RPS Investigations
Investigations - 2009
Shartlesville Hotel- Shartlesville, Pennsylvania- August 15, 2009- Case #1
Conditions- clear night, temperature in the high 70's, very high humidity, light to no wind, last quarter moon phase
Investigators- Team 1- Rich Fox, Sr. and Jay Livinghouse
Team 2- Mike Snyder and Shawn Maurer
Team 3- Paul Laplante and Rich Fox, Jr.
Equipment Used: (3) digital camcorders; (4) digital cameras; (2) Cell Sensor EMF readers; (1) infrared thermometer; (3) digital voice recorders; (2) battery-activated motion sensors
Time of Investigation- Arrived at 8 p.m.; Initial walkthrough (to familiarize ourselves with each floor and to take beginning pictures and starting EMF (electromagnetic field) readings) lasted from 8:30 to 9:30; Lights out at 10 p.m.; investigation lasted until 4:30 a.m.
History: In the early 1900's, the Shartlesville Hotel was a very popular stagecoach stop along the Hex Highway, or Route 22, which now runs parallel to Interstate 78. Not only did it serve as a hotel for weary travelers, it also served as a fine Dutch restaurant, bar/ social lounge, and even at lesser times served as a brothel in the area. Up to until July 2008, the second floor of the building was being rented to tenants; however, a fire in July gutted the second floor, which deemed the building unsuitable for residence. The current owner, Eric, is currently in the middle of gutting and remodeling basically the whole building. Along with fixing the fire damage, new standards in electrical standards has forced Eric to update even farther than he may have wanted to. Construction is beggining in late September. However, the building is not completely abandoned. Eric currently is running a small mini market out of the first floor.
Reports of Paranormal Activity- Claims of paranormal activity at the Shartlesville Hotel has been abundant. The biggest claim to fame seemed to be that a prostitute was hung on the 2nd floor. RPS found this claim through the Berks Lehigh Paranormal webpage. Nobody knows, however, if this hanging was self-inflicted or set up and was actually a murder. Other claims include townspeople seeing a woman's face in one of the 2nd floor windows. Now coming off that claim, the whole town of Shartlesville seems to believe that this hotel is haunted. Even the next door neighbor had asked Eric, the owner, if she could spend the night in the hotel; however, at that time, he declined. But, Eric was gracious enough to allow RPS the chance to investigate the site. Another claim from some of the workers in the mini market, especially a teenager that works at night, is that he generally feels uneasy every time he enters the area of what used to be the hotel or restaurant.
Findings- It is safe to say that all six members of RPS had some kind of personal experience that night. Team 1, consisting of Rich Sr. and Jay, were on the attic stairs, and Jay felt a hand placed on his shoulder blade. At the time he thought Rich was trying to regain his balance because he was right behind Jay; however, when Jay realized it wasn't Rich he quickly swung around to see if he could see that hand on his video camera. Team 2 had two experiences in the attic. The first experience occurred when Shawn was at the top of the stairs, and Mike was a few steps down. Just as Shawn was saying something, Mike felt a cool blast of air hit him on the right side of the face and travel downstairs into the second floor area. Not 10 seconds later, the same thing happened again. Were there two spirits trying to escape the RPS team that night? It was a very humid night, so a cool blast of air like described was easily noticeable. The second personal experience Team 2 had in the attic occurred with our last investigation point of the night. This time, Mike was at the top of the attic stairs and Shawn was a few steps down. Shawn and Mike were talking about something, and all of a sudden, both teammates heard what sounded like a female hum or child's voice coming from down the stairs in the second floor. Playback on the video and digital recorder came up inconclusive; however, both members definitely heard the same noise at the same time.
Also, on our recorders and on video, Team 2 was able to track a series of knocks from the basement to the first floor that were almost directly on cue with the team asking for them. Team 2 was able to track the noise to a stairwell on the first floor because of a very loud knock or bang that every team in the building heard loud and clear.
Another strange thing that night happened to Team 1. They were in the dining room area on the first floor, when Rich asked if there was any spirit present, if they could turn off his flashlight that was on the counter. Almost immediately, the flashlight turned off, and when he asked to do it again, before the again came out of his mouth, once again the spirit obliged. The only bad part about this was that the video camera was not rolling at this time. However, when the team did turn the camcorder on, over the next seven minutes of footage, we have some unexplainable instances of the flashlight flicking on and off, but not on our command like before the tape was rolling. We are currently having some technical difficulties posting the video on the website, but we hope to have it up soon.
The rest of our findings were quite expansive. In all we have 5 clear EVPs posted on our EVP page, plus one recording, #2, that was just too strange not to post. These 5 EVPs all came from one recorder, surprisingly enough, even though we had three recorders running most of the night. Please visit our EVP page and let us know what you think they say by following the e-mail links, and then we will get back to you, letting you know what we thought we heard.
The Reveal: After weeks of reviewing the evidence, Rich and Mike met with Eric, the owner of the Shartlesville Hotel to go over the findings. We shared how we conducted our investigation, what tools we used throughout the night, any personal experiences we had, and finally the evidence. Eric was more than astonished by what we were actually able to capture. Even without headphones, he could clearly pick out the same thing that the EVPs revealed to us. Eric's reaction was priceless during parts of the reveal, but not in a frightened way. He seemed like he was ecstatic that we actually found something, because he himself had never experienced anything in the hotel/restaurant section of the Shartlesville Hotel. Eric went on to say that beginning in late September of 2009, construction would begin to renovate the charred remains of the hotel. Construction would take at least three months; however, the next statement Eric said surprised Rich and Mike more than anything. Eric invited RPS to do a follow-up investigation when construction is slated to be finished in early January of 2010. Rich and Mike accepted the offer, and are psyched to once again go back to the first case accepted by RPS.
Strangely enough, the claims going into Shartlesville were all of females. The voices RPS caught were clearly male; however, through thorough research of the EVPs, RPS concluded that there are at least 2 or 3 male spirits in the hotel as well. This is something RPS will definitely focus on during the investigation in January; however, RPS will also try to include a female investigator on its next trip to Shartlesville. A female investigator may help lure out the female spirit, if in fact there is one actually present there.
Shartlesville Hotel- Shartlesville, Pennsylvania- August 15, 2009- Case #1
Conditions- clear night, temperature in the high 70's, very high humidity, light to no wind, last quarter moon phase
Investigators- Team 1- Rich Fox, Sr. and Jay Livinghouse
Team 2- Mike Snyder and Shawn Maurer
Team 3- Paul Laplante and Rich Fox, Jr.
Equipment Used: (3) digital camcorders; (4) digital cameras; (2) Cell Sensor EMF readers; (1) infrared thermometer; (3) digital voice recorders; (2) battery-activated motion sensors
Time of Investigation- Arrived at 8 p.m.; Initial walkthrough (to familiarize ourselves with each floor and to take beginning pictures and starting EMF (electromagnetic field) readings) lasted from 8:30 to 9:30; Lights out at 10 p.m.; investigation lasted until 4:30 a.m.
History: In the early 1900's, the Shartlesville Hotel was a very popular stagecoach stop along the Hex Highway, or Route 22, which now runs parallel to Interstate 78. Not only did it serve as a hotel for weary travelers, it also served as a fine Dutch restaurant, bar/ social lounge, and even at lesser times served as a brothel in the area. Up to until July 2008, the second floor of the building was being rented to tenants; however, a fire in July gutted the second floor, which deemed the building unsuitable for residence. The current owner, Eric, is currently in the middle of gutting and remodeling basically the whole building. Along with fixing the fire damage, new standards in electrical standards has forced Eric to update even farther than he may have wanted to. Construction is beggining in late September. However, the building is not completely abandoned. Eric currently is running a small mini market out of the first floor.
Reports of Paranormal Activity- Claims of paranormal activity at the Shartlesville Hotel has been abundant. The biggest claim to fame seemed to be that a prostitute was hung on the 2nd floor. RPS found this claim through the Berks Lehigh Paranormal webpage. Nobody knows, however, if this hanging was self-inflicted or set up and was actually a murder. Other claims include townspeople seeing a woman's face in one of the 2nd floor windows. Now coming off that claim, the whole town of Shartlesville seems to believe that this hotel is haunted. Even the next door neighbor had asked Eric, the owner, if she could spend the night in the hotel; however, at that time, he declined. But, Eric was gracious enough to allow RPS the chance to investigate the site. Another claim from some of the workers in the mini market, especially a teenager that works at night, is that he generally feels uneasy every time he enters the area of what used to be the hotel or restaurant.
Findings- It is safe to say that all six members of RPS had some kind of personal experience that night. Team 1, consisting of Rich Sr. and Jay, were on the attic stairs, and Jay felt a hand placed on his shoulder blade. At the time he thought Rich was trying to regain his balance because he was right behind Jay; however, when Jay realized it wasn't Rich he quickly swung around to see if he could see that hand on his video camera. Team 2 had two experiences in the attic. The first experience occurred when Shawn was at the top of the stairs, and Mike was a few steps down. Just as Shawn was saying something, Mike felt a cool blast of air hit him on the right side of the face and travel downstairs into the second floor area. Not 10 seconds later, the same thing happened again. Were there two spirits trying to escape the RPS team that night? It was a very humid night, so a cool blast of air like described was easily noticeable. The second personal experience Team 2 had in the attic occurred with our last investigation point of the night. This time, Mike was at the top of the attic stairs and Shawn was a few steps down. Shawn and Mike were talking about something, and all of a sudden, both teammates heard what sounded like a female hum or child's voice coming from down the stairs in the second floor. Playback on the video and digital recorder came up inconclusive; however, both members definitely heard the same noise at the same time.
Also, on our recorders and on video, Team 2 was able to track a series of knocks from the basement to the first floor that were almost directly on cue with the team asking for them. Team 2 was able to track the noise to a stairwell on the first floor because of a very loud knock or bang that every team in the building heard loud and clear.
Another strange thing that night happened to Team 1. They were in the dining room area on the first floor, when Rich asked if there was any spirit present, if they could turn off his flashlight that was on the counter. Almost immediately, the flashlight turned off, and when he asked to do it again, before the again came out of his mouth, once again the spirit obliged. The only bad part about this was that the video camera was not rolling at this time. However, when the team did turn the camcorder on, over the next seven minutes of footage, we have some unexplainable instances of the flashlight flicking on and off, but not on our command like before the tape was rolling. We are currently having some technical difficulties posting the video on the website, but we hope to have it up soon.
The rest of our findings were quite expansive. In all we have 5 clear EVPs posted on our EVP page, plus one recording, #2, that was just too strange not to post. These 5 EVPs all came from one recorder, surprisingly enough, even though we had three recorders running most of the night. Please visit our EVP page and let us know what you think they say by following the e-mail links, and then we will get back to you, letting you know what we thought we heard.
The Reveal: After weeks of reviewing the evidence, Rich and Mike met with Eric, the owner of the Shartlesville Hotel to go over the findings. We shared how we conducted our investigation, what tools we used throughout the night, any personal experiences we had, and finally the evidence. Eric was more than astonished by what we were actually able to capture. Even without headphones, he could clearly pick out the same thing that the EVPs revealed to us. Eric's reaction was priceless during parts of the reveal, but not in a frightened way. He seemed like he was ecstatic that we actually found something, because he himself had never experienced anything in the hotel/restaurant section of the Shartlesville Hotel. Eric went on to say that beginning in late September of 2009, construction would begin to renovate the charred remains of the hotel. Construction would take at least three months; however, the next statement Eric said surprised Rich and Mike more than anything. Eric invited RPS to do a follow-up investigation when construction is slated to be finished in early January of 2010. Rich and Mike accepted the offer, and are psyched to once again go back to the first case accepted by RPS.
Strangely enough, the claims going into Shartlesville were all of females. The voices RPS caught were clearly male; however, through thorough research of the EVPs, RPS concluded that there are at least 2 or 3 male spirits in the hotel as well. This is something RPS will definitely focus on during the investigation in January; however, RPS will also try to include a female investigator on its next trip to Shartlesville. A female investigator may help lure out the female spirit, if in fact there is one actually present there.
Private Residence- Exeter Township, PA- September 4, 2009- Case #2
Conditions- clear night, temperatures in the low to mid 60's, low humidity, light to no winds, full moon
Investigators- Team 1- Mike Snyder and Jay Livinghouse
Team 2- Rich Fox, Sr. and Chet Miller
Team 3- Shawn Maurer and Rich Fox, Jr.
Equipment Used: (4) digital camcorders, (4) digital cameras, (2) CellSensor EMF meters, (2) infrared thermometers, (3) digital vioice recorders
Time of Investigation: Half of team arrived around 6 p.m. to do an initial walkthrough to take pictures and do EMF sweeps. Initial sweeps were done for the house and barn on the premises; however, a sweep was not completed of the 'lodge' at the top of the property, since we were not allowed access to this building, only the grounds around it. The rest of the team arrived a bit after 8 p.m.; Lights out at 9 p.m.; Investigation lasted until 3:15-3:30 a.m.
History: The house, which was built around 1890, was formerly used as a caretaker's house for the property. The barn was also built around the same time, as well as we assume the 'lodge' was built in the same period of time.
The House: The current resident of the house has lived there since the late 70's. A few years later, the resident married and brought his wife and her two sons into the residence. Three caretakers died in the house before the current resident resided there.
