A Night at the Hill House Manor

Location: Hill House Manor; Gainesville, Texas

Date: November 5, 2011

                Gainesville’s Hill House Manor has been called one of the most haunted locations in Texas, the “Grand Central Station” of haunted houses.  Ironically, though, despite these bold descriptions, it does not have a storied past.  Those who have lived in the house generally agree that it is haunted, but no one knows why. 

          SPI made the trip down to Gainesville eager to prove correct the owner’s claim that those looking for the paranormal will indeed find it.  We set up in the house at a late hour and remained there until the early hours of the morning. 

          A hundred years ago, the Manor was a single residence; now, it has been divided into three conjoined residences, though one of them is in an unfinished, ruined state, the result of flooding and abandonment.  We were warned that this section of the house could result in a broken ankle (or something worse) if we weren’t careful.

Matching poker hands.

          The first odd occurrence came in the sunroom upstairs.  Supposedly, some of the entities here enjoy playing cards, and an old deck had been left for their amusement.  My dad encouraged me to deal a hand, and so I shuffled the deck a couple of times and, not thinking much about actually playing a real game, dealt a couple of incorrect Texas Hold’em hands (you’re supposed to deal two cards to each player, not three).   Both of these three-card hands proved to be mirror images of one another, and both were straights.  Coincidence?  You can only take that for what it is, I guess.

          Later, John and I were sitting in a dark, quiet room in the back of the house.  We weren’t taking pictures or talking; we were simply listening and monitoring an EMF meter.  We realized after several minutes that Hayley and my mom were in the room above us, and when we heard what sounded like heavy footsteps coming down the staircase just outside our room, we assumed it was them.  I stepped out the door to greet them—only to discover that they were still upstairs, and had never stepped foot on that particular staircase.

Orb in the kitchen.

          John and I had another unexplainable experience on the Manor’s second floor.  We were in a room known as the speakeasy, equipped with a camera, a digital thermometer, and a voice recorder.   The room’s temperature began to drop shortly after we stepped through the door.  After several minutes, we moved into the adjoining kitchen.  The temperature was cooler in here as well.  I snapped a picture of this room, and in it is a, bright, baseball-sized orb floating several feet above the floor.  Shortly after I took this picture, the upstairs temperature rose several degrees.

          Perhaps the night’s most significant experience occurred as we were preparing to leave.  I had just passed by the upstairs bathroom into the kitchen; my dad was in the speakeasy.  Mom came up the stairs and began talking to someone in the sunroom.  She thought this shadowy someone was my dad.  Hayley had just come upstairs as well and thought she saw my outline in the bathroom doorway.  Neither of these shadowy apparitions can be explained, but they are consistent with many stories from the house’s past, which speak of unexplainable figures that linger just long enough to seem physically real, then disappear.

Moving, pink orb in the sun room.

If you look closely, there is a mist rising off the fainting couch.

          Hill House Manor produced two more oddities.  A digital voice recorder that had been left in the ruined apartment downstairs captured a noise that sounds like a muted piano key—but there was no piano in the room.  We spotted the other phenomenon on our downstairs camcorder.  The camera was facing our workstation, where we can watch live feed from our four infrared cameras.  At the beginning of the video, there is a cylinder-shaped object lying beside a rug.  During a brief time when the room was completely dark, the object apparently moves, because it’s lying on the rug when the lights come back on.  John is in the video at this point.  He stretches, sits down in front of the computer monitor, and is still.  A few seconds later, the object rolls back over to its original location.  You can see curled wires lying near the object, and it seems as though the wires move as well, sideways with the object, though, not as if they were pulled straight…  But anything moving at this point is unexplainable, because everyone except John was upstairs.

          We enjoyed our trip to Gainesville, and concluded that Hill House Manor is almost certainly haunted…  It simply did not provide much concrete physical evidence to back up our personal experiences.

Mitch.

Below is the audio of the piano sound and the video of the object moving downstairs.

