Private Residence 1 (Bennington, NY)
- personal experiences
- EVP
Shortly after moving into this residence, the daughter of the family began complaining of 'noises' in the closet of her bedroom that she particularly noticed at night. She described a sound that resembled the dropping of small objects. Her description was that it sounded as if someone were dropping marbles, which then rolled around and stopped. The sound would repeat itself time and time again. At first, it was dismissed as a classic case of 'monster in the closet' observations by the little girl.
Then, a teenage son came downstairs one night in a state of extreme agitation. He had been sleeping, he said, and had had an extremely graphic vision which had shocked him awake. It had been of a man, burned beyond recognition, right in front of his bed. As he awoke from this vivid dream, he had felt as if his side and back were burning. When the feeling did not subside, he pulled up his shirt to find long straight scratches on his side and back which had not been there when he went to bed.
Again, this information was considered and then dismissed as over active imagination.
After these residents had moved out a year later, a young couple moved into the home and began repainting and modifying the residence to their own preference. During the move there was a feeling of being uncomfortable, and one mover swore he saw a young girl at the top of the stairs, staring down at him. When he looked up, startled, he saw the girl move into the upstairs bedroom (which had previously been the room of the young daughter mentioned above.)
The new residents contacted S.P.I.R.I.T. to come in and do an investigation of the home. All four members of S.P.I.R.I.T. were at the investigation, with the addition of a young trainee.
At the investigation, two Hi-8 cameras with night-shot (low light Infra-Red technology) were used, complemented with Infra-Red (I.R.) boosters to increase the night shot capabilities of the cameras. One was placed in a stationary spot to record the area where the apparition had been seen, and the other was used by S.P.I.R.I.T. members during the investigation as a mobile camera.
High speed digital cameras were also used by the investigators to try to capture information during the night.
Before they went 'dark' (turning off all the lights of the residence so that the night-shot cameras would be effective) a baseline EMF (Electro-Magnetic Frequency) sweep was taken of the residence, recording any anomalies of electrical, magnetic or radio frequencies that normally occur in a house. The baseline would then be used to compare against any spikes or anomalies that might be noticed during the investigation. A baseline temperature reading of all the rooms was also taken, again for comparison if differences were noticed during the course of the night.
Our Sensitive was placed in the upstairs bedroom where the apparition had been seen entering. Her function was to see if she could 'pick up' any information, and she would speak into a recorder during the night of anything she might be feeling or receiving.
Nothing was captured on the video or digital cameras, and no anomalies of EMF or temperature was captured. During the evening, the sensitive felt a strong, yet not harmful sense of someone other than the living people in the home. She picked up on the name "Wanda" and reported what she had felt during her stay there.
In the dirt floor basement of the home, an investigator and the trainee had just descended from the wooden stairs leading up to the home when the door at the top of the stairs swung open. It had been manually closed securely behind them as they began their descent into the basement. Upon reporting this information, other members of S.P.I.R.I.T. came to see if it would occur again, or be re-created. During the ensuing examination of the phenomena, the matter was debunked when it was discovered that as someone stepped off of the bottom step, the entire wooden staircase would rebound very slightly, almost unnoticeably (with the light on, and definitely unnoticeably in the dark) and if the door was closed, it would provide just enough 'give' to lower the attached doorframe a fraction of an inch, releasing the closed door to swing open. Once this matter was debunked, the team moved on. Nothing further was noticed or recorded during the investigation.
It was during the examination of evidence that EVP's (Electronic Voice Phenomena) were discovered. One was a quick word, which sounds like "Wanna" or even "Wanda", which validated the sensitive's information. The second, however was most interesting. (Listen)
It was recorded during the initial EMF baseline sweep. In the bedroom of the room in question (the previous bedroom of the daughter) one investigator and the trainee were recording the normal readings of the room. As the investigator entered the closet (which had been the site of the dropping and rolling sounds, information that the investigator and trainee were unaware of at the time) a very distinctive EVP was picked up. It was of a male voice whispering "Ricky! Let me out!" (Listen)
It is clearly not the voice of the male investigator, nor of the young female trainee. The fact that this closet was previously noted for strange sounds was not lost on the members of S.P.I.R.I.T.
Further research of the history of the residence uncovered the fact that the original house had burned, although there was no recorded death. The present home had been built upon the site of the burned home and had been used as a primary residence, and later as a rented home. No information on any occurrences noted by the residents or renters can be found prior to those mentioned above.
S.P.I.R.I.T. cannot officially claim the home to be 'haunted', but have concluded that there definitely is paranormal activity, especially in light of the close correspondence between the previous daughter's reports of activity in the closet, with the correlating EVP captured there, and in the curious similarity between the sensitive's report of the name "Wanda" and an eerily similar EVP recording of a word or name that is very close to what she caught.
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