Ghost Hunting (8 page)

GHOSTS WITHOUT LEGS APRIL 2002

O
ne of our strangest cases took place in a New York City suburb, where two children were being scared to death by apparitions without legs. They were so distraught that they were actually poking their eyes to keep from seeing the things.

Normally, Grant and I like to stay home with our families on Christmas Eve, just like anyone else. But when we heard what these children were going through, we knew we had to put our holiday aside. Keith Johnson and Heather Drolet must have felt the same way, because they agreed to go with us.

When we arrived, Heather and I interviewed the homeowners, Amy and Gary Stanton, while Grant and Keith began setting up our equipment. We learned that Mindy Stanton, age seven, had seen a human figure move through her bedroom without noticing her. And for some strange reason, the figure seemed to be buried in the floor up to its hips.

Twelve-year-old Marcus had seen an entity walking in the hallways, similarly sunken into the floor. He too said the entity hadn’t appeared to notice him. Alan, age fifteen, hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary.

But Mr. and Mrs. Stanton had seen a male figure walking down the stairs from the second-floor landing, its feet buried in the steps. When they confronted it, it had vanished. All three apparitions had recurred in the same locations.

We explored the entire house and recorded both video and audio for several hours. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any results. When we left in the early hours of the morning, we had nothing to offer the family.

However, our research turned up some interesting information. Apparently, the house was built on what used to be farmland, and the farmer’s house, which had been torn down long ago to make way for a suburban development, had stood on more or less the same spot. It occurred to us that the apparitions were the occupants of the farmhouse, tied to the place for reasons we couldn’t begin to imagine.

But why would they appear to be sunken into the floor? Because the floors of the farmhouse had been lower than the floors in the Stanton house. The apparitions were still walking in the paths they had always walked, unaware that a second house had replaced their own.

From all indications, this was a residual haunting—one that plays itself over and over again, like a broken record. The supernatural entity can’t interact with its environment. It’s just a pattern of energy left over from its earlier activities.

We offered the family our theory. But even if it was accurate, they were too scared to let the situation continue. In the end, they had the house blessed, which reportedly eradicated the entities from their home.

THE BET JULY 2004

T
he best result we ever got from an investigation was at Race Rock Lighthouse on the west end of Fishers Island, a vicious-looking pile of rock that sits at the eastern entrance to the Long Island Sound. We were invited there by the Coast Guard, which had been frustrated in its attempts to prove or disprove rumors that the place was haunted.

Race Rock had certainly seen its share of tragedies over the years. During the early 1800s, vessels struck the partially submerged formation with shocking regularity. The best-known ship to wreck itself on the reef was the steamer
Atlantic,
which went down in the autumn of 1846. Forty-five people perished that day.

Finally, the government decided to erect a lighthouse on the rocks. One of the engineers who worked on the project, Francis Hopkinson Smith, also built the foundation for the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. It took seven years and great courage on the parts of dozens of workers before Race Rock Lighthouse was completed in 1878.

For years, the rocks were manned by a succession of hardy lighthouse keepers. But after a while a solar cell was installed, and the lighthouse no longer needed a human being to run it. Today the Coast Guard makes periodic maintenance visits, but no one lives there.

Unless you believe the stories about the lighthouse keeper’s ghost. Then you would have to amend that statement.

Six of us from T.A.P.S. were slated to hook up with the Coast Guard in New London, Connecticut, and get a ride to the lighthouse. Because the place is no longer furnished, we had asked Brian to pick up some folding chairs at my house. As far as I knew, he had that job covered.

Unbeknownst to either Grant or myself, Brian had forgotten the chairs. “He’ll frickin’ kill me,” he muttered, referring to
me.
And I would have. It wasn’t as if we could just scoot on back to the mainland whenever we felt like it. Once we set up on Race Rock, we would be stuck there for the night.

Fortunately Andy Andrews, a new investigator in the group, had backed Brian up and packed the chairs. Brian was relieved, to say the least. If I had known the chairs were missing, I would have been on his case all night.

We had also brought along Heather Drolet. Heather was an expert in the use of divining rods—a pair of metal sticks that can detect ambient energy. Since ghosts draw on the energy around them in order to manifest themselves, Heather’s talents seemed likely to come in handy.