Return to Octagon Hall

Don and Bev returned to Octagon Hall on September 10th for a "Ghost Hunt Weekend" with SyFy channel's John Zaffis and Bruce Tango. They and the other visitors enjoyed a day of interesting talks and discussions of the paranormal, and then got to enter the hall for a ghost hunt in the evening. At one point that evening, Don and Bev went down to the winter kitchen in the basement to escape the crowd upstairs. While down there, Don got an interesting response to one of his comments. The audio clip of this is below.

Don with SyFy Channel's John Zaffis and Bruce Tango

The winter kitchen where the EVP was captured

An orb captured outside the hall.

The Many Mysteries of Octagon Hall

Location: Octagon Hall; Franklin, KY

Date: July 2, 2011

Samantha and I made the trip to Octagon Hall, along with my parents, Don and Beverly, and my sister, Hayley. 

        The Hall was built in 1847 for the pro-Confederate Caldwell family, and is now a Civil War museum.  This strange-shaped building has many ghost stories attached to it, the most famous being that of Mary Elizabeth, one of Mr. Caldwell’s daughters, who burned to death in the basement’s winter kitchen.  She had apparently been playing near the fireplace and caught her dress on fire.

         There are numerous gravesites on the property.  The Caldwell’s plots are the most prominent.  They lie behind the Hall, not far from a crude, separate building that served as slave quarters.  Mary Elizabeth was buried here, along with her parents and little brother.  Mr. Caldwell’s body was later removed at the request of his last wife.  From the Caldwells’ plots, down a short section of trail, you come to a slave cemetery surrounded by out-of-place bald cypress trees (These trees typically grow in swampy or wetland areas, not in the middle of corn fields as they are here).  Also here are the graves of two unknown Confederate soldiers.  Paul Browning’s book Hauntings at the Octagon Hall states that at least three Confederate soldiers died on the property.

         When SPI arrived, we met the director of Octagon Hall, Billy Byrd.  He gave us a tour of the grounds and described several of its most recent—and prominent—phenomena, including a “seven foot shadow figure” that was captured in a photograph.  The figure is standing in a window near the Hall’s back entrance.  After the tour, we went for a meal and some last minute supplies, and then came back to set up.

         We began by placing infrared cameras, wired back to a DVR, at four different locations: the winter kitchen in the basement, the dining room on the main floor, the children’s’ room on the second floor, and the soldiers’ room (where Confederate soldiers were treated) on the second floor.  We also set up a video camera in the slave quarters and an audio recorder in the winter kitchen.

One of the few photos featuring the "mist."
It should be noted that this mist occurred
at a time when we were also getting strong K2
readings in the cemetery.

          The night did not begin slowly.  While investigating the slave cemetery for the first time, Hayley noted what looked like a mist surrounding our dad in a couple of pictures.  Whether this was paranormal or some photographic flaw caused by the late hour’s low light is hard to say, but it does not occur in all the pictures from that setting.

Returning to the Hall, we immediately encountered strange activity with the K2 meters.  My mom, Hayley, and Samantha found strong K2 activity in the soldiers’ room upstairs.  The meter’s rapidly flickering lights abruptly halted when they left the room.  My dad and I had a similar experience.  While trying to contact Mary Elizabeth in the children’s room, his K2 meter began lighting up all the way across.  The presence obliged his request to “step back till there’s only one light shining.”  This calmness lasted for several seconds, and then the meter started flashing rapidly again.  When we left the room, the meter darkened and never again went beyond one light.  The presence in this room, and I will write this assuming it was Mary Elizabeth, was also interested in playing the flashlight game (video clip below).  For at least ten minutes, she turned the flashlight on and off while it was lying untouched in the middle of the floor.

This photo stumped us as well. The mysterious blob above Don's
 head only occurred in this one shot and looks almost like a mangled face.

         We gathered two quality EVP occurrences.  While in the dining room, my mom mentioned to Samantha that she thought she heard something.  A voice can be heard on her audio recorder muttering, “Doubt that.”  In the basement’s winter kitchen, we captured something apparently saying “Hold on” as my mom described what she thought was a shadow in the shape of a large coat standing in the doorway. Both of these EVPs are posted below.

                

         The night’s most puzzling phenomenon also occurred in the winter kitchen, in front of the fireplace where Mary Elizabeth died. 

