a six-year-old daughter, and we don’t like to see children hurt or victimized by fear. When we arrived, Grant and I sat down and spoke with Deena while Keith Johnson and Heather Drolet did a walk-through and set up equipment.

  Deena complained of several problems. For one thing, she felt she was constantly being watched. For another, she heard a banging in the walls at all hours. She also heard footsteps at night, though there was no one there to make them. Finally, her downstairs television appeared to turn itself on at night.

  It appeared to Deena that her home was haunted. She was concerned for the safety of herself and her little girl. It was an understandable reaction.

  In our exploration of the town house, in Deena’s bedroom closet we came across several books on ghosts and hauntings. Sometimes that’s an indication that the client is trying to fake a supernatural event, but we didn’t believe that was true in this case. Deena seemed genuinely scared by what was happening.

  The first claim we checked out was the sound of footsteps late at night. Deena’s neighbor walked his dog at night. It was possible that what she’d heard were his footsteps on the staircase outside.

  We trained a camera on the downstairs television, hoping it would turn on and give us some evidence. We also checked on it from time to time. However, it remained inactive the entire night.

  Deena had also spoken of a banging sound in the walls. We didn’t have to wait long to hear it. However, it sounded like her neighbor’s headboard hitting the wall between his town house and Deena’s.

  Of course, not everyone who lives in a town house hears what goes on in her neighbor’s home. But these homes were rather new and had walls built with metal two-by-four studs. This allowed sound to travel easily and efficiently from one residence to another.

  After a while, we called it a night. When we came back to Deena with our analysis, we had to tell her that we didn’t think her home was haunted. After all, we hadn’t been able to document any of her claims. In addition, none of us felt anything out of the ordinary there. It seemed like a secure place to raise a child.

  Deena rejected our findings out of hand. Despite everything, she was certain that her home was haunted, and she wouldn’t hear anything to the contrary. It wasn’t our job to convince her one way or the other. All we could do was tell her what we had seen and wish her good luck.

  * * *

  GRANT’S TAKE

  We’re not mean people. We would rather have a happy client than an unhappy one. However, we’ve got to call ’em the way we see ’em, and the way we saw Deena Jackson’s house was “not haunted.

  * * *

  THE HAUNTED WAREHOUSE FEBRUARY 2001

  We’ve all heard of haunted houses, but how many of us have heard of a haunted warehouse? We at T.A.P.S. have not only heard of such a thing but we once had the opportunity to investigate one.

  The warehouse in question was located in central New Jersey. It was an old building, though we were unable to determine how old, or what it was used for originally. All we knew was that it was big—80,000 square feet of storage space spread out over three floors.

  We were invited there by Sam Dillon, the warehouse’s manager. He and other employees had experienced what they could only describe as supernatural occurrences, though he was the only employee there when we arrived. As we set up our equipment, we asked him to tell us exactly what had happened.

  On one occasion, Dillon said, he and two other employees were ascending the south staircase, talking about work, when they all felt they were being pushed from behind. On another occasion, he and another employee saw a man in a tan work shirt who glanced at them and then appeared to walk through a wall.

  Shortly thereafter, an employee was having trouble pushing a heavy cart up a ramp. Finally, he decided to take a break before giving it another shot. When he returned to the cart, he saw it was at the top of the ramp—and a pitchfork had been stuck in one of the wooden steps that ran along the ramp’s flank.

  At first, the employee thought that some of his coworkers had done the job for him as a joke. But they said they hadn’t. They also claimed they didn’t know where the pitchfork had come from.

  After that, the incidents became more widespread. Employees began seeing nebulous masses in the warehouse. Some said they were black, some said they were gray, and some said they were red, but almost everyone encountered one of them.

  The building alarm began going off every Wednesday, regardless of how many times Dillon had the system serviced. Employees were calling in sick and quitting. It got to the point where people were scared to enter the building.

  After we finished interviewing Dillon, he took us up to the third floor, which had no windows. It was almost perfectly dark up there, but we were all able to make out moving shapes. As we got closer to them, they seemed to disappear.

  Later that night, Andrew was pushed from behind and nearly fell down a flight of stairs. At the same time, we recorded some EVPs—though we wouldn’t hear them until the next day, when we analyzed our data. They were voices telling us to “Leave…leave, gather.”

  At a few minutes after 3: 00, we all suddenly smelled food and heard what sounded like many voices coming from one end of the wa
rehouse. Dillon told us that the smell and the sounds were coming from what used to be the building’s cafeteria.

  Later, while we were investigating the second floor, we heard the sounds of footsteps and sliding objects coming from the floor above us. Keith and I also witnessed several orange lights whipping through the building. We tried to come up with an explanation for them but couldn’t.

  Finally, we decided we had seen—and heard—enough. We packed up and assured Dillon that we would be in touch with him. Then we headed back to Rhode Island, eager to go over our footage.

  Our analysis documented the EVPs, if not a whole lot else. However, when we combined the data with our personal experiences in the warehouse, it was difficult not to concede that there was something supernatural afoot.

  Unfortunately, we were unable to piece together who was haunting the premises and why. It was an old building and probably had an interesting past, though none of it was documented by the historical societies in the area. We would have loved to spend more time there but were unable to do so.

  One story that Dillon told us may have accounted for some of the paranormal activity. According to one story, the building used to have a security guard who would travel up and down the stairs during his rounds, pushing people out of his way. If that’s so, his ghost may still be doing so.

  We suggested to Dillon that Keith bless the building and try to exorcise the spirits in it. Dillon agreed, and the procedure was carried out. We have since heard that some activity has been noted, but Dillon is of the opinion that it is simply people’s imagination and nothing to be concerned about.