The Lodge: This building is publicly used to this day; however, only people possessing a badge swipe, can even enter the driveway leading to the building. This same gate and driveway is shared by the lodge and house on the grounds. One suicide has been reported in this area before the security gate was ever installed. As far as authorities can tell, a man drove up to the lot adjacent to the 'lodge', sat there for a bit, took out his gun, and shot himself once in the head. The residents' knowledge of the suicide is the only vantage point we have pursued so far. In the future, if we feel it is necessary, we will do a background check on the name, age, and exact time the man killed himself.
The Barn: There is no real historical significance about the barn. The barn is currently being used to hold a boat owned by the resident of the house, and also the lodge uses the barn for some of their odds and ends.
Reports of Paranormal Activity:
The House: Claims are numerous within the house. First we will start in the basement, and work our way up. One night, the youngest son was on the second floor with company when they heard a noise come from downstairs in the basement. They knew no one else was in the house, so they hurried downstairs. The residents' son went to the door of the basement. Through the whole at the bottom of the door carved out for the house's cats, the son saw a shadowy figure, or least the bottom half of a figure of what he felt was the size of an adult male. As he saw this shadow, it darted behind the staircase. As soon as the son saw this, he went to the phone to call a neighbor for help. The neighbor arrived and together they searched the basement, but nothing was there.
On the first floor, the husband of the residence always sits at one chair at the table in the living room. From this chair, he can scope out the television and most of the kitchen. The gentleman was sitting at the table one morning in his chair eating his breakfast, when all of a sudden from around the corner in the kitchen, he sees one of his cats walking on its hind legs, but also holding its front legs out like they were being held there by some kind of force. Well, the man saw this, did a double take, looked around a bit, and with a moderate yell, said, "Knock it off!". Immediately, the cat dropped to the ground, and started looking around the kitchen area, like it was looking for the thing that was making it walk like that.
On the second floor, there are also numerous claims. The first comes from the youngest son. The youngest son was scared to death to sleep in his bed. Many times a week, he would be sleeping in his bed and the floorboards would start creaking in the room. The creaking would grow in intensity as what he claimed sounded like footsteps getting closer and closer to the edge of his bed. And every time, they would just stop. He explained to us, that he just sat there frightened, hoping whatever was there was going to go away soon. He also mentioned that a few times, he saw a figure of a man standing at the end of his bed; however he just stood there, almost watching over the young child. This led the youngest son to spend a lot of nights sleeping with the lights on because that was his form of security. Also, claims have come out of the bathroom as well. The toilet seat dropping unexpectedly was one of the most frequented claims by the residents. Before RPS started the investigation that night, we tested this claim and tried to debunk it. The attempts to debunk this claim were worthless. When we lifted this toilet seat, it easily swings all the way back and rests against the tank. When the seat was up, we tested to see how easily it would fall; however, the seat has a natural occurrence to fall back towards the tank and not banging shut. Numerous times the residents would be downstairs and hear this toilet seat fall down rather hard. After a while, they became so used to the occurrence, that they stopped worrying about and just let it go.
Findings: It is safe to say that our results were not nearly as successful as our first case. Though each team had their own short-lived experiences that night, the investigation was fairly lackluster and uneventful. The house, which we thought would be a huge hot spot for every group, proved to not show any conclusive results. Every instance seemed to have been debunked, except for one; however, the whole RPS team was not able to conclude that we caught a disembodied voice, so therefore we will not post it.
The barn, RPS concluded, held nothing that we could deem paranormal as well. Many times throughout the night, each team heard things falling on top of the roof and trickling down the slant until it finally hit the ground. There were a few trees nearby which explains these items falling on the roof. Now the claim going into the barn was that the resident would hear noises from the second floor as he was working on his boat on the first floor of the barn. Though we did not debunk the claim, the noises the gentleman heard from the second floor could directly correspond with the noises we were hearing that night. We also examined the trees and found that some of the branches were very close to touching the side of the barn. If the wind would pick up just slightly outside, the branches could definitely make a large rapping sound on the side of the barn, thus explaining some large noises that could come from upstairs.
Last but not least, we will focus on the 'lodge' area where RPS feels that the most activity may have taken place that night. Remember, the 'lodge' parking lot is where a man committed suicide some years back with a gunshot to the head. Team 3 was at the 'lodge' first during the night. At one point, Team 3 was sitting on the porch of the 'lodge' and heard a noise from inside the building, which we did not have access to that night. Not a soul was in that building. On video, we have Shawn asking to make that noise again, and a few seconds later, a noise came from within. Though we can never prove if this was paranormal or just conincidence, it definitely did raise our awareness at the 'lodge' for the rest of the night.
Now this next finding was a bit disturbing and will be posted on our website's EVP page. Team 1 reached the lodge for the first time around 11:15 p.m. Throughout the crickets chirping, they decided to hold an EVP session on the porch of the 'lodge'. At about 11:25, and another team's recorder corresponds the same time because they heard the same noise from the barn, we were conducting our EVP session when out of nowhere, a gun shot came right from behind Team 1. The shot sounded like it came from a pavilion that sits about 100 yards southeast of the 'lodge'. Now on this propety, to bring all readers up to speed, there is a gun range. Under normal circumstances that would debunk the gun shot that was heard; however, 1) It was 11:25 p.m.--no one is allowed on the range after dark, 2) No one can enter the property unless they have an entrance badge at the gate, 3) All three teams witnessed no one on the grounds during their investigation period. Jay and Mike, after about a minute or two, decided to walk around the grounds to see if they could find anyone who may have scattered through the woods or smell anything like the smell that comes from gunpowder after a shot is discharged. Unfortunately, nothing was found to back up this claim. Could this one lonely, but well-heard gun shot be a residual haunt from the night when the tortured soul of the young man who parked at the 'lodge' ended his life? RPS may never know; however it did create a discussion throughout all of RPS about how often residual haunts play over and if a sound like the gunshot from that fateful night could transfer over into that haunt as well. Later that night, Team 1 also picked up what sounded like a disembodied voice coming from that same 'lodge' porch; however, again not all RPS members were convinced that they heard the voice, so it has not been included it on the EVP page.
One other piece of information to keep in mind at the 'lodge' was that three pieces of RPS's equipment completely malfunctioned. If remembered correctly, two camcorders and one digital camera had complete battery exhaustion. Coincidence? Yeah, it could be, but RPS will leave that up to the public to decide.
Conditions- clear night, temperatures in the low to mid 60's, low humidity, light to no winds, full moon
Investigators- Team 1- Mike Snyder and Jay Livinghouse
Team 2- Rich Fox, Sr. and Chet Miller
Team 3- Shawn Maurer and Rich Fox, Jr.
Equipment Used: (4) digital camcorders, (4) digital cameras, (2) CellSensor EMF meters, (2) infrared thermometers, (3) digital vioice recorders
Time of Investigation: Half of team arrived around 6 p.m. to do an initial walkthrough to take pictures and do EMF sweeps. Initial sweeps were done for the house and barn on the premises; however, a sweep was not completed of the 'lodge' at the top of the property, since we were not allowed access to this building, only the grounds around it. The rest of the team arrived a bit after 8 p.m.; Lights out at 9 p.m.; Investigation lasted until 3:15-3:30 a.m.
History: The house, which was built around 1890, was formerly used as a caretaker's house for the property. The barn was also built around the same time, as well as we assume the 'lodge' was built in the same period of time.
The House: The current resident of the house has lived there since the late 70's. A few years later, the resident married and brought his wife and her two sons into the residence. Three caretakers died in the house before the current resident resided there.
The Lodge: This building is publicly used to this day; however, only people possessing a badge swipe, can even enter the driveway leading to the building. This same gate and driveway is shared by the lodge and house on the grounds. One suicide has been reported in this area before the security gate was ever installed. As far as authorities can tell, a man drove up to the lot adjacent to the 'lodge', sat there for a bit, took out his gun, and shot himself once in the head. The residents' knowledge of the suicide is the only vantage point we have pursued so far. In the future, if we feel it is necessary, we will do a background check on the name, age, and exact time the man killed himself.
The Barn: There is no real historical significance about the barn. The barn is currently being used to hold a boat owned by the resident of the house, and also the lodge uses the barn for some of their odds and ends.
Reports of Paranormal Activity:
The House: Claims are numerous within the house. First we will start in the basement, and work our way up. One night, the youngest son was on the second floor with company when they heard a noise come from downstairs in the basement. They knew no one else was in the house, so they hurried downstairs. The residents' son went to the door of the basement. Through the whole at the bottom of the door carved out for the house's cats, the son saw a shadowy figure, or least the bottom half of a figure of what he felt was the size of an adult male. As he saw this shadow, it darted behind the staircase. As soon as the son saw this, he went to the phone to call a neighbor for help. The neighbor arrived and together they searched the basement, but nothing was there.
On the first floor, the husband of the residence always sits at one chair at the table in the living room. From this chair, he can scope out the television and most of the kitchen. The gentleman was sitting at the table one morning in his chair eating his breakfast, when all of a sudden from around the corner in the kitchen, he sees one of his cats walking on its hind legs, but also holding its front legs out like they were being held there by some kind of force. Well, the man saw this, did a double take, looked around a bit, and with a moderate yell, said, "Knock it off!". Immediately, the cat dropped to the ground, and started looking around the kitchen area, like it was looking for the thing that was making it walk like that.
On the second floor, there are also numerous claims. The first comes from the youngest son. The youngest son was scared to death to sleep in his bed. Many times a week, he would be sleeping in his bed and the floorboards would start creaking in the room. The creaking would grow in intensity as what he claimed sounded like footsteps getting closer and closer to the edge of his bed. And every time, they would just stop. He explained to us, that he just sat there frightened, hoping whatever was there was going to go away soon. He also mentioned that a few times, he saw a figure of a man standing at the end of his bed; however he just stood there, almost watching over the young child. This led the youngest son to spend a lot of nights sleeping with the lights on because that was his form of security. Also, claims have come out of the bathroom as well. The toilet seat dropping unexpectedly was one of the most frequented claims by the residents. Before RPS started the investigation that night, we tested this claim and tried to debunk it. The attempts to debunk this claim were worthless. When we lifted this toilet seat, it easily swings all the way back and rests against the tank. When the seat was up, we tested to see how easily it would fall; however, the seat has a natural occurrence to fall back towards the tank and not banging shut. Numerous times the residents would be downstairs and hear this toilet seat fall down rather hard. After a while, they became so used to the occurrence, that they stopped worrying about and just let it go.
Findings: It is safe to say that our results were not nearly as successful as our first case. Though each team had their own short-lived experiences that night, the investigation was fairly lackluster and uneventful. The house, which we thought would be a huge hot spot for every group, proved to not show any conclusive results. Every instance seemed to have been debunked, except for one; however, the whole RPS team was not able to conclude that we caught a disembodied voice, so therefore we will not post it.
The barn, RPS concluded, held nothing that we could deem paranormal as well. Many times throughout the night, each team heard things falling on top of the roof and trickling down the slant until it finally hit the ground. There were a few trees nearby which explains these items falling on the roof. Now the claim going into the barn was that the resident would hear noises from the second floor as he was working on his boat on the first floor of the barn. Though we did not debunk the claim, the noises the gentleman heard from the second floor could directly correspond with the noises we were hearing that night. We also examined the trees and found that some of the branches were very close to touching the side of the barn. If the wind would pick up just slightly outside, the branches could definitely make a large rapping sound on the side of the barn, thus explaining some large noises that could come from upstairs.
Last but not least, we will focus on the 'lodge' area where RPS feels that the most activity may have taken place that night. Remember, the 'lodge' parking lot is where a man committed suicide some years back with a gunshot to the head. Team 3 was at the 'lodge' first during the night. At one point, Team 3 was sitting on the porch of the 'lodge' and heard a noise from inside the building, which we did not have access to that night. Not a soul was in that building. On video, we have Shawn asking to make that noise again, and a few seconds later, a noise came from within. Though we can never prove if this was paranormal or just conincidence, it definitely did raise our awareness at the 'lodge' for the rest of the night.
Now this next finding was a bit disturbing and will be posted on our website's EVP page. Team 1 reached the lodge for the first time around 11:15 p.m. Throughout the crickets chirping, they decided to hold an EVP session on the porch of the 'lodge'. At about 11:25, and another team's recorder corresponds the same time because they heard the same noise from the barn, we were conducting our EVP session when out of nowhere, a gun shot came right from behind Team 1. The shot sounded like it came from a pavilion that sits about 100 yards southeast of the 'lodge'. Now on this propety, to bring all readers up to speed, there is a gun range. Under normal circumstances that would debunk the gun shot that was heard; however, 1) It was 11:25 p.m.--no one is allowed on the range after dark, 2) No one can enter the property unless they have an entrance badge at the gate, 3) All three teams witnessed no one on the grounds during their investigation period. Jay and Mike, after about a minute or two, decided to walk around the grounds to see if they could find anyone who may have scattered through the woods or smell anything like the smell that comes from gunpowder after a shot is discharged. Unfortunately, nothing was found to back up this claim. Could this one lonely, but well-heard gun shot be a residual haunt from the night when the tortured soul of the young man who parked at the 'lodge' ended his life? RPS may never know; however it did create a discussion throughout all of RPS about how often residual haunts play over and if a sound like the gunshot from that fateful night could transfer over into that haunt as well. Later that night, Team 1 also picked up what sounded like a disembodied voice coming from that same 'lodge' porch; however, again not all RPS members were convinced that they heard the voice, so it has not been included it on the EVP page.