When the Coast Guard arrived, we met Senior Chief Boatswain’s Mates Jennings, Osborne, and Nolda. Having heard the stories about the lighthouse keeper for so long, they were looking forward to the investigation. So were we, even though we would have to cover eight miles of choppy seas before we got to Race Rock.

When we came in sight of the place, we realized why so many ships had run aground there. Two strong, savage currents were clashing at the rock, churning the water around it into a giant whirlpool. It was crazy.

There was no way any of us could have made it to the dock. However, the Coast Guard guys made it look easy. We worked harder than usual unpacking our equipment, considering we had to hand it up from a rocking boat instead of simply carrying it out of a truck. Also, we had to bring our own generator, since there wasn’t any power available to us in the lighthouse.

All in all, it promised to be the most difficult investigation we had ever undertaken. Not only were we dependent on our generator for power but we also had to be careful not to slip on the rocks and end up in the drink. Worst of all, the lighthouse didn’t have a single bathroom that still worked.

Fortunately, we were all used to improvising.

One of the Coast Guard’s claims was that they had heard the shower going one time they visited the lighthouse. Of course, when they went to check it out, it was turned off. To observe the shower, we trained a couple of cameras on it and set up an EMF detector, which measures energy fluctuations. Then we put others in the basement, where the spirit of the lighthouse keeper had been known to appear.

One thing you need to know about me is that I have a playful side. Even in the middle of the most serious investigation, I might grab Grant’s leg or play a prank. I was in that kind of mood at the lighthouse.

In fact, I had felt like that all day—which was why I had brought a fishing rod along with all our other equipment. While the rest of the team investigated the insides of the lighthouse, I was going to spend the night fishing.

It wasn’t as crazy as it sounded. Ghosts have been known to manifest themselves outside as well as inside. In a place like Race Rock, it wasn’t a bad idea to have a set of eyes on the rocks themselves.

Just to make it interesting, I got ahold of Brian and wagered two hundred dollars that I would catch a fish that night before he caught a ghost. Being the earnest soul he is, Brian took me up on the bet. I didn’t know what the fishing would be like, but I didn’t get a real haunted feeling from the lighthouse, so I thought my money would be safe.

As Brian investigated the place, he offered to cut a deal with the lighthouse keeper’s ghost: if he let Brian obtain proof of his existence, Brian would split the two hundred dollars with him. It made sense in a bizarre sort of way, though I can’t imagine what the ghost would have done with the money.

In the meantime, Grant made his way up to the attic and sat down in one of the chairs we had brought. We do that sometimes—just sit in a place, soaking up the atmosphere. But he couldn’t stay up there long. It was just too warm.

At this point in the investigation, Heather and Andy were working together, Heather using her divining rods and Andy using an EMF detector. We wanted to see how the two modalities compared to each other. As luck would have it, neither of them came across anything significant.

Out on the rocks, I wasn’t having any better luck than they were. I had been out there for hours already without a bite. At least I had some company in the form of one of the Coast Guard guys—Chris Osborne, or Oz, as he liked to be called.

We were talking about fishing, about ghost hunting, and about the Coast Guard. Just passing the time. Then I asked a question about something, I don’t remember what. But I do remember Oz not answering.

His eyes had narrowed, as if he was trying to concentrate on something behind me. I turned around, but I didn’t see anything. Just big, fat billows of fog.

“What is it?” I asked.

“There’s someone out there,” he said, already on his way back up to the lighthouse. “I just saw a flare.”

It seemed unlikely that anyone would be cruising around in that fog. But if they were, they were in terrible danger. The rocks were dangerous enough even on a clear night. On a night like this one…

As it turned out, there
was
a boat out there. By the time the Coast Guard guys got to it, it had smashed against the rocks and was taking on water pretty quickly. As I watched from shore, the Coast Guard brought in the boat’s crew.

Two guys, a father and son. The dad was maybe fifty, the son half of that. They had been out there for hours, their motor having conked out. The flare Oz had seen had been their last one. And the dad was a diabetic. He was already starting to have problems, so we got him inside the lighthouse and gave him orange juice and fruit.

The two of them were extremely, extremely fortunate. The fog, the rocks, and the waves made for a deadly combination. If we hadn’t chosen that night to conduct our investigation, they would probably have drowned.