         I had gone with Hayley and my dad to the cemetery.  Upon returning to the house, we found Samantha and my mom staring into the DVR monitor outside the gift shop, apparently dumbfounded.  The object of their attention was playing on Camera #1, the one aimed at the winter kitchen’s fireplace.  This object, captured in still, complete darkness by the infrared camera, was a broken, vertical strip of light.  It looked vaguely like a piece of filmstrip, or—for a more morbid analogy—a spinal x-ray.  Lingering close to the ceiling, it danced across the front of the fireplace for approximately five minutes.  Its movements were abrupt, as it would be relatively still for several seconds, then move again, occasionally spinning in circles or creeping close to the camera. 

          

         Hayley and I went down to see if we could find this phenomenon’s source.  We reached the winter kitchen’s door and found the room dark and still.  There was nothing coming through the window (which faced the back of the property).  I called up and asked if they could still see the object, and yes, they could.  But right before I mentioned that I was about to turn on my flashlight, the object swept around the table and left the room. 

                

          Each of our infrared cameras recorded hours of video.  This phenomenon was nowhere to be found before this occurrence, and it never returned after Hayley and I apparently ran it off.

          

          There is no rational way to explain what we captured on video, which can be seen below.

               

          The phenomenon seems to be energy, as it appears in the video like light, but there was no light in the room at all, none coming through the window (and keep in mind, as seen on the video, that “artificial” light, like flashlight beams, displays with a yellow tint).  Hayley and I could not see two inches in front of us when we went down to investigate, and the phenomenon was still appearing on video at that time, practically right in front of us.  The infrared video obviously changes the appearances of some things; insects occasionally appear as balls of light.  But if it was something “innocent”, like a cobweb, how and why did it leave the room, why did it never appear again, and in a completely still room, what was causing its dance-like escapade in the first place?

           

         It should also be mentioned that, throughout the night, most of us noted strange lights while investigating the basement’s rooms.  On one occasion, I thought Hayley was coming down the stairs taking pictures—but she wasn’t.  No one was.  My mom described something similar. 

       

        After the winter kitchen object departed, Octagon Hall quieted for us, and the rest of the night was uneventful.  But it was a quality pursuit.  We all, at some point, experienced something.  And the basement light has to be regarded as one of the most bizarre and unexplainable pieces of evidence we’ve ever obtained.  I’m sure a return visit lies in the not-too-distant future.

Mitch

This is the full length (approx. 5 minutes) video of the basement phenomenon:

The following is a shorter (approx. 2 minutes) version showing the highlights of the event:

Here is a couple of minutes of video footage from Mary Elizabeth's room showing how she turned one of our flashlights on and off multiple times. There is no audio to go along with the video.

Below are the two EVP's we captured during our investigation. The first was captured in the downstairs dining room after Beverly thought she had heard movement in the room , and the second was captured in the basement kitchen after she had seen a shadow in the doorway.

More than Just Shows at the Rohs Opera House

Location: Rohs Opera House; Cynthiana, KY

Date: June 17, 2011

         Since obtaining satellite TV a few months ago, we’ve gained several new channels and with them, several new ghostly shows to watch. After watching such a show on the Biography channel we found a couple of haunted locations in Kentucky we wanted to check out. The first of those locations was the Rohs Opera House located in charming downtown Cynthiana. The opera house dates back to the 1870s and reportedly has at least four resident spirits: an older man, a “lady in white,” and two children. While we were in town we decided to stay just a block away at the Seldon Renaker Inn, which is also believed to be haunted. Sadly, we didn’t have any ghostly experiences there, but it was a charming place with lovely innkeepers.

        Our hunt at the opera house was very productive, however. We had a wide array of personal experiences, ranging from seeing white shapes and shadows move to people being touched. Early on in the night something touched John’s arm and his body became very cold while he and my mom, Beverly, were sitting in the stairwell where the Lady in White is most often seen. Later on my mom and my dad, Don, went to sit in the stairwell for a while and he was pinched on the leg, causing goosebumps all over his body.  We also captured many orb photos, one of which contained a red orb. We’ve only encountered one red orb before in all of our investigations, so we tend to think a little more of those than we do the plain white or translucent ones. Still, though, an orb is an orb, and they’re hard to use as solid evidence.

