Stalking Shadows (18 page)

“Maybe it was Mrs. Loop thanking you for the compliment,” Randy suggested. I nodded in agreement.

“Whoever it was, it would indicate that it was an intelligent entity, wouldn’t it?” he asked.

“Definitely,” Randy and I answered at the same time.

An intelligent entity is a ghost or spirit that interacts with or acknowledges the living in some manner. Touching our investigator’s arm would be the act of an intelligent entity.

“I’m going to keep investigating this area,” our investigator said.

“Have fun! We’re heading upstairs,” Randy said as we walked back down the foyer hallway to the massive, regally designed, semicircular staircase.

The first room on the left as you turned the corner at the top of the stairs to go down the hallway, belonged to Dr. and Mrs. Loop. It’s a rather small room, with a gorgeous antique bedroom set and two chairs with a table in between them.

A black dress that belonged to Mrs. Loop lay on the bed and a mannequin in the far corner of the room was adorned in another one of Mrs. Loop’s Victorian outfits.

Randy and I spent the better part of an hour trying to make contact with the doctor, or Mrs. Loop, as I could feel a distinct female presence, but nothing happened. I felt that the spirit was relatively shy and more curious about what we were doing than in communicating.

We moved on to Emma’s bedroom, on the opposite side of the hallway. This was a large room with an antique bedroom suite, several chairs, a dressing table, and an upholstered bench.

There was also a doll carriage in the room, containing what we believed to be one of Emma’s dolls, although it’s possible it belonged to her daughter.

The energy in this room felt a little thicker and heavier than in the rest of the house we’d explored so far. This could indicate the presence of a spirit. While I could pick up on a female energy in the room, she didn’t go out of her way to communicate, but once she warmed up to us, she began to talk to me telepathically.

Randy and I both felt like we were invading her private space, and although we were slightly uncomfortable, we continued to investigate. I explained to her who we were and why we were there, and apologized for the intrusion.

Emma indicated to me telepathically that she had indeed crossed over to the other side, but she loved to visit her home frequently to check on things and reminisce about her life in the house.

She also said that she was thrilled with how the home has been preserved, and with all the new buildings, most of which she remembers seeing when she was alive, that had been added to the property grounds.

When asked about the incident with the fire inspector, Emma laughed and said she really didn’t mean to scare him, but the event amused her greatly. I have to admit, I chuckled right along with her. The vision of the fire inspector racing from the mansion was entertaining.

To me, it felt that Emma was beginning to realize and understand the power she has as a spirit, and she was starting to enjoy her time in the afterlife. All I can say to that is: “You go, girl!”

Emma’s energy felt light and playful. I didn’t feel that her spirit was capable of any type of malicious event, and was simply, from time to time, visiting a place she loved so dearly in life. I also believe she enjoyed interacting with the living, but on her own terms. I really can’t blame her for that.

We thanked Emma for her time and moved on to Captain Stanley’s room. This rather small room was filled to bursting with maritime relics. Models of ships, shipwreck relics, and other maritime artifacts sat on display, in every available space.

There were a small table and chairs in the center of the room; the table displayed navigational charts of the Great Lakes. Randy and I made ourselves comfortable in the chairs and tried to open a line of communication with Captain Stanley or any other entity that occupied the space.

After sitting in the room for a short period of time, we noticed that the air was becoming thick and heavy. This energy had a different feel than in the other rooms in the house we’d investigated—it felt a little bit menacing and intimidating, and was definitely male.

Randy tried an EVP session, while I reached out psychically, in an effort to make contact with whatever spirit was in the room with us. Both attempts failed.

We then decided to move on to the military room. Large display cases lined two walls and a large display case ran through the middle of the room. At the back of the room, in front of a window that looked out over the backyard, stood a male mannequin dressed in full combat gear.

Directly to the right of the mannequin was a small room filled with glass display cases. These cases held all types of Native American artifacts, and Randy and I spent a considerable amount of time admiring the various relics.

These two rooms felt light and I couldn’t detect the presence of any type of entity, which surprised me. I thought that with all the trappings of war in the room, some type of energy would be clinging to them.

Deciding to take a break, we returned to the kitchen to monitor the equipment so that another team could investigate the upstairs. We had brought a couple of rookie investigators with us, thinking this would be a good case for them to train on, and we sent one of our more experienced investigators with them, to instruct them on the investigative techniques we use.

We settled ourselves at the kitchen table and while I watched the camera feeds, Randy started to review the audio from the tape recorder. We could hear the other team moving around the second floor, so we tried to stay as quiet as possible. We’d discovered early on in the investigation that conversations taking place in the kitchen travel through the heating system, and could give false EVP recordings.

After a couple of hours, the team returned to the kitchen from the second floor.

“We’re not going back up there,” the rookies announced. I glanced at our experienced investigator, who just shrugged.

“Why? What happened?” Randy asked.

“Something was following us down the hallway from Captain Stanley’s room. We tried to do an EVP session, but we don’t know if we got anything,” they said.

“Okay. So why don’t you want to go back upstairs?” I asked.

“Because of the things that follows us.” They looked at me as if I’d just landed from Mars.

“Well, that kind of experience is what ghost hunters live for,” I explained. “What about the event scared you?”

“It felt like it didn’t want us there. It was intimidating. Please don’t make us go back up there.”

“Okay. Why don’t you investigate down here, and Randy and I will go back upstairs,” I said.

