A Black Friday Investigation

SPI is pleased to announce that along with our upcoming investigation of the Mineral Wells, TX VFW, we will also be visiting the Lake Norfork Inn located on Lake Norkfork in Henderson, Arkansas next month. The Inn has been featured on SyFy Channel's Haunted Collector and is reported to have a wide variety of activity, ranging from a "lady in white" seen on lake to children's laughter in the halls.  We look forward to bringing you the details of our Black Friday investigation soon!

Upcoming Adventures

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In early November, SPI will be venturing to Mineral Wells, Texas to investigate the VFW Post 2399 building. The Post building originally served as the Milling Sanatorium and later as the Irvine Sanitarium and was one of many facilities of its type in the town, which has long been visited for its healing mineral spring waters. Follow this link to learn more about the Post.

A Haunting in the French Quarter

Date: June 17-18, 2014

Location: Hotel Monteleone; New Orleans, Louisiana

The HotelMonteleone stands high over Royal Street, one block off of Bourbon, in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Like most of the city, the hotel has many rumors of paranormal activity surrounding it, particularly on the 14^th floor, where many employees refuse to go. So, naturally we requested a room on the 14^th floor to see if we could encounter any of the numerous resident spirits for ourselves. These spirits include that of a young boy who died of illness weeks after his parents were killed outside the hotel in a buggy accident as well as spirits of past owners and bellhops.

We spent two nights in room 1484, and although our room provided no paranormal encounters of its own, we had multiple encounters while wandering the halls of the 14^th floor in the evenings. The first of these experiences still gives my father chills to recall. He was walking the halls in hopes of catching EVPs from any of the resident spirits, and all seemed calm and quite at first. However, when he walked down a side hall that lead to the Mr. Monteleone suite, he felt as though he literally walked into a wall of spiritual energy. He doubled over with his breath taken away and cold chills shaking his body. When my dad returned to our room moments later he told us what had happened and was still visibly shaken. He had to back away from the spot where he felt the energy, and even the next night could not walk to the end of that hall without feeling short of breath and getting cold chills. Although my mom and I did not share his experience near Mr. Monteleone’s suite, we did both sense a heavy, oppressive energy near a hotel staff staircase on the far western end of the building.

On the second evening in the hotel my parents were able to communicate with a spirit we believe to be an adolescent boy in the hallway using an EMF meter. While sitting on a set of steps in the 14^th floor’s main hallway my parents asked an

extensive series of questions and the meter would spike 1-2 miligauss (mG) in response to questions regarding whether the spirit had passed away at the hotel, if he preferred the 14^th floor, and if he wanted to be left alone. I was snapping photos throughout this session with the EMF meter, and only one of the photos featured anything out of the ordinary – a blue orb hovering over my mom’s shoulder.

Close up of the blue-tinted orb.

This same meter had a steady reading of 0.0 mG throughout the rest of the 14^th floor, except while my mom and I were in the far hall (near where we had felt the oppressive energy). When we were leaving the hallway, the meter spiked several points while my mom held it. She passed it to me and it dropped immediately to 0.0 mG when I held it in the exact same location. This occurred several times before the meter settled again to 0.0 and we retuned to the main hall.

We also discovered one EVP among the hours of audio we recorded at the hotel. After wandering the halls alone for a time my dad returned to the room to ask if my mom and I wanted to join him. During the conversation between my parents the voice of what seems to be a much younger male interrupts my mom while she is talking by saying rather loudly, “What?” Audio of this EVP is provided at the bottom of this post. 

 Like much of New Orleans, the Hotel Monteleone is practically overflowing with paranormal energy, and to our delight we were able to gets several unique tastes of that in our brief stay. So although we may not have enjoyed the smells of Bourbon Street or the overbearing traffic throughout the city, we did enjoy our time at the hotel known to many as the “a jewel of the French Quarter.”

Hayley.

A Trip to the Past at Oak Alley

Date: June 16, 2014

Location: Oak Alley Plantation, Vacherie, Louisiana

After hearing stories and seeing the Oak Alley Plantation featured on TV, we knew we had to find time to visit southern Louisiana to check it out for ourselves. The beautiful plantation home is well preserved, located in a prime location along the Mississippi, and has a stunning row of live oak lining the front walk to provide a picturesque frame of the main house.

We booked one of the small cottages on the grounds for an overnight stay and were able to roam the grounds throughout the night. Although we didn’t see any apparitions or gain any overwhelmingly exciting evidence, we did have a few interesting personal experiences and certainly donated our fair share of blood to the bayou’s mosquito population.

Early in the evening we began to notice noises throughout the cottage, including a sound like marbles dropping and feet shuffling, which was heard when everyone was sitting in the living room. The clock in the back bedroom also repeatedly made noises of electrical interference even though our EMF meters detected no energy in the vicinity of it and no other electronic devices were nearby.

Later in the evening while John was laying on the bed in the back room during an EVP session the KII meter lying on the bed beside him spiked to its highest color level, red, on multiple occasions and would then drop to green, the lowest energy level, as soon as he touched or moved it. Other signs of energy in the cottage included numerous fast-moving orbs observed on the infrared camera we left running all night in the dining room.

Investigating near the slaves quarters.