John snapped this from the balcony while the little girl was
 playing with our flashlight downstairs.

        Thankfully, though, we did get some other activity that led us to believe the place was indeed haunted. During our tour of the place before we began our investigation, our guide told us that many other investigation groups as well as himself and the other owners have good luck communicating with the spirits using flashlights. For us that method has become pretty useful on our past few hunts, so we were glad to try it again. Maybe an hour after we began, my mom and I went to sit in the auditorium while the guys were in the opera room. We were hoping to see or talk to the two children who are most often encountered in the aisles or stage of the theater. After placing a flashlight in the aisle near our seats, we began asking questions (see video below) and received several answers. Among other things we found out we were talking to a little girl who was less than 5 years old and that she likes to play with the little boy who lives in the theater too. When my dad came downstairs to see what we were doing, he placed his flashlight in the floor near ours to see if the little boy would like to play with it or if the little girl would like it better since it was purple and the one we were using was gray. Even though the flashlights were identical in make and operation, the little girl persistently answered us using the gray one, even when we switched where the two lights were sitting on the floor.  Several hours later we returned to the theater auditorium and used the flashlights to once again talk to the little girl. Our favorite encounter with her that time around was when she indicated that she would like us to return to the opera house again someday.

        My parents also had luck with the flashlight method in the stairwell when my dad was touched. While the lady in white didn’t answer any direct questions, she did turn it on and off upon request several times. My dad also picked up a strange “hmm” on his audio recorder while talking to the Lady in White, but it didn’t transfer over on the computer well enough to be heard. The "hmm" was a very fitting response since Don had been warning the Lady  about a group of investigators coming through in a few weeks who are known for violent and antagonistic methods of getting responses. It seemed as though she was acknowledging and considering his statement. Our favorite EVP from the night also occurred with the Lady in White in the stairwell, but it was captured earlier on after the Lady had touched John’s arm. While my mom and John were discussing him getting touched, my mom commented that she hoped the lady had answered some of their questions for the audio recorder. It seems the lady didn’t want to be caught on tape, though, because ironically she said “don’t” in a soft but plain whisper. Our other audio evidence from the night occurred in the opera room itself. We were all standing around talking about where we were each going next when we were interrupted by a loud whistle. It was loud enough that we all actually heard it over our talking, and thankfully the recorder was going to capture it too.

       While we were sad we didn’t actually get to see the Lady in White appear on the stairwell or see the little boy dart across the stage, we did walk away with a fair amount of evidence. And if nothing else, we know that at least one of the spirits would be glad if we returned to investigate the Rohs Opera House again someday.

Hayley.

Pensacola Isn't Just For Beach Goers

Location: Pensacola Lighthouse; Pensacola, FL

Date: June 2, 2011

        For vacation this year we decided to return to St. Augustine, FL for a few days of relaxation on the beach. Being the Sebourns, though, we never just take a vacation… So, along the way we decided to stop in Pensacola for a night and investigate the infamous 1858 lighthouse where bloodstains from the murder of a former keeper are said to mysteriously return to the upstairs bedroom floor and the victim of a nearby hanging is said to haunt half of the basement in the keeper’s house.

The one and only orb we caught at the lighthouse.

        We arrived at the lighthouse around 8:30pm and received a brief tour from two paranormal enthusiasts who work there. After hearing the stories of the spirits “Raymond” and “Thomas” haunting their respective halves of the basement, we set up an IR camera in each area. We also set up a camera upstairs to keep an eye on the bloodstain bedroom since the area reportedly has a lot of unexplainable activity such as noises and footsteps. Just for fun we climbed the lighthouse tower itself and ran another camera since some visitors have claimed to see shadows or white figures in the tower.

