Devil in the Delta (14 page)

Julie described speaking to the dead girl as if it was an ongoing conversation that she had been having with the spirit since she was about four years old. When I asked for details concerning Emily, I was told that she had “blonde hair” and that she “wore a dress”—the same description that Joanne had given me during my first visit.

I asked why the spirit of the girl was in their home. According to Julie, Emily had drowned in a nearby creek and now her spirit was wandering the area, looking for her family, which was now long gone. I asked Julie how she knew Emily's family was long gone. “Well,” she pointed out, “Emily wears an old-time dress.” Ahh …

As I spoke with the young girl, another thing became crystal clear: Julie was a fan of paranormal television. She threw around terms like “intelligent spirit,” “residual haunting,” and “paranormal activity” like a seasoned ghost hunter.

And, along with her mother, Julie had delved into the basics of magic. In fact, the wand we had come across during the first investigation was actually made by Julie for her own personal use. I made a note of this and found myself now beginning to wonder how much of what was happening around them (or at least their opinion of what was happening) was being influenced by what they had been watching on television.

All too often, when people experience strange things, they turn to paranormal programs and books for answers. But since most people lack any real experience dealing with such matters, they often come to erroneous conclusions or they blow certain events out of proportion. As a result, common-sense answers are often overlooked—especially if there's a more exciting answer that's similar to what they saw last week on TV!

After I wrapped up the interview with Julie, Terri and Patricia pulled me aside and told me something else about the young girl: Julie was known by local children her own age to be quite promiscuous. Terri's son went to school with Julie and knew a lot about the girl—and Terri and Tom had actually caught the nude Julie attempting to seduce their son in their own house!

While I found this information to be disturbing on a whole new level, it did seem to confirm that there was a young girl within the throes of puberty in the trailer—a classic ingredient for poltergeist activity. It also confirmed, though, that Julie craved attention and that she might be trying to get it any way that she could.

Having finished with my interview, I called Joanne into the room with us. With Julie and Joanne both being present together with me for the first time, I decided it would be a good time to broach the subject of Keith again.

I wanted to know if either of them had actually seen anything that would indicate that Julie's dead father was in the trailer. Again, at this point, this particular haunting was based entirely on Tim's word. So I asked them, “Other than Tim telling you that Keith is here in the trailer, what makes you think he is here?”

To my amazement, Joanne became indignant and answered me by pointing at Julie and saying, “Grab her titty and see what happens!”

What do you say to an answer like that? The implication was that if I acted in such a manner to Julie, the spirit of Keith would retaliate in some way. Of course there would be no underage titty-grabbing happening any time soon, so I thought this might be a good time to end the interviews. With more than a few laughs erupting around me, I went outside for a breath of fresh air.

At this point, I was pretty much through with interviewing everyone, so I decided it was probably a good time for us all to go grab some food. We would need to fuel up for another evening of investigating and the trailer still needed to cool down considerably.

But before we left, I decided to go ahead and set up a couple audio recorders in the trailer to run during our absence. It was a great opportunity to catch some EVPs without anyone being on the premises. Once this was done, we all loaded up in the vehicles again to go into town for some food at a local pizzeria.

Dinner and the Ride Home

Our meal went pretty much like any other and ended with us saying goodbye to Frank for the night. He promised to contact us after his Sunday services the following day before returning to the house to perform the blessing.

But as he sped off into the night, things took another interesting turn; Joanne asked if she and Julie could ride with me back to the trailer (they had commuted to the restaurant with Terri and Tom). I stammered an “okay,” and soon we were off.

We were in the car for maybe two minutes when Joanne began asking me how I “went about” shooting a movie. She had heard from Terri and Patricia that I was involved with
Ghosts of War
(a documentary I produced/directed about haunted Civil War sites) and she was interested in making a movie about her ordeal in the trailer. I don't have to say that, at this point, alarm bells were going off all over the place. She was actually asking how they could capitalize on their haunting!

Giving her the benefit of the doubt (instant television/movie fame is one of the bad side effects of paranormal
reality TV), I told her that making a feature film is quite difficult and that it can cost a lot of money. I understood that Joanne and her family were in dire financial straits; she was a single parent raising her kids with a difficult budget, a home that was fast becoming unlivable, and (of all things) a haunting to contend with. Of course she would want to explore the possibility of improving their lives financially.

This led us into a whole conversation that involved me explaining the production process of movies and the need for her to write out her story so that a script could be formed (it seemed she was speaking of a narrative feature rather than a documentary). She then told me that one of her daughters was an actor in Austin, Texas, and that she'd like for her to have work.

Again, I gave Joanne the benefit of the doubt and just assumed that her questions about a movie was just her desire to help out her daughter in Austin with some work. I did not want to think that she, or anyone else in the home, was attempting to use their ordeal to simply make a profit. Either way, I pushed all this out of my mind as I pulled up in the driveway of the trailer.

I'd just have to get back to the basics; I knew from my first investigation and review that the place
was
most likely haunted. In the end, it would be the evidence gathered from my investigations that would determine any validity to any/all claims being made—not any hasty judgments made by me or anyone else concerning the intentions of the household.

With the last remnants of daylight hovering on the horizon, we quickly unloaded the remainder of our equipment for the night while Joanne and Julie made their way to a relative's house that was just a short distance away. The ghost hunt was on!

