Palmer House Hotel (The October Event) – Sauk Centre, MN

Thursday – October 28th

Justin, Judy and Nick had arrived a couple days early so they could get some investigating in.  I joined them on the investigation Thursday night, we were also joined by The Palmer House‘s own sous chef Rachelle Beilke.  There were no other guests staying at the hotel.

I started out the night by going around the hotel and taking some pictures.  For some reason I narrowed in on “the kid’s room” on the third floor.  There is just something about all the stuffed animals and toys in that room that can lead to some interesting pictures.  I also wanted to get a picture of the stuffed animals so we could see if any got moved throughout the night.  I snapped off a couple pictures and joined the rest of the crew in the room we would be using as our home base.  We discussed the area we wanted to hit throughout the night and the major consensus was to start out on the third floor.  We would try and move the cameras and everything else as we switched locations.

THIRD FLOOR

We set up 4 cameras on the third floor.  One in “Raymond’s room”, two in the hallway and one in the kid’s room.  As I went around adjusting the cameras I noticed something very odd, on the floor in the kid’s room.  Where I had kneeled down maybe 15 minutes earlier to take some pictures there was now a set of large Lego blocks put together where I was kneeling.  I would have definitely noticed if I had kneeled on these!  Because of this we decided to narrow in on the kid’s room.

Judy and Justin took up positions in the kid’s room, Nick stood in the doorway and myself and Rachelle sat down out in the hallway. The hotel was very quiet other then the occasional truck or car passing by on Main or St Claire Lewis.  Judy and Justin started up an EVP session, Nick video’d and Rachelle and myself observed from the hallway.  Judy was wearing a glowstick around her neck and at one point I noticed it was moving.  She said she wasn’t sure if it was her breathing or if something was moving it.  I was surprised she hadn’t passed out as she was trying not to breathe :)   Not a thing we would suggest trying, don’t shorten the time you have on this plane of existence..

She then took the glowstick and wrapped it around the ever mysterious stuffed Scooby Doo.  While around Scooby’s neck it didn’t move.

While the EVP session continued we all heard what sounded like a growl come from the hall.  This wasn’t a foreboding growl like everyone seems to hear.  It sounded more like someone’s stomach.  The thing is it came from the far side of Rachelle where noone was.  This made us turn our attention to out in the hallway.

Justin set up some equipment on the table outside the kids room.  One of which was a flashlight for ‘the old flashlight trick’.  Later a theory was posted online about how this works….not sure what to think. We started another EVP session.  Justin and Judy asked a bunch of questions with no responses.  I decided to open my mouth and asked a couple questions about things I had known about the legends/lore of the Palmer.  Many of the questions were geared towards an entity known as Raymond.  The flashlight would come on only when I asked questions that dealt with that part of the lore.  I would ask leading questions that had nothing to do with anything at the Palmer and I would get no responses.  The responses started to dwindle so I asked if we should go elsewhere and we got one of the fastest and brightest responses of the night.  Still not sure what to think with this sort of activity.

We decided to break things down and head to the basement.

THE BASEMENT

We decided to start out our investigation in the room known as “the Snowman room.”  As we started an EMF sweep of the room the meters started going off the charts higher in the room.  As we investigated further we found some old wiring running down the center of the ceiling that was putting off some crazy high EMFs.  We all noted this and started our investigation.  We had several different EMF meters and digital recorders laid out throughout the room.  (None would go off at lower levels or on the floor)  We also set up a laser grid on entry way and wall outside the snowman room.  An EVP session was started.

During the EVP session, I don’t recall the question asked, but most of us heard a loud NO come from the back corner of the room.  I started to ask some more questions and the EMF meter in Nick’s hand started to alarm.  A few minutes later the EMF meter on the floor behind Judy started going crazy.  I wanted to try and experiment so I asked if whoever was with us could make the EMF meter light up/alarm to the numbers I would present it.  I would say three.  BEEP…..BEEP…………….BEEP.  I continued with single numbers for a bit, it continued to count the number I said.  Still not being sold on this I asked if it could do something like 3 beeps, pause and then 5 beeps.  BEEP..BEEP..BEEP………….BEEP..BEEP..BEEP..BEEP..BEEP….  This went on as I continued with some other combinations.  I ran out of ideas and asked if it wanted to impress me it would……. BEEP..BEEP..BEEP, the meter on the table in the middle of the room started to go off, as I finished my sentence ……make the other meter go off.  I wanted to say the one behind Judy, but I did not specify the meter.  I was pretty confused by this, I have never gotten any sort of responses like this.

My mind went blank as to what I wanted to ask.  I started to hum ‘Axel F’ from Beverly Hills Cop.  The meter started to go off again.  When I stopped it would stop.  So we all started going around the room humming different tunes.  The majority, the meters would go off.

Finally I decided to ask, would you like us to go upstairs and play the records.  The meters went nuts again.

We grabbed our gear and headed upstairs.

THE LOBBY/PUB

Seeing as we had Rachelle along with us Kelley gave us permission to investigate the pub if we wanted.  On previous investigations we had some strange things happen with the pub doors seeming to try and open and another group (Minnesota Paranormal Study Group) had captured video of a shadow person in the pub.  Rachelle and myself sat down in two of the chairs in the pub.  Justin, Judy and Nick headed out to the lobby and started to play the old records on the Victrola.

I honestly can’t report on much from the pub.  Where we were sitting we couldn’t see a whole heck of a lot.  Not much to hear either, there is a lot of background noise from the bar, the heating and the kitchen.

At two points during the time we investigated the group from the lobby came rushing into the pub asking if we had moved.  Both of us had stayed seated in the same chairs the entire time we were in there.  One time I thought I had seen some shadow movement on the floor but couldn’t tell if that came from someone moving in the lobby or not.  The Victrola also made a loud noise which sounded like what we heard when the doors move but Justin noticed it was something with the player itself.

Later when Justin rolled the footage for me it looked as though a shadow had crossed in the pub doors.  We spent the next few hours trying to debunk the footage, including walking and driving around outside.

As it was now very early in the morning and the event was starting in a few hours, we decided to wrap things up.

Friday – October 29th

It was amazing the amount of people that were coming through the Palmer House during the day.  Kelley had sold out all the rooms, so there were plenty of guests along with others that came just for the event.

Tiffany started the night out with another one of her great psychic/medium lectures.  I was unable to stay in and watch the entire thing but every time I came in everyone was glued to what she was saying.

As Tiffany finished up people started to gather in the restaurant for the investigation Justin and I were leading.  We also conned a few of the other folks from W.I.P.S. (a.k.a. Relatively Haunted) to help out.  The room was packed as we ended up letting a few more people in on the investigations due to last minute sign ups.

Lesson Learned!

Several of the participants I personally think came for more of a “haunted house” experience.  They were pretty loud, drunk and wouldn’t take things seriously.  (NEVER again….any future events participants under the influence of anything will be ejected) Honestly they should have all gone to the local haunted house and got their scare there.  A few completely freaked out when the waivers came out, but those are necessary as there are some things, such as low pipes, that you can get injured on.  It’s unfortunate that a few people can ruin things for others.  Anyways……

We split up into three different groups.  The first group headed to the basement with Justin.  Luckily I had recruited a couple other paranormal investigators (Sherry and Mary) that were at the hotel for the weekend to take the group up to the third floor.  After a few minutes another group headed to the basement lead by of the W.I.P.S. team.  I headed up to the third to meet up with the group already up there.  Half of the group headed down to Raymond’s room and I took the other half into the kid’s room.

I started out the kid’s room session with a little explanation of how our usual EVP sessions work.  There were one or two people that had investigated before, the others were new.  I started out asking some questions and just observing the others in the room.  Others would chime in from time to time with questions.  While I was observing I noticed the younger girl in the room fidgeting a bit.  I asked if anyone was feeling or observing anything, noone said anything.  We decided to give another room a try.

This time we only had the hallway, the kid’s room and Raymond’s room available to investigate.  We headed down to Raymond’s room.  Again we started an EVP session.  Noone was asking questions, I asked if anyone wanted to.  One of the ladies spoke up and said well maybe a female should ask a question.  So of course I said go ahead.  I think I heard crickets… she went quiet and didnt want to ask questions.  The group decided they wanted to give the basement a try.  As we left the room I was approached by the younger girl and her mother.  “She has something to tell you” the mother said.  The daughter started out by saying “I’m a skeptic.”  “Thats great! Absolutely nothing wrong with that” I said.  She went on to tell me when she was in the kid’s room she was fidgeting and it was because she was feeling her pant leg and sleeve being tugged on.  I told her she should have said something because what if the person next to her was feeling the same thing since we were asking for some sort of sign.  I totally understood where she was coming from though, I was the same way when I had my first experience at an event.

I walked around waiting for others to come upstairs… the basement always keeps people intrigued once they are down there.

I was able to work with two more groups in Raymond’s room through the night.  For once, besides the young girls experience I didn’t notice anything going on on the third floor.  As the investigation drew to a close I headed downstairs to let the basement group time was up.  When I reached the landing between the first and second floor I ran into the young girl again.  This time she looked pretty upset.  I asked her what was up and she said that when she was in the basement she felt like she was being choked by hands around her neck.  Her father sent her upstairs after that.  I talked with her for a bit and excused myself to go let the groups in the basement know time was up.

When I got to the basement I ran into Kysa who was all pumped up.  “It was the coolest thing, as I went in the ‘door room’ my sweatshirt hood got yanked and I was pulled back.”  Of course only paranormal investigators would get excited about that.  We cleared out the basement and headed back upstairs.

The girl was now sitting on the steps as I passed her I asked “Still so skeptical?”  She grinned and said “Not as much.”

I turned in for the night, the W.I.P.S. crew stayed up and investigated with a few of the other guests.  I am assuming nothing really went on as I didn’t hear too much.

Saturday – October 30th

Saturday started out with a presentation on evidence and evidence review that Justin and I did.  We had a pretty small group but I felt that we were able to do a pretty quality presentation.  We covered things like investigative techniques, tools that we use and some of the prime evidence we had in our collections.  Those that attended seemed to enjoy it.

After our presentation the W.I.P.S. crew had a little birthday celebration for the team psychic, Kysa.  Judy had talked with Rachelle earlier and a cake was baked.  It’s always great getting to embarrass someone with cake and singing!  Oh and she is going to hate me including her birthday picture in this blog.  :)

During the afternoon the lobby was loaded with people looking at the goods for sale, along with palm readings and massages presented by “The Goddesses.”

The evening began with Tiffany’s Gallery Reading.  I was able to sit through this entire session and have to say once again it was pretty amazing.  Some of the questions and responses really tugged at my heart.  I think the greatest point of the reading that I saw was when Tiffany went into detail about a letter one of the ladies mother’s had written and the lady broke down.  She said something like “I really didn’t want to believe you but I am just amazed, there is no way you could have known about that!”  I thought Tiffany was going to cry when she was told that.  It was really cool to see.

Halloween tradition at the Palmer House is always a costume party.  Many of the participants from gallery reading came in costume, others went up to their rooms to change.  The Palmer House also provided some really good ghost cakes for everyone!