One other piece of information to keep in mind at the 'lodge' was that three pieces of RPS's equipment completely malfunctioned. If remembered correctly, two camcorders and one digital camera had complete battery exhaustion. Coincidence? Yeah, it could be, but RPS will leave that up to the public to decide.
Pike Township Farm- Pike Township, PA- September 26, 2009- Case #3
Conditions- rainy night, mid 50s, complete cloud cover, however moon was in first quarter phase, very little wind
Investigators- Team 1- Rich Fox, Sr. and Paul Laplante
Team 2- Shawn Maurer and Jay Livinghouse
Team 3- Mike Snyder and Chet Miller
Equipment Used- (4) digital camcorders (1 was static on the porch for most of the night); (4) digital cameras; (4) digital recorders (1 was static inside the first floor of the house for almost 7 hours); (2) CellSensor EMF Detectors; (2) infrared thermometers; (1) K2 EMF meter; (1) motion sensor (this was set up on the porch about halfway through the investigation)
Time of Investigation: RPS arrived around 5:30 p.m. We began by taking some quick snapshots. Initial EMF readings were completed two weeks prior to investigation when Shawn, Rich, and Mike met with John, a local, who lives nearby. That night, John took us around the house, barn, and workshop, and gave us a brief history about the area. John came around 6:15 p.m. to unlock the doors, and from there RPS proceeded to showing the rest of the crew the nooks and crannies of the property. After doing some more EMF sweeps, RPS readied more to begin the investigation at 8 p.m. The investigation lasted until 4:30 a.m.
History: The owners of the property wish to leave the names of the residents of this old farm and farmhouse anonymous; RPS respects this right of privacy and offers this choice to everyone we help. RPS will forgo using any names during this brief history section. The viewers of this page must understand that this farm property, built in 1753, from our conclusions had a high probability of housing paranormal acitivity.
The House: Early records say that there was some kind of structure on the grounds before the house that stands today. The earliest descendant of the family came to America in the early 1700's, went back to Germany, married, and then came back to the colonies. The main house was built by travelling workers in 1753; as the family grew, an addition was built to the house that is less than half the size of the original structure, but was built almost seamlessly in the process. The new addition was estimated to be built around 20 years later after the original structure was built.
The old section of the house has a 3-room first floor layout. In the first room you walk into, it's hard not to notice the massive hearth that extends all the way to the chimney and was used to heat this whole structure, as well as to perform any cooking tasks. The other two rooms are still well intact; the first room seemed to be that of a large family room or living room. The other smaller room, which still houses a very old table in the middle of the room, was explained to have been a birthing room. The birthing room served two functions actually: (1) If a baby was on the way, the woman would stay in that room on the first floor so the family could easily check up on her; (2) this room was also used for the deathplace of many members of the family. If a family member would grow terminally ill, the near deceased would stay in this room for the last few days or weeks of their lives. The second floor of the old section of the house has a 3-room layout. Two staircases go up to the second floor: one narrow staircase from the large living room area and one amazing, spiral, wrap-around staircase from the kitchen area/hearth room. One would almost have to assume that these upstairs rooms were used as bedrooms, since the family had about 17 kids in total; however, only half lived to reach adulthood. In the room that would be overhead from the hearth room, there is a trap door that comes open to enter the attic. None of the teams investigated the attic, due to the fact that locals believe it was only used for grain storage and there are tons of bats that reside up there. Most members of RPS did not seem thrilled to have to deal with rabies. RPS also was not allowed access to the basement, due to the fact that the door to the basement was outside the back porch and over ther years has become so brittle from the weather conditions around it, that if we would have moved that door it would have just crumbled in our hands.
The newer section of the house had only one room on the bottom floor, which seemed to serve as some kind of dining area. A story was told to us by the person that toured us around the building that the last two female descendants of the family that lived on this farm would serve lunch in this room for the servants that assisted with the farm work. They would serve the food in this room then quickly sneak through the inside doorway that once connected these two buildings and watch them eat their food. The last generation of this farm family seemed to be very anti-social people and did not trust many souls. At the west end of the room, a stairwell leads up to the second floor, which consists of two decent-sized rooms, probably used for bedrooms due to the massive numbers in the family. The attic also connects to this side and a small stairwell leads up to the attic door.
The Workshop: The workshop was used primarily as an area for the landowner's turning profession. Still in the workshop sits an old lathe, which the owner poured hours and hours of work into. The owner worked so hard in that workshop that his heelprint is still indented in the hardwood floor due to the foot press he used to manually spin the lathe. His legacy can be shown from that one indentation, which has withstood the test of time for almost 250 years. The lathe is situated on the second floor of the workshop next to two windows and a small room with a large metal door which historians now know was used by the owner as a place to hang and dry wood. Also, the lathe was situated in such a way in between the two windows that the turner could turn it this way or that way to create maximum sun exposure to give him more light and therefore time to work. The windows faced due east and due south, and the house would block the sun in its westernmost area when it would just about set, probably telling the turner it was about time to wrap things up. The workshop consists of three floors; however, two floors were inaccessible to RPS on the night of the investigation. The attic is very brittle and our tour guide said he did not want anyone going up there and falling through the floor. The first floor was also closed to us due to a simple error of forgetting to take off a lock; however we made due with the one floor we could peruse.
The Barn: The barn has no really historical significance other than it has also stood for just as long as the farmhouse. The first floor of the barn was used to house any livestock the farm family owned. The second floor and the loft area were probably mainly used for any other kind of storage necessary. The barn would probably measure somewhere between 50 to 60 paces from the house, due east. The foundation of the barn is made of thick locally quarried limestone just like the house, the workshop, and the pig barn that has long ago been gone; however, the foundation still stands strong and intact.
Reports of Paranormal Activity:
Conditions- rainy night, mid 50s, complete cloud cover, however moon was in first quarter phase, very little wind
Investigators- Team 1- Rich Fox, Sr. and Paul Laplante
Team 2- Shawn Maurer and Jay Livinghouse
Team 3- Mike Snyder and Chet Miller
Equipment Used- (4) digital camcorders (1 was static on the porch for most of the night); (4) digital cameras; (4) digital recorders (1 was static inside the first floor of the house for almost 7 hours); (2) CellSensor EMF Detectors; (2) infrared thermometers; (1) K2 EMF meter; (1) motion sensor (this was set up on the porch about halfway through the investigation)
Time of Investigation: RPS arrived around 5:30 p.m. We began by taking some quick snapshots. Initial EMF readings were completed two weeks prior to investigation when Shawn, Rich, and Mike met with John, a local, who lives nearby. That night, John took us around the house, barn, and workshop, and gave us a brief history about the area. John came around 6:15 p.m. to unlock the doors, and from there RPS proceeded to showing the rest of the crew the nooks and crannies of the property. After doing some more EMF sweeps, RPS readied more to begin the investigation at 8 p.m. The investigation lasted until 4:30 a.m.
History: The owners of the property wish to leave the names of the residents of this old farm and farmhouse anonymous; RPS respects this right of privacy and offers this choice to everyone we help. RPS will forgo using any names during this brief history section. The viewers of this page must understand that this farm property, built in 1753, from our conclusions had a high probability of housing paranormal acitivity.
The House: Early records say that there was some kind of structure on the grounds before the house that stands today. The earliest descendant of the family came to America in the early 1700's, went back to Germany, married, and then came back to the colonies. The main house was built by travelling workers in 1753; as the family grew, an addition was built to the house that is less than half the size of the original structure, but was built almost seamlessly in the process. The new addition was estimated to be built around 20 years later after the original structure was built.
The old section of the house has a 3-room first floor layout. In the first room you walk into, it's hard not to notice the massive hearth that extends all the way to the chimney and was used to heat this whole structure, as well as to perform any cooking tasks. The other two rooms are still well intact; the first room seemed to be that of a large family room or living room. The other smaller room, which still houses a very old table in the middle of the room, was explained to have been a birthing room. The birthing room served two functions actually: (1) If a baby was on the way, the woman would stay in that room on the first floor so the family could easily check up on her; (2) this room was also used for the deathplace of many members of the family. If a family member would grow terminally ill, the near deceased would stay in this room for the last few days or weeks of their lives. The second floor of the old section of the house has a 3-room layout. Two staircases go up to the second floor: one narrow staircase from the large living room area and one amazing, spiral, wrap-around staircase from the kitchen area/hearth room. One would almost have to assume that these upstairs rooms were used as bedrooms, since the family had about 17 kids in total; however, only half lived to reach adulthood. In the room that would be overhead from the hearth room, there is a trap door that comes open to enter the attic. None of the teams investigated the attic, due to the fact that locals believe it was only used for grain storage and there are tons of bats that reside up there. Most members of RPS did not seem thrilled to have to deal with rabies. RPS also was not allowed access to the basement, due to the fact that the door to the basement was outside the back porch and over ther years has become so brittle from the weather conditions around it, that if we would have moved that door it would have just crumbled in our hands.
The newer section of the house had only one room on the bottom floor, which seemed to serve as some kind of dining area. A story was told to us by the person that toured us around the building that the last two female descendants of the family that lived on this farm would serve lunch in this room for the servants that assisted with the farm work. They would serve the food in this room then quickly sneak through the inside doorway that once connected these two buildings and watch them eat their food. The last generation of this farm family seemed to be very anti-social people and did not trust many souls. At the west end of the room, a stairwell leads up to the second floor, which consists of two decent-sized rooms, probably used for bedrooms due to the massive numbers in the family. The attic also connects to this side and a small stairwell leads up to the attic door.
The Workshop: The workshop was used primarily as an area for the landowner's turning profession. Still in the workshop sits an old lathe, which the owner poured hours and hours of work into. The owner worked so hard in that workshop that his heelprint is still indented in the hardwood floor due to the foot press he used to manually spin the lathe. His legacy can be shown from that one indentation, which has withstood the test of time for almost 250 years. The lathe is situated on the second floor of the workshop next to two windows and a small room with a large metal door which historians now know was used by the owner as a place to hang and dry wood. Also, the lathe was situated in such a way in between the two windows that the turner could turn it this way or that way to create maximum sun exposure to give him more light and therefore time to work. The windows faced due east and due south, and the house would block the sun in its westernmost area when it would just about set, probably telling the turner it was about time to wrap things up. The workshop consists of three floors; however, two floors were inaccessible to RPS on the night of the investigation. The attic is very brittle and our tour guide said he did not want anyone going up there and falling through the floor. The first floor was also closed to us due to a simple error of forgetting to take off a lock; however we made due with the one floor we could peruse.
The Barn: The barn has no really historical significance other than it has also stood for just as long as the farmhouse. The first floor of the barn was used to house any livestock the farm family owned. The second floor and the loft area were probably mainly used for any other kind of storage necessary. The barn would probably measure somewhere between 50 to 60 paces from the house, due east. The foundation of the barn is made of thick locally quarried limestone just like the house, the workshop, and the pig barn that has long ago been gone; however, the foundation still stands strong and intact.
Reports of Paranormal Activity:
Though this farmhouse seems to have a long history of hauntings and paranormal activity, no members of RPS were told about the location of any activity going on at the site. Our tour guide, we believe, has witnessed things himself; however, he did not want to tell us of any location in the house so we would not focus on one area, but instead the whole house. The only evidence that RPS has is online newspaper articles from a very respected historian/writer in the area. He has done some haunted tours around the area, and this farmhouse is one of the stops on the tour. One of the visitors on the tour, a woman in her 30s or 40s went to walk in the house; however, when she got to the doorway, she just could not do it. The article even went on to explain that when she parked in the grass beside the house she already had a sense of dread about the building. The sense of dread escalated as she walked up the back porch and waited in line at the entrance of the house. Another report from a different tour date to the farmhouse gives a sense of another spirit that may haunt the site. A tour was just concluding at the house when everyone was walking back to their cars. One of the guests on the tour looked back at the house as she was about to enter her car, and as she looked back at the house she saw an apparition of a rather portly lady standing between the two front doors that currently stand next to the road. Not believing what she saw, she did a double take only to find that the apparition was not there. No other reports of paranormal activity were revealed to any members of RPS.
Findings:
Most of the night was very uneventful for the RPS staff; however, around 2:30 a.m., activity began to increase. Around 8:30p.m., Group 2, which consisted of Mike and Chet, was beginning the investigation at their first station, the barn. Though things seemed very bland in the barn at the time, data analysis of the recorder being used at the time gave RPS a Class A EVP. At the time, Mike was pointing his digital thermometer across the span of the barn, and casting the red, pinpoint laser on a door on the opposite side of where he was sitting. At one point, the red laser did not cast all the way across to the door, but reflected back about 8-10 feet away from where Mike was sitting. This point was an area in between two large support pillars. Mike stated this to Chet, but Mike tried to debunk the claim by saying a moth had been flying around in the barn earlier and could have deflected the light. After Chet said that the chances of that are worse than getting struck by lightning, our Class A EVP was clearly heard.