The Second Investigation

Much like the first investigation, we spent the first part of the evening setting up additional audio recorders and video gear while staking out various areas of the trailer for activity (often called a “vigil” in the paranormal world). Blake and I manned the master bedroom, while the remaining team members went to do some EVP work in the bedrooms at the back of the trailer.

After we settled in, we almost immediately began to hear a strange scratching sound coming from the kitchen. Armed with a couple of EMF detectors, we cautiously approached the area. The sound was coming from the kitchen sink. The sudden elation that something paranormal might be happening quickly went south, though, when we discovered it was a mouse trapped in an empty two-liter soda bottle. Rats!

We returned to the master bedroom and concentrated on trying to get another rumble—or at least some EVPs—on audio. After about an hour with nothing discernible happening around us, we rallied up with the other team members so that we could rotate to different areas of the trailer.

Breaking off on my own, I soon found myself in the rear room of the trailer—an area that seemed to function as a second living room, though was now a general dumping area for miscellaneous objects. This was also the place where we had spotted the various occult/magic objects during our first visit. While I performed some EVP work there, I decided to take a closer look at the various items scattered about the room.

Besides the same assorted bottles of herbs and oils that we saw the first time we investigated, I found an odd bottle of powdered incense. Upon examination, the scent of the incense was actually called “Exorcism.” If Joanne and her family were not instigating any of the activity in this house—nor had any belief it was anything inhuman—why were they purchasing this kind of incense? Suddenly I was angry.

Clearly Joanne was saying one thing and doing another. Not only did I now believe she was creating—or at least exacerbating—all the activity in the trailer herself, but I was sure she was manipulating us and the information she divulged to get herself more attention than a simple haunting warranted. I crammed the bottle of incense in my pocket, determined to confront Joanne about it later that evening.

About an hour after I discovered the incense, Terri and Patricia gave a shout from the trailer's bathroom. They, too, had found an interesting item: a makeshift Ouija board drawn onto the bathroom floor. It was drawn on the wooden floor under some loose carpet, but was plainly visible to everyone present (even though it looked to have been made using a ballpoint pen or small marker).

This was just too much now. It's one thing to believe you are assisting a victim with a haunting—it's quite another to find out that, not only are they performing acts that could possibly
cause
or invite a haunting, but they are hiding this information from the investigators.

But I was also struck again by the similarities of this case to the Cottage City, Maryland, exorcism. The activity that plagued the poor young man (and that led to an exorcism) began in part because of the use of a Ouija board and séances. The Ouija board part was even included in the movie,
The Exorcist
. All that was missing in this case was the séance!

Once again, I had a good reason to confront Joanne. Were the details just coincidentally similar to the exorcism case or was this yet another detail that they may have picked up from watching the movie and decided to try it in their home? Either way, it was one more example of how the Martins were not being completely truthful with us. Luckily, the whole evening wouldn't be discoveries of the bad sort.

Not long after uncovering the Ouija, we started getting activity in the long hallway outside the bedroom doors. This was the same area that I had witnessed the shadow figure in during my first time around. Much like the first trip to the house, we found a strange reading on a K2 EMF detector—only this time it was sustained. This was especially interesting because there was no power at all in the trailer to cause a false or natural reading.

Over the course of about an hour, we managed to follow a fairly contained energy source at it roamed between
several rooms of the trailer. The K2 would spike in the kitchen, I'd ask a few EVP questions, and then the meter would go flat—as if it had fled the room. Then a quick search of the area would find the energy in a new spot.

This impromptu game of hide-and-seek went on for quite a while, but, eventually, the energy dissipated entirely and we couldn't find it any more. I was just hoping we got something on our audio recorders during this extended Q&A/chase period.

After this burst of activity, not much else seemed to be happening. We set up motion detectors, we peered through camcorders, and we patrolled the place almost constantly with EMF detectors and digital thermometers. Nothing.

With the night winding down, we decided we may as well start packing up the gear. The Mississippi team seemed a little disappointed that the evening had been relatively slow, but I know from past experience that in a lot of cases things just
seem
to be slow, but lots of great evidence gets captured on the audio and video devices. I hoped that this would be the case again.

Once we were finished packing up for the evening, Joanne returned to the trailer to lock up. I immediately sat her down and confronted her about the incense and Ouija board.

At first she used the “defense” argument; she claimed she had purchased the incense to ward off any possible spirits and that she didn't know who had drawn the Ouija on the bathroom floor (the drawing had been covered by a rug/piece of linoleum, but was now clearly visible—even to Joanne).

After I pressed her for a bit, she finally did admit that the family might be to blame for some of the things going on, though she still believed John had been around since her grandfather's days on the property. She also confessed that not long after they had all moved into the trailer, one of her older daughters (the actor in Austin) had decided to host an impromptu séance in the trailer with a couple of her friends.

According to Joanne, they were getting nowhere with the séance until they decided to try to speak to the spirit of Marilyn Monroe. It was then that things began to happen—things like a picture flying off the wall in front of the now-terrified girls. The séance was quickly ended at that point, and (interestingly) it wouldn't be long before young Julie would start seeing and hearing Emily.

I was dumbstruck. I had joked earlier that evening with the Mississippi team that a séance was the last missing piece to this case having “everything possible” that could cause their haunting to take place. It was also another key element to the exorcist case as I mentioned before. The similarities now were getting ridiculous; either they were on the same path as the Cottage City, Maryland, family or Joanne's family had somehow read about the previous case and was actually attempting to duplicate the happenings.