For the others Justin and I did an Investigation 101 presentation.  Justin pretty much ran the show with the presentation.  He started out with his always interesting ghost ethics ideas.  That is one thing that I really liked when I met Justin and W.I.P.S.  Their take on “treating others like you would want to be treated” ethics was very appealing.  With the majority of the crowd never having investigated Justin did a great job covering some basic tools and investigative techniques.  Everyone was in awe of the laser grid.  :)

The group was much smaller then the night before.  After splitting into two groups Justin, Judy, Suzie and Heather led the group up to the third floor.  Kysa, Nick, Paige and myself took the other group down to the basement.  We started out with an EVP session in the snowman room.  Heather and I were getting some responses to the good old shave a haircut knocking.  In fact at one point the knocks responded out in the hallway.  It was a bit hard to really concentrate, observe and listen as there was a party going on upstairs so we decided to give another area a try.

We headed to one of the corners in the main part of the basement.  As we went on with a small EVP session myself and one of the girls in the group heard a bed frame, stored in the basement, sound as if it was moved.  She was nowhere near it when it made the noise.  As we continued I suddenly hear what sounded like change skipping past my foot.  A few others had heard that as well so I turned on a flashlight to see if anything was anywhere near me.  I couldn’t find anything.  Where I was located and the sounds I heard the person directly in front of me would have had to throw it.  I was watching them all at the time and did not see anyone even move their hands.  As I investigated around checking to make sure nothing fell from the ceiling I heard a set of heavy doors make a noise as if they were trying to slide.  I actually got a bit nervous about having things thrown at me and luckily time was rolling down so the group decided to change locations.

Into the door room.  I took a few steps into the room and felt like I was punched in the stomach.  Being a big believer in removing yourself from an investigation if you are feeling uncomfortable I asked Paige if she would mind leading the investigation.  She agreed and I excused myself from the room.  I took a seat on the stairway, after a very short period of time another one of the participants came out of the room and sat down in a chair near me.  I asked what was up and she said she had a similar sensation when she was in the room.  Sort of odd.

It was getting close to the hour being up for the crew in the basement to head upstairs.  As we escorted the group upstairs Nick, Kysa and myself gathered at the bottom of the stairs.  Nick was a little bit away from Kysa and myself.  As I looked around the room I noticed at the end of the room a streak of red heading out to the hall.  At the same time I heard both Nick and Kysa say something about seeing something.  The three of us ran to the other room and into the hallway.  Nick and I stopped in the hallway looking around to see if we saw anything.  Kysa continued her sprint into the “cowboy room.”  We asked her what was up and she explained that she had seen a face high in the doorway and someone must have been in the room standing on a counter top.  As she looked around the room she realized there was no counter top by the doorway.  We still have no idea what we saw.  Kysa and Nick both saw a shorter black shadow go running out of the room, completely different from what I saw.

The next group made their way into the basement.  We asked if anything had gone on on the third floor and it sounded as if it was sort of quiet.  We let them know that we had some activity and I talked about the change incident.  Once again we started out in the snowman room with a small EVP session.  FINALLY some of the other participants were open to asking questions.  It was GREAT to have participation!  Once again we had some knocking going on in the room as well.

Paige led the group back to the corner where I had the incident earlier.  I stayed back to make sure noone else came down to the basement.  As I walked towards the stairway I heard Justin say my name, issue is Justin was on the third floor.  Later Justin told me that he had heard me talking in his room right before the investigation began, I was down in the lobby at the time.   Paige, Nick and Kysa pretty much took over the investigation and did a really great job.

As the night came to a close we led everyone upstairs and locked up the basement.

When I got back into the lobby I noticed Judy all excited, like a little kid.  When she was finally able to calm down she let a few of us know about what she had seen on the third floor.  She said the group of them were standing near the end of the hallway, she was looking at the window and the others were looking towards the stairs.  She went on to describe a shadow figure come out of one of the rooms and go across the hallway into another room.  She got SO excited that she pushed her sister Suzie into the wall to get her out of the way.  They checked out the rooms but did not see anything.  Seeing the look in her eyes and the description she gave definitely made me believe she had seen something!  Her description was definitely not the typical movement I have ever heard of a shadow person.

The party came to an end and a group of us sat around talking about the event for a few hours.  I finally decided to turn in (recurring theme…am I getting old?), the rest of the crew went on to investigate.

Sunday- October 31st

Sunday I was lucky enough to go on a walk through of the basement with The Goddesses and La’s amazing dog Dolly.  I have never gone into a haunted location with an animal and I thought it would be an interesting opportunity.  La let Dolly lead the way.  It was cool to see her walk around, some of the more active rooms Dolly was very hesitant on entering.  You could see her looking at things, but there was nothing where she was looking.

We went back into the corner where I heard the change.  We looked all over, with the lights on to see if there was anything but there was nothing lose laying on the floor.  I looked under the few cabinets that were there and there was nothing.  I did figure out what made the door make the sound while investigating the floor.  as I went around the door it made the noise again but then I noticed that the floor was sort of heaved up where the door was sitting.  Sure enough as I moved back and forth the door would make the noise.  I checked out the bed to see if had similar flooring issues but I could not get the bed frame to make any sort of noise.

Everyone decided we should go into the door room and see how Dolly reacted.  She looked completely comfortable in the room.  Me on the other hand not so much.  As we stood in the room I started feeling as if someone was grabbing on to my ankle, the sensation went up my leg.  In fact it felt like it went in my leg and my hip started to ache.  I was trying to shake off the feeling and someone else noticed and asked me what was up.  I let the group know and one wondered if maybe I was some how feeling someone else’s aches and pains.  The sensation continued even a short time after leaving the basement.

I would love to give a full investigation with Dolly a try.  Just wondering if she would react to anything like knocks or EMF spikes.  Definitely something to think about in the future!

CONCLUSION

Even with the lessons learned I think the event went pretty good.  It was definitely one of the lesser active times at the Palmer House but it was still interesting.  I look forward to doing more things like this in at the Palmer in the future.

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Kenosha Theatre – Kenosha, WI

August 27th 2010

I dont know the exact wording for half of the locations in the theatre, so I am going to make up my own.  Bare with me.  :)

Once again I was invited by the Relatively Haunted crew to tag along with them to investigate the historic Kenosha Theatre.  I knew absolutely nothing about the place other then it was old.  Of course I had to go along!

Justin and I went into the office next door and met Jeff the owner of the Kenosha Theatre.  The office was very cool!  Lots of historic photos and “stuff.”  Then he showed us his editing “studio” and one of his video cameras.  Lets just say I thought about clubbing him and taking his goods.  :)

Entering the Kenosha Theatre I was greeted by several of the other members of the team.  It had been decided that the entry area was going to be our “base of operations.”  Wally had a table setup where he was going to be watching the DVR.  The floor was covered with gear bags.  There was one table with some of the actual old film reels on it, WAY COOL!

Before we went lights out we went in and Justin gave me a tour of the location.  Besides some small things on the phone, Justin only told me about one other paranormal report in the theatre….. Just how I like it.  The theatre is pretty much gutted, no seats, very little of the original decoration (bummer) and the changing, projection and other rooms are pretty tattered.   It is still an amazing place.  We made the walk through quick, zipped through the setup (which is awesome!) and got on to investigating.

Justin and I started out in the upper seating.  We both picked a spot and just sat and observed.  For having a bunch of other people investigating in the theatre it was relatively quiet….. besides the bats.  Yup, a whole bunch of bats were buzzing us while we investigated the night away.  While just sitting and observing there were several times that I could see shadows moving along the upper seating area between myself and the staging area.  It looked like there was someone walking back and forth.  There were also a few times I saw a shadow look as if was crawling up the seating area towards me.  That one was sort of odd and disturbing.  Justin and I conducted a short EVP session, asking very basic questions.  We didn’t seem to be getting any responses near us but there were many noises on the side balconies when we would ask something.  The problem was is there was no way to tell if it was a bat or something paranormal.

After spending some time in the upper seating we decided to head to the second floor lobby area.  This is another very large open area.  Much of it is closed off to the upper seating which helped block out an ambient noise from the other groups investigating.  This is the one area where there have been claims of an apparition of a gentleman running up some stairs.  We spread out across the area but stayed close enough where we could hear each other while not having to yell.  I started to ask some questions, then Justin.  While we asked questions it sounded as if there was movement coming from a specific location.  Nick had joined us and threw on his night vision headset.  He said he thought the chair towards the one stairway had moved, which is what I thought I heard but wasnt sure if there was a chair there.  This continued a few more times.  Nick thought he saw the chair move again and he also saw the swarm of bats zipping in and out of the area, moving between all of us.  That was just wonderful to know.  About this time all three of us heard what sounded like someone running up the stairs.  It was noone that was physically there.  We had a good handle on where everyone was.  I decided at this time to go investigate where the footsteps came from but found nothing.  We decided to try an experiment with the chair as well, we took a roll of tape and taped off the location of the legs.  We wanted to make sure if the chair did really move that we would have some sort of proof.  The area became quiet again, well other then the flapping of bat wings…

Nick, Kysa, Suzie and myself headed up to the projection room.  The room was pretty rough, lots of junk on the floor and walls, the ceiling was falling down in a lot of areas.  It was hard to find some good locations to take a seat so we could keep things quiet.  We all took a seat in one of the clean areas we could find.  I started to ask questions and did not seem to be getting much for responses.  I then decided to ask if they didn’t want us in their space if they could give us a sign or do something.  A really weird, almost frog sounding, noise came from between Nick and Suzie.  I asked again to make sure and again we heard the same sound.  We left the area…

The group of us moved out into the upper seating area.  We kept hearing lots of noises coming from all around us.  It was hard to tell what was natural, what was coming from the bats and what could be paranormal.  Nick and Suzie noticed some shadow movement around us as well.  We started an EVP session.  After asking a few questions I ran out of ideas so decided to say the following…  “I paid good money for these tickets, lets start the show!!”  Out of nowhere something that sounded large (larger then the pieces of plaster coming down from the bats) hit a row or two in front of me.  It sounded as if something was hurled at me.  I’m not a big fan of getting things thrown at me so I quit asking questions.  We stayed in the upper seating for a little bit longer and then decided to leave the area.

Justin and I decided to do a little exploring.  We headed to the area underneath the stage.  It was really hard to move around down there.  The walls had collapsed and there was remains of walls, furniture, doors and ceiling all over the place.  We did manage to check things out and even run a small EVP session.  Nothing audible was heard by either of us.

We then decided to head into the dressing room location behind the main stage.  Again this was a very hard area to move around.  I was having a hard time breathing due to the dust and mold so I headed out.

As walked back to the lobby area I came across the rest of the crew using a bunch of different meters in the main seating area.  Once again, the WIPS crew seems to get some really interesting activity with the meters.  As they were asking questions various meters would light up or sound off.  Justin jumped into the group and checked out the location with his own meters and it didn’t seem to be any sort of electrical source.  He also swapped meters around with the various members and the lighting up/sounding off would continue.  They would ask if a different meter could be lit up and sure enough it would.  It was really interesting to watch.

We finally decided to start tearing down as some of the crew had to get on the road.  After we got the camera system torn down a few of us decided to pick out an area and just sit.  Greg and Kelly were sitting high in the upper seating area.  Justin, Kysa and myself were spread out across the lower part of the upper seating area.  After about 20 minutes I had not noticed anything and decided to hit the road since I had a 3 to 4 hour drive ahead of me.