        After setup we shut off the lights and began our investigation, with my parents choosing to visit Raymond’s basement first and John and I heading off to visit Thomas. Although Raymond is said to be the angrier and more active spirit at times, Thomas actually provided us with an evening of entertainment and mystery. Believed to be a runaway slave, Thomas now resides in a storage room behind a large metal door covered with a black drape down in the basement. Less than a minute after being down there, I asked Thomas if he was in the basement with us. In what seems to be a sarcastic or grudging tone, there is a quick response of “grand” and then some unintelligible murmuring.  This turned out to be the only EVP we got at the lighthouse, and thankfully Thomas warmed up to us a little bit after that.

This shows the grated entrance to Thomas' room as well as one of the
 many occasions when he turned the flashlight on.

        Having had such luck with other spirits turning our flashlight on and off at other locations, John and I soon reverted to this tactic since Thomas seemed opposed to showing up on camera or making out K2 meters spike. It turned out that Thomas was quite fascinated with the Maglite, which we set down on a glass cabinet and left there the entire night… We now have over 2 hours of footage of the light turning on and off in random intermittent patterns and brightness levels throughout our investigation.

        Other activity throughout the night wasn’t as brazen as Thomas seemed to be with the flashlight, but it was certainly interesting. Raymond seemed less interested in interacting with us, never spiking a K2 meter or talking to us. However, while John and I were down in his basement, John did become very creeped out, thinking someone kept walking up behind him while we sat on a bench in the middle of the room. What’s strange about that is that during this incident, our DVR recorded strange patterns of electrical interference that occurred at no other time in any area of the lighthouse or keeper’s quarters.

        Throughout the night we all experienced strange noises in the upstairs hallway and bathroom area. My mom and I even followed scuffling noises from room to room at one point, unable to ever track them down. At another time while my parents were upstairs alone they kept hearing the sounds of a printer or fax machine coming from an office where everything was shut off for the night. Perhaps the strangest occurrences upstairs, though, were caught with our infrared camera. The camera was set up on a table to face towards the bloodstain bedroom, and for the first hour or so it was fine and nothing happened. Then suddenly, not long after 10pm when no one was upstairs, the camera moves on its own to face a closed door on an adjacent wall. Once we discovered this and corrected it (thinking at the time that one of us must have bumped it unknowingly when we walked by), the camera once again sat without moving for the rest of the night. About an hour later, though, a wave of interference came across the camera that we couldn’t explain.  After becoming fuzzy, a white mass moves across the camera, and once it passes the lighting adjusts itself several times before the camera returns to normal.

        The most bizarre experience of the night, though, occurred once again in Thomas’ basement only thirty minutes or so before we packed up to leave. My parents were down in the basement trying to talk to Thomas, when out of nowhere my dad felt chills on his legs and got goose bumps. Only seconds after he commented on that, both of them saw a green light seemingly outlining the grate that covers the entrance to Thomas’ favorite room. What was stranger still, though, was the light did not illuminate the areas where the curtain sagged down to allow you to see into the storage room, instead the green light only occurred around the edges of the grate, and the change was not detectable on the IR camera we had down there. After this occurred, my mom approached the grate with a K2 meter to investigate. On the IR you can watch as the K2 meter does not light up when she looks at it, but whenever she looks away the lights dance with activity. Nothing about this incident makes much sense to us, but it was certainly outside the realm of normal activity. It became even stranger to us when we told our friendly hosts about the green light and they opened up the storage room to show us that it was full of nothing but t-shirts and other overstock for the gift shop. Not a single thing in there except the ceiling light could light up at all, much less outline the door in green.

        Overall it was an intriguing hunt. Sadly, though, some of the most interesting events were just personal experiences. We’ll probably never know what happened with the green light or what made the camera move, but it was definitely worth the visit.

Hayley.


Here are our videos and the one EVP we got that night:

A Night in the Pythian Castle

Location: Pythian Castle; Springfield, MO

Date: March 21, 2011

Built in 1913 by the Knights of Pythias as an orphanage and refuge for the families of members who passed away, the Pythian Castle was purchased by the US Military in the 1940s and used as a private club for servicemen.  The building was left to ruin for years, and only since the mid-1990s has it been restored to resemble its original glory. The castle is rich in history, and since its current owners have moved in, they’ve also found that it is rich in hauntings.