We gathered no hard evidence while walking the grounds that night, but my parents did have a strong personal experience near the slaves’ quarters. They were standing alone reading some of the plaques detailing the history of slavery at the plantation when they heard someone approaching, which they assumed would be me. When the footsteps drew close they turned to speak to me and found that no one else was nearby.

Oak Alley may have given us all more mosquito bites that ghostly frights, but the personal experiences we shared were all proof enough to us that the plantation’s rich history is still alive and well.

Hayley.

Coming Soon

SPI has recently returned from a trip to New Orleans. The results from our investigations at Oak Alley Plantation and the Hotel Monteleone are coming soon!

An Interesting Photo and Some Upcoming Hunts

We recently received a picture from the folks who run the ghost tours at the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, AR. Apparently a guest sent in this picture, which they took with their phone while on a ghost tour with my family back in December of 2010. The picture was taken in Theodora's room, which my Aunt Tina and her family were staying in that night (find the original story of that night here), and it features my mom standing next to the tour guide (seen below in the red vest), with another hotel guest and a rather mysterious, semi-transparent figure standing behind them.

(Photo received from Crescent Hotel Staff. Original credit unknown.)

While the photo quality certainly isn't the greatest, we all know from memory and other photos taken that night that the wispy figure standing between my mom and the tour guide was not visibly present in Theodora's room that night. Perhaps Dr. Baker came down his secret stairway in the wall (located behind the tour guide) to hear the stories being told about him that night.

In other news, SPI will be traveling to Louisiana this summer to visit Oak Alley Plantation, located along the Mississippi River in Vacherie, and the very popular (and supposedly very haunted) Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans. We'l keep you posted on what we find at both of these beautiful, historic locations when we visit in June. 

Hunting for the Goat Man

Date: November 2, 2013

Location: Old Alton Bridge, Denton, Texas

Rumors of hauntings at the Old Alton Bridge in Denton, TX abound. Built in 1884, the bridge was used to connect Lewisville to Alton. According to local legend, just after the turn of the century an African American goat farmer, Oscar Washburn, and his family moved to the north side of the bridge, and Oscar began regularly herding his goats over the bridge, earning the nickname “the Goat Man.” While Oscar was an honest, dependable farmer, local Klansmen were not fond of him, leading to his lynching on the bridge in August of 1938. Legend says that when the Klansman looked over the bridge, Oscar’s body was no longer hanging from their rope. In anger and panic, they went to Oscar’s house and murdered his entire family. To this day many claim that if you cross the bridge in total darkness, the Goat Man will be waiting for you on the other side. Along with the legendary Goat Man haunting, there have also been reports of a female ghost around the Old Alton Bridge who is looking for her lost child.

On a chilly night soon after Halloween while my parents were visiting from Arkansas, we decided to check out this legendary bridge for ourselves. Despite there being a very large gathering of local paranormal investigators as well as local kids at the bridge, we were able to find some peace and quiet in the surrounding woods to do some EVP work. Unfortunately, the Goat Man decided not to reveal himself to us through audio evidence, but we did end up with some rather intriguing photographs from the woods, a few orbs around the bridge, and some video evidence to support my mom’s personal experience of the light on her video camera going turning off and on at random.

Two orbs occur in this photo, a moving white one on the right and a small red one on the left.

This video evidence (featured below) was captured towards the end of the night. My dad, John, and I had all walked down to the west end of the bridge without any equipment on in an attempt to recreate the legendary sightings of the Goat Man that occur when you cross the bridge in total darkness. While this effort didn’t reveal the Goat Man to us, just before we returned to where my mom was standing at the east end of the bridge, the light on her video camera began to flash off and

Photo of my mom (Beverly) taken while the camera light was flashing.

on unexplainably. She had been using the camera to film the KII meter while she asked questions about whose spirit was present at the bridge. The KII and her audio recorder yielded no results, but the flashing of the camera light was quite intriguing since my mom was very unfamiliar with how to work the camera and the three of us witnessed the light flashing several times after we returned. The light stopped flashing as soon as she aimed the camera away from the KII meter. This experience fit rather well with reports we had heard earlier in the night from another group of investigators who claimed that all of the electronic devices had been drained while they were on the bridge.

The red streak of energy on the bridge.

Our only other evidence from the night came from photos. In several photos I captured orbs around the bridge and in the woods. While most of these were typical white/translucent orbs, in a couple of photos the orbs appeared reddish-orange. On the bridge, one picture even showed a bright red streak moving across the bridge. The streak of energy seems to be moving over the middle of the bridge because several bridge beams can be seen beyond the light, and despite my best efforts I could not replicate the photo when cars passed by. These red/orange orbs are in line with many reports of a flying orange light being spotted in the area. 

More interesting, though, were two of the pictures I took in the woods on the east side of the bridge that featured several white streaks of light or energy seeming to move through the air above John. The two photos were taken only seconds apart and seem to show the light/energy moving across the path. In the second photo, some have seen a face forming in the upper blob of energy.

Two photos showing the mysterious energy moving through the woods. 

Zoomed in view of the upper energy blob from the second photo. A face seems to be forming in the misty lower part of the blob.

So while we got no EVPs to help us determine if the Goat Man or the wandering lady do linger around the Old Alton Bridge, we did find evidence of some sort of paranormal energy in the area. We strongly believe the bridge is worth a return visit, just maybe not so soon after Halloween next time.

Hayley.