So what did I think?

The Kenosha Theatre is a very interesting place.  Awesome history and architecture.  It is great to see that someone is taking up a huge restoration project like this!  I would really like to make a return investigation when some more of the cleanup work is completed.  I would be really interested in doing some more investigating in the Projection Room, the area under the stage and back stage.  The footsteps we heard was very cool, especially when it ties to experiences that people living in the apartments attached to  the theatre, the volunteers and the owner have had.

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Emanuelson Inn – Zion, IL

I was lucky enough to be invited by Justin Libigs, founder of Relatively Haunted to go down with their crew to investigate the haunted Emanuelson Inn.  They were scheduled to record another episode for their next “season.”

When I got down to Zion, IL I was amazed to see some of the historic buildings of the area.  There are quite a few nearby the Emanuelson.  Unfortunately the coolest of them all, the Zion City Hotel, was torn down in the 70s.

The Emanuelson has some interesting history of it’s own.  Built in 1903, its gone through several changes; home, funeral home, bed and breakfast.  Seeing its history and that a Cancer Treatment Center is next door seems to lead to some interesting other worldy inhabitants as well.

Justin took me around the Inn showing me some of the points of interest, places they have had experiences and some of the history.  The history even had included his grandfather as he had worked there as well.

The Sky Room

Our investigation started in the sky room.  The sky room is located on the third floor and I am guessing at one time it was an open air overlook.  Nowadays it is a small room with some furniture and glassed in.

Justin, Heather and myself started out the investigation by placing several toys around on the floor.  The crew had gotten some good activity on a previous investigation which seemed to be coming from a child.  The toys were a great thing to try to see if it would trigger activity from a child.  We didn’t seem to be getting any sort of activity.  I decided to move out into the hallway as I thought maybe the room was too crowded.  We all started playing with the different toys laid out on the floor.  I was throwing a ball around out in the hallway.

Justin and Heather were asking questions to see if we could get any sort of response.  At one point there were several very quick and quiet knocks that sounded to come from the door.  Heather didn’t hear them and she was next to the door.  Justin and I both heard them.

We continued to investigate but the area seemed very quiet and we never heard any more knocks.  We decided to move on to another location.

I figured before we continued on that I would get something to drink from the refrigerator.

The Kitchen/Dining Room

As I entered the kitchen/dining room area I walked in on Nick, Suzie and Kysa doing an EVP session.  I grabbed my drink from the fridge and decided to hang out and see what was going on.  Suzie saw a shadow move behind Nick, which is close to where I was standing.  Kysa also saw it.  I did not see anything.  She said she could see it on the wall.  What I was seeing is what looked like another shadow cast from Nick.  I used my shadow to point to the shadow I saw.  What was strange is when my shadow connected with the other shadow I was seeing my entire body fired up with goosebumps.  One of the most powerful case of the goosebumps I had every had.  They were everywhere.  When I moved my finger they seemed to go away.  I tried it again and the goosebumps returned, not as strong but they returned.

This continued for a short period and then I couldn’t see the shadow any more.  I needed a change, so I went across the kitchen and leaned against the counter.  I decided after a short period of time that I was going to meet back up with Justin and Heather.  I let the group know it and the acknowledged.  I took one step forward and the powerful goosebumps returned.  I took a step back and they went away.

Kysa informed me that she was seeing a little boy standing just a short distance in front of me.  I reached out my hand and felt nothing.  She said I was too high, when I moved my hand down the goosebumps returned.  She said he was laughing.  I moved my hand and tried to find the area that gave me goosebumps again, I couldn’t.

Suzie then said that her leg had just been touched under the table.  She asked “Did you just touch me?”  The meters in the room lit up and beeped.

Thinking this was pretty interesting I decided to take a seat at the table.  We continued to ask questions.  We would get the same type of responses from time to time.  Suzie then started to ask “Can you leave the building?”  Beep! “Would you like to go outside?” Beep! “Would you like us to go outside with you?” Beep!

The Front Porch

Kysa and Suzie took seats on one end of the porch and Nick and myself on the other.  Suzie started to ask questions and the meter would respond on our side of the porch, not the one in front of them.  Nick had seen the shades move in the dining room.  Kysa and Suzie went to investigate.  They said that they were seeing a little boy playing peek-a-boo with them.  They were getting the meter to beep in progression, as if there was someone counting, while they tried a game of hide and go seek.  This continued for a little while.

Then the activity seemed to stop.  Suzie started asking questions again.  The meter on our side of the porch started responding.  At one time I asked “do you like hanging out with the older boys?” BEEP!

Unfortunately we had to go back in to the Inn.  The mosquitoes were terrible.

The Basement

Kysa and I decided the basement would be the next place to investigate.  The basement had been the area where the bodies were prepared when it was a funeral home.  The one tenant that had a room in the basement had also reported his dishes being knocked off the counter quite frequently.

We started an EVP session in the main area of the basement.  We were getting no responses so we decided just to sit and talk.  We had gotten some interesting EVPs when we did this at the Walker House.  I suddenly saw what looked like a smaller human like shadow dart across the hallway that led to the elevator.  It was darker then the surrounding areas and it blocked out the light that came from the exit sign.  It seemed to disappear behind a rack of linens.  I asked Kysa if she saw anything, she moved over by me to check and see.  We both started to see a shadow emerge from the side of the freezer.  Kysa said she was sure it was the little girl she had seen in the basement before.  The height of the shadow would match what she was describing she saw.

As the shadow seemed to manifest more we started hearing footsteps coming down the stairway.  Nick came down to check out what was going on.  The shadow vanished.

Nick stuck around for a short time and then headed back upstairs.  The shadow did not return while we were in the basement.  One thing I did start noticing was a dark shape coming down the left side of the stairs.  It would come down, start at the top of the stairs, come down and repeat.  At one time I thought I saw what looked like a tail wag.  Maybe this was the shadow of animal?  Not too sure.

The Sky Room

We decided to head back up to the Sky Room and see if we could get any sort of activity.  We once again tried asking questions but seemed to get no responses.  We tried using many of the toys but seemed to get no responses.  We even staged a big demolition derby but it didn’t seemed to coax out any children.

Living Room

Justin had invited comedian Mike Brody to come and investigate with the group.  When he arrived we decided to head to the main living room.  They had not investigated that area before.  Justin, Mike, Heather, Nick, Judy the owner and myself took up positions around the room.  Almost immediately Heather started to experience batteries draining in the video camera.  She would switch out the battery for a fresh one and a few minutes later the battery would be near drained.

There were several different meters placed throughout the room.  Nick had one in his hand.

Justin started asking Yes/No questions and the meter in Nick’s hand seemed to beep in response.   He then decided to try the old shave and a haircut trick.  He first knocked it out on the table and asked if whoever was in the room could finish it.  The meter beeped.   He then knocked out the beginning 5 knocks.  BEEP!  BEEP!  He tried it again.  Once again the meter went BEEP!  BEEP!  Questioning the meter being in Nick’s hand Mike took a different meter over, gave it to Nick and took the one that was beeping.  Justin tried it again.  BEEP!  BEEP!  Mike was watching Nick and so was Judy.  Both of them saw that Nick was just holding the meter, not doing anything to influence it.

Justin then asked “Can you do the entire Shave and a Haircut?”  The meter beeped a bunch of times.  I counted it, 8 times.  Justin and Mike were wondering what was going on.  I said it answered yes and then did it.  It was an “Oh yeah” moment.  Justin then asked if it could slow it down.  Sure enough, it did it closer to the cadence that Justin knocked out.

Judy had never experienced anything in the Inn, she was in awe.  Justin continued to ask questions about the Inn.  It would beep in response to the Yes/No question.  He then asked if it would like to go to another room.  BEEP!  The Sky Room?  BEEP!

Justin and the crew headed up to the Sky Room.  I stayed back as the room is very small and I figured there was enough going in to the room.


Here is some video from the session

Room 6

I decided to go check out Room 6.  The crew had some interesting activity in there on a prior investigation.  There was a car under the bed that started itself up and moved.  There were also all sorts of wheel tracks in the carpet, under the bed.  Not sure how that would be possible.

Kysa was already in the room so we concentrated our investigation under the bed.  I asked several questions.  I got no response to any of them.  We then heard everyone coming downstairs.  Thinking maybe the spirit may have been with the other group, I asked another question.  Both of us heard what sounded like a knock on the metal footboard of the bed.  Kysa then said he must like you.  I said who and why.  She said the little boy, he is sitting next to you.  I didnt notice anything but she has been pretty accurate in her visions, so I am pretty sure he was there.

I wanted to move so I decided to lay down on the bed and see if anyone could make the bed vibrate or anything.  Well it was a bad move.  Mr Sandman decided to intervene in the investigation and put me to sleep.

I woke a couple minutes later to find the crew tearing down.

So what did I think?

The building along with the entire area has a very interesting history.  I definitely think we witnessed some sort of activity.  I think there are a lot of other areas that could be investigated.  It would also be nice to investigate during the cooler months.  The Inn only has A/C in limited areas and not very good air flow through the building.  At times I am guessing some of the areas we were investigating were in the 80-90 degree range.  That makes for a tough investigation.

I would love to go back and investigate again.  From what Justin said the Emanuelson is for him like the Palmer is for me, each time some sort of activity.

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Palmer House Hotel (The Event) – Sauk Centre, MN

The Palmer House Hotel is one of my favorite haunted locations.  I have yet to be there when there isn’t activity of some sort.

Psychic Tiffany Johnson had asked me to do an event with her at the Palmer.  She was going to do a lecture and a group gallery reading and I was going to lead a ghost hunt.  Along with the two of us I asked fellow investigator Lee Anderson to lead a second group for ghost hunts.

WEDNESDAY – JUNE 16

I decided to get to the Palmer a little early so I headed out right after work on Wednesday.  Upon arriving at the Palmer I was greeted by the wonderful staff.  I ate some Walleye (which I highly recommend) and then helped lock the building up.  Seeing as there were other guests in the hotel who were interested in ghost hunting Kelley, the owner, wanted to make sure the building was locked up so no one went in locations they shouldn’t be.  While myself and Rachelle, the sous-chef, were locking up I went to check the door to the basement.  After checking the door, I turned back to go to the lobby when out of nowhere it sounded like a baby cried.  Rachelle asked if I heard it, so it wasn’t just me.  I tried to “debunk” the sound thinking it was the large cabinet in the hallway to the basement.  It wasn’t.  I’m not sure where that sound came from.  Later asking around no one had heard a sound like that before.

I was given room 17, Lucy’s room, for my visit to the Palmer.  During the night I heard several noises, all but one could have been anything.  At one particular time in the night I was awoken to what sounded like someone slapping the wall.  No one else was on the third floor or up at this time.  I’m not really sure what the sound was.  Maybe Lucy was greeting me in some way.

THURSDAY – JUNE 17

Thursday was a pretty uneventful day at the Palmer.  When I went down to the restaurant for breakfast I left a voice recorders running in my room.  Oh how fun it is listening to a few hours of cars driving by.  After I ate breakfast I decided to challenge myself a little.