From there, the night can basically fast-forward to 2:30 a.m. Mike had some personal experiences of hearing voices all night throughout the house, and a few other investigators felt they heard footsteps and creaks in the house even over the pouring rain; however, the evidence from data analysis doesn't quite synch up with the claims. At about 1:00 a.m., RPS decided to completely nix the barn from the investigation (not very smart in hindsight) and team up into groups of 3 and focus on the house and the workshop. Team 1 now consisted of Rich, Paul, and Chet and Team 2 now consisted of Mike, Shawn, and Jay. At this point, Team 2 went into the house first and sat in the birthing room to conduct an EVP session. While Team 2 was in the birthing room, Mike sat his K2 meter on an old table that was sitting in the middle of the room. Just for reference, a K2 Meter reads electromagnetic fields in the area, just like a regular EMF reader; the only way a K2 is different is that it has different color LED lights for each level the meter hits going from green as being normal EMF readings, up to yellow, orange, and then finally red. At one point while sitting in the birthing room, Mike was taking a picture of the adjacent room, Shawn was looking out the window towards the road, and Jay was staring at the K2 on the table. Jay saw the meter go to the second green light, go back down, and then spike up to red 3 or 4 times. As he fumbled with his speech to tell Mike and Shawn what just happened, the K2 meter went back to a normal reading. For no reason should that K2 meter have spiked the way that Jay described it due to the fact that there is no electricity or modern plumbing running through this house. And at that instance was the only time the K2 meter got a hit that night. Strangely enough, the K2 hit came in the room where the most residents of the house were born and died.
The strangest occurrences happened around 2:30 a.m. At the time, Team 1 was in the house and Team 2 was stationed inside the workshop. Team 2 had chairs set up around the lathe and were conducting an EVP session. The whole time out there was described as pretty uneventful, so for about the last 10 minutes of the allotted time in the workshop, the digital recorder was turned off and Team 2 was just sitting around taking pictures and asking questions for something or someone to make a noise. As Team 2 was sitting there, Mike was looking near one of the windows that faced a wooded area next to the workshop and house, and suddenly he saw a light that flashed for a second that created a box-like effect in almost half of the window. Shawn also claims to have seen this flash of light out of the corner of his eye even though he was staring out of the opposite side window looking toward the back porch of the house. This light anomally was not a camera flash from the house or a car coming up from the road. It definitely was not a car because the woods were too dense to let that kind of light through the window. Also, through out the whole night no groups saw a flash from a camera illuminate outside the house the way this light appeared outside the window. At that point, Team 2's adrenaline was starting to rise when not ten minutes later the team heard a loud growl from outside of the workshop. Mike was sitting closest to the workshop door and heard it originating from that point. Jay heard it from behind him, closest to the window Shawn and Mike saw the light anomally from. So there is a bit of discrepancy between RPS where the growl came from; however Team 2 definitely heard a growl somewhere from outside. At that point Team 2 tried to contact Team 1 who was in the house and asked if they were screwing with them, explaining what they just heard. At this point the walkie-talkies started malfunctioning. Over the static Team 2 could not hear what Team 1 said. Later RPS realized that low battery power may have been the culprit in that technical problem, but at the time RPS was picking up a lot of interference on the walkie-talkie. Mike then decided to call Rich on his cell phone. The call went through, Rich answered, and we asked him to go to the first floor window amd look to see if there was anyone or anything out there he could see that could have possibly made that noise. Now, this is where things get a bit weird. During this radio interference, the motion sensor set up on the porch went off. This motion sensor emits a bright blue light whenever something that contains a certain mass walks in front of it. Shawn, who was staring at the porch the whole time this ordeal was happening, saw this blue light come on and radioed this into Rich. Now through the static, Shawn was barely audible to him, but he was on the first floor at the time and saw this motion sensor pop on as well. Rich looked out the window to see if Team 2 had come out of the workshop since the allotted time in our stations were almost complete and it was almost time to switch. As he looked out the window, he later described seeing the upper torso of someone dressed in all white coming up the stairs onto the porch and coming to the door of the house, and at that point this figure disappeared from sight. At the time, Rich thought it was Jay, because that night he was wearing a all-white sweatshirt. However, Rich, soon after that point, received the call from Mike saying that they weren't leaving the workshop until they received confirmation that there wasn't anything like a human or bear in front of the workshop door ready to pounce on them when they exited.
Most of the night was very uneventful for the RPS staff; however, around 2:30 a.m., activity began to increase. Around 8:30p.m., Group 2, which consisted of Mike and Chet, was beginning the investigation at their first station, the barn. Though things seemed very bland in the barn at the time, data analysis of the recorder being used at the time gave RPS a Class A EVP. At the time, Mike was pointing his digital thermometer across the span of the barn, and casting the red, pinpoint laser on a door on the opposite side of where he was sitting. At one point, the red laser did not cast all the way across to the door, but reflected back about 8-10 feet away from where Mike was sitting. This point was an area in between two large support pillars. Mike stated this to Chet, but Mike tried to debunk the claim by saying a moth had been flying around in the barn earlier and could have deflected the light. After Chet said that the chances of that are worse than getting struck by lightning, our Class A EVP was clearly heard.
From there, the night can basically fast-forward to 2:30 a.m. Mike had some personal experiences of hearing voices all night throughout the house, and a few other investigators felt they heard footsteps and creaks in the house even over the pouring rain; however, the evidence from data analysis doesn't quite synch up with the claims. At about 1:00 a.m., RPS decided to completely nix the barn from the investigation (not very smart in hindsight) and team up into groups of 3 and focus on the house and the workshop. Team 1 now consisted of Rich, Paul, and Chet and Team 2 now consisted of Mike, Shawn, and Jay. At this point, Team 2 went into the house first and sat in the birthing room to conduct an EVP session. While Team 2 was in the birthing room, Mike sat his K2 meter on an old table that was sitting in the middle of the room. Just for reference, a K2 Meter reads electromagnetic fields in the area, just like a regular EMF reader; the only way a K2 is different is that it has different color LED lights for each level the meter hits going from green as being normal EMF readings, up to yellow, orange, and then finally red. At one point while sitting in the birthing room, Mike was taking a picture of the adjacent room, Shawn was looking out the window towards the road, and Jay was staring at the K2 on the table. Jay saw the meter go to the second green light, go back down, and then spike up to red 3 or 4 times. As he fumbled with his speech to tell Mike and Shawn what just happened, the K2 meter went back to a normal reading. For no reason should that K2 meter have spiked the way that Jay described it due to the fact that there is no electricity or modern plumbing running through this house. And at that instance was the only time the K2 meter got a hit that night. Strangely enough, the K2 hit came in the room where the most residents of the house were born and died.
The strangest occurrences happened around 2:30 a.m. At the time, Team 1 was in the house and Team 2 was stationed inside the workshop. Team 2 had chairs set up around the lathe and were conducting an EVP session. The whole time out there was described as pretty uneventful, so for about the last 10 minutes of the allotted time in the workshop, the digital recorder was turned off and Team 2 was just sitting around taking pictures and asking questions for something or someone to make a noise. As Team 2 was sitting there, Mike was looking near one of the windows that faced a wooded area next to the workshop and house, and suddenly he saw a light that flashed for a second that created a box-like effect in almost half of the window. Shawn also claims to have seen this flash of light out of the corner of his eye even though he was staring out of the opposite side window looking toward the back porch of the house. This light anomally was not a camera flash from the house or a car coming up from the road. It definitely was not a car because the woods were too dense to let that kind of light through the window. Also, through out the whole night no groups saw a flash from a camera illuminate outside the house the way this light appeared outside the window. At that point, Team 2's adrenaline was starting to rise when not ten minutes later the team heard a loud growl from outside of the workshop. Mike was sitting closest to the workshop door and heard it originating from that point. Jay heard it from behind him, closest to the window Shawn and Mike saw the light anomally from. So there is a bit of discrepancy between RPS where the growl came from; however Team 2 definitely heard a growl somewhere from outside. At that point Team 2 tried to contact Team 1 who was in the house and asked if they were screwing with them, explaining what they just heard. At this point the walkie-talkies started malfunctioning. Over the static Team 2 could not hear what Team 1 said. Later RPS realized that low battery power may have been the culprit in that technical problem, but at the time RPS was picking up a lot of interference on the walkie-talkie. Mike then decided to call Rich on his cell phone. The call went through, Rich answered, and we asked him to go to the first floor window amd look to see if there was anyone or anything out there he could see that could have possibly made that noise. Now, this is where things get a bit weird. During this radio interference, the motion sensor set up on the porch went off. This motion sensor emits a bright blue light whenever something that contains a certain mass walks in front of it. Shawn, who was staring at the porch the whole time this ordeal was happening, saw this blue light come on and radioed this into Rich. Now through the static, Shawn was barely audible to him, but he was on the first floor at the time and saw this motion sensor pop on as well. Rich looked out the window to see if Team 2 had come out of the workshop since the allotted time in our stations were almost complete and it was almost time to switch. As he looked out the window, he later described seeing the upper torso of someone dressed in all white coming up the stairs onto the porch and coming to the door of the house, and at that point this figure disappeared from sight. At the time, Rich thought it was Jay, because that night he was wearing a all-white sweatshirt. However, Rich, soon after that point, received the call from Mike saying that they weren't leaving the workshop until they received confirmation that there wasn't anything like a human or bear in front of the workshop door ready to pounce on them when they exited.
Private Residence- Reading, PA- October 10, 2009- Case #4
Conditions- clear night, temperature in high 30's to low 40's, very little wind, nearing last quarter moon phase
Investigators- Team 1- Rich Fox, Sr. and Shawn Maurer
Team 2- Mike Snyder and Paul Laplante
Equipment Used- (2) static digital camcorders; (3) digital cameras; (2) Olympus digital recorders; (2) infrared thermometers; (1) CellSensor EMF detector; (1) K2 EMF Reader; (1) motion sensor (this was set up in the upstairs hallway)
Time of Investigation- RPS showed up on location around 7:00 p.m. We began by taking some quick photos and asking the tenants if any other activity occurred since the initial walkthrough that was completed by Rich and Mike on Friday, September 25th. Initial EMF sweeps had been done that night which at the time, with no explanation, yielded some amazing results. Most of the EMF hits came from the boy's bedroom; however, the K2 meter picked up a few random spikes in the master bedroom. RPS got started with the investigation around 9:15 p.m. and ended around 3:30 a.m.
History- By communicating with the landlord, the tenants learned that the house was built in the early 1900's and was once used as a funeral home. The garage next to the house was apparently where the hearse was parked. Other than that the history seems to be a bit vague about the residence. Just from RPS's conclusions, we feel that the residence was once also used as some kind of general store due to the way that the front of the house has a bit of a store fromt quality to it. And since the house sits on the corner of the street, it would seem the perfect place for a general store.
Reports of Paranormal Activity- The current tenants moved into the house in July, and soon after that things began to happen. The first things to happen were not all that strange. The first night there, the wife was taking a shower and while in the shower claimed that she thought she saw someone pass in front of the door. At the time she thought that her husband had just come into the bathroom; however, she never brought it up to him. From there, things began to progress, especially for the female of the house. Almost every night of the week, while the husband and wife just layed down to fall asleep in their bedroom, they would begin to hear footsteps from down the hall. The footsteps would begin to get louder and closer, and it seems these footsteps led right to their bedroom door, which at the time they reported this to RPS, they would leave open every night. The footsteps would lead right up to where the wife would sleep, which is the side closest to the door, and at that point the footsteps just stopped, almost like whatever it was just wanted to stand next to her, to make sure she was there. Another claim from the wife is just a general feeling of discomfort when being upstairs, especially in the master bedroom. She claims as if she is almost being watched when she is upstairs. Another claim came from the bathroom right before RPS came in to do the intial walkthrough and questioning with the husband and wife. The wife was getting ready for work one morning and had the medicine cabinet doors open at the bathroom mirror. As she was getting herself ready for work, the medicine cabinet doors slammed shut. RPS tested these doors before beginning their investigation on the 10th of October. RPS concluded that in no way could these doors close by themselves. Once open, the hinges are strong enough to hold the door where they were originally opened to. A person walking by could not cause they doors to close or open more. Something had to close those doors, and close them violently as the wife described to RPS. The wife has also reported happenings from downstairs as well. While the wife was sitting on the sofa in the living room talking to a male friend on the phone about the strange events that were happening in the house, the chandalier hanging over the dining room table began to swing. When we say swing, we mean not just a small repitive motion back and forth, but almost the way a swingset would eventually come to rest after a person dismounts until it slowly loses all momentum. RPS also tested this occurrence. Directly above the chandalier is the daughter's bedroom. As the wife and Rich stood down stairs looking at the chandalier, Mike began jumping on the floor in the girl's bedroom. Mike does not have a small stature: 6'1" and over 250 lbs, if anyone could make that chandalier move, he could. What Rich and the wife reported back to Mike was a bit of a surprise. The chandalier barely shook. Rich and the wife did see it move a bit, but it did not swing back and forth, so that rules out any of the resident's remaining momentum from coming from upstairs and walking downstairs to see the chandalier moving. It just isn't possible. The strange thing about this claim is that the wife was on the phone with a friend who she knew through a friend of hers that died soon after they graduated together from high school. The deceased was named Jon and he mysteriously drowned in Blue Marsh in 2000. One day when the wife was at work, soon after the family moved into the house, a medium came and talked to her and told her that she had a spirit around her, a very strong spirit. The medium went on to describe a young man with a chiseled face, jet black hair who was a close friend. Immediately, the wife thought of Jon. And Mike, who had gone to the same high school as the wife and had previously been in a class with Jon in 2000, shortly before he died, knew this was a very accurate description of him. The wife tried to stay withdrawn from what the medium was saying and gave her a list of names to see if the medium could pick out Jon's name out of a group and sure enough she did. RPS believes that all of this seems to be too much of a coincidence to not in some way hold some kind of truth to it.