Funny how things work out.

Anyway, neither Brian nor I won our wager. He didn’t find any ghosts, and I didn’t catch any fish. When morning came, we packed up our stuff and headed back to the mainland. Needless to say we were disappointed, but the Coast Guard guys were even more so.

Of course, we still had to analyze the data. When we did, we found some interesting things. A tendril of fog, for instance, that made its way into the bathroom and got thicker in the vicinity of the shower. And a cluster of orb activity, though neither Grant nor I are big on those phenomena as reliable indicators of the supernatural.

However, the real eye-opener took place in the attic. We saw Grant sitting in the chair and opening himself up to the vibes in the place. Then we saw him get up and leave the room. As far as we knew, that was the end of it.

But as soon as he was gone, the chair slid across the floor.

It was dark in the attic, and we were concerned that we might have misinterpreted what we had seen, so we sent the tape out to a videographer of Andy’s acquaintance. The guy cleaned up the tape and sent it back. It was just as we had thought. The chair had slid across the floor of its own volition.

“So something happened,” I conceded, despite my earlier feelings that the lighthouse was free of ghosts. My colleagues weren’t satisfied. “All right,” I said, “the place is haunted.”

But the best thing we caught that night was that boat with the two guys in it. After all, our mission is to help people. You just never know whom you’re going to help.

THE CAPTIVE DEAD SEPTEMBER 2004

T
here aren’t many venues like Eastern State Penitentiary anymore—a gray stone fortress in the northwest portion of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that would have put some medieval castles to shame. The place was shut down years ago, when it became too expensive to run. But according to stories, some of the prisoners remain—at least in spirit.

Grant and I had been hoping to investigate Eastern State for some time, so you can imagine how excited we were when the invitation came. But no one was more excited than Steve and Brian, who had heard the tales circling the penitentiary like vultures and were eager to see what it offered. It would be interesting. Both of them were stimulated by even the slightest sign of supernatural activity, though Steve was always levelheaded in the end.

If Grant and I were ever to place T.A.P.S. into anyone else’s hands for a hiatus, Steve would be our man. He would take care of the organization just the way we do, and it would be in the same condition when we returned.

We put together a team of six for the haul down to Philadelphia. It included, in addition to Brian and Steve, Carl Johnson and Sheri Toczko. Sheri, whom Steve had brought into the group, had never been on a ghost hunt before, but she had always been interested in the paranormal. This was her chance to see it up close.

Before we arrive, T.A.P.S. researches every place we investigate, but we still weren’t prepared for Eastern State’s immense size. When we drove up, the prison’s caretakers invited us to park our vans right there on the grounds behind the iron gates. Then they gave us an extensive tour of the place. Because it’s such a unique and impressive venue, a brief history is in order.

It all started with the Quakers. They pretty much ruled the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania during the 1800s, and they had an idea that it would be better if prisons served as places of spiritual reform rather than mere holding cells. Influenced by Enlightenment thinking and visionary physicians like Benjamin Rush, they believed that people who committed serious crimes ought to be isolated so they could spend time in contemplation and penitence.

Eastern State was built over a period of ten years and opened for business in 1829 while still under construction. It was one of the most expensive buildings erected to that point in time, with its thick, medieval-looking walls, its vaulted windows, its arched corridors, and its imposing guard towers. From a central hub called The Rotunda, seven long, stony cellblocks radiated like the spokes of a wheel. The place became an architectural wonder that attracted international visitors and encouraged imitation.

Each prisoner had a room with a toilet, running water, and a skylight dubbed the “Eye of God.” They were allowed contact with only a guard or a minister—no one else. When taken from their cells, prisoners were hooded so they wouldn’t be distracted from the business of humility and spiritual transformation. Supposedly, with nothing else to do but contemplate his crime, a prisoner would learn to so hate it that he would never again be tempted to do such a thing. Charles Dickens, on the other hand, viewed these methods as an ignorant “tampering with the mysteries of the brain,” which were potentially worse than torturing the body.

There were any number of “inducements” for a prisoner to pursue remorse and repentance. He might be confined in a straitjacket, given an ice-cold bath, entombed in a vermin-infested trench, thrown into a much smaller cell than his own, strapped overnight to a wall, or belted into the “mad chair”—a device intended for uncontrollable psychotic patients. Worse, he might get the Iron Gag, where the convict’s hands were crossed over his chest and tied, while a device was locked over his tongue that would torture him as he moved.