The Challenge


I’m not one for investigating by myself.  I am also not a huge fan of the basement of the Palmer.  On a previous trip I got the overwhelming feeling I wasn’t welcome down there.  This time I decided to face my fears and head down to the basement by myself.  The basement at the Palmer is dark, and I mean dark, day or night.  There are no sources of light, no cracks in the foundation, no windows, no off kilter doors.  The basement also has a lot of funky noises since it is a fully functioning hotel, pub and restaurant.  I stayed in the “door room” for about five minutes, by myself, in the pitch black and asked a few questions with a voice recorder and camera running.  I felt uneasy but I think my fears were getting the better of me.  I did it though!  I wanted to stay down there for five by myself and five minutes I stayed…

A friend of mine had scheduled an investigation at another location for those of us that were coming in for the event on Thursday. Unfortunately I was the only one that made it Thursday so we cancelled the investigation.

Thursday night was pretty uneventful.  The noises I had experienced in my room the previous night were not there.  The hotel was extremely quiet.

FRIDAY – JUNE 18 – EVENT DAY 1

Tiffany’s Lecture

It has been a while since I have sat through one of Tiff’s lectures.  It is just as I remember.  Tiffany has a way with speaking and lighting up a room.  She is so bubbly and positive.  Always cracking little jokes but getting her message across.

The audience was totally interested in what she had to say.  She explained some about psychic abilities, her abilities, her childhood with these abilities and fielded quite a few questions.

It was also cool of her to explain to those in the room that it is not necessary to provoke spirits to get activity.  That is a major belief of mine as well.

While Tiffany was doing her lecture I was sitting at the restaurant bar, Kelley was on the other side.  At one point I noticed Kelley look back over her left shoulder, which was the shoulder facing me.  When I turned to my right I saw what looked like a brown mass behind me.  The more I processed it, it looked like the shape of a shoulder and arm.  Talking with Kelley later she also described the same thing but she actually saw what looked like a man standing behind me.  The sense I got was one of the regulars of the hotel decided to come out and check out what all the commotion was about.

The Investigation

I started out the investigation with explaining what exactly we would be doing.  The Relatively Haunted crew was there as well as some of the Dark Forest Paranormal folks so I decided to split the group up and mix some of the new people with some of the experienced people.  I also explained that the Palmer was one location where there is activity just about anywhere but to make it a pleasent experience and not have to deal with contamination from the other floors we would only be exploring the third floor and the basement.

Lee took half the group down into the basement and I took the other half upstairs to the third floor.  We had the most notoriously haunted rooms open for investigation.  Room 17, 22 and the children’s room.  Since we had several people that had never investigated before and I was lucky enough to have Relatively Haunted’s Justin Lidbig with me I asked if he would lead a mini investigation.  He was more then willing.  Part of the group split up with Justin and the rest headed into various rooms.  I walked up and down the hall checking on people to see if they had any questions or needed any help.

When most of the group decided to head down to the basement.  Justin, Kysa and myself were the last remaining on the third floor waiting for anyone else that wanted to investigate to come upstairs.  While we were waiting the activity on the floor seemed to really pick up.  It started first with a knock at one end of the hall.  The three of us all looked at each other and asked if the others had heard it.  All of us had.  So we headed down to the end of the hall we heard it from.  When we got to that end of the hall we heard a knock from the other end of the hall.  So we headed down that way.  When we got there, the knock was now on the other end of the hall.  This continued for a few more knocks.  I started to sarcastically say things about how fun this game was and I bet it is funny watching us go from one end of the building to the other.

We then decided to split up and fully cover the hall.  Justin and I on the ends and Kysa sat in the middle near the stairs.  As we split up the knocking stopped.  We decided to regroup and then I started hearing footsteps on the fourth floor….. there is no fourth floor.  It sounded as if a few people were walking up and down a hallway that did not exist.

As we regrouped again in the center of the floor, the knocking started.  This time it drew us to one end of the hall and then started skipping from one side of the hall to the other.  Eventually it stopped.  We regrouped in the center again.

While we stood in the middle of the hallway I thought I heard someone whisper my name.  I asked Kysa if she had, but she had not.  Justin had not either.  A short time after this Justin and I were both looking down the hall towards my room and we both saw something.

The conversation went something like this…

…”did you see that?”

“I saw something”

“Was it on the floor?”

“Yup. Did it look like two shapes?”

“Yes, did it look like feet?”

“Sure did.  Did you see it take steps?”

“Three of them.”

“Wow”

No idea what the heck we had just experienced but it was pretty darn cool.

Kysa decided to go down to the second floor to check some things out.  While she was on the second floor I had my back to the Children’s Room.  From behind me I heard Kysa say “Hello” quite loudly but she was nowhere on the floor nor anywhere where the sound would have bled through.  I asked out loud if she had said something, she heard me and replied no.

About this time some of the participants had come up to the third floor after investigating the basement.  The floor suddenly seemed to get very quiet and activity ceased.  Almost as if someone was playing games with us when there were only the three of us but did not want to be noticed when there were more on the floor.

We completed the official investigation at midnight.  I was able to talk to some of the people that had investigated and it sounded like they had a great time.

The After The Official Investigation Investigation

Kelley was nice enough to allow us to continue to investigate the basement.  Usually she prefers that investigation time in the basement is limited.  Some times the building can push back a little and it usually happens in the basement.

We started the investigation in the back half of the basement under the lobby.  The group was myself, Justin, Judy, Kysa and Nick.  Judy kept feeling like she was getting touched and Justin was saying that something was tapping on his boot.  While they were saying things about the activity I felt the back of my shirt get tugged down.  I couldn’t see anything so I felt around me.  No one was anywhere near.  A few minutes later I was poked in the stomach, Pillsbury Doughboy style.  Again I felt around and no one was near.  No idea what or who was touching me but the poke definitely got my attention.

The touching seemed to stop so we all decided to break up and do some more investigating.  Kysa and I headed into the “Snowman Room.”  The room is setup with a bunch of chairs in a circle with a table in the center.  We took a seat on two of the chairs towards the back of the room.  We started a short EVP sessions.  All we could really hear in the basement was the EVP session going on in the next room.  Out of nowhere I hear Kysa say something to the effect “you are welcome to touch me but not on the face please.”  I asked her what was up and she explained that something had just brushed her face.  The sensation seemed to cease.  Our attention was now turned to the hallway.  Nick was walking around with a UV flashlight.  We could see the blue hue from his light when he was near the hallway.  I saw what looked like a very short shadow go from right to left in the doorway.  Kysa asked if I just saw “that.”  I told her yes and she went on to describe something low to the ground scurrying across the doorway.  She said it almost looked as if something was dragging itself along.  One of the reported spirits at the Palmer is “the crawler.”   A spirit that is on a cart and drags itself along by its arms.  Could this have been “the crawler” we both saw?  While we were in the room we also got the sensation of bugs crawling all over under our clothing, it was rather odd.

We went out in the hall to check things out but we did not see anything.

I decided it was time to head upstairs.  I have to say this was one of the most classic moments of the night.  Meeting up with Ron we headed into the restaurant.  We sat at the large table in the back half of the restaurant.  Ron started up his iOvulus app.  It started to spew out names and random words like it normally does.  Then it said “Ron.”  Ron said “What?”  It then said “run.”  So Ron stood up and ran a lap around the restaurant.  It was HILARIOUS!  When he came back to the table he asked a few times if it wanted him to do something again, but it never responded.  While we were sitting in the restaurant Kysa looked over towards the door and saw one of the chairs move.  We asked if someone could move the chair again

The next location we decided to try out was the lobby.  It is a location that I have never really investigated but have seen some pretty cool evidence come from it.  Kelley had told us previously that the spirits love it when you play the old 78s on the record player.  So we thought it would be a good experiment to try.  Ron started up a record and we up seats in two of the couches in the lobby.  As the first record we were playing came to an end the doors to the pub made a loud bang as if someone was trying to open the doors.  We immediately tried to figure out what happened.  We tried recreating the sound by opening other doors, stepping around on the floor and various other methods.  The only way we could recreate it is if we went up to the door and pulled the handle hard.  Nothing from the pub seemed to have caused this, the air conditioner was off, the other doors were closed and no one else was anywhere on the first floor.  The weight of the door causes it to swing open if the adjoining door is opened.  There is also a fan that was on blowing against the door.  I tried getting it to stick in a totally closed position but couldn’t.  We could come up with no logical explanation to the noise the door made.

I went outside where Justin and Kysa had been taking a smoke break since before we had started the record player up.  I filled them in on what had just gone on and they decided to join us in the lobby.  We continued to play different records.  I am guessing we went through about 5 of them when all of a sudden the doors did it again, this time the room got very cold as well.  Justin and I both hopped up and checked out the door.  Again we tried to recreate the activity but could not come up with any sort of explanation.

We continued to listen to records for quite a while, the door did not make the noise again.  Sleep was needed as it was about 4:30am and we had another night of investigating ahead of us.

SATURDAY – JUNE 19 – EVENT DAY 2

During the day some of Kelley’s friends, the Goddesses, were in the lobby doing palm readings and giving massages.  There were also several different items for sale.  It was a nice addition!


Tiffany’s Gallery Reading

I have never been a part of Tiffany’s Gallery Readings.  I was an observer and I was pretty amazed.  From my viewpoint several of the people in the room looked very skeptical.  By the end the look of skepticism was off of their faces.  Tiffany first went through a small Q&A session and then went into her readings.  She went from person to person answering the questions they had or getting messages from the other side.  It was very interesting to watch.

The Investigation

Saturday night I took one group to the basement with the Relatively Haunted crew.  Lee took the other group to the third floor with the Dark Forest Paranormal crew.  Justin was nice enough again to take a group and do a mini investigation while some of the others went off to other areas in the basement.  Justin chose the door room for the investigation.  I sat in for a little while and heard some very interesting questions being asked from some of the newer folks.  Lots of questions about equipment and getting in to investigating.

As Justin led the investigation in the door room I joined some others in the Snowman Room.  I experienced a burning sensation on my wrist.  It wasnt on my wrist but actually inside the wrist.  Ron handed me his digital thermometer but there was no temperature difference.  The burning sensation stayed with me while I stayed in the basement.

I felt a little uncomfortable with this sensation so I went and sat by the stairway to wait for more participants to come down the stairs.  While I sat on the stairs I watched what looked like a short shadow moving back and forth at the end of the room.  It was breaking the beam of light that was coming from the kitchen above.

The group with Justin decided to go up to the third floor to get some investigating in.  So Justin joined me at the stairway and immediately noticed the shadow as well.  I thought it was my eyes playing tricks on me but it seems a little odd that both of us saw something.  We continued to watch this until one of the participants came into the room and started flashing pictures.  That pretty much ruined our vision and the shadow was no longer seen.

A group of Kelley’s friends had been investigating with Ron and they had moved from the Snowman Room to the Door Room and then to the room underneath the bar.