Conditions- clear night, temperature in high 30's to low 40's, very little wind, nearing last quarter moon phase
Investigators- Team 1- Rich Fox, Sr. and Shawn Maurer
Team 2- Mike Snyder and Paul Laplante
Equipment Used- (2) static digital camcorders; (3) digital cameras; (2) Olympus digital recorders; (2) infrared thermometers; (1) CellSensor EMF detector; (1) K2 EMF Reader; (1) motion sensor (this was set up in the upstairs hallway)
Time of Investigation- RPS showed up on location around 7:00 p.m. We began by taking some quick photos and asking the tenants if any other activity occurred since the initial walkthrough that was completed by Rich and Mike on Friday, September 25th. Initial EMF sweeps had been done that night which at the time, with no explanation, yielded some amazing results. Most of the EMF hits came from the boy's bedroom; however, the K2 meter picked up a few random spikes in the master bedroom. RPS got started with the investigation around 9:15 p.m. and ended around 3:30 a.m.
History- By communicating with the landlord, the tenants learned that the house was built in the early 1900's and was once used as a funeral home. The garage next to the house was apparently where the hearse was parked. Other than that the history seems to be a bit vague about the residence. Just from RPS's conclusions, we feel that the residence was once also used as some kind of general store due to the way that the front of the house has a bit of a store fromt quality to it. And since the house sits on the corner of the street, it would seem the perfect place for a general store.
Reports of Paranormal Activity- The current tenants moved into the house in July, and soon after that things began to happen. The first things to happen were not all that strange. The first night there, the wife was taking a shower and while in the shower claimed that she thought she saw someone pass in front of the door. At the time she thought that her husband had just come into the bathroom; however, she never brought it up to him. From there, things began to progress, especially for the female of the house. Almost every night of the week, while the husband and wife just layed down to fall asleep in their bedroom, they would begin to hear footsteps from down the hall. The footsteps would begin to get louder and closer, and it seems these footsteps led right to their bedroom door, which at the time they reported this to RPS, they would leave open every night. The footsteps would lead right up to where the wife would sleep, which is the side closest to the door, and at that point the footsteps just stopped, almost like whatever it was just wanted to stand next to her, to make sure she was there. Another claim from the wife is just a general feeling of discomfort when being upstairs, especially in the master bedroom. She claims as if she is almost being watched when she is upstairs. Another claim came from the bathroom right before RPS came in to do the intial walkthrough and questioning with the husband and wife. The wife was getting ready for work one morning and had the medicine cabinet doors open at the bathroom mirror. As she was getting herself ready for work, the medicine cabinet doors slammed shut. RPS tested these doors before beginning their investigation on the 10th of October. RPS concluded that in no way could these doors close by themselves. Once open, the hinges are strong enough to hold the door where they were originally opened to. A person walking by could not cause they doors to close or open more. Something had to close those doors, and close them violently as the wife described to RPS. The wife has also reported happenings from downstairs as well. While the wife was sitting on the sofa in the living room talking to a male friend on the phone about the strange events that were happening in the house, the chandalier hanging over the dining room table began to swing. When we say swing, we mean not just a small repitive motion back and forth, but almost the way a swingset would eventually come to rest after a person dismounts until it slowly loses all momentum. RPS also tested this occurrence. Directly above the chandalier is the daughter's bedroom. As the wife and Rich stood down stairs looking at the chandalier, Mike began jumping on the floor in the girl's bedroom. Mike does not have a small stature: 6'1" and over 250 lbs, if anyone could make that chandalier move, he could. What Rich and the wife reported back to Mike was a bit of a surprise. The chandalier barely shook. Rich and the wife did see it move a bit, but it did not swing back and forth, so that rules out any of the resident's remaining momentum from coming from upstairs and walking downstairs to see the chandalier moving. It just isn't possible. The strange thing about this claim is that the wife was on the phone with a friend who she knew through a friend of hers that died soon after they graduated together from high school. The deceased was named Jon and he mysteriously drowned in Blue Marsh in 2000. One day when the wife was at work, soon after the family moved into the house, a medium came and talked to her and told her that she had a spirit around her, a very strong spirit. The medium went on to describe a young man with a chiseled face, jet black hair who was a close friend. Immediately, the wife thought of Jon. And Mike, who had gone to the same high school as the wife and had previously been in a class with Jon in 2000, shortly before he died, knew this was a very accurate description of him. The wife tried to stay withdrawn from what the medium was saying and gave her a list of names to see if the medium could pick out Jon's name out of a group and sure enough she did. RPS believes that all of this seems to be too much of a coincidence to not in some way hold some kind of truth to it.
At this point, RPS was in a uproar about what was happening at this place. What made that snarling and growling noise? Why did the motion sensor go off? What was the light anomally outside the workshop window? Did Rich really see an apparition walk up those porch steps up to the door and just vanish? RPS had a lot of questions that needed to be answered. Rich explained everything that happened in that short amount of time to the rest of the group. He still claims that he saw an apparition even though we have no proof from video or audio. Shawn was looking at the porch the whole time. He saw the motion sensor get tripped; however he saw nothing walking on the porch. The strange thing about that motion light, also, is that when it doesn't catch anything walking in front of it for a while it slowly dims out until it turns off completely. When the motion light turned off it went from being completely lit up to just turning off instantly. There was absolutely no dimming of the blue light in the process. But anyways, at that point RPS decided to look around the workshop and house to see if something or someone was tampering with the investigation. Chet and Paul walked around the workshop and side of the house. Shawn and Jay were looking around the front of the workshop. As Chet and Paul walked around the side of the house, something that sounded like a brick hitting the ground made a loud thud behind them with enough force to make Chet, who was trailing behind Paul, jump a bit. Paul said shortly after to Chet that it almost sound like someone was throwing something at them. A short time after, Shawn and Jay heard what sounded like a scuffling at the end of the porch and something make a loud thud off the porch onto the rocks in between the cold cellar and workshop and ran off. They followed the noise as quickly as they could; however, nothing was there. Could there have been an animal on the porch which had a trash can at the end of it that became startled by everyone around and made a jump off the porch? Yes, it is a possiblity; however, we can definitely rule out human, because RPS concluded with that 10 foot drop to the ground below that no man would have been able to pull off an escape that quickly before Shawn and Jay got to the area of interest. At this point again, all members of RPS came together and explained to each other what just happened to them. The night had turned from unbelievably boring to unbelievably active in 15-20 minutes. RPS could not understand why this happened, but this was a pleasant surprise to say the least.
After all of this happened, with Rich maybe seeing a full apparition and all these other small events, RPS decided to send all 6 group members into the house where they would all sit in one room to see if all six members could centralize where any noises might be coming from. Rich and Shawn, while in the house together, tested the motion sensor that was sitting on the porch to see if someone could turn it on from the inside by standing in the window it was perched near. With no surprise to the rest of the members, the motion light did not trip when any members were in front of the window. RPS sat in the house from about 3-4:15 just listening, snapping pictures, and conducting quiet EVP sessions to see if they could capture any stray disembodied voices. On a few occasions, Mike and Paul both agreed they heard voices, and nonetheless voices of children coming from upstairs while they sat in the first floor family room in the oldest section of the house. At another point, at least 3 or 4 members heard footsteps coming from upstairs. Shawn tried to pass it off as the rain dripping down somewhere. RPS even has this conversation caught on a recorder where Paul says to Shawn, "Rain doesn't creak." After RPS heard these creaks, two members, Jay and Mike, decided to go upstairs to look around and to see if they could recreate these creaks that were heard prior. This is the point where the second EVP from the page comes from. Jay and Mike head upstairs and stand in the largest room on that floor. Jay and Mike were not up there for more than 4 or 5 minutes when they heard what Jay described clearly on his recorder as a scuffing noise coming from an adjacent room. This scuffing noise happened twice and soon after that RPS captured a clear EVP on Jay's recorder. This session gets even more interesting even though it is not posted on the website. Jay and Mike begin hearing footsteps at or on one of the flights of steps coming upstairs, and Mike even says on Jay's recorder, "It sounds like they are coming up", with 'they' referring to the four members of RPS we left behind on the first floor. Once again, Jay and Mike heard someone at the stairs, so they decide to walk to where the staircase is, and surprisingly they see nothing. Mike says to Jay, "I thought...." and Jay finishes his thought saying, "So did I!" Jay and Mike both believed that someone was walking up the stairs towards them, and as they went back to the first floor, the other four members of RPS were standing in the exact same spots they were when Jay and Mike originally left them.
After all of this happened, with Rich maybe seeing a full apparition and all these other small events, RPS decided to send all 6 group members into the house where they would all sit in one room to see if all six members could centralize where any noises might be coming from. Rich and Shawn, while in the house together, tested the motion sensor that was sitting on the porch to see if someone could turn it on from the inside by standing in the window it was perched near. With no surprise to the rest of the members, the motion light did not trip when any members were in front of the window. RPS sat in the house from about 3-4:15 just listening, snapping pictures, and conducting quiet EVP sessions to see if they could capture any stray disembodied voices. On a few occasions, Mike and Paul both agreed they heard voices, and nonetheless voices of children coming from upstairs while they sat in the first floor family room in the oldest section of the house. At another point, at least 3 or 4 members heard footsteps coming from upstairs. Shawn tried to pass it off as the rain dripping down somewhere. RPS even has this conversation caught on a recorder where Paul says to Shawn, "Rain doesn't creak." After RPS heard these creaks, two members, Jay and Mike, decided to go upstairs to look around and to see if they could recreate these creaks that were heard prior. This is the point where the second EVP from the page comes from. Jay and Mike head upstairs and stand in the largest room on that floor. Jay and Mike were not up there for more than 4 or 5 minutes when they heard what Jay described clearly on his recorder as a scuffing noise coming from an adjacent room. This scuffing noise happened twice and soon after that RPS captured a clear EVP on Jay's recorder. This session gets even more interesting even though it is not posted on the website. Jay and Mike begin hearing footsteps at or on one of the flights of steps coming upstairs, and Mike even says on Jay's recorder, "It sounds like they are coming up", with 'they' referring to the four members of RPS we left behind on the first floor. Once again, Jay and Mike heard someone at the stairs, so they decide to walk to where the staircase is, and surprisingly they see nothing. Mike says to Jay, "I thought...." and Jay finishes his thought saying, "So did I!" Jay and Mike both believed that someone was walking up the stairs towards them, and as they went back to the first floor, the other four members of RPS were standing in the exact same spots they were when Jay and Mike originally left them.
When all of RPS decided to head up to the second floor, some members had some other claims. Once again, from an adjacent room, some members reported hearing a little girl or a woman talking, maybe even holding a conversation. Shawn was the first one to report a claim of seeing light anomallies in the yard between the house and the barn. These light anomallies were described by Shawn as a little bigger than pinpoint balls of light floating and moving ever so slightly about. Throughout the next 15 to 20 minutes each member saw these anomallies, but some members to much more extent. RPS did not use the occurrences of the light anomallies during the reveal however: our proof behind it was not steadfast enough to have any of our members describe it to anyone else. That basically concluded the night's findings. Through data analysis RPS's recorders had also picked up a few moans and groans which RPS did not post because only Class A EVPs were presented at the reveal. Unfortunately, the results of Mike's static recorder, which was sitting inside the family room on the first floor of the older section of the house, had to be thrown out due to where the recorder was placed. Whenever anyone came near it, sounds and voices became distorted, also it picked up distorted voices from the second floor as well and from the porch when some members were taking breaks. One other thing that RPS used during the reveal was a picture found with Shawn's digital batch from the first floor family room in the oldest section of the house. In that room, RPS had a strobe light set up, hoping to capture shadows more easily if they would walk on by. RPS does not know if the strobe light was on while Shawn was taking this picture; however, in the picture Shawn caught a bluish-green mist centered around a window and the door leading out to the porch. This was the same window and door that Rich later claims he saw the apparition from outside walk up to and where the motion sensor tripped.
The Reveal:
The reveal was performed on October 28th, 2009 in front of a group of preservationists dealing directly with this house. Shawn, Jay, and Mike were all present at the reveal, and three members, mainly Shawn, went into depth with what the investigation process details and the equipment that is used when investigating a site. Shawn seemed to grab everyone's attention really well as he backtracked on some of the personal experiences that were documented from that night. Jay and Mike chimed in when they could as a detail or two were missed here or there. Shawn's picture was shown to the gathering we had yielded. RPS didn't put too much backing into this picture due to the fact that it could be a light reflection; however, this was not the case in any other pictures taken by any other members. Shawn, Jay, and Mike really got everyone's attention when the EVPs were played and repeated. Not everyone from the audience could clearly make out what was said; however, everyone definitely heard a voice exactly when RPS heard it. When Shawn, Jay, and Mike told the audience what was said, some of the people said that that is what they heard as well.
The audience was pleased with the reveal and the professionalism RPS brought during the presentation and during the investigation as well. RPS has been invited back to the Pike Township Farm in hopes of having a clear night to investigate the next time. Through this reveal, RPS may have opened up a few more investigations of other houses these preservationists take care of, so RPS was very stoked about this. Shawn, Jay, and Mike answered a few more questions, wrapped up the reveal, thanked the audience for giving them their attention, and headed off.
