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: