Devil in the Delta (3 page)

There were a lot of these stories, and many of them have stuck with me over the years. But two of these ghost stories have particularly had a large impact on me—and I credit them, as much as my own personal experiences, with pushing me into the field of paranormal research at an early age. Here they are as I know and remember them:

Ghost Story #1

This particular tale comes courtesy of my paternal grandmother. It was related to me when she lived in Webster Groves, a small St. Louis neighborhood. Though the most well-known haunted home in this area was (and is) the infamous Henry Gehm house on Plant Avenue, my Grandma often spoke of another family close by that had their own unique and disturbing haunting.

According to the tale, there was a family living in this nearby house when it was broken into by a burglar. The man of the house, hearing the intruder entering the front door, grabbed a handgun and crept to the stairs from his second-floor bedroom. After peering into the darkness below and seeing nothing that would indicate an intruder was in the home, he started down the stairs. Of course, stairs creak and these were no exception, so the burglar heard the man coming for him.

So the intruder waited for the owner to get halfway down the stairs, and then he leapt from behind the living room couch and promptly shot the man dead. Screams echoed throughout the house as the other inhabitants heard the gun go off, driving the killer out into the night. I don't believe that my grandmother ever told me the outcome of the entire affair (Was the killer ever caught?), but I do recall the ghost story that followed the horrific event.

Apparently, the current (and altogether new) residents of this particular home were experiencing a reccurring haunted event: each night, everyone in the home would hear the sounds of phantom gunshots, followed by the thuds of a body falling down the living room stairs, and ending with a series of piercing screams. Today, paranormal investigators term this type of ghostly event as a “residual” type of haunting—and most believe it doesn't always involve an actual ghost.

B
ut back then, when I first heard the story, it was only one thing—scary! I mean, how could these people live in such a house? Weren't they afraid? According to my grandmother, they simply learned to ignore the ghastly sounds and, eventually, to sleep right through the nightly event.

All of this intrigued me. It sounded like something out of a late-night horror movie, yet I wanted to know more. I think this particular story has stuck with me over the years because it illustrates an important point when dealing with ghosts—there is more than one type of haunting. This was the first time I had heard of anything other than the stereotypical spirit, and it was intriguing to me that there could be multiple reasons to explain why a home is experiencing paranormal activity.

This would specifically come into play during my investigation of the Martin family …

Ghost Story #2

As I previously detailed, my mother's side of the family lived in rural southern Missouri. By this, I mean they lived out in the middle of nowhere—an area usually dubbed “the Boondocks” by Missourians. And I don't mind saying that visiting there was a dreaded affair, but not because of my family. It was entirely because of the quality of life they had and the living conditions on the farm. Going to Marston, Missouri, in the 1970s was like traveling back in time to the turn of the century.

A trip to my grandparents' house meant going to the bathroom in an outhouse, pitching in with the chores (these could, and did, often include chopping cotton, picking beans, and hauling hay), and, worst of all, constantly dodging tornadoes. A visit from a “twister” meant fleeing outside into the windy night and huddling in a damp and dark storm cellar that doubled as a storage area for homemade canned goods. We would all clutch blankets and peer at each other through the oily light of an old kerosene lamp as the numerous Bell jars of canned tomatoes and green beans clattered and clanged around us. We would sometimes endure hours of this until a storm had passed.

On top of all this, even the “fun” things in the country often involved work of some kind—such as slaving over an ice cream churn for an hour to get some dessert. Or trudging through the yard picking pecans for an entire morning to get a pie that would be hours away from getting into our mouths. This was just how things worked out there. Of course, there was also, as previously mentioned, many a night of tale-telling. Nights spent at the hearth or on the front porch talking of dark things by moonlight.

It was during one of these visits to Marston that my mother, along with one of my uncles, told me a ghost story that I still remember to this day. Just down the gravel road from my grandparents
'
home was a neighbor who we would often see working outside in the yard. She was always by herself and seemed a lonely soul out there in the country all alone—but it hadn't always been that way. At one point, when my mother and her siblings were young, she lived with her son there in the old house. Her husband had died long before, so it was just the two of them there, eking out a meager existence.

Since they were neighbors, my grandparents felt bad for the widowed woman. As a result, my uncles would often spend the night at the house to socialize with the woman and to play with the boy. That is, they did so until the boy drowned just outside the house in a large drainage ditch. As you can imagine, this pushed the poor woman to the edge of her sanity. To attempt to alleviate her pain and loss—as well as to provide her with some much-needed company—my uncles would still, on occasion, spend the night with her in her home. It was during one of these visits that this story takes place …

My two uncles had finished playing for the night and the woman had just tucked them in for some sleep when they began hearing some strange sounds coming from the upstairs hallway, just outside the guest bedroom. These noises began as soft knocks and bangs, but soon escalated to the sounds of footsteps and even an unintelligible voice whispering from just outside the door. Needless to say, my uncles were quite frightened, though they did manage to eventually drift off to sleep. But later that same night, the two of them decided to make a trip to the bathroom together. (Hey, if you have to be pee and be scared, pee and be scared with company.)

According to them, while they were using the restroom, something kept turning off the bathroom light and knocking on the bathroom door. Once they had finished up, they immediately ran back to their beds and jumped under the covers. Eventually, they drifted off to sleep once again. But this wasn't the end of it.