The Reveal:
The reveal was performed on October 28th, 2009 in front of a group of preservationists dealing directly with this house. Shawn, Jay, and Mike were all present at the reveal, and three members, mainly Shawn, went into depth with what the investigation process details and the equipment that is used when investigating a site. Shawn seemed to grab everyone's attention really well as he backtracked on some of the personal experiences that were documented from that night. Jay and Mike chimed in when they could as a detail or two were missed here or there. Shawn's picture was shown to the gathering we had yielded. RPS didn't put too much backing into this picture due to the fact that it could be a light reflection; however, this was not the case in any other pictures taken by any other members. Shawn, Jay, and Mike really got everyone's attention when the EVPs were played and repeated. Not everyone from the audience could clearly make out what was said; however, everyone definitely heard a voice exactly when RPS heard it. When Shawn, Jay, and Mike told the audience what was said, some of the people said that that is what they heard as well.
The audience was pleased with the reveal and the professionalism RPS brought during the presentation and during the investigation as well. RPS has been invited back to the Pike Township Farm in hopes of having a clear night to investigate the next time. Through this reveal, RPS may have opened up a few more investigations of other houses these preservationists take care of, so RPS was very stoked about this. Shawn, Jay, and Mike answered a few more questions, wrapped up the reveal, thanked the audience for giving them their attention, and headed off.
The Walkthrough:
The walkthrough conducted by Rich and Mike on September 25, 2009 yielded some interesting results, some of which later RPS realized, was a mistake made during this walkthrough. When the husband and wife first contacted RPS, they sent through email a picture that looks like a projection of a face on their bedroom door. When the couple had taken this picture right after they heard creaking coming down the hallway into the bedroom, they were a little freaked out. Rich looked at this picture and immediately debunked it. The 'face' was actually a reflection of light off the lightswitch off the wall where the bed was located which projected off the door. Sure enough, the husband went upstairs to recreate this phenomenon, and in two or three consecutive pictures was able to do so. However, not everything was immediately debunked that night. As Mike and Rich performed a EMF sweep through the son's room, Rich noticed that high EMF levels were coming from the area around the child's bed. Surely a high EMF reading couldn't be coming from the bed, right? Well, Rich and Mike had no reasonable explanation. Even at one point of the night while in the son's room, Rich and the husband were talking in the son's room about some occurrences when Rich's CellSensor, which was laying on the bed, turned on by itself and started going ballistic. No one was within 5 feet of the meter, so RPS knows that something pushed that button down. Also, as the child sat next to the meter, it started going even crazier. The CellSensor is known to give inaccurate readings if it is shaken violently; however, the son was not moving, he was just sitting there looking at the meter beeping and carrying on. After this incident that Mike and Rich witnessed, RPS now had to focus on two main areas during their investigation: the master bedroom where the creaking footsteps lead to and the son's room at the opposite end of the hall where the dangerous EMF readings were centered.
The walkthrough conducted by Rich and Mike on September 25, 2009 yielded some interesting results, some of which later RPS realized, was a mistake made during this walkthrough. When the husband and wife first contacted RPS, they sent through email a picture that looks like a projection of a face on their bedroom door. When the couple had taken this picture right after they heard creaking coming down the hallway into the bedroom, they were a little freaked out. Rich looked at this picture and immediately debunked it. The 'face' was actually a reflection of light off the lightswitch off the wall where the bed was located which projected off the door. Sure enough, the husband went upstairs to recreate this phenomenon, and in two or three consecutive pictures was able to do so. However, not everything was immediately debunked that night. As Mike and Rich performed a EMF sweep through the son's room, Rich noticed that high EMF levels were coming from the area around the child's bed. Surely a high EMF reading couldn't be coming from the bed, right? Well, Rich and Mike had no reasonable explanation. Even at one point of the night while in the son's room, Rich and the husband were talking in the son's room about some occurrences when Rich's CellSensor, which was laying on the bed, turned on by itself and started going ballistic. No one was within 5 feet of the meter, so RPS knows that something pushed that button down. Also, as the child sat next to the meter, it started going even crazier. The CellSensor is known to give inaccurate readings if it is shaken violently; however, the son was not moving, he was just sitting there looking at the meter beeping and carrying on. After this incident that Mike and Rich witnessed, RPS now had to focus on two main areas during their investigation: the master bedroom where the creaking footsteps lead to and the son's room at the opposite end of the hall where the dangerous EMF readings were centered.
A Bit of Debunking During the Investigation:
Though Rich and Mike are the co-founders of RPS, they still make mistakes. During the investigation on October 10, 2009, RPS realized that the high EMF readings coming from the son's room were not caused by the bed, but from what was below the floor. Apparently, right below the child's bedroom was a ceiling fan and light and when either the fan or light were turned on, the EMF readings would skyrocket in the bedroom. RPS isn't really saying that this is healthy for readings to be so high through a wooden floor; however, a reasonable explanation was finally given for these huge spikes. Rich and Mike admitted their mistake to the owner, and they were gracious enough to accept their apology.
Though Rich and Mike are the co-founders of RPS, they still make mistakes. During the investigation on October 10, 2009, RPS realized that the high EMF readings coming from the son's room were not caused by the bed, but from what was below the floor. Apparently, right below the child's bedroom was a ceiling fan and light and when either the fan or light were turned on, the EMF readings would skyrocket in the bedroom. RPS isn't really saying that this is healthy for readings to be so high through a wooden floor; however, a reasonable explanation was finally given for these huge spikes. Rich and Mike admitted their mistake to the owner, and they were gracious enough to accept their apology.
Findings:
Going into the investigation, RPS targeted the wife as a possible stimulant to any activity that was going on in the house, because almost all reports had been witnessed by her. Most of the night was very uneventful. The plan to use the wife in our investigation seemed hopeless since the whole family, kids and all, fell asleep watching TV downstairs while RPS performed their investigation. Not until about 2 or 2:30 a.m. did the wife wake up and actually join in on our cause. Surprisingly, at this time is when we picked up the three sound bytes that are posted on the EVPs page. Not only did we get some nice EVPs while the wife joined our team, we also had some K2 hits while her, Rich, and Mike were in the master bedroom together. No K2 hits had been recorded earlier in the night. The K2 hits were fairly weak, only going up to the 3rd dot, which is yellow, which is bordering on the minimum level of a typical paranormal force between 2-7 MiliGauss. With only the few K2 hits throughout the night and nothing else to boast about, RPS left the house around 3:30 a.m. a bit dissatisfied about the uneventfulness of the night that had just ended. However, through data analysis, Mike quickly found that RPS may not have been the only guests there that night. All three EVPs came from Mike's Olympus recorder. Shawn also found some interesting data on his digital camcorder which was running static the whole night. A few loud creaks were captured by the camcorder and a Mike's voice recorder that was left on the bed in the master bedroom. During the reveal, however, these creaks were actually debunked. The creaking was actually the neighbors walking up the stairs in their side of the house and in the hallway. The two sides of the semi are completely symmetrical, therefore the floorboards in the master bedroom actually run across to the neighbor's bedroom as well. The creaks caught on the camera and the recorder apparently must have picked up the neighbors walking down the hallway going into their bedroom to retire for the night. Still, even after data analysis, a question still remained: Was the wife the main reason for all of these happenings in the house? RPS still couldn't be sure of an answer to that, even though things did get a bit more interesting when she joined the group that night.
Also, RPS found out that night that the wife had made a call to her pastor to have the house blessed two days after the investigation. The feelings of discomfort had finally became too much for her and she felt she had to do something for her family's sake. While doing the blessing, the pastor also came to believe that something or someone was attached to her in some way; however, the wife reported back to Mike that things seem to calm down a bit ever since the pastor made his holy visit to the house.
Going into the investigation, RPS targeted the wife as a possible stimulant to any activity that was going on in the house, because almost all reports had been witnessed by her. Most of the night was very uneventful. The plan to use the wife in our investigation seemed hopeless since the whole family, kids and all, fell asleep watching TV downstairs while RPS performed their investigation. Not until about 2 or 2:30 a.m. did the wife wake up and actually join in on our cause. Surprisingly, at this time is when we picked up the three sound bytes that are posted on the EVPs page. Not only did we get some nice EVPs while the wife joined our team, we also had some K2 hits while her, Rich, and Mike were in the master bedroom together. No K2 hits had been recorded earlier in the night. The K2 hits were fairly weak, only going up to the 3rd dot, which is yellow, which is bordering on the minimum level of a typical paranormal force between 2-7 MiliGauss. With only the few K2 hits throughout the night and nothing else to boast about, RPS left the house around 3:30 a.m. a bit dissatisfied about the uneventfulness of the night that had just ended. However, through data analysis, Mike quickly found that RPS may not have been the only guests there that night. All three EVPs came from Mike's Olympus recorder. Shawn also found some interesting data on his digital camcorder which was running static the whole night. A few loud creaks were captured by the camcorder and a Mike's voice recorder that was left on the bed in the master bedroom. During the reveal, however, these creaks were actually debunked. The creaking was actually the neighbors walking up the stairs in their side of the house and in the hallway. The two sides of the semi are completely symmetrical, therefore the floorboards in the master bedroom actually run across to the neighbor's bedroom as well. The creaks caught on the camera and the recorder apparently must have picked up the neighbors walking down the hallway going into their bedroom to retire for the night. Still, even after data analysis, a question still remained: Was the wife the main reason for all of these happenings in the house? RPS still couldn't be sure of an answer to that, even though things did get a bit more interesting when she joined the group that night.
Also, RPS found out that night that the wife had made a call to her pastor to have the house blessed two days after the investigation. The feelings of discomfort had finally became too much for her and she felt she had to do something for her family's sake. While doing the blessing, the pastor also came to believe that something or someone was attached to her in some way; however, the wife reported back to Mike that things seem to calm down a bit ever since the pastor made his holy visit to the house.
The Reveal: Mike performed the reveal for the family at their house. The husband and wife listened to the three EVPs captured on Mike's recorder. Hearing these disembodied voices caught on tape did not seem to comfort the wife who was the one that felt most uncomfortable to begin with; however, Mike assured the wife that nothing at the house seems to want to harm them, and none of the voices sounded unfriendly in nature. Mike offered the evidence CD to the couple; however, a first for RPS, did refused to keep it. They said they could always go on the website to give a further listen to them if they ever wished. Mike asked if the house cleansing from her pastor seemed to work, and as far as they could tell it has: the kids were sleeping soundly in their rooms every night, most activity has seemed to calm down, though the wife still seems a bit uncomfortable when she goes upstairs. Still, those feelings of discomfort could be lasting impressions from earlier run-ins. Mike ended the reveal with a huge thanks for allowing RPS to perform their investigation and offering the group's services to them whenever the couple may need help. Overall, the reveal was a success. RPS did not learn who was there in that house; however, some evidence was captured that something still lingers in the house.
Private Residence- Cumru Township, PA- October 24th, 2009- Case #5
Conditions- began as a night with occasional showers, until the end of the night it was clear, however the wind picked up to about 10-15 mph, temperature in the mid 40s to low 50s, nearing first quarter moon phase
Investigators- Beginning of investigation: Team 1- Rich Fox and Jay Livinghouse
Team 2- Shawn Maurer and Scott Henry
Team 3- Mike Snyder and Rich Fox, Jr.
About 10 minutes into the investigation, Team 1 who was in the basement was hearing a lot of sound carrying from the first floor from where Team 2 was stationed. At that point, RPS split into two groups of three. Team 1 now consisted of Rich Fox, Shawn Maurer, and Jay Livinghouse. Team 2 now consisted of Mike Snyder, Scott Henry, and Rich Fox, Jr.
Equipment Used- (3) static camcorders (one stationed in the basement, first floor living room, and attic), (5) digital cameras, (5) Olympus digital recorders, (2) infrared thermometers, (2) CellSensor EMF meters, (1) K2 EMF detector, (2) battery-operated motion sensors
Time of Investigation: RPS arrived around 8:00 p.m. Mike was the only one to meet the homeowners, Kim and Shawn, during the walkthrough he completed on October 9, 2009. During the walkthrough, Mike conducted some initial EMF sweeps and tried to sort the logistics of how many members to bring and what areas to cover with static video cameras. Every floor had some sort of activity reported on it: all 4 floors. Kim and Shawn left for the night, RPS set up their equipment and began the investigation a bit after 9 p.m. The investigation lasted until 3:30 a.m.
History: The history of the house is quite vague. Kim and Shawn possess some of the deeds to the house that date back to the 1930's and 40's. All they knew is that the former landowners used to possess a lot more land. After years, the land began to be sold and parcelled out. The house also had a sister house that was across where the current street is; however, a business and its parking lot now sits there. The real estate company that Kim and Shawn bought the house from said the house dated back to the year 1700. The preservation group RPS works with says that this is impossible, since they claim their group owns the oldest dwelling in Berks County. Whatever the case may be, the house is quite old, and surely had many generations of families living in it. The latest previous owner was an elderly woman who only used the basement of the house since she had problems with stairs at her age. Unfortunately, she died in a car accident a few years back and the house sat empty until Kim and Shawn bought it. The piece of information that caught RPS's attention was that Kim and Shawn called Paranormal State to have the Paranormal Research Society from Penn State investigate their house. Everything was in the works with Paranormal State until Kim had to cancel with them due to conflictions with her job the day of the investigation. RPS figured that if Paranormal State was serious about this investigation and with all of the research that PRS puts into their investigations, that this house would be a perfect site.