When we heard about the castle from a friend, we knew we had to set up an investigation. The claims range from male and female voices to full body apparitions, and the resident spirits include a young boy named Petey, a German prisoner of war, and many others who once lived or died in the building. On our roughly 6 hour visit we were fortunate to capture evidence of at least a couple of these spirits.

While touring the building, I actually found some of our most interesting photographic evidence: what appears to be a face in an orb. Orbs are not an uncommon occurrence in haunted places, this one was certainly unique. The owners of the castle actually said they had seen similar orbs before, so perhaps that is how one of the resident spirits manifests itself. Unbeknownst to us at the time, we also captured another photographic anomaly during the tour in the form of a face in a window. Much later in the evening I discovered the photo and tried multiple times to reproduce it, but with no success. A male face is visible in the upper corner of the window, covering the normal lines in the bricks behind him.

Zoomed in view of the orb.

Circled in green is what appears to be a face.

A zoomed in view of the "face" in the window

After setting up our equipment, we started our investigation around 9:30pm. For the first part of the investigation, my dad, Don, decided to go visit Petey in his favorite room of the building, a large not-yet-refurbished suite on the second floor, while my mom and I explored the first floor and Mitch, Samantha, and John went down to the boiler room and steam tunnel. During that first hour or so the most unique experience by far occurred in the boiler room. Mitch went to check out the steam tunnel while Samantha and John stayed in the boiler room. As they were standing there taking photos and talking, they heard several unexplained footsteps walking at a steady pace. While they tried to determine where the noises were coming from, the footsteps sped up and seemed to rush towards them before disappearing, prompting both John and Samantha to jump backwards.

A little later on in the night, John and I decided to go down to the “dungeon,” a concrete room in the back of the basement where prisoners were believed to have been kept, and a German gentleman is believed to reside now. While we were down there we decided to try to play a little game with our Maglite flashlight, which had yielded interesting results for us on our last investigation at Powhatan Courthouse. Although we did not have a video camera with us at the time, the flashlight did turn on and off at least three times on its own. More importantly, though, our audio recorder picked up a very interesting EVP at the same time. While John and I were discussing the flashlight, a male voice says, “ja ja ja,” which I discovered means “yes, yes, yes” in German. It seems more than a mere coincidence that we would pick up German words in the one room of the castle were a German prisoner was known to have been held.

The other primary source of activity in the castle was Petey’s room on the second floor. When my dad first visited the room he picked up some strange sounds on the audio recorder that we couldn’t determine the source of. Some of us thought it was the floor squeaking and others thought it sounded like a child’s voice. What were more interesting still, though, were the results we obtained with our flashlights. While this method may seem unconventional, it has worked well for us, especially given the type of flashlights, which have to be twisted on and off. On our first visit to the room John and I tried this since it had worked in the basement, and found that Petey seemed enthused with the flashlight. While we couldn’t get him to play with the many toys people had left in the room for him, he seemed to enjoy turning the light on and off in strange sequences. On our first visit we relied on our new infrared cameras to capture the scene, but without a monitor we weren’t sure if we were capturing what we intended to. Mitch and Samantha experienced the same thing when they visited the room, so John and I decided to return later with our handheld digital camera to ensure we had the experience recorded. The video is featured below, showing how the flashlight, when placed alone on the floor, turns on and off multiple times at different degrees of brightness and at different paces.  

Overall our investigation left us with a good deal of evidence, but even more questions. We will always be left to wonder what those photos really show, what lurks in the boiler room, and what grabbed my mom’s foot as she came down the stairs at the end of our investigation. Maybe some of the spirits at Pythian Castle didn’t want us to leave…? Well, they can rest assured that they certainly made us want to return.

Hayley.

Here's the video of Petey and the flashlight.

Here is the EVP of the German soldier we captured in the dungeon that night:

SPI featured in Arkansas newspapers

On our recent hunt at Powhatan State Park, Arkansas Democrat Gazette writer Kenneth Heard joined us to see what the rumors were all about. His story about the park and our hunt can be read online here. Thanks again to Mr. Heard and Powhatan State Park Superintendent Corinne Fletcher for helping us out.