Eventually these practices subsided and the place became a bit more humane. The prisoners were allowed to mingle, develop skills in workshops, communicate with the outside world, and even form teams for sports like baseball and football. Still, they always had to return to their cold, dark cells.

Among the more notorious inmates at Eastern State was gangster Al Capone, who was sentenced in May 1929 to a year’s confinement as a punishment for carrying concealed weapons. But he wasn’t uncomfortable there. He was allowed to furnish his cell with a rug, an antique desk, a lamp, a radio, oil paintings, and an easy chair to make his stay there more pleasant. Today’s tourists get to see the place decked out the way Capone had it, and the contrast between his cell and the others is startling. He was even allowed to make long-distance telephone calls and conduct business from the warden’s office.

Nevertheless, isolation got to him (as it did many others), for he began to complain of a ghostly visitor—one of the men who had been gunned down in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. It’s probably worth revisiting that bloody chapter in the history of organized crime to understand who might have been haunting Capone, and why.

On the morning of February 14, 1929, seven men were standing in a red brick warehouse on Chicago’s North Side, waiting for a delivery from the S-M-C Cartage Company. This was during Prohibition, when the government clamped down on booze, but these gentlemen weren’t exactly the most law-abiding citizens. They were awaiting a truckload of bootleg whiskey that would be distributed to illegal pubs, called speakeasies, around the city.

Instead of the truck, a police car pulled up to the building. Three men wearing police uniforms and two dressed as civilians got out of the car and went inside the warehouse. It looked like the authorities had caught on to the illegal delivery.

But a few moments later, residents of the neighborhood heard the rattle of several machine guns. After the occupants of the police car piled back inside and took off, a few brave souls entered the warehouse. They found a horrific scene: the seven men lay on the floor, each one shot in the back multiple times. The wall against which they had been lined up for the assassination was a gory mess of spattered blood and bits of human flesh.

Obviously, the shooters had only impersonated officers of the law. It was in actuality a gangster hit. Since the victims were known associates of mobster George “Bugs” Moran, Moran pointed the finger at his rival, Al Capone, who was in Florida at the time. Naturally, Capone pointed back at him.

The truth didn’t come out until investigators were finally able to match a bullet to a machine gun found in the home of one of Capone’s hit men. Moran was right. Capone’s men had lured the victims to the warehouse and then slaughtered them.

One of these victims, James Clark, had been Bugs Moran’s brother-in-law. After Capone moved into Eastern State, the other inmates could hear him screaming at night for “Jimmy” to leave him alone. Having heard the details of the crime, they assumed that the ghost was Clark. Capone apparently continued to be haunted by this spirit even after his release, because his bodyguards later reported that they would hear him begging “Jimmy” to depart.

Capone’s valet supposedly saw this apparition for himself on one occasion. Capone believed that the spirit had followed him from Eastern State, although why it would have decided to appear to him there is anyone’s guess. Perhaps the conditions were just right.

Like any place that’s been around a long time, the prison went through waves of renovation over the years. They included the 1956 addition of a death row, with its own exercise yard for some of the country’s most dangerous men, which remained in use until 1972.

It is estimated that upwards of 80,000 inmates were processed through Eastern State over the years. Some of them never got out. The prison now sits empty and crumbling, a National Historic Landmark open for tours, art exhibits, and a special monthlong Halloween extravaganza.

It was an interesting venue for an investigation, no question about it—especially since Capone’s story wasn’t the only one worth checking out. After all, plenty of inmates went insane in this building. Many others died, either from abuse, old age, illness, or at the hands of other inmates.

Staff members who work late have reported eerie sensations, the sound of footsteps in cells or corridors, strange laughter, and glimpses of fleeting things in the shape of humans. Often they were seen darting into a cell. Of considerable interest to us were the staff’s reports of a dark figure in cellblock 12 that walks the long, dank corridors or just stands still, always reeking of malevolence. Another phantom figure is sometimes spotted in the guard tower, as if one conscientious guard just can’t leave his post. A number of people who work on the ongoing restoration feel they’re being watched by someone.