Reports of Paranormal Activity:
As mentioned before, all 4 floors of the house have some type of claim. Let's start from the bottom up:
Basement: In the basement, the mystery of the flashing strobe light is the first report. Like any couple, Kim and Shawn argue. Apparently, something in their house takes exception to them yelling, because whenever they would get into a heated argument, a strobe light they had set up in their basement, before it got stolen last Halloween, would automatically turn on and start flickering slowly and then pick up the pace. The strobe light in question has no chance of turning on by itself since RPS's Shawn has the exact same replica. Also, a dial has to be manually turned in the back of the light to change the speed. Kim also gets a strange feeling of discomfort if she ever goes downstairs. She hates going in the basement alone.
First Floor: The first floor has an abundance of activity. Kim's son has reported watching the door between the living room and a spare bedroom/kid's toy room close by itself. RPS found that the door easily gets hung up on the carpet at the bottom, so the wind would not blow it shut or anything like that. Some kind of force had to close it. Kim has reported getting her hair pulled on the couch and the feeling as if something poked her on the shoulder. This has happened a few times when Kim and Shawn are sitting on the couch watching TV. Kim always assumed that Shawn was doing these things, even though Shawn usually sits a few feet away from Kim. The first floor is also where Shawn saw the apparition of a lady in white twice. The first time he saw it, Shawn and Kim had been in an argument. Kim was upstairs in the second floor master bedroom. Shawn was on the couch in the first floor living room. As Shawn was sitting there, he heard someone walking down the stairs. There he saw a lady walk down the second floor stairs. wrap around to the basement stair landing, make a creak at the first step that always makes a creak under any weight, and then disappear. Shawn immediately went downstairs to find nothing. He went outside to see if anyone snuck in the house. No one was there. He went upstairs to the second floor master bedroom and saw Kim was still laying in bed. He made a huffing noise and stomped out of the bedroom. Shawn couldn't understand what happened, but he had just seen a ghost and later he told Kim this. Once again, the same thing happened to Shawn. There was no intelligence to the haunt: just a lady coming downstairs and walking down into the basement.
Investigators- Beginning of investigation: Team 1- Rich Fox and Jay Livinghouse
Team 2- Shawn Maurer and Scott Henry
Team 3- Mike Snyder and Rich Fox, Jr.
About 10 minutes into the investigation, Team 1 who was in the basement was hearing a lot of sound carrying from the first floor from where Team 2 was stationed. At that point, RPS split into two groups of three. Team 1 now consisted of Rich Fox, Shawn Maurer, and Jay Livinghouse. Team 2 now consisted of Mike Snyder, Scott Henry, and Rich Fox, Jr.
Equipment Used- (3) static camcorders (one stationed in the basement, first floor living room, and attic), (5) digital cameras, (5) Olympus digital recorders, (2) infrared thermometers, (2) CellSensor EMF meters, (1) K2 EMF detector, (2) battery-operated motion sensors
Time of Investigation: RPS arrived around 8:00 p.m. Mike was the only one to meet the homeowners, Kim and Shawn, during the walkthrough he completed on October 9, 2009. During the walkthrough, Mike conducted some initial EMF sweeps and tried to sort the logistics of how many members to bring and what areas to cover with static video cameras. Every floor had some sort of activity reported on it: all 4 floors. Kim and Shawn left for the night, RPS set up their equipment and began the investigation a bit after 9 p.m. The investigation lasted until 3:30 a.m.
History: The history of the house is quite vague. Kim and Shawn possess some of the deeds to the house that date back to the 1930's and 40's. All they knew is that the former landowners used to possess a lot more land. After years, the land began to be sold and parcelled out. The house also had a sister house that was across where the current street is; however, a business and its parking lot now sits there. The real estate company that Kim and Shawn bought the house from said the house dated back to the year 1700. The preservation group RPS works with says that this is impossible, since they claim their group owns the oldest dwelling in Berks County. Whatever the case may be, the house is quite old, and surely had many generations of families living in it. The latest previous owner was an elderly woman who only used the basement of the house since she had problems with stairs at her age. Unfortunately, she died in a car accident a few years back and the house sat empty until Kim and Shawn bought it. The piece of information that caught RPS's attention was that Kim and Shawn called Paranormal State to have the Paranormal Research Society from Penn State investigate their house. Everything was in the works with Paranormal State until Kim had to cancel with them due to conflictions with her job the day of the investigation. RPS figured that if Paranormal State was serious about this investigation and with all of the research that PRS puts into their investigations, that this house would be a perfect site.
Reports of Paranormal Activity:
As mentioned before, all 4 floors of the house have some type of claim. Let's start from the bottom up:
Basement: In the basement, the mystery of the flashing strobe light is the first report. Like any couple, Kim and Shawn argue. Apparently, something in their house takes exception to them yelling, because whenever they would get into a heated argument, a strobe light they had set up in their basement, before it got stolen last Halloween, would automatically turn on and start flickering slowly and then pick up the pace. The strobe light in question has no chance of turning on by itself since RPS's Shawn has the exact same replica. Also, a dial has to be manually turned in the back of the light to change the speed. Kim also gets a strange feeling of discomfort if she ever goes downstairs. She hates going in the basement alone.
First Floor: The first floor has an abundance of activity. Kim's son has reported watching the door between the living room and a spare bedroom/kid's toy room close by itself. RPS found that the door easily gets hung up on the carpet at the bottom, so the wind would not blow it shut or anything like that. Some kind of force had to close it. Kim has reported getting her hair pulled on the couch and the feeling as if something poked her on the shoulder. This has happened a few times when Kim and Shawn are sitting on the couch watching TV. Kim always assumed that Shawn was doing these things, even though Shawn usually sits a few feet away from Kim. The first floor is also where Shawn saw the apparition of a lady in white twice. The first time he saw it, Shawn and Kim had been in an argument. Kim was upstairs in the second floor master bedroom. Shawn was on the couch in the first floor living room. As Shawn was sitting there, he heard someone walking down the stairs. There he saw a lady walk down the second floor stairs. wrap around to the basement stair landing, make a creak at the first step that always makes a creak under any weight, and then disappear. Shawn immediately went downstairs to find nothing. He went outside to see if anyone snuck in the house. No one was there. He went upstairs to the second floor master bedroom and saw Kim was still laying in bed. He made a huffing noise and stomped out of the bedroom. Shawn couldn't understand what happened, but he had just seen a ghost and later he told Kim this. Once again, the same thing happened to Shawn. There was no intelligence to the haunt: just a lady coming downstairs and walking down into the basement.
Second Floor: The second floor has a few unexplained happenings of its own. Kim's oldest son, who doesn't live in the house, told RPS that the few nights that he used to sleep there that he would hear whispering all night in the bedroom on the left side of the hallway. He would hear it so much so that it would be hard for him to sleep. He vows to never sleep in that house again, because he knows something is there. Also, from the master bedroom, Shawn has reported seeing shadows walk in front of the door at night when no one is awake. Mike tried to debunk this during the walkthrough by saying that if a car went by one of the bedroom windows and cast a light through the door from the hall (FYI: their doors have small slits running up and down it, almost the same way blinds can be positioned to let little pieces of light through) it could cast some kind of moving shadow that would catch his attention. Shawn tried to recreate this phenomenon in between the investigation and walkthrough and told RPS that he couldn't. He heard cars go by but saw no light coming into the windows and then leading in to the hallway. Also, every night before they go to sleep, Kim and Shawn close the door to the attic. This door latches tightly when it shuts, and in no way could the door become ajar by a draft. Kim told RPS that many mornings, the attic door that they can see from their bedroom is wide open, even though they just had closed it the night before.
The Attic: This floor probably has the least amount of reports; however, RPS chose to focus a lot on this floor due to some K2 readings Mike captured here during the initial walkthrough. This was the last floor that Kim and Shawn directed Mike to, and all over the place, Mike was capturing sporadic K2 readings. And it wasn't against a wall that may explain maybe an electrical wire running through; these readings were occurring right in the middle of the room with nothing around him. Most of the K2 readings captured in the attic during the walkthrough were later debunked either during the investigation or the reveal; however, some are still left unexplained. Other than these K2 hits, Kim and Shawn reported of hearing loud noises in the attic while even a neighbor who goes on a lot of walks and passes by the house has reported to Kim and Shawn that she sees little children, a few girls, in the attic window all the time. However, their kids do not go into the attic because they think it is creepy.
Coincidence or Not?: After the investigation was over, Shawn from RPS had his wife, Sherry, ask him if there were any dolls in the house he had just investigated with the rest of the RPS crew. Sherry claims that at about 2:00 in the morning, while RPS was conducting their investigation, she woke up after having a dream that had at least two dolls in it, one of which was a boy with golden locks and blue eyes, another which was a girl with dark hair. Sure enough, while conducting the investigation, RPS came across a doll in the first floor toy room, about 3 feet tall with dark hair and a girl nonetheless. A few times during the night, a few members of RPS commented on how creepy that doll looked, and it almost seemed like it was staring at them. This doll was from the 1930's, which RPS later found out during the reveal. The strange thing is that one of our unexplained noises, a loud thud, came from that very room. Also, during the reveal, Kim showed Mike, Shawn, and Rich a doll that almost looked like a little Amish child, with blond hair and blue eyes. These dolls were exactly what Sherry described to Shawn without him saying anything to her about the investigation from the previous night.
Coincidence or Not?: After the investigation was over, Shawn from RPS had his wife, Sherry, ask him if there were any dolls in the house he had just investigated with the rest of the RPS crew. Sherry claims that at about 2:00 in the morning, while RPS was conducting their investigation, she woke up after having a dream that had at least two dolls in it, one of which was a boy with golden locks and blue eyes, another which was a girl with dark hair. Sure enough, while conducting the investigation, RPS came across a doll in the first floor toy room, about 3 feet tall with dark hair and a girl nonetheless. A few times during the night, a few members of RPS commented on how creepy that doll looked, and it almost seemed like it was staring at them. This doll was from the 1930's, which RPS later found out during the reveal. The strange thing is that one of our unexplained noises, a loud thud, came from that very room. Also, during the reveal, Kim showed Mike, Shawn, and Rich a doll that almost looked like a little Amish child, with blond hair and blue eyes. These dolls were exactly what Sherry described to Shawn without him saying anything to her about the investigation from the previous night.
Findings: The beginning of the investigation brought RPS their first EVP. About 5 minutes into the investigation, Shawn and Scott were on the first floor, and somewhere along the way, Shawn must have heard the door open or seen that it had opened. The first EVP posted on the EVP page proves the fact that Shawn and Scott found the door opened, and then them asking all the other groups if someone had closed the door the whole way. At the end, Rich Jr. replies that he did close the door the whole way. The rest of our EVPs came during very boring parts of the night. None of the EVPs are voices; they are random noises that all members of RPS could not account for. The noises range from a loud bang to a moan, a series of knocks that were too out of sequence to be from on of the members of RPS, to what sounded like someone ripping paper or running their hands over a polyester type fabric. All of these captured noises could not be explained and that is why they have been posted.
One thing that did not get posted, but may once it is edited due to uncensored material, is an occurrence that happened to Shawn while he was in the basement with Rich and Jay. This all happened right before RPS took their break around midnight or so. The three were talking about TV shows and other random topics because at the time they were that bored since nothing was happening. Shawn was sitting in the wooden chair next to the staircase, Rich was sitting in a loveseat that was in the middle of the length of the room and Jay was on the opposite side of the room sitting on a sofa. As Shawn said that it was pretty bad they had to resort to talking about the things they were discussing, Shawn became startled after a rustling noise that was captured on the recorder. What Shawn describes next is a bit shocking. Shawn had his head turned to the right looking up the staircase that heads to the first floor. He said for some reason, his eyes kept getting drawn to that staircase. When he heard the rustling noise, he quickly turned his head, and at that moment, saw a mass rushing towards him. The mass, which he described as having its own light source, came within a few feet of him and then turned right into the wall not towards the staircase. At first, Shawn thought that Jay had jumped up from his seat on the sofa and had ran towards him. But, Jay was still sitting down, and was in awe of the way Shawn was reacting to whatever had just happened. Rich and Jay did not see what Shawn had seen. The problem there is that this mass with its own light source would have had to travel right past Jay and Rich, which the rest of RPS feels could not have happened without the two of them seeing it. Another theory that evolved from this incident is that Shawn may have swung his head around too fast giving him the effects of some sort of vertigo causing him to see something that his eyes may have created but was not really there.
Were the Spirits Hiding from RPS?: Strangely enough, Kim gave Mike a call almost as soon as RPS left the investigation site. Kim and Shawn had been waiting close by after getting back from the prior engagements a bit early. Kim asked Mike a rather odd question: Did one of your guys turn down one of the corners of the bedspread in the master bedroom bed during the investigation? Mike proclaimed that RPS had just fixed that bed due to the fact that they had straightened out the sheets earlier in the night because they wanted to see if they could get an indentation on the spread, which actually did happen. On the side of the bed closest to the door, a rather small indenture was made sometime during the night on a flattened out sheet. RPS documented this, took pictures, and then fixed the bedspread. No member of RPS turned down one of the corners of the bed. Kim described the fold to be almost like what a hotel turndown service would do. Is it possible that something did not want to be seen by the RPS crew? Did this spirit decide to hide until the rightful owners of the house were once again there? RPS may never know.
