Retail Store - Oshkosh, WI
Investigators present: Matt from Midwest Preternatural Research, Katie and Keith from Fox Valley Spirit Hunters, and Mark and Kurt from HPI.
Also present: The store owners
and one of the staff were there the first visit. The second visit, they
also invited some neighbors to come watch us without us knowing they
were going to be there. (Please do not invite your friends or neighbors
to observe us as there really is nothing to see, and if there are extra
people it tends to get in the way.)
Equipment used: Sony Nightshot Camcorder, Cellsensor EMF Meter, Digital Cameras, Digital Voice Recorders, Temperature Reader
Report written by: Katie and Matt
Background: The owners and staff
believe that the store is haunted by a young child who died when she tripped over a cat and fell down a front stairwell. Also another spirit
of a child from a building a few doors away is supposed to come visit
and play with her. The cat is also supposed to haunt the building,
along with at least one other cat that had belonged to one of the store
managers. The spirits in the building are the type that you spot out of the corner of your eye. There may also be other spirits as 1940s music has been
reported to come from the 2nd floor ballroom (aka "rave room") when no
such music was being played. One of the front rooms contains an old
rocking chair with a rag doll in it. The doll is said to occasionally
slightly change positions.
A few other experiences include a second hand account
of seeing a ghostly woman dash quickly up an invisible stairway leading
to what would be a non-existent third floor. The building is not known
to have ever had a third floor and the area in which this was seen
shows no visible evidence of a stairwell ever having been there.
Another episode in the history of the site is that there could have
been a 19th century brothel present in the building at one time. Legend
has it that a prostitute was murdered by her pimp and that could be the
woman rushing up the stairs.
It is possible that someone
observed what could have been the dead child's grandmother, that of an
older woman sitting in a rocking chair. Another experience was
recounted of a (living) child asking her mother "who that man is over
there?" when there was no one present (the pimp?). Lastly was an
incident where a baby said the name of the "visiting spirit" out of the
blue. However, the child's older brother shared the same name so the
baby could have been simply practicing saying his brother's name.
There
was also discussion of people working in the building reporting the
feeling of "not being alone".Our investigation: Bearing in mind that the store manager has only been in the building for six
and a half years, we can't really say for certain that anyone really did
die until we can verify at least part of the information presented in
some way. We did get what could be the child's full name from the manager, which is
something to start with, and it is possible that the child was visiting
a relative in the building and not a resident. It was possibly her
grandmother that she was visiting and the cat could have been the
grandmother's cat.
The floor in the room
with the rocking chair and the doll vibrates when traffic goes by, and
that might explain how the doll may have moved slightly. We set up a camera on the doll and on the stairs where the child is reported to have died, but we captured nothing.
Evidence Gathered: Nothing in pictures except some dust orbs, no EVPs, temperature oddities, and no strange EMF readings.
Final Analysis: We did not find
any evidence of an active haunt. The store is on a busy street and the heavy traffic that goes by could be creating infrasound. Infrasound is inaudible, low-frequency sound that is known to give people uneasy feelings. It can also make your eyeball vibrate so you can see things out of the corner of your eye. This could account for the feelings of not being alone, and seeing things out of the corner of your eye. We also got the feeling that the clients wanted the store to be haunted, and while we're not saying that it's not, we think that may be coloring some of the stories.