Justin noticed that it was midnight so I asked him if he could stay by the stairway and led people up while I went to clear out the basement.  He agreed.  I headed into the back of the basement where Ron and his group was to let them know we needed to lock up.  I walked back through the hallway by the Snowman Room and back to where Justin was leading people up.  When I came up on Justin he looked like a deer in headlights.  I asked him what was up.  He waited until everyone had gone upstairs and then told me that when I walked to the back to get every one that a low shadow had come shooting out of the Door Room, followed me and then went between some water heaters.  When he followed to investigate he said he was pretty sure he had seen “The Crawler.”  I don’t really want to go in to details about what he saw but what he described is exactly what I had been told by others.  He also included one thing that I had not passed along to him when we were randomly chatting earlier.  In fact I didn’t know about it until I talked to one of the staff and they acknowledged what Justin had described.  We decided at that time the building had had enough and we needed to shut the basement down for a while.

Of course word spread about what Justin had seen and the investigators staying wanted to go check things out but the basement stayed locked for a few hours.

We continued to stay in the lobby and just chat it up.  A couple of people headed down to the basement after a few hours to check things out but I never heard of any more activity.

I needed to move my stuff back into my room since the investigations were over.  I was moving things from the conference room up to my room and as I got to the top of the steps I heard a little girl say “Hello.”  The way it sounded to me she was just sitting there and saw me and decided to say hello.  I said hello back but heard no more responses.  The only other people that were on the third floor were in the Kids Room and they were in a close group listening to some recordings.  I asked if they said hello or heard anything, none had.

CONCLUSION

All in all I think the event went great.  Everyone Tiffany, Kelley or myself had the chance to talk to absolutely loved it and had a great time.  Investigation wise there were a lot of personal experiences which is always exciting for the first timers.  Obviously not everyone had a personal experience but they still had a really good time.

Accommodations, the staff, the hospitality, the food, the activity…  The Palmer House once again did not disappoint.


I had a blast. Thank you so much for letting us tag along on the investigation Friday night. You have got to let us know the next time you have an event where you do an investigation, we talked to a lot of people over the weekend who didn’t even hear about it, so they were kinda bummed. I can’t promise I won’t freak out – but I will try hard not too.

Thanks again!

- Cort

Thank YOU – it was an awesome experience!!!  Will you guys be coming back to the Palmer House anytime in the future?  I definitely want to do that again!!!  Next time I’m staying for both nights!!

- Sara

Hi. It felt like being with family in that room!!! Well I was with my Mom and Dad, but everyone else made me feel comfortable and at ease. I will be there next time Tiffany comes back if I don’t have to work!!!!!

- Cindy

Spooky Dudes and Tiffany Smith Johnson will be welcomed back to The Palmer House with open arms anytime they want to do an event here.  Their professionalism, charismatic personalities, attention to detail and utmost respect to The Palmer House (and all of its inhabitants and staff) was outstanding.  I look forward to working with them again, and again, and again!

- Kelley Freese/Owner
The Palmer House Hotel, Restaurant and Pub
Sauk Centre, MN


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Walker House Inn (The Return) – Mineral Point, WI

I have been keeping in touch with Joe Dickinson, the owner of the Walker House.  Something about the place just makes me feel the need to try and be involved as much as I can.  I really hope someone will come along and help Joe out and keep him the caretaker of the Walker House.

Anyways…

Joe let me know that there was a group coming to the Walker on June 5th.  When I asked who it was I pleased to hear it was the W.I.P.S. crew, the cast of ParaXVision‘s Relatively Haunted.  I had been introduced to their founder, Justin Lidbig’s by my good friend and SpookyDudes psychic consultant Psychic Tiffany Johnson.

I immediately sent a message out to Justin to see if he would be willing to have a guest investigator come along and fill them in on some of the activity that we had experienced on the Dark Forest Paranormal investigation of the Walker House.  Justin replied very quickly that they would be more then happy to have me involved in the investigation.

I was greeted by Joe and his wife.  We sat on the deck talking about the last investigation, the reactions from the locals and life in general.  Then the RV pulled up.  It was great to finally meet the crew.

Joe gave the whole crew a walk through of the building.  I kind of went off on my own to see if I got any vibes.  The building seemed really quiet.  Of course I walked around saying “Yup, Im back” to see if I could stir up any activity.  The building continued to stay quiet.

When the walk through was completed I took Justin and Nick around to give them a tour of where we had activity on our previous investigation of the Walker House.  While I was showing them some of the rooms Judy and Sue were in the boiler room and Sue said she got pushed.  Justin and I immediately went into the boiler room to check out what had happened.  I let them know that this a location that Lee had seen a shadow dart back behind one of the water heaters and seemingly walk through the wall.  Of course we went in and through out a friendly challenge to whatever had pushed Sue to push one of us.  Nothing happened to either of us while we were in there.

We proceeded to setup the equipment that they had brought.  While I was helping carry some equipment around I ran in to Kysa sitting in the pub.  Kysa seems to have the ability to see spirits at times.  I noticed she was sort of fixated on the chair in the corner in front of one of the caves.  Kysa had not read my blog to know anything about the activity, she was coming in “blind.”  When I asked her what she was looking at she proceeded to tell me about a man sitting in the chair rocking back and forth.  It was the same chair that I had seen a shadow rocking back and forth on the previous investigation.  She described the shape in good detail along with many many more details about the gentleman.  That was a big validation experience for me!

THE INVESTIGATION

The Pub

We started the investigation fairly early, Im guessing it was around 4:30pm.  Almost immediately we started to experience noises.  It started out in the caves.  It sounded as if rocks were being dropped in them, along with shuffling.  I went in and checked and did not see anything out of place.  The activity then seemed to move out pub.  Knocking started underneath the table that Nick and Kysa were sitting at.  The knocking seemed to be in direct response to questions.  Eventually it started to get quiet once again so I decided to try an experiment.

“The Chair”

I decided to come out of my investigative shell a little bit and see if I could get any sort of reaction.  I decided to sit in the chair in the corner.  I asked if whomever was there didn’t like me sitting in their chair.  KNOCK.  I asked Kysa if she saw anything, she said that the gentleman had now moved to one of the chairs at the table.  Surprisingly enough it was the chair that sounded like it moved when Lee reached over it.

Pushing my personal boundaries again I decided to move that chair as well.  I pulled it out from behind the table and moved it quite a distance away.  I took another of the chairs and moved that as well.  There were now two remaining at the table.  I asked if the person there wanted me out of their chair they needed to give me some sort of a sign.  Maybe make a noise, a knock, say something or even push me out of the chair.  As I looked up I saw Kysa’s eyes grow a little larger.  When I asked why all she said was “He is standing behind you to the left.”  I didn’t think it was that big of a deal.  She then proceeded to tell me that he was trying to reach for the “candle holder” on the table.  I am guessing he was a little upset and instead of pushing me he was going for a KO.

I continued to ask him to let me know I wasn’t welcome in his chair and nothing happened.

Judy then reported that she had some noises in the smaller of the caves.   She then asked “If you want me to leave, could you make a knoc?.”  KNOCK!  She listened to the knock and left the area.  Justin then asked “If you want Nick to leave, could you make a knock?”  Nothing.  ”If you want Kysa to leave, make a knock.”  Nothing.  ”If you want me to leave, make a knock.”  Nothing.  Since I was the last in the room I asked “If you want me to leave, make a knock.”  KNOCK!  I took my queue and left the pub.

The Third Floor Hall

Judy met up with Sue and went off to investigate.  Since the others hadn’t been told to leave the pub and I knew the third floor hall was on DVR and being monitored by Walter I decided I could go and investigate the hall by myself safely.  I sat in the hall for about 20 minutes, asking questions with a voice recorder and video camera rolling.  I didn’t experience anything out of the norm.

Top of the Main Stairs

While the group continued to investigate the pub I decided above the stairs where Mike and myself had smelled what I now called “Mr Stinky” was a good place to check out.  Again with voice recorder and video camera rolling I did not experience or notice anything.

Back to the Pub

I joined the group back in the pub again.  They had now moved into the cave.  I decided since the person in the chair didn’t seem to be happy with me I would stay out in the main pub and sit at one of the tables.  I was hearing beeping from the cave but was not sure what was going on.  Suddenly I hear Justin say “Can Craig come in here?”  BEEP!  He came out and asked me if I would join them in the cave, he wanted me to check something out.  On our way to the cave he explained to me that Nick seems to have something attached to him and it will begin to intervene in investigations.

I sat down in the cave and almost immediately was touched on the shoulder.  It was a tap or anything light it was as if someone walked up behind me and poked me in the left shoulder with their finger.  I was sitting very close to the back of the cave.  I looked around and saw nothing out of place.  None of the rock had fallen or anything like that.  I decided to ask “Did you touch me?”  The Ghost Meter in Nick’s hand beeped once!  Questions continued and the meter continued to beep as if answering yes to questions.  It would also stay silent for no.

Nick then left the cave to get some coffee.  He left the meter where he was sitting.  I thought as a test we would ask the same questions again.  The meter stayed completely silent while he was away from the cave.  When he came back he picked up the meter again and it continued to stay silent.  Justin and I walked out of the cave and he asked what I thought.  I honestly couldn’t come up with any answers.  The only thing I could think is that either Nick has some sort of attachment and it requires him to be around OR some how his energy feeds the meters.  Just not sure?

Back Hall

This time I decided to head up to the back hall by the bathrooms, sitting at the corner so I could see the entrance to the boiler room as well.  I was alone.  No cameras on me, I just wanted to see if that would matter.  I sat in this location for around 20 minutes and nothing happened.

Returning Again to the Pub

The pub just seemed to be the hot spot of the Walker House.  This time we were more focused in the general large area of the pub.   The knocking noises continued.  This time we were all experiencing what felt like cold breezes all over the pub.  Using digital thermometers and even simple lighters we could not find the source of the breeze.  Justin and I seemed to experience the breezes the most but we could not get a bead on where the heck they were coming from.  They were definitely cold and in your face or on your hand but there was no source.  That one will remain a mystery.

I decided to take a seat next to Kysa to see if she was still seeing the gentleman in the chair.  She said she was.  While we sat there checking out the room she said he was now sitting there but it was really “Weird.”  His head was now in his hands.  Not too sure what to make of that one.

Several of the team members decided to go outside and have a smoke.  While they were outside I noticed what looked like smoke in the corner of the room.  The group smoking was way on the other end of the building so there was no way that it could have traveled that far, it also did not have a smoke smell to it.  It dissipated pretty quickly, but I definitely saw something.

Kysa then asked if I saw someone near the main stairway or if I knew if someone was over there.  I saw the door to the front desk was closed so I said no.  She said she had just seen a grey figure walk out the front door.  We did not hear the door open or close and no footsteps coming down the stairs.  This is another one of those things that will remain unknown.

Outside

Everyone was outside smoking so I decided to meet up with them out there to see what the game plan was.   Justin said he would like everyone to team up and just go somewhere in the building.  Since Kysa hadn’t been around the building much I asked if she wanted to team up and maybe she could validate some more for me.  She agreed.

The Sauna Room

We decided to check out a room that our team had never investigated, “The Sauna Room.”  This was a room tucked back in what looked like closet.  The first thing we notice in the room is an axe, great thing in a haunted building to find.  There is also a bunch of lumber in the room and some holes for heating lines to go through.  One of the holes lead to the boiler room, the other out to the “ballroom.”  On the ballroom side there was sheets of plastic across the framing right outside the hole.

We started with a general EVP session.  ”Is there anyone with us?” type questions.