One thing that did not get posted, but may once it is edited due to uncensored material, is an occurrence that happened to Shawn while he was in the basement with Rich and Jay. This all happened right before RPS took their break around midnight or so. The three were talking about TV shows and other random topics because at the time they were that bored since nothing was happening. Shawn was sitting in the wooden chair next to the staircase, Rich was sitting in a loveseat that was in the middle of the length of the room and Jay was on the opposite side of the room sitting on a sofa. As Shawn said that it was pretty bad they had to resort to talking about the things they were discussing, Shawn became startled after a rustling noise that was captured on the recorder. What Shawn describes next is a bit shocking. Shawn had his head turned to the right looking up the staircase that heads to the first floor. He said for some reason, his eyes kept getting drawn to that staircase. When he heard the rustling noise, he quickly turned his head, and at that moment, saw a mass rushing towards him. The mass, which he described as having its own light source, came within a few feet of him and then turned right into the wall not towards the staircase. At first, Shawn thought that Jay had jumped up from his seat on the sofa and had ran towards him. But, Jay was still sitting down, and was in awe of the way Shawn was reacting to whatever had just happened. Rich and Jay did not see what Shawn had seen. The problem there is that this mass with its own light source would have had to travel right past Jay and Rich, which the rest of RPS feels could not have happened without the two of them seeing it. Another theory that evolved from this incident is that Shawn may have swung his head around too fast giving him the effects of some sort of vertigo causing him to see something that his eyes may have created but was not really there.
Were the Spirits Hiding from RPS?: Strangely enough, Kim gave Mike a call almost as soon as RPS left the investigation site. Kim and Shawn had been waiting close by after getting back from the prior engagements a bit early. Kim asked Mike a rather odd question: Did one of your guys turn down one of the corners of the bedspread in the master bedroom bed during the investigation? Mike proclaimed that RPS had just fixed that bed due to the fact that they had straightened out the sheets earlier in the night because they wanted to see if they could get an indentation on the spread, which actually did happen. On the side of the bed closest to the door, a rather small indenture was made sometime during the night on a flattened out sheet. RPS documented this, took pictures, and then fixed the bedspread. No member of RPS turned down one of the corners of the bed. Kim described the fold to be almost like what a hotel turndown service would do. Is it possible that something did not want to be seen by the RPS crew? Did this spirit decide to hide until the rightful owners of the house were once again there? RPS may never know.
The Reveal: The reveal was done by Rich, Shawn, and Mike on November 13th, 2009. Rich and Mike decided to bring Shawn along because only he could best describe his incident that occurred to him in the basement. RPS even had a small audience of some of Kim and Shawn's acquaintances. The reveal was a success: Kim, Shawn, and the audience listened to the EVPs and heard all the noises that we captured. Kim and Shawn said that they were so used to these noises that they just kind of place them as everyday occurrences. The more interesting thing about these noises, they felt, is that they were audible on the recorder; however, the RPS members around the recorder never reacted to these noises. RPS also showed everyone the picture that was in question throughout most of RPS. Surprisingly to Mike, the only RPS member that cannot see what the rest of RPS sees, Kim, Shawn, and their friends saw the exact same thing that the rest of RPS could see. During the reveal, Shawn, Rich, and Mike tried to debunk the evidence of the picture from the attic. Shawn went outside and snapped some pictures of the attic window as Rich and Mike were standing in front of it, and while they were not. These pictures turned out coming up very inconclusive. When Rich, Mike, and Kim were standing in front of the window, Shawn could make out the figures; however, when they weren't standing in front of the window, Shawn could still see some kind of outline of a shape in the window. Through viewing the first time the picture was snapped, through data analysis, and the debunking process during the reveal, some RPS members still consider this picture full-on evidence that something was caught; other members feel less strongly about it now than when the picture was first taken, and one member barely sees anything at all.
Overall, from what RPS found the night of the investigation, the group made the conclusion that the evidence was fairly inconclusive. RPS has a made a push to revisit the house with Shawn, Kim's boyfriend, being an essential part of the next investigation. It seems that Kim has accepted the invitation and that RPS will be going back in early 2010 to try to find more answers to some of the noises that were captured on the recorders that night.
Overall, from what RPS found the night of the investigation, the group made the conclusion that the evidence was fairly inconclusive. RPS has a made a push to revisit the house with Shawn, Kim's boyfriend, being an essential part of the next investigation. It seems that Kim has accepted the invitation and that RPS will be going back in early 2010 to try to find more answers to some of the noises that were captured on the recorders that night.
Pike Township Farm Revisited- Pike Township, PA- Case #6
Conditions- clear night, temperatures in the mid 20s, becoming partly cloudy at end of the night, 3 days into last quarter moon phase
Investigators- Team 1- Rich Fox, Paul Laplante, and Julie Bennis
Team 2- Mike Snyder and Scott Henry
Team 3- Shawn Maurer, Jay Livinghouse, and Sam (high school reporter)
Equipment Used- (1) camcorder with infrared extender carried by Shawn, (6) digital cameras, (5) Olympus digital voice recorders, (2) infrared thermometers, (2) CellSensor EMF detectors, (1) K2 EMF detector, (2) battery-operated motion sensors
Time of Investigation: Most of the crew arrived around 8 p.m. to set up equipment. The caretaker of the house already had the fire roaring inside the house's fireplace by the time RPS got there. Base camp was set up in the old dining room of the house and by 9 p.m. the investigation was under way. Due to the lack of activity that night, RPS decided to wrap the investigation up by about 2:45 a.m. The cold was also a big factor in this decision.
History of the Property and Reports of Paranormal Activity- These sections have already been described from the first investigation completed at the Pike Township Farm back in September. Refer to those notes if a refresher course is needed.
Findings/ Happenings- The night was for a lack of better words, dead and cold. Reports from all groups showed that barely any noises were heard throughout the house, workshop, and barn. Even with the fireplace started up in the house by the caretaker in hopes of stirring up some kind of activity, any kind of activity was few and far between. Also, RPS's night was filled with noises from a party up the road from the farmhouse. Sounds of music, people yelling, screaming, and conversing loudly, and cars coming and going to the event became a huge nuisance for most of the investigation. The most constant noise heard by any investigators all night was found by Scott and Mike in the barn at the beginning of the investigation. Throughout their time in the barn, they kept hearing noises from above them in the second floor of the barn. They described it as a kind of rustling noise. Later, when their hopes were up, they heard the noise of an animal up on the second floor, which completely debunked any of the prior 'activity'. In a picture a few minutes later, the flash from the camera caught the gleaming eye of an animal as well, which to Scott and Mike looked like a raccoon. Other than that, activity was very sparse throughout the night. Some of the investigators even commented that the house did not have the same feeling that it had the first time RPS investigated it. Charlie Adams had toured the property sometime after RPS's first investigation in September and had brought a bunch of guests as well. Is it possible that the multitude of people coming and going from the property, that is normally somewhat abandoned, had caused the spirits there to quiet down? Anything is possible. The generations of the family that lived in this house lived very secluded lives, and if anyone is still stuck there, they probably do not appreciate all the unwanted guests. For the most part, RPS's night was summed up in one word: silence. However, through data analysis, RPS found out that sometimes, silence can be deafening.
Data Analysis/ Group Review of Recorder Findings- Digital pictures from that night revealed no evidence at all. However, RPS was quite amazed when Mike's static recorder that was sitting on the second floor of the house managed to pick up eight excellent EVPs that have been posted on the website along with one EVP that came from the workshop. The one from the workshop came from the first floor with a static recorder, while Mike, Shawn, Jay, and Sam sat up on the second floor. As a paranormal group that looks for spirits in each investigation, but also tries to debunkany claims, RPS is also a group that if they get a sign of a spirit asking for help, they will try to react on it as far as they possibly can.. In one of the EVPs, Mike is heard asking in a nearby room in the house, "Are there any spirits with us?", and then a disembodied voice says, "Hey, I'm here", and then about 4 seconds later it says, "Help me over." Originally while Mike was reviewing the recorder evidence, he did not catch the ending of the EVP; however, during the group review, Scott caught on to those 3 last words, which the group played over and over again, until the group finally agreed upon what it said. When RPS hears something like "Help me over", they have to take into consideration that a spirit was directly asking them for help because they are either stuck where they are or they just don't realize that they can leave and they need a little bit of help. If requested by the preservationists who own this property, RPS will set up a house cleansing with an individual affiliated with the group who specializes in holistic healing and spiritual cleansing, and just happens to perform house and business cleansings on the side. No video evidence was found to support any claims, and through the whole night, both the K2 EMF meter and CellSensor EMF meter showed no signs of activity happening in all three areas being investigated.
The Reveal- A reveal has not been set up with the preservationists at this time. However, some kind of reveal will be given by 1 or 2 members of RPS to at least give them a copy of the CD that contains all the EVPs captured. Also, a discussion will be held on if the preservationists want to act on a house cleansing to release any spirits that are trapped at the old farmhouse.
Conditions- clear night, temperatures in the mid 20s, becoming partly cloudy at end of the night, 3 days into last quarter moon phase
Investigators- Team 1- Rich Fox, Paul Laplante, and Julie Bennis
Team 2- Mike Snyder and Scott Henry
Team 3- Shawn Maurer, Jay Livinghouse, and Sam (high school reporter)
Equipment Used- (1) camcorder with infrared extender carried by Shawn, (6) digital cameras, (5) Olympus digital voice recorders, (2) infrared thermometers, (2) CellSensor EMF detectors, (1) K2 EMF detector, (2) battery-operated motion sensors
Time of Investigation: Most of the crew arrived around 8 p.m. to set up equipment. The caretaker of the house already had the fire roaring inside the house's fireplace by the time RPS got there. Base camp was set up in the old dining room of the house and by 9 p.m. the investigation was under way. Due to the lack of activity that night, RPS decided to wrap the investigation up by about 2:45 a.m. The cold was also a big factor in this decision.
History of the Property and Reports of Paranormal Activity- These sections have already been described from the first investigation completed at the Pike Township Farm back in September. Refer to those notes if a refresher course is needed.
Findings/ Happenings- The night was for a lack of better words, dead and cold. Reports from all groups showed that barely any noises were heard throughout the house, workshop, and barn. Even with the fireplace started up in the house by the caretaker in hopes of stirring up some kind of activity, any kind of activity was few and far between. Also, RPS's night was filled with noises from a party up the road from the farmhouse. Sounds of music, people yelling, screaming, and conversing loudly, and cars coming and going to the event became a huge nuisance for most of the investigation. The most constant noise heard by any investigators all night was found by Scott and Mike in the barn at the beginning of the investigation. Throughout their time in the barn, they kept hearing noises from above them in the second floor of the barn. They described it as a kind of rustling noise. Later, when their hopes were up, they heard the noise of an animal up on the second floor, which completely debunked any of the prior 'activity'. In a picture a few minutes later, the flash from the camera caught the gleaming eye of an animal as well, which to Scott and Mike looked like a raccoon. Other than that, activity was very sparse throughout the night. Some of the investigators even commented that the house did not have the same feeling that it had the first time RPS investigated it. Charlie Adams had toured the property sometime after RPS's first investigation in September and had brought a bunch of guests as well. Is it possible that the multitude of people coming and going from the property, that is normally somewhat abandoned, had caused the spirits there to quiet down? Anything is possible. The generations of the family that lived in this house lived very secluded lives, and if anyone is still stuck there, they probably do not appreciate all the unwanted guests. For the most part, RPS's night was summed up in one word: silence. However, through data analysis, RPS found out that sometimes, silence can be deafening.
Data Analysis/ Group Review of Recorder Findings- Digital pictures from that night revealed no evidence at all. However, RPS was quite amazed when Mike's static recorder that was sitting on the second floor of the house managed to pick up eight excellent EVPs that have been posted on the website along with one EVP that came from the workshop. The one from the workshop came from the first floor with a static recorder, while Mike, Shawn, Jay, and Sam sat up on the second floor. As a paranormal group that looks for spirits in each investigation, but also tries to debunkany claims, RPS is also a group that if they get a sign of a spirit asking for help, they will try to react on it as far as they possibly can.. In one of the EVPs, Mike is heard asking in a nearby room in the house, "Are there any spirits with us?", and then a disembodied voice says, "Hey, I'm here", and then about 4 seconds later it says, "Help me over." Originally while Mike was reviewing the recorder evidence, he did not catch the ending of the EVP; however, during the group review, Scott caught on to those 3 last words, which the group played over and over again, until the group finally agreed upon what it said. When RPS hears something like "Help me over", they have to take into consideration that a spirit was directly asking them for help because they are either stuck where they are or they just don't realize that they can leave and they need a little bit of help. If requested by the preservationists who own this property, RPS will set up a house cleansing with an individual affiliated with the group who specializes in holistic healing and spiritual cleansing, and just happens to perform house and business cleansings on the side. No video evidence was found to support any claims, and through the whole night, both the K2 EMF meter and CellSensor EMF meter showed no signs of activity happening in all three areas being investigated.
The Reveal- A reveal has not been set up with the preservationists at this time. However, some kind of reveal will be given by 1 or 2 members of RPS to at least give them a copy of the CD that contains all the EVPs captured. Also, a discussion will be held on if the preservationists want to act on a house cleansing to release any spirits that are trapped at the old farmhouse.