Relief washed over their faces, and they willingly began to investigate the main floor of the mansion. Randy and I grabbed our gear and hotfooted it back up to the second floor.

As soon as we reached the second-floor landing, it became apparent that the energy had changed dramatically. The energy that we’d felt in Captain Stanley’s room seemed to ooze out of the walls and permeate every available space.

Randy and I moved from room to room in search of the source of the energy. We did notice that the only room that didn’t have this energy was Emma’s. Her room remained calm and serene.

“That’s curious.” Randy shrugged as we left Emma’s room and continued our search.

“It is,” I agreed. “Either this entity respects Emma, or Emma is keeping the energy at bay somehow.”

We spent the better part of two hours trying to find the source of this heavy energy and make contact, but to no avail. Whatever was up there wasn’t in a talkative mood. It just wanted us out.

From what I’ve been told by the people who work in the museum, Captain Stanley was a rather nice man, so I highly doubted he was responsible for the energy that filled the room.

My best guess is that one of the many maritime relics from past shipwrecks and other sources has a ghost attached to it, and it is he who is responsible for the activity in Captain Stanley’s old bedroom.

Defeated, we returned to the kitchen to talk to Donna. We told her what we and our team had experienced on the second floor, and asked if any of the volunteers had similar experiences.

She seemed confused by our question, and said that no one had ever said anything about experiencing the type of activity our team fell victim to. Our only conclusion is that we were strangers to the spirits that either reside here or that visit from time to time.

We believe that the spirits were just trying to protect the museum from a perceived threat. This type of behavior by a ghost or spirit is not uncommon. If they love the place they are inhabiting, many types of entities will try to protect that space from people they don’t know.

Because the new investigators were spooked by their experiences, and due to the lateness of the hour, we packed up our gear and left. Donna asked us to come back the next weekend to investigate the other historical buildings on the property. We jumped at the chance.

The following weekend, with more experienced paranormal investigators in tow, we returned to the museum grounds. We invited another paranormal investigation team we’ve worked with in the past to help, because of the sheer size of the investigation. It would have been impossible for us to cover all twelve-plus outbuildings by ourselves.

We were greeted warmly by a small group of the volunteers and a couple members of the Board of Directors. After introductions were made and the small talk was finished, it was time to get down to business. Once again, the museum was kind enough to let us use the kitchen as command central. One of the volunteers unlocked all the outbuildings, including the restroom building, and then retreated to the kitchen to allow us to do our thing.

The tech people from both teams scurried around the property like rabbits, setting up the equipment in as many buildings we had cameras for. They also checked out all the equipment to ensure everything contained fresh batteries and was in good working order.

We then divided into pairs and headed off in opposite directions.

The first place I wanted to investigate was the old church. The church had a rich history. It once was a grocery store, then a bar, and then a church. The steeple had been added at that point.

Our team usually conducted ghost hunting lectures in the church every October, as a fund-raiser for a museum. It seemed to us, and many of the people present during those lectures, that we weren’t alone. We’d done fund-raising lectures for the museum in this building several times before, but this was the first time we’d been able to investigate the grounds and all the outbuildings.

This is because we seemed to always have equipment malfunctions or other type of activity happen during one of our lectures.

Randy and I entered the old church and immediately walked down the center aisle of pews to the raised altar area. To us, this seemed to be the place where much of the activity occurred during the lectures.

We spent a good hour and a half trying to make contact with any entity that may have been present in the church, but all we got in response to our questions were a few odd noises that we couldn’t positively attribute to anything paranormal.

As we walked out of the church and headed over to the dairy barn, we heard a scream come from the area where the old train depot stood. Randy and I rushed over to see what happened.

We found a couple of our investigators, along with an investigator from the team we brought along, laughing hysterically. When Larry, one of our investigators could stop laughing long enough, he told us that when Dan, his investigating partner, looked in the window of the train depot, he saw a man sitting at the depot desk. It scared the crap out of him, which is why he screamed. Larry looked in the window and saw that it was a mannequin dressed up as the depot master—hence, the hysterical laughter. This was really a rookie mistake, and happens a lot when someone is amped up to see a ghost and spots a mannequin, or a shadow cast on a wall by some object in the room, etc.

Embarrassed, Larry said it wouldn’t happen again, and the team walked around the building to enter the depot. Still chuckling, Randy and I headed back toward the dairy barn.

The dairy barn was filled to overflowing with various equipment that would have been used back in the day. There were old-fashioned milking machines, milk cans, and other paraphernalia. Two narrow mangers lined both sides of the barn and large dairy machines ran down the middle of the building. No one had ever reported anything even remotely paranormal occurring in the dairy barn, but a good paranormal investigator leaves no stone unturned—just in case.

With no activity after a half-hour, Randy and I walked through the property to the old hunting cabin, which sat nestled just inside the tree line on the northern side of the property. A mown trail wound its way a short distance into the woods, toward the cabin.

We first walked around the outside of the cabin to get the lay of the land, and to inspect the building for any holes or unstable beams, and to make sure all the windows were intact. We also checked to see if any tree branches could scrape the sides of roof of the cabin, if the wind blew. That way, if we heard something, we would know whether it was paranormal or caused by the old building itself.

Randy and I climbed the two wooden stairs to the front door and opened it, peering into pitch blackness. The door emitted an eerie creak as it swung open for us to enter. It was so stereotypical of a Hollywood haunted house movie that we both laughed.