Haunted Objects: Stories of Ghosts on Your Shelf (27 page)

Yard sales can be a battleground of haunted objects.

Each time Pam holds an object, she might pick up a different “movie” of a different person who owned the object, discovering more of the item’s back story in the process.

“Objects are coveted by people,” she said. “The strongest emotion they had in relation to the object is what I pick up on. It doesn’t matter if 20 people have owned that object since; if someone carried it around with them everywhere they went, that is what I’ll pick up on. It doesn’t matter if she was the fourth person out of 20 who owned it, that’s what comes through.”

This was especially true of one experience illustrating the awesome power of psychometry. Pam’s friend, Emily (not her real name), invited Pam and her partner in paranormal investigation, Andrew Lake, to help her understand the hauntings in her Massachusetts home. The friend was upset because her young son was having a difficult time dealing with the ghostly activity.

During the course of the investigation, Emily handed Pam a gold bracelet that her boyfriend had given to her.

“Rings and other jewelry usually have something happening, gold rings in particular,” Pam said. “Gold (which is known for its electrical conductive properties) holds on to energy the best out of any metal that I’ve every touched.”

Emily said that every time she wore the bracelet, she felt awful and didn’t know why. Knowing Pam practiced psychometry, Emily wanted to know if Pam picked up anything from the bracelet.

Pam held the bracelet and closed her eyes. Her consciousness was transported to a lake.

“I could see the man the bracelet had belonged to, and then I was seeing the scene through his eyes,” Pam said. “He took me into the boat with his two friends with whom he was fishing on the lake. Then suddenly, the boat tipped over and it was as if I was actually being pulled under the water myself, drowning, feeling my feet stuck in the muck at the bottom of the lake and unable to get free. I could look above me and see his friends trying to get to him, but they were too late.”

As she was viewing this, Pam began to feel as if she, too, were drowning. She began thrashing around, having difficulty breathing. After the vision ended, she explained to her bewildered friend and fellow investigator what she saw.

Emily called her boyfriend to find out where he had gotten the bracelet.

“He told me it had come from his friend, Ken, and that he had drowned in a fishing accident,” Pam said. “He essentially described for me the entire ordeal, and it was exactly as I’d seen it.”

Pam also received a message from Ken while holding the bracelet; he was worried about his son, who had developed a drug problem. Ken told Pam that he intended to stick around to keep an eye on his son.

“Sometimes I get just a few images when holding an object, but sometimes I get whole stories. That was one of the most vivid experiences I ever had,” she said.

Another time, Pam was in a marketplace and picked up a pretty necklace. As soon as she did, she was hit by the image of a horse-draw carriage riding by a streetlamp with snow on the ground.

“Although I don’t know how I knew this, I felt it was someplace in Europe,” she said. “I could see a girl of about 14 or 15 with a long dress on, wearing the necklace. I asked the man selling it if he knew anything about it, and he reiterated back to me everything I had seen.”

While the ability to utilize psychometry gives her a different perspective on many items, it’s not always a good idea to get the complete story behind every object she encounters. Pam goes through a special procedure in her mind, allowing her to turn her psychometric abilities on and off as she needs them so that she’s not inundated with visions while perusing a flea market or yard sale, for example.

When she visits antiques shops, Pam’s ability helps her not only find out if the item is authentic, but also if anything is attached to it.

But she said it can also be quite a tool when she wants to get the entire story behind what she is buying.

“When I go to antique shops, I keep it on,” she said. “If I’m buying an antique, I want to know if it’s the real thing, but I also want to know if it has anything attached to it that I might not want to take home. That might be considered cheating, but I want to know.”

Pam once bought a curio cabinet that she said had “a low energy” in the shop. But after she brought it home, something “not of this world” was attached to it.

“I can’t always depend on what I see,” she said. “Something nonhuman or alien can change their appearance to make you think they’re something human when they’re not, but they give off a different vibration. Humans have a certain sense to me, and these nonhuman entities are totally different.”

Through a process of spiritual cleansing, she was able to remove the entity from the cabinet, which is still in her home. She said most times there’s no need to remove entities attached to objects, but it can be done if needed.

Skeptics question the validity of psychometry, but Pam is able to unveil such in-depth history of objects she merely holds in her hands that those same skeptics are left scratching their heads. Paranormal investigator Matt Moniz even tried to trick Pam while at a paranormal conference. He had several examples of evidence laid out on a table, including such items as soil samples from UFO landing sites and casts of alleged Bigfoot prints. Also on the table was an ordinary brick. Matt asked Pam if she could pinpoint where the brick came from.

Pam barely had to touch the brick before she was able to pinpoint that it had come from the basement of the haunted Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast in Fall River, Massachusetts.

“I was floored when she said it,” Matt said, something that hasn’t happened often in his 25-plus years of investigating the unusual. “That’s when I knew psychometry and Pam’s abilities were the real deal.”