We then started to hear movement around us but kept passing it off as the plastic moving with a wind leak some how or some sort of critter was in the room.

The EVP session now turned into a BS session.  Kysa was telling me things that she had seen while walking around the Walker.  She didn’t know the exact rooms.  I have added them to the descriptions.

  • A man looking at her from the hall when she sat in a chair in room 9.  He looked upset.  Well that chair turned out to be the chair that it has been reported a younger gentleman is seen sitting in.  He is also the spirit that has scared Joe’s grandson.
  • A cat walking around in room 8.  This is the same room Nancy saw what she thought was a cats tail hit the bed.
  • A little girl in room 7.  The same room that Josh had seen the girl sitting on his bed.
  • A little girl in room 6.  My room.  Not in the bedroom but in the sitting room, hiding behind the door where I had heard some noises.

Once she got as far as my room I had to pick my jaw up off the floor and ask her if she wanted to point out the rooms.  She said sure.

We decided to end the EVP session.

The Boiler Room

Kysa showed me where in the rooms she had seen some of the things she told me.  She was happy at the validation I was giving her on those rooms.  They matched the exact location that people had reported activity in when we were there.  Before we got too far I asked her if she would be interested in checking out the boiler room since there was some more activity reported there.

We took a seat on the floor near the water heaters.  We were seeing shadows in various locations in the room that were definitely out of place.  When we would turn a light on to it the shadow was no longer there.  Sounds were coming from out in the hallway.  It sounded as if someone was talking in the hall.  Sue and Judy were investigating room 8 so we could hear them but the sounds we were having were directly outside the boiler room.

Suddenly we heard some scuffling on the floor.  It sound like someone walked into the room and the doorway just seemed darker.  I was starting to make out what looked like a shadow of child when suddenly Kysa said there was a little girl standing in the doorway.  We continued to try and coax the little girl in the room but all we would hear is noise in the doorway.  Suddenly we heard a louder noise out in the hallway and the shadow seemed to vanish.  Kysa said she could sense something larger come into the area and the little girl just sort of vanished.

We waited a little bit longer but the responses and noises we were getting just stopped.

Room 3

Kysa said she really wanted to check out room 3.  When she was outside she thought she had seen someone in the window checking us out.  We could hear Judy and Sue down the hall doing some experiments so we shut the door.  The room was very quiet.

As my eyes adjusted to the lighting in the room it looked as if there was a shadow crouching in the corner on the side of the other bed.  We tried getting responses from questions and knocking but we didn’t seem to get any.

We now heard Judy and Sue walk down the stairs.  As they did Kysa asked “Did you hear that?”  I didnt hear anything.  I asked what she heard.  She said it was the voice of a child saying “It’s OK they are gone now.”  The room and the hallway continued to remain quiet and the shadow in the corner seemed to have vanished.

The sun started to creep into the room.

The Tear Down

We had investigated for almost 12 hours and decided to call it a night.  While I was walking around collecting equipment I noticed a major smell in the dining room area.  It smelled just like it did when me and Mike were cleaning up at the previous investigation.  It smelled like I had just walked into a locker room again.  As I walked around to find the source of the smell it vanished just like previously.

So What Did I Think?

First off I have to say working with the Relatively Haunted crew is simply amazing.  It was awesome to see the group dynamics with the family.  Everyone pitched in, everyone was listened to, everyone was asked for ideas…  Simply amazing!

I think that the main thing I got out of this investigation was a lot of validation.  Kysa seems to have one heck of a gift.  She hadn’t read my previous blog, she hadn’t been told anything by anyone else on the team and she hadn’t spent that much time with me yet she was seeing things that the team had experienced last time and could describe them in detail.

Once again I think that the Walker House is definitely a location that is worthy of investigating over and over!

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Walker House Inn – Mineral Point, WI

Ever since I heard about the Walker House Inn I just felt the need to go there and investigate it.  Not sure I was this amped to investigate a location before.  Before planning the official investigation I wanted to go see the place.

VISIT #1

I took a free day and headed down to the Southern Wisconsin town of Mineral Point.  When I pulled in I looked around in astonishment.  The town was one that time seemed to have forgotten.  Sure there are vehicles and modern things but so many of the buildings are historic and just amazing to look at.

As I got to the Walker House I was greeted by the current “caretaker” Joe Dickinson.  Joe immediately started telling me the history of the Walker House.  Being built in 1836 the building has an amazing amount of history!

Joe went on to tell me about all the work he has done on the property.  He has done an AMAZING amount of work.  The building looks as beautiful inside as it does outside.  The inside has been somewhat modernized but still keeps contains a lot of the history.

As I walked around the building I was just amazed.  Joe talked a little bit about the activity people have experienced there, including his daughter and grandson.  Some included:

  • Apparition of a man sitting in one of the rooms staring out in the hallway
  • Something blocking out the overhead fan when a very credible guest was sleeping
  • Ghostly animals
  • A woman in period wear walking about the hotel
  • Mists forming in one of the caves in the pub and being caught on film
  • The front desk man still doing his job
  • A soldier walking the main pathway over and over again
  • A man watching employees from the stairway as they served guests
  • A man that enjoys looking out one of the windows
  • Last, but not least, a dark entity that had told Joe’s daughter and grandson to “GET OUT”

We wandered around and talked for about 2 1/2 hours.  Joe needed to talk to some potential customers so he let me walk around the property on my own.  I snapped some pictures and got a feel for the place.  There were a few areas where I felt there was more then myself walking around.

As the sun was starting to go down I decided to head home since I had a 3 hour drive ahead of me.  All the way home I couldn’t keep the Walker House out of my head.  I HAD to investigate the place!  When I got home I immediately sent out a message to the Dark Forest Paranormal family.  Something about the place made me want to organize the investigation and get everything planned out.

VISIT #2

Along with DFP members Ron and Lee we were in the Janesville area investigating another location.  The three of us decided to make a little trip over to the Walker House.  Lee and Joe went off on their own to take a look at all the heating and air conditioning.  Those two could have talked for hours about the stuff.  Ron and I decided to wander around the place.  I’m not sure if Ron experienced anything while we were there but again there were times where I did not feel that we were the only two walking around.

Ron did try the IOvelus a few times but did not get much for results.

The three of us were excited to have an investigation scheduled in a few weeks and to get to investigate a location within a good distance for all of us.  We are all about an equal distance away with them being in Chicago.

THE “OFFICIAL” INVESTIGATION

The team consisted of:

  • Myself (Wisconsin) – Stayed in Room #6
  • Lee (Illinois) – Stayed in Room #1
  • Ron (Illinois) – Stayed in Room #5
  • Nancy (Colorado) – Stayed in Room #7
  • Josh (Maryland) – Stayed in Room #8
  • Chris (Minnesota) – Stayed in Room #2
  • Mike (Minnesota) – Stayed in Room #2
  • Ally (New York) – Stayed in Room #9

DAY 1 – The Investigation begins

I was the first to arrive at the Walker House.  Joe again was there to great me.  We sat on the porch chatting about all sorts of stuff awaiting for the arrival of the other team members.

Nancy and Josh were the first two to arrive.  Joe proceeded to give Nancy and Josh a little tour of the place.  As Nancy went into the room she claimed for hers for the night she yelled out in the hall for us to come in the room.  She said she had just seen movement on the bottom of the bedspread.  She saw something hit it.  I looked under the bed but there was nothing there.  As the tour continued Joe started to talk about a cat running around like something was chasing it.  Nancy had a lightbulb go off in her head, what she had seen was what looked like the tail of a cat hitting the bedspread as it went under the bed.

As the tour continued we went in to one particular room and I could have sworn I saw a gray mist in the corner on the side of the bed, it was there for a few seconds and then just vanished.  Josh got got the feeling as if there was a child or a younger person that was trapped and in distress.  Later Joe revealed some information on the room from the tales that had been passed down to him and indeed Josh’s feelings were valid.

As the tour ended the three of us headed off to run some errands.  We chatted the whole time about the location.  Both Josh and Nancy were excited to investigate and felt like the location was active.  The building had a welcoming, comforting feeling.

Chris and Mike were the next two to arrive.  They got a tour while we were still running errands so I am not sure what that all entailed.

Unfortunately the Walker House has had the power to the building turned off which would have made some of the gear we brought with a little difficult to use.  Mike was the hero though!  He had a friend that had a 10,000 watt generator that we were able to borrow.  This would help us run the DVR, webcast equipment and charge some of our other stuff.

While we were getting the generator set up and the power run Josh and Nancy headed into a few of the rooms to do a little investigating.  I found them in one of the guest rooms with an Ovelus running.  I could hear them while I was walking up the hallway.  Things were coming out of the equipment that were describing the bed, where Nancy was sitting and things about her.  As I approached the door it got sort of quiet.  Josh started to ask some more questions , he even went so far as to ask if I could enter the room.  I heard “No……feet……dirty.”  That would have made sense as I was just outside climbing around running the power over the roof.  I lifted up my feet to check out if they were indeed.  As I lifted the second I heard “OK.”  Josh asked if it was OK if I entered the room.  ”Across.”  Josh replied “You want him to sit across from us?”  ”Yes.”  As I sat down the discussion seemed to return back to things about Nancy.  After a few minutes every thing went quite again and stayed that way.

We decided to head back out to see what was going on.  Lee had arrived.  Lee is the owner of the DVR so we helped him unpack and start setting up the DVR along with cameras and some other equipment.  We came up with a small game plan of how we would like the night to go.  Unfortunately Lee had misplaced some of the cables so we were only able to run two cameras the first night.

  • Camera 1 was setup in Room 1 (the room we were investigating earlier)
  • Camera 2 was setup looking down the hall to the guest rooms and directly aimed at room 9 (the room the reported apparition sits in looking down the hall)

While we still had light we decided to walk the property and do an EMF sweep.  It had an extremely low baseline reading since there was no power running throughout the building.  We did find one location in the kitchen where the EMF was off the charts.  Lee later hypothesized that the EMF came from some poor grounding with the water pipes.  The only other area we had high EMF readings was in the boiler room.  The water pipes came through that room and the fire alarm system was also throwing off some EMF.

As the darkness of night fell (it sure did fall, it was a super clear night and it was pitch black in Mineral Point) Ron and Ally arrived.  We quickly did introductions, broke up into small teams and headed out to investigate.

The Pub

The first location I was involved with investigating was the pub.  Several of the team members experienced problems with freshly charged batteries and brand new batteries.  A few of us needed to go back and get more batteries.

Chris headed into the smaller of the two caves.  Ally, Mike and Lee went into the larger and I decided to stay out in the larger area.  Voice recorders running we started an EVP session.  Mike is fairly new to investigating so Lee and Ally did a small training session with him.   Explaining just what the heck we were doing and what we would do later on with the voice recorders.

As the EVP session went on the pub was dead silent.  Lee suggested turning on the EM pump to see if that would help charge up the environment.  It still stayed quiet.

Ally decided to start a little provoking.  I had really never been involved in an investigation where this technique was used.  As she continued to get a little mouthy I started to hear some popping noises out in the area I was sitting.  Chris also heard these.

