Date Of Investigation: Saturday, April 19th, 2008
Investigation Site: Private Residence, Neosho, WI
Investigators Present: Amanda S and Matt S, Noah L and Steve G (Paranormal Investigators of Milwaukee Guest Investigators)
Clients/Visitors Present: Clients T and P
Equipment Used: Canon PowerShot AS60 Digital Camera, Olympus WS-300M Voice Recorders,
Trifield Standard EMF Meters, Dual Infrared Non-Contact Thermometer/Air
Probe Thermometer, Motion Sensors, Pyrometer, DCR-SR80 Sony Camcorder,
UV Headlamp, H2 Digital Voice Recorder, Nikon D50 Camera, Sony
DCR-TRV110 Camcorder, Sony DCR-TRV280 Camcorder, Olympus VN-3100PC
Voice Recorder
Weather Conditions: Cloudy
Average Temperature Outside: 50 Degrees Farenheit
Average Temperature Inside: 1st floor was 58 Degrees Farenheit, and basement was 51 Degrees Farenheit
Moon Phase: Full
Background: Residence is a two story home w/ basement. The clients (T) and her
husband (P) moved in at the end of Winter, 2007. They have three
children living with them, ages 6, 4, and 2. A friend (N) lives with
them also. The previous occupants felt something there but didn’t
really have many experiences; they were playing cards one night and had
cups on the table and the ice started stirring in all the cups. T heard
about this from a friend who knows the person who used to live there,
and called him recently to ask him about it. The past occupants lived
there for 15 years. T says she noticed little things but the activity
didn’t really start until December, 2007.
The occupants report
seeing black shadow figures. The children 6 and 4 claim they see them
standing in their bedroom doorways. But it's not just the kids or the
people who live in the house who see them. On one occasion 5 grown
adults saw two shadow people in the basement. T says the shadow people
weren't seen out of the corner of the eye, they were seen dead on.
T
says things are slamming and when they go towards the basement people
are hearing a growl. One night she says it sounded like someone was
punching up at the floor and dragging a dresser. It also moved the
camera she has hooked up downstairs monitoring the oldest child (D)'s
room. D is T's stepson, and T says she has a feeling he is some kind of
gateway/carrier. When he went over to his mom's house stuff happened
over there as well. But she also says they've had some experiences when he's
not home, such as the furnace starting on fire, and friend N hearing
running and what sounded like someone entering the front door when the
door was locked and he was alone in the house. T said that her
stepson's mom has a history of things happening at her house too, so it
could be two separate cases.
They've heard footsteps on the
basement steps, TV channels flip, batteries have been known to drain,
people hear whispers, and P says he heard something breathing in his
ear. Recently there was an experience where T says she could hear
splashing in the bathtub when there was nobody in there. Then her
stepson went in there to go to the bathroom and the water came on and
he ran out screaming. She went back in there with him and turned it off
and told him "that's not funny". She stood there with him while he
finished going to the bathroom and the water came on again. She took
him out and made him sit with her in the kitchen and she says she could
hear splashing again. She went in and looked and the water was moving.
Investigation Overview: Noah and Steve arrived at about 5:30PM to map out the house, take
baseline readings, and to do control audio recordings. Matt and Amanda
would not arrive until a little after 7PM because they were coming from
work. Once Matt and Amanda got there, we sat down and interviewed T and
P, then did another walkthrough of the house. The investigation began
at 8PM.
We
noticed right away that the basement was really dusty and that could
explain any orb photos. There were also some high EMF readings in the
back area of the basement where D's bedroom was, and by the little
closet type room that was off to the right side when looking at it from
the basement stairs. The first thing we did was to try debunking the
incident
where the camera moved that T has hooked up downstairs monitoring her
stepson's room. After looking at how it was attached, we thought that
vibrations from people walking on the floor above may have made the
camera move, so Noah and Steve watched in the basement while Matt tried
walking, running, and jumping upstairs. But we were not able to
recreate it.
Next we shut off all the power in the house to
eliminate any false readings, and then set up video cameras in the
basement (since the one they already had downstairs wouldn't work with
the power off) and in a second floor bedroom. We put motion detectors
around each camera, and we set more in various spots around the house.
Then for the duration of the investigation the four investigators
stayed together to reduce the amount of noise contamination and the
clients sat quietly in the living room.
We
started in the basement, and worked our way up. Before every EVP
session we did 10 minutes of control silence first, then started asking
our questions and taking pictures. We also took EMF and temperature
readings. We wrapped up at about 1AM.