Haunted Collections

Considering the awesome power of some of the haunted, possessed, and cursed items we’ve shared with you in these pages, you may be shocked to discover that there are a number of individuals who collect these objects. Some of them even keep them in their own homes and invite the spirits that are attached to them to make themselves known.

Paranormal investigators like Ron Kolek of the New England Ghost Project, Thomas D’Agostino of the Paranormal United Research Society, and the members of the D.C. Metro Area Ghost Watchers have acquired numerous haunted items through their years of investigation, and utilize them to conduct experiments and train new investigators on the concepts of dealing with spirits attached to objects. But there are also a few collectors out there who display their objects to the public.

The most famous is the John Zaffis Museum of the Paranormal located next to Zaffis’ home in Stratford, Connecticut. Zaffis, star of the Syfy channel program,
Haunted Collector
, has spent more than 35 years investigating cases of alleged haunted, possessed, or cursed objects, many of which have ended up back at his home. He began his career working with his famous aunt and uncle, legendary investigators and demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren of the New England Society for Psychic Research (NESPR), and has become one of the most respected paranormal authorities in his own right.

Eminent paranormal researcher John Zaffis.

Although Zaffis has clergy members conduct “binding rituals” to the objects to keep the spirits from causing further problems, many of the items are still subject to spirit activity. When a client asks Zaffis and his organization, the Paranormal Research Society of New England, to remove a haunted object, if Zaffis feels it is too powerful to remain in his museum or if the binding rituals are not enough to hinder the spirits, Zaffis will either bury the object or throw it in a body of water to eliminate its power.

Although duties with his television show have contributed to a temporary hiatus at the museum, Zaffis continues to add objects on a nearly daily basis. Many of them are featured on the website,
johnzaffisparanormalmuseum.com
. A clown doll, a ventriloquist’s dummy, and a possible human skull used in dark rituals are some of the highlights of the Zaffis Museum. Idols, dolls, and other items associated with black magic help create a feeling of foreboding to those who enter the museum.

Long before Zaffis started his museum, his aunt and uncle displayed their collection of haunted and cursed items at their home in Monroe, Connecticut. Now run with the help of NESPR director Tony Spera, the Warrens Occult Museum is featured in NESPR’s “Warrenology” events, which include lectures by Lorraine Warren and Spera and tours of the museum.

There, visitors can see items such as a satanic idol found in the Connecticut woods, an organ that plays mysteriously on its own, shrunken heads, possessed toys, and masks used for demonic projection. But the highlight of the Warrens Occult Museum is the world-famous Annabelle the Doll, as featured in the Warrens’ book,
The Demonologist
.

Annabelle, a Raggedy Ann doll, was a gift to a college student in 1970. It soon began to move around on its own, even leaving creepy notes around the house. A medium told the doll’s owner that it was possessed by the spirit of a seven-year-old girl, who died not far from the home, but it turned out to be something much more sinister. Annabelle was later responsible for choking and clawing a man across his chest and may even be responsible for killing another person who came in contact with it. Attempts by the Warrens and an Episcopal priest to exorcise the demonic spirits that inhabit the doll have lessened some of the power, but the doll is still known to move around on its own.

In addition to the Zaffis and Warren museums, there are other museums that warrant a visit as well. While most of them are more dedicated to paranormal investigation or strange phenomena rather than as a depository for haunted items, many do have one or two special displays of haunted objects.

The Museum of the Paranormal (
museumoftheparanormal.ca
), located in Niagara-on-the-Lake in Ontario, Canada, is the home of such haunted items as the Gettysburg Doll, the Post-Mortem Doll, and the Custom House boots. The most famous item there is Lizzie the Doll, whose eyes follow visitors as they move about the museum.

The Paranormal Museum in Asbury Park, New Jersey (
theparanormalmuseumnj.com
) has numerous exhibits at any given time, often featuring allegedly haunted objects. In addition, the museum offers ghost tours of other noted haunted locations across Asbury Park.

The International Museum of Spiritual Investigations (
museumofspirits.com
) is located in historically haunted Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and operates out of a Civil War-era home. Its “Residual Room” features many allegedly haunted objects from dolls to Ouija boards. It is affordable to visit; adult admission is $2.

These are just a few sites in which the paranormal is the direct focus of the museum; there are countless other allegedly haunted objects that rest in various historical museums across the country and the world. Haunted items can be used as a hook to bring in visitors. It’s like the motto we often use on “Spooky Southcoast” and at some of the events we conduct at historic locations: Come for the ghosts, stay for the history.

The high overhead cost of running a brick-and-mortar museum has led to the current trend of online museums. There are many of these on the Web, usually featuring the private collections of investigators and other purveyors of paranormal trinkets.

Although online museums take away the ability to be in the presence of haunted objects and to feel the energy they emit, they require no travel, no admission fees, and best of all, no chance of bringing an unwanted spirit home with you!