As I continued to survey the area with my eyes I started to notice what looked like a small shadow moving outside the cave that Lee, Mike and Ally were in.  Ally then asked out if someone was sitting outside the cave.  I replied no but I thought I was seeing something moving back and forth right outside the entrance to the cave.  She said she had thought she saw some movement but wasnt too sure.  Mike got up to investigate but there was nothing there.

While we were doing the session we were in contact with the other team via hand held radio.  Several times the radios keyed themselves but this could have been from some sort of external interference.

Eventually the EVP session started to get a little too long.  I have noticed anything more then 15 to 20 minutes gets a little on the minds of the participants.  Usually end up babbling about other things.  Plus longer recordings become very hard to review later on.  We decided to call the session to an end after about an hour.

Back at the DVR

We now broke up into three groups.  Lee and myself.  Ally, Mike and Chris.  Ron, Nancy and Josh.  Both Lee and I decided to stay at the DVR for a while.  We wanted to observe the webcast and see if anyone was requesting us to check out any locations in the building.  Ally, Mike and Chris were directly below us in the “lobby” area.  We could hear them doing an EVP session.  Ally said something that made her laugh and I heard what sounded like a little girl giggling from the stairway right next to us.  Noone else heard this.

Upstairs

Lee and I decided to head upstairs to find out where the others were.  When we got to the landing on the stairway we both heard what sounded like a woman sobbing.  We yelled up to see if it was Nancy.  Her team could not even hear us as they were down the hall a ways and in one of the rooms.  We could not find the source of the sound.

Top of the Main Stairs

Since we knew one team was upstairs and the other was in the “lobby” area we decided to head to the top of the main stairs where Joe’s former employees reported seeing a man watching them while they served food to patrons.  We had the “Ed Box” sitting at the top of the stairs and we both started our recorders running.  As our EVP session ran I thought at one point I had seen a larger shadow walk out of a side door but as we investigated nothing was found.  We stopped this EVP session at about the 20 minute mark.

The Lobby

As Ally’s team headed to a different location Lee and I decided to check out the Front Desk area.  Lee stood behind the desk and I took a seat on the chair.  We ran a 20 minute EVP session but did not notice anything.

Room #9

Lee and I decided to give one of the guest rooms a try.  For us it was relatively quiet.  Lee did report at one time seeing what he thought was a cat coming in to the room but it was only for a split second.

Calling it quits

After the Lobby I decided to call it a night.  Several of the other members continued to investigate.

Other reports from Day 1

  • Shadow movement in the upstairs hallway by the guest rooms
  • While Ally was doing some provoking in the kitchen area she had her ear pulled on.  Her ear was beat red for some time.
  • Lee saw a shadow, the shape of a person, walk across the back wall in the boiler room.
  • Lots of “dust” moving in Camera #1.  The direction of the “dust” did not match the airflow of the room and there were no bugs.

DAY 2 – “GHOST OR METEORITE HUNTERS?”

Mike and myself were the first two up.  We decided to walk around the non-occupied parts of the building.  When we got downstairs near the main stairway we both smelled a fresh fire.  It smelled like the fireplace in the pub had just been put out.  We investigated but there was no breezes coming from the fireplace and no logs were burned.  It could have possibly been from a pressure change in the building with a door open somewhere just aren’t sure.

As we continued to walk the building and try to figure out the smell we were greeted by a new smell as we went up the stairway.  As we reached the first landing we got the whiff of a very strong musty smell.  I never smelled it before that strong in the building but hey it’s an old building.  As we go to the top of the stairs though, we began smelling what was a horrible body odor smell.  It was as if we had just walked into a gym locker room.  The smell was only on the top few stairs and at the top of the stairs.  We walked around seeing if we smelled it anywhere else but could not.  The scent eventually dissipated.

Could this have been the man that was watching the previous employees?

Lee, Nancy, Ron and Josh headed to the next town over to do some shopping.  Mike, Chris and myself spent a good part of the morning enjoying the fresh air out front of the Walker House.  Ally continued to sleep.  As I looked back up at the building at one time I thought I had seen a man looking out of Ally’s window.  This is not the room that the reports of someone looking out the window happened.  We also know noone else was in the building at that time as Joe and his wife were at their sons house.  As I did a double take I did not see the man again.  When Ally woke up she didn’t report anything either.

Everyone returned to the Walker House.  Joe, his wife and grandson also came back to see how things were going.  While several of the team members were outside they were approached by some of the locals.  ”Ghost or meteorite hunters?”  Once they found out that we were ghost hunters the word spread like wild fire!  Later when we went to eat in the next town over we were asked about being ghost hunters.  Joe got a call from a local business owner asking him about what was going on.  It was crazy!

The team now split up.  Lee, Nancy, Ron and Josh headed out to go shopping again.  Chris went to catch a nap.  Mike and Ally headed to another hotel room we booked in town for showering and equipment charging.  I stayed and talked to Joe’s grandson.  He had a lot of experiences to tell me about.  Obviously not in his words but he said both he and his mom have experienced a lot of things in the hotel.  His mother sounds to be quite sensitive or possibly even psychic.  From what I heard she can describe several of the entities in the building.

I asked him if he was scared of any of the ghosts.  He said only two.  The first was the man that sits down at the end of the hall.  He said he walked upstairs one day and saw this guy sitting in a chair at the end of the hall.  The guy looked up at him, stood up and started walking towards him.  The man then turned when he got near one of the rooms and walked in.  The grandson walked down the hall to see where the man went and saw no one.  Pretty darn brave kid if you ask me. The second was the entity that told him and his mother to “GET OUT!”

He continued to tell me about some of the other ghosts.  There are several adults, a child or two and a few animals.  He then went on his merry way to being a little kid and just playing.

The Investigation

Lee had purchased new cables for his cameras so we were able to run many more.

  • Camera 1 was the hallway by the guests rooms
  • Camera 2 was the hallway by the bathrooms in the 80s addition where Ally had her ear tugged on
  • Camera 3 was the front desk area
  • Camera 4 was the pub
  • Camera 5 was a mobile camera with audio

For some reason it seemed much darker outside which made the building also seem much more dark.  Not in an ill will type darkness, just extremely dark.

The Webcast

I started the night out operating the webcast.  It was nice to see some of our familiar viewers and several new ones.  Some of the locals were even watching from the local tavern.

We decided to mainly broadcast from the live mobile camera.  I was passing along information people were giving me in the chat.  Joe decided to go along on the investigation this time.  Ally, Chris, Josh and Joe headed up to Room #1.  The chat room was buzzing with things they were “sensing” and “feeling.”  I was passing along tons of information and requests.  Ally was reporting her hair getting played with at one time.  It was requested at one time to see if anything could be moved in the room.  The hangars were chosen as they were the lightest thing in the room.  From what I could see from the DVR, the hangars did indeed move a little bit.  The strange thing is that only one moved while the others stayed still.  They were all set very close together.

As the chat room quieted down a little bit I decided to leave the DVR and go and investigate.

Room #9

I met up with Ron and Nancy in Room #9.  We started to do an EVP session and I decided to focus my attention out in the hall.  As I did I noticed what looked like the shadow of a small child peaking around a corner looking into the room.  I asked Nancy to take a look out in the hall.  I didnt fill her in on what I was seeing.  ”Well, that was weird” she said.  I asked her what and she went on to describe the same thing I was seeing.  In fact one time we both said at the exact same time “there it is.”  Several times one of us would see something and the other would describe the location or the shape.  What we were seeing I am not sure. Was it our eyes playing tricks on us?  How would two sets of eyes see the same thing?

The Pub

Lee, Nancy, Ron and myself decided to try something new down in the pub area.  We decided to do a little role playing.  Lee was the bartender, the rest of us were patrons.  Recorders were left running.

Lee played a very rude bartender.  He decided the people in the open area were more important then the people at the bar.  I decided to be the complainer and started complaining about him and the service we were getting.  I was asking for help from anyone else and things like that.

Lee came back and I decided to give up on him and his service and headed out to the open area to sit in one of the pews.  As I sat there I complained a bunch about him.

We had a laser pointer setup shining on the wall that was split into several beams creating a grid on the wall.  I started to watch the lights.  I was noticing some of them being blocked out but nothing in the way to block them out.  Nancy then came in by me and started observing things similar.  Lee then came in and stood at a completely different angle and noticed nothing.

We would explain which lights we saw blocked out and he would tell us nothing had changed.  Its almost as something was between us and Lee blocking some of the lights out from our vantage point.  As Lee went to point at one of the lights we were explaining the chair made a noise.  Lee did not bump the chair or the table.  It sounded as if when he reached his arm over someone got out of the chair.

We watched these lights get blocked out for about an hour.  We could come up with no logical explanation.  With confusion and frustration we decided to move locations.

Calling it quits

I started to feel ill.  Earlier while sitting outside I got too much sun and it was getting to me.  So I decided to call it a night.  Before I went to bed I made one last check in the chat room.  I had to laugh to myself as one of the locals called us “interlopers” and said we were causing all the ghost in the historic section to become agitated.  It was amazing that we were also investigating the night before but nothing was agitated then.

Room #6

While I was getting ready to go to sleep I started to hear some movement from the small sitting room adjoining my room.  When I looked up to investigate the sounds stopped and I saw nothing.

Other reports from Day 2

  • Of course I picked the wrong day to not feel well.  Later in the night as Josh was sitting in his bed watching TV on his phone he saw something out of the corner of his eye.  As he put his phone down and looked he saw a little girl sitting on the edge of his bed.  As he looked at her, she looked at him and then vanished.
  • Ally had her hair played with again while her and Lee were investigating the kitchen.

So what did I think?!?!?

All in all I think the Walker House is an amazing place!  There is just something about the place that sucks you in.  Just about everyone that came to investigate had some sort of personal experience.

I would LOVE to go back and investigate again!

We recorded hours upon hours of audio and video.  Unfortunately for myself life happens and I am unable to review all of the evidence on a timely basis.  I have been analyzing it as time permits.  My audio was pretty clean but one seemed to have another female talking in a room when there was no female with us.  I am passing that along to my Spooky Dudes team member Tom to review as well.  Lee has fallen upon hard times and has messed up his back at work.  He is currently on pain medication and has a hard time giving the evidence the attention that it needs.  Ally has some audio that she is having another person review it as well.  Nancy has passed some along to me but I can’t get my software to play it.  We have also sent off the video to fellow DFP member Ed for review.

I hope to post any evidence we may have captured here in the future.

THE BAD NEWS

The Walker House is in dire straits.  Due to many issues Joe has run into some financial difficulties.  Unfortunately he may lose the Walker House forever.  If Joe loses it there is no telling who the next owner is or what they will do with the property.  Investigating the Walker House may be on borrowed time.

Check out Patrick Burns amazing video

Ghost Hounds – On The Hunt “Save the Walker House”

The Walker House is looking for help and you can do it.  Donations are being taken on the following page.

Future of the Walker House

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Mantorville Opera House – Mantorville, MN

I was invited to go on an investigation of the Mantorville Opera House in Mantorville, MN.  Chris, one of the other members of Dark Forest Paranormal happened to know Paul, the person, that runs the Opera House.  Her along with another DFP member, Toni have wanted to investigate this location since they were kids.  They had always heard that is was haunted.

Joining the team was fellow DFP member Lee, Chris’s brother Mike and for a short time his wife Sally.