We couldn’t wait to unload our equipment and get set up. The question was where to focus our resources. The place was too big for us to cover in a single night.

I didn’t know what to make of Capone’s experience, since that could have been his own mind playing tricks on him. Since he wasn’t around any longer, there was no way to re-create it. However, the other prison stories we had heard suggested that we had both residual and intelligent hauntings on our hands.

A residual haunting is the most common variety. It’s as if some person or event left an impression in time the way a seal leaves its image in hot wax. The entity, when seen, may seem to be lost in a time warp. Often it seems mindless and confused or unaware. That’s because it’s not actually there, but energy from the person or event lingers nevertheless.

In these types of hauntings, people may hear screaming, crying, footsteps, or a name being called out. They even smell perfume, or the odor of cigars or pipes. We don’t know exactly why residual hauntings take place, but we believe that they start with a violent event, like a murder, or the loss of a loved one. This creates an energy that replays itself over and over in the same place, either on an anniversary or more regularly.

One thing to remember about residual hauntings is that they pose no danger to the observer. The entities aren’t aware that anyone is watching them. They just go about their business.

An intelligent haunting, on the other hand, is the result of entities that are aware of their surroundings and can freely move around. So you might see an entity in cellblock 12 that then shows up in a guard tower. That makes our decision as to where to place our cameras more uncertain. You just don’t know where entities will be, although they tend to at least stay in the same building. Sometimes they can move objects, and often they will see the living and try to communicate.

They want to be noticed, and they can do things that scare the living, particularly because—like a flashlight—they do their most noticeable work during the darkest hours of the night. They can be benign or mischievous, perhaps wanting to drive people away or wanting to deliver some piece of information that will finish their business on this side. Maybe they can’t accept the fact that they’ve died, or they’re trying to watch over someone. Whatever their reason for being there, they don’t want to leave.

We decided to set up our four remote cameras in two places—cellblock 4 and cellblock 12—because they had the highest volume of reported activity. Our command center would be in The Rotunda. At any given moment, at least one member of the team would be there to catch anything the rest of us missed.

Grant and I had to remind everyone that this wasn’t a Halloween tour. We were professionals. It was hard to resist being influenced by the cold, dank setting, with its crumbling walls, rows of empty cells, and dark corridors, but we had to go about our investigation as we always did—with an eye to objectivity.

Carl Johnson went off to leave a voice recorder in one of the cells where he sensed a presence might be trying to communicate, while Brian and Dave Hobbs, one of our cameramen, approached cellblock 4 to collect EMF readings. An electromagnetic field meter shows different types of spikes for different types of energy. We believe that a certain range of spikes indicates the presence of an anomaly in the electromagnetic field.

Grant and I were watching Brian and Dave from the monitor station when suddenly they gave a shout, wheeled, and came running the length of the cellblock back to The Rotunda. This really annoyed me, but I waited until they arrived, out of breath and wide-eyed, to hear their explanation first. They looked like they had seen a ghost—maybe several.

“Dave had just taken a picture,” Brian explained, huffing and panting, “when a black shape went right across in front of us. It went right across my face. I saw shoulders and a head. Dave freaked and ran, and then I freaked and ran.” For some reason he thought that what he was saying would excuse his behavior.

“You ran like a sissy,” I admonished him. “You can’t do that on an investigation.”

Brian didn’t have a good answer for that. Instead of responding, he turned around and walked away. It was a good thing. Angry as I was, I might have said something we would both have regretted.

Grant and I checked out the cellblock. After all, we wanted to see if there was really something there. But we couldn’t find anything.

“The flash must have screwed up their eyes for a second,” I ventured.

“Still,” said Grant, “you’ve got to walk out calmly. It’s unprofessional. The people who work here saw that.”

What if we had been in somebody’s house? The last thing you want to do as an investigator of the paranormal is panic the people you’re trying to help. True, we never know what we’re going to encounter, but we’re supposed to be documenting our experiences, not fleeing from them.

Brian eventually acknowledged that we were right. He was torn between the delight of a little kid who had gotten what he was hoping for and the calm manner of an investigator who wants to be taken seriously. For us, he had to be the latter. There was no compromise—even if the devil himself had crossed Brian’s path in cellblock 4.