This spring the SPI team will be heading north to Iowa to investigate the famous Villisca Ax Murder House. The house was the site of eight brutal murders in 1912, with six of the victims being the Moore family and the other two being young friends of the Moore children. Although someone confessed to crime, the confession was later recanted and the crime remains unsolved. Today the house is said to be one of the most haunted in the country, and after seeing and hearing about it on TV and in podcasts, we are extremely excited to check it out for ourselves. Check back in April to see what we find!
Source: The Des Moines Register
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the SPI family!
On the morning of August 2nd while picking up his tools to leave a remodeling job in the sanctuary of a local church, Don glanced up and out of the sanctuary into the reception area of the church and saw something entirely unexpected – A gray shadowy figure walking, swinging arms and moving legs included, across the reception area towards the stairs that lead up to the office.
This sighting lead Don to ask church leadership for permission to investigate, which was happily granted since many members of the church staff have heard unexplainable things there themselves. And so, on August 14thwe (Don, Beverly, and I) packed some small pieces of equipment and ventured to the church on a Saturday evening to see what we could find.
Shortly after arriving we began experiencing things. EMF levels throughout the church were low, with the EMF and KII meters never showing any spikes. We set up in the reception area and began asking questions with the REM pod. On multiple occasions almost immediately after we captured asking questions or asking something to approach the REM pod would light up and beep for several seconds in response.
The EVPs were the highlight of the night. The first was captured upstairs in the office. Don was alone in the office asking questions, and after several minutes of sitting in the office/library he decided to change locations. After saying aloud that he was going to walk away, he gets up, sighs, and then a male voice whispers “Tell ‘em I’m doing just fine.” Moments later on the opposite side of the office there was a brief word captured that sounds like “Hynum”, but was challenging to make out.
Soon after this, after checking out the basement and moving into the sanctuary, Don’s audio recorder picked up the longest EVP we have ever captured. Don was alone in the sanctuary while Beverly and I were upstairs in the office. After stating that he was going to walk up the main aisle to the front of the room to see if anyone is near the front door, the following statements were all recorded in the same session, uninterrupted, for a total of 31 discernable words:
“I got this. Call me in the morning. I think we’re in vain. But once you hear it… When you can hear, anybody, tell them, tell them I’m doing just fine.”
After listening to this EVP a multitude of times, this is our best interpretation of what is said. The majority of the statements are very clear, but small portions were challenging to make out, especially since the statements don’t seem to be a coherent train of thought.
Back out in the reception area, Don’s recorder captured one last (mostly) intelligible EVP for the evening. He requested whoever was with us in the church to confirm their presence with a loud resounding knock. Instead, he was told a name several seconds later: “Brother Gary Stillman.” Immediately after the name there is another word that we can’t quite discern. At first it sounds like “a pharaoh” or perhaps “of arrow”, but upon closer listening it could be the word “avero”, which in Latin means “I approach”.
Moments later the recorder captured one final word for the evening, and it sounds like “cancer.” Perhaps the male entity at the church was trying to tell us how he passed?
Although Beverly and I didn’t see the grey misty figure that started this adventure for us, as a team we captured the most audio phenomena we have ever heard from a single investigation, much less in a span of less than three hours. We’ll call it a Saturday night well spent, and hopefully someday we can piece more of this mystery together.
Each of the EVPs described above can be heard in the clip below. They are included in sequential order as described in the story above.