Off and on, for the rest of the night, they would both feel something tugging at their blankets—and, on occasion, their feet. They would wake up, peer over the covers for any intruder, then, seeing nobody was in the room with them, they would dive back under the blankets. Much to their dismay, this went on till sunup. It was the following morning, though, that they received the biggest surprise of all …

After they had gotten dressed and went downstairs for breakfast, they heard and saw a strange sight: the woman of the house was going about cooking their meal—while having a conversation with nobody! When they asked who she was speaking to, she told them that her son was still there with her in the house and that she still liked to talk to him. Then she calmly served them their food. I probably don't have to tell you that they never spent the night there again.

Years later I would see the old house, now empty, sitting there, falling into disrepair. Was the spirit of the boy still there? Was the poor, lonely woman (who was now dead, too) there with him? I didn't know, but I wished I could find out. Today that house is long gone or I would have certainly visited it. But it is because of these stories—and many others just like it—that I slowly migrated toward the paranormal. I was determined to find out how this whole afterlife thing worked. And if it meant that I had to visit every haunted place in the state of Missouri to do so, then so be it!

Another reason this story is important to me is that it illustrates an important fact for us investigators: hauntings happen to real people—people we often know and want to help. It's easy to forget sometimes that ghosts and hauntings are very real things that happen to unsuspecting families all the time. They are not just fodder for horror stories. The compassion I felt for that poor woman and her dead son—as well as the questions her story raised—affects me and my investigations to this day.

Performing an Investigation

Before jumping into the particulars of the Martin case, it's important that you know how I perform an investigation. In general, paranormal groups fall under three categories: Sci (scientific-based groups), Psi (psychic-based groups), and Religious. As mentioned above, I would definitely consider myself a scientific investigator. So when I approach a paranormal investigation, with or without Paranormal Inc, there are several guidelines that I follow:

1. Silence is golden. We try to keep our group very small (two to three people if possible) and we maintain noise discipline to keep from contaminating evidence.
   
2. Be a neutral investigator. I try not to have any preconceived notions about what is or is not happening at a haunted location. I have gone to too many “investigations” with other paranormal groups where the entire event was an exercise in sophistry. They were already completely sure the place was haunted, so every little knock, creak, etc., was “proof” of paranormal activity.
   
3. Be respectful of the location. I always try to leave a place in the condition I found it, and I always get permission to investigate. In addition, I feel there should always be some level of professionalism so that the client doesn't feel I'm just some thrill seeker who is there to see a ghost.
   
4. Evidence, not experience. Again, as I stated above, the goal of any investigation is to get audio, photographic, or video evidence of the haunting. This means I do not go into a room without equipment designed to
   do just that.
   
5. Detect, interact, capture, and escalate (DICE). This is my basic philosophy for investigating. First, I try to detect where the spirit(s) is by using environmental monitoring gear (EMF detectors, weather/temperature stations, etc.) and performing a vigil. Once there is evidence of a presence, I try to interact with the entity by performing simple EVP work or asking the ghost to manipulate a trigger object. All of this will be captured on audio and/or video recorders. When it appears interaction is happening, I then try to build on what's happening by escalating the interaction, such as performing a “table tipping” session or providing some ambient energy for the spirit to attempt to materialize.
   

This is pretty much the foundation of all my investigations—and it has proven to be a good system for obtaining quality evidence when a haunting is actually occurring. If this method of ghost hunting appeals to you, you can always read more about my methods in my book (shameless plug)
Ghost Hunting for Beginners
from Llewellyn Publishing.

Believers vs. Nonbelievers

Interestingly, I have found over the years that almost
everyone is predisposed to believing one way or another concerning ghosts. For those who believe in spirits, almost everything constitutes evidence. The fuzziest of audio files are voices speaking from beyond, common radios on “scan” can tune in the dead, and Hasbro board games can allow users to speak to long-lost loved ones. (Yeah, you know the one).

On the flip side, those who simply think ghosts are hogwash cannot be swayed by any amount of evidence or eyewitness accounts. I have a good friend (an atheist) in Austin, Texas, who designs new technology for the scientific community. He doesn't believe in ghosts—and, most likely, never will.

When I tell him of being alone in a haunted location and actually hearing a disembodied voice speak right beside me, he says somebody is “faking it.” It does no good to explain to him that I am alone, that there are no sounds coming in from outside, and that the owners are an elderly couple without the technological know-how to pull the wool over my eyes. Though he is a scientist, there is no level of scientific method that could be employed that will
ever
convince him that there are ghosts.

Furthermore, he loves to say “prove it” when I bring up the subject. I just have to smile. I know full well there is no proof that would ever be good enough for him—and, of course, he refuses to go along on an investigation. Why bother shaking up what he thinks of as “the truth” by chancing actually seeing or hearing something for himself? My usual comeback for skeptics is to point out that if they believe in science then they should believe what scientists say: Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and even Albert Einstein have all indicated a belief in the human soul. Edison even claimed to know how to build a device to speak to the dead. So, how about that, Mr. Skeptic?

The whole belief vs. nonbelief thing also applies to religion. I have approached the owners of homes-turned-bed and breakfasts about performing an investigation on their property. It doesn't matter that the property has had a long-standing reputation for being haunted (often with some evidence to support it), if they do not believe in ghosts, or if they are members of certain denominations of hard-core Christian churches, they will not entertain even the idea of their home being haunted. To them, when you die you go to Heaven or you go to Hell. There is nothing else.

There is a well-known haunted inn in Virginia that was recently purchased by new owners. When I wrote them concerning a visit to investigate their resident spirit, I was told the only “spirit” there was that of “the Lord.” What can you say to that?