Findings/Personal Experiences: When
we were all down in the basement doing our first EVP circle, just
before we headed back up we thought we heard a noise upstairs and went
to check it out. There was a pot on the kitchen counter that was moving
for whatever reason. Something might have fallen and hit it, we don't
know. We decided to set up in the kitchen and living room and do some
EVP questions there. At one point everybody heard the motion detector
in the basement go off when nobody was down there. After we were done
we went back down there to check it out. Matt thinks his motion
detector may have been malfunctioning because it got wet the day
before. It also didn't go off at all when he approached it to pick it
up. Matt put it away and put another one there in its place.
Noah had a couple batteries drain on him in his camcorder. He thinks it
was because they were after market batteries that were just failing. He
has since bought Sony batteries so he can see if there is a difference.
Noah and Steve also heard a whistling sound a couple times.
Final Analysis:
Some of the experiences reported have normal explanations, such as the
TV channels flipping. That could just mean it's time to get a new TV,
or a neighbor could be changing the channels with their remote. The
pipes in the bathtub could be clogged, which might be why the water
seemed to "come on" by itself. Some water could have just gotten stuck.
These are things we've had happen in our own apartment which isn't
haunted.
Even
though
we didn't capture anything, lack of evidence doesn't mean
lack of a haunting. We would like to schedule a follow up investigation
with the kids present this time to see if what the clients might be
experiencing is poltergeist activity. T says the activity seems to
center around her stepson D, so maybe D is a poltergeist agent. We are
not offering this as our
conclusion, it's just a theory we would like to investigate.
T says that they've had
activity while D was away, but the experiences described (the furnace
starting on fire, and friend N hearing running and what sounded like
someone entering the front door when the door was locked) could have
normal explanations. Furnace fires happen all the time, and T and P
admit that it needed cleaning. Another possibility could be that there
are multiple things going on - a residual haunt and poltergeist
activity (we think if there were anything intelligent the past
occupants would have had more experiences, and we would have gotten
more when we were there too). But the furnace fire, we think, was not paranormal.
T said the
first time she talked to Matt on the phone that the activity was the
hottest in the basement, where D was sleeping at the time. This would
make sense, and the reason there's still activity down there now that
the kids have been moved to the upstairs could be because the
poltergeist agent now believes that's where the ghost lives. Poltergeist activity often runs in families. It's
caused by stresses in the environment, so if one person in the family
is under stress then it's likely that others in the family may be too.
D and his mom could both be experiencing the same thing; they could
both be agents.
Matt was on two cases where a
mother and daughter living a few blocks apart were both having
experiences. They saw shadow people too. In poltergeist cases, shadow
people represent something from the subconscious, which is after all
what's causing the RSPK. The human agent could be projecting something
they fear to other people in the vicinity, or they could be looking for
a scapegoat to pin the activity on. It's like their brain can't accept
that they're doing it, but they can accept a ghost doing these things.
Usually as soon as you figure out who the agent is and you get them to
realize it and accept it, the activity stops.
Another
paranormal investigation group came through before us, and told them
it's demonic. The group has since disbanded because several of the
members weren't happy with the way the leader always thought everything
was a demon and never seemed open to any other possibilities. Their
investigation never went through. But they nonetheless did a lot of
harm by telling the clients that it was a demon when they didn't have
anything to base it on, and the family was already scared enough as is.
T says there are mysterious footprints that appear in the snow that
they've seen several times. They aren't human and are really odd. The
other group took a fascination with them. We still need to see the
pictures of the
footprints before we can say one way or another what they
are, and they may have been strange but they probably weren't
paranormal and we think the other group had a big hand in them being
noticed in the first place. We're curious how they were even seen in
the first place because even if you see footprints in the snow, at
15-20 feet from the house how could you tell they weren't anything more
than animal tracks? What would make you go out and look?
We also think the family has been so scared because of the real
phenomena they've got going on and what this other group told them that
they've started to look at everything in their daily life that's not
going just so and attributing it to the real phenomena. It's unlikely,
for example, that the poltergeist was responsible for P collapsing on
the floor unconscious with a temp of 104.7, which was another
experience they reported, or that it was the cause of a near-car
accident, or that it made D's mom have a seizure when she was over.
It's probably also not responsible for the
problems they've been having with their phone line and internet. These
things are probably just the result of some really bad luck.