Another Visit with Dr. Baker

Location: Crescent Hotel; Eureka Springs, AR

Date: December 30, 2010

After hearing our stories of paranormal encounters for many years now, some of our extended family members finally decided to join us on a ghost hunt. My aunt and uncle, Tina and Steve Hooper, decided that as a gift for their daughter, Julia, they would book us all a night with Theodora and Dr. Baker at the Crescent Hotel. Julia has been fascinated by our ghost stories for quite a while and wanted to go on a hunt of her own.

With our equipment in tow, Julia’s new K2 meter and voice recorder included, we all headed towards Eureka Springs hoping that something exciting would happen for us during our stay… And we weren’t disappointed at all.

Tina and Steve opted to stay in Theodora’s room, and Julia chose to join myself and my parents in Dr. Baker’s suite... for a while anyway. We were all hoping that the young girl who responded so well to my cousin, Christine, on our previous visit would respond equally as well to Julia.

A blue orb in the hallway.

The night’s strange events began on the ghost tour we all went on. As we toured the hotel we heard many old and some new tales of the strange past surrounding the hotel. At one point we stopped in a hallway on the third floor, and our guide told us about some fairly recent phenomena that had been occurring there. Beginning on a tour a week or so before, people had started discovered strange green and blue paw-print shaped orbs on the carpet in this hallway. These orbs were always arranged in pairs that trailed along the floor and walls. After hearing that, myself and others on the tour began taking turns snapping photos down the hall to see what we could catch. And low and behold, one of my photos had a nice blue orb on the carpet a little ways down the hall from where we all stood. What was even stranger, though, was that a photo not long afterwards showed a tannish-white blob moving across the shoulder of a man who was on the tour with us. The photos taken directly before and after this one both showed this man but included no such phenomenon.

This photo shows the mysterious moving phenomenon on the man's shoulder.

This photo, taken less than one minute later,  shows no such phenomenon.

While we were gone on the tour, one of our voice recorders was running up in Dr. Baker’s suite. This recorder was left on the dining room table in a completely silent room. Even voices from the hallway below could not be heard up in the suite…And yet on several different occasions on this audio you can hear garbled conversations between a man and a woman. On other occasions a small child is heard yelling, a man is heard laughing and coughing, and a door is heard closing. Apparently the room wasn’t so silent while we were gone after all. To top it all off, when we returned we found that the upstairs bedroom light and fan had been turned on and that Julia’s baby doll, who had been sitting up prim and proper on the bed, had been knocked over.

After reviewing this audio and finding all these strange noises we decided to leave another recorder going while we slept that night. We positioned both the recorder and our video camera on the dining room table, aimed towards the living room where my dad slept on the couch. Unfortunately it was a little too dark for much of our video footage to be useful.

         
The audio from both the camera and the voice recorder turned out to contain several mysteries, though. At one point not long after we had all gone to sleep, our suitcase, which also sat on the dining table, was moved and unzipped. On the audio recording you can distinctly hear the suitcase being drug across the table, and then the small clink of the zippers is heard and the sound of the bag actually being unzipped. Not long afterwards, footsteps are heard coming across the room with no person being seen on the camera.

         
Throughout the audio there were numerous other mysteries, from heavy breathing directly into the audio recorder to a strange male voice practically moaning “hi." The most mysterious EVP we got throughout our stay, though, was one caught near the end of our night's recording that says, "Here we are."

All in all it seemed to be an eventful night as we slept, not just for us, but for Tina and them as well in Theodora’s room. Though they caught no strange images or EVPs, Tina had a personal experience that convinced her something was with them in the room. As she lay awake in the middle of the night, Tina heard an off-key whistling that seemed to be moving closer and closer to her. Once the whistling got directly beside her, a pressure came over and seemed to lie on top of her for several seconds.

While we got no full-body apparitions on our trip, we did come away with some strange photos and some audio that has left us scratching our heads. We are more certain than ever, though, that the long and disturbing history of the Crescent has left it with many spirits who will continue to roam its halls.

Hayley.

         
*Below is a combination of all the EVPs we caught while staying in Dr. Baker's suite.