The Tour

A few of us arrived early at the Opera House to get a tour.  The tour started in the main entrance of the Opera House.  We were basically given a short history lesson on the location, including that the original building had burned down and the current Opera House was built in 1918 using limestone from the local quarry.

The first area of the Opera House we were shown was the most important, the bathrooms!  When I entered the room that lead to the bathrooms I got a weird punched in the gut feeling, nothing spectacular but I felt like noting it.  This area included a very small office and both the Villians (Men’s) and Heroines (Women’s) bathrooms.  Paul explained to us that another paranormal group had visited the Opera House a few months earlier and had a some activity in this area.  He really didnt get into the details much.

We were then led up to the balcony.  It was really cramped for room with all the equipment for the sound system, lighting and other items that were stored up there.

The basement was next on the agenda.  It spanned most of the Opera House but turned into a crawl space underneath what would be the back stage area.  <insert name> told us that a lot of people had been hearing sounds of cats in the basement.  Two volunteers had crawled into the crawl space to do some cleaning.  There were a bunch of old bottles in there along with a mummified cat.  While we were being led to another room in the basement Paul jumped back and gasped!  Against the wall was the mummified cat with a bandanna tied around its neck.  Im not going to lie, it was pretty creepy.

The next room we were shown was originally a small library.  It was a rather small area for a library but then again how many books would they have had back in the late 1800s, early 1900s in a community, that seemed to me, out in the middle of nowhere.  The room had a sealed door and a few sealed windows on one side.  The other side had a padlocked door and some cabinets.  Now the room looked to be the storage room for the extra chairs for the Opera House.

As we were led out of the room, Paul told us that there used to also be a kitchen and dining room down in the basement and showed us a window where the food was probably served through.

The next room was the largest room in the basement.  It was now a records storage area.  The Opera House is funded by local donations and lotteries, so there was a maze of boxes we had to navigate around.  I would really feel sorry if a fire started down there because the Opera House would probably go up in a few second.  This along with the sketchy wiring had me a little worried.  To turn on one light the switch was hanging off the conduit and sitting on top of a box, the other was hanging off of the ceiling by conduit.  At the back of this room there was the entry way to the crawl space where the cat was found.

There was another room off of this one that was loaded with old bottles.  My guess is it used to be a coal chute.  Paul said another team that had investigated there had felt there was a presence of an upset male in this room.

When we got back up to the main floor of the Opera House Paul introduced us to some of the people working on building a set and one of them continued our tour.

We were now shown the back stage area that consisted of four different rooms; makeup room, two storage rooms and a bathroom.  There was a closet in the makeup room that had a mannequin head and a weird doll with a Michael Myers looking face.  I later moved these as to not freak someone out when we were walking out and I just didnt like them.  We were told that it is reported that the lights on the mirrors in the makeup room will turn on by themselves from time to time.

Next we were led upstairs where our guide stopped about 3 steps up and yelled hello.  He said no one had been up there and the lights shouldnt be on.  He went back out to the stage and asked if anyone had been upstairs.  No one had been all day.  They were all out on the stage working on building sets.  He then said that it wasnt the first time that happened.  He has left there late at night before, knowing he turned off the lights only to turn around and the lights were back on.

The upstairs consisted of a hallway, three rooms and completely bizarre doll hanging with a chain around its neck and a wooden spike driven through its head.  The rooms were the mens dressing room, wardrobe storage and the womens dressing room.

As the tour ended we asked the people working on building the sets if they had ever heard any stories or experienced anything themselves.  One said there were stories of a woman in the balcony area watching the plays.  The only other experience was the guy that experienced the lights turning off when he knew they were out.

The crew needed to finish cleaning up so we headed out for some food.

The Gear

I, myself carried a digital camera, two digital voice recorders, a flashlight, an IR light and a night vision Hi8.  Im really not sure what the others each decided to carry.  Other then items we each carried we setup the following equipment:

* Digital Voice Recorder – Crawl space where the cat was found
* Camera (Camera 4) for the DVR – Records room
* EM Pump and Digital Voice Recorder – Next to mummified cat
* EdBox – Area between the office and bathrooms
* Laptop and DVR – Along the wall next to the women’s bathroom
* Camera (Camera 1) for the DVR – Balcony looking over the seating and stage area
* Static MiniDV Camera – Covered the balcony
* Camera (Camera 2) for the DVR – Makeup room
* Camera (Camera 3) for the DVR – Viewing the upstairs hallway
* Static MiniDV Camera – Women’s dressing room

The Investigation

We decided to split up in to two groups.  Team 1 consisted of Lee and myself.  Team 2 consisted of Chris, Toni, Mike and Sally.  I wont be able to blog anything about Team 2.  I never really did any digging into what they may or may not had experienced while on location.

Area 1 – Basement (Library)

Lee and myself decided to do an EVP session down in the basement at first.  Since Lee is usually silent I thought I was going to do all the question asking but I was shocked when Lee introduced himself and started asking questions of his own.  Lee did an EMF sweep of the area and found that we were in a pretty clean room.  Amazing as there is tons of old wiring and pipes in the building.

I set my Hi8 on a table facing us.  We started asking various questions, leaving quite a bit of time between questions.  There were a lot of little bangs and pops going on but that can easily be attributed to the HVAC system.  Most of it was just duct work fished in between rafters and torn out drywall.  At one point Lee thought he saw a small ball of light when he looked towards the area with the mummified cat, but was unsure.

I was going blank with questions and felt like I was babbling, so I asked Lee if he would be up for running through the questions once more and then heading upstairs.  He agreed, so we ran through the questions again and headed back upstairs.

Since we were webcasting from the location we would jump online between areas and give a little description of what we were doing and looked to see if anyone had seen anything on the cameras or if they had ideas for us.  One of the main things we really noticed on the cameras was the INSANE amount of dust in the building when someone would walk past one of them.

Area 2 – Makeup room


My back had started to bother me so my idea was to lay on the stage by myself and do an EVP session.  Lee said he was going to go to the office in the front of the building where I remembered there was also a couch.  So I followed him.  We only last a few minutes in this area as we could hear Team 2 right below us and we didnt want to contaminate any of the evidence.  We decided to check out the other couches which were back in the makeup room.

I laid on one couch and Lee sat on another.  Again we started an EVP session and AGAIN I was shocked as Lee started asking questions.  I thought it was great he was breaking out of his silence shell and asking questions.  It helped a lot when I would go blank he would come up with a question, which would lead to more.

The back room was pretty quiet except for the alley way on the one side of the Opera House.  You could hear any car that drove by.  Lee decided to get up and go check out the other rooms.  I continued to lay on the couch, relax my back and continue my EVP session.  I could hear Lee asking some questions in the other rooms as well.  Neither of us were talking over each other which worked out rather well.

At one point Lee felt something brushing his hair which then turned into crawling on his neck.  Seems there was a spider that took interest in Lee.  He swatted it off and went on with the investigation.

Lee eventually returned to the makeup room where at one point he got excited and said he saw the shadow of a head poke its head into the room through the stage curtain.  He saw it through a mirror which happened to be above me.  I thought I had heard some footsteps out on the stage but was unsure.  This may have been someone/something checking us out?

We could hear Team 2 out in the main Opera House area so we decided to call an end to our investigation and head out to see what was up.

Area 3 – The main Opera House

I decided to sit and check out the webcast for a while.  I placed my voice recorder on the stage.  The teams now changed up a little bit.  Sally decided to call it a night.  Team 1 was now Lee and Mike, Team 2 was Chris and Toni.  Team 1 decided to head upstairs.   Team 2 decided to sit up in the balcony and just chill.  I spent most of my time updating the people watching our webcast.

Team 2 decided to head up on the stage and start an EVP session.  They got about 5 minutes in and suddenly Team 1 comes down stairs.  Lee needed to have people check something out.  Something happened in the wardrobe room and Lee’s one arm was extremely cold!  He wanted someone else to come check it out so I decided to head up.

Area 4 – Wardrobe room

Lee, Mike and myself entered the wardrobe room.  The room is PACKED with clothing so there really wasnt too much room for us to move around.  Lee and Mike kind of giggled and just told me to pick a place in the room, stand and see if I noticed anything.  I decided to stand in one of the corners.  At first I felt nothing, then I moved my hand.  When my hand moved there was suddenly a breeze that seemed to come out of nowhere hit the back of my hand.  It almost felt as if there was someone breathing on me.

Lee and Mike then explained that is exactly what they felt.  There had to be a logical explanation.  We dug around, found no leaks in the room, found one vent with nothing happening by it and the breeze continued.  It seemed to come out of a purse and some clothing that were hanging on a rack.  We shut the door to see if there was some sort of draft and nothing changed.  Lee decided to go down stairs and get a container of smoke he had with him.

He tested it out in various areas of the room.  We could not figure out where the breeze was coming from.  In some areas of the room the smoke would dissipate normally.  Other times it would go in the direction we were feeling the breeze.  We continued to look through everything and we could not find a source.  The only other thing we could have done is moved everything out of that room and looked for more of a source.  That would have taken hours.   We figured we would send Team 2 up and see if they experienced the same.

Area 5 – Men’s dressing room

We moved into the men’s dressing room and did an EVP session.  We tried something new to us and tried to do more of a role playing session.  We were asking for help with our clothes, our lines and other things we figured would go with doing a play.  At one point Lee busted out a crazy line and about 5 minutes later we all got into a big laugh fest from it.  No idea why it took 5 minutes for that to come on.  Lee also thought he saw a flashlight shine across the ceiling as if Team 2 were coming upstairs but noone was there.

We finally decided to call it a night.

The End Of The Night

All in all we all felt like we did a pretty good job covering the building.  We could have maybe investigated the one room in the basement a little more but we can hopefully go back some day and do it again.

Evidence Review

I was able to go through all my recordings and video the past two nights.  At one point I thought I had caught an EVP in Area 1 but after reviewing the video it ended up just being Lee talking as he stood up which had altered his voice a little.  Other then that I didnt notice anything else.  I have sent off my audio to Tom to check it out as well.  I feel its always good to have a second set of ears check things out.

I am still waiting to hear from the remainder of the team to see if they captured any evidence.

My Final Thoughts

The Mantorville Opera House is a very cool location.  It has a lot of history, it is nicely restored and taken care of by people that really care about taking care of the place.  Mantorville itself is a very cool area.  There is so much history in such a small area.  Within a few blocks I am guessing there are at least half a dozen places that I would love to investigate.  I would love to go back some time in the future and check things out again.

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Palmer House Hotel – Sauk Centre, MN

So here I am back from my weekend (Jan 22 – 24, 2010) with the Dark Forest Paranormal crew at the wonderful Palmer House hotel.  I am still trying to process all the happened to me and the team.  There are a few things I wont be talking about since they were experiments that were done that I was not involved in or the crew has requested not be publicly known yet.

Friday, January 22nd

On the way to the Palmer I sent my friend Michelle “Babs” Babiarz a few text messages to see if she got any vibes about the place I was going to be investigating this weekend.  I did not tell her where I was going.  She sent me a name, which she also sent me when I was there previously.  The previous time I did NOT tell her where I was at.  In fact I just told her about that today.  She also started describing a room that I should check out.  I had no clue what she was talking about but kept the messages for reference.

After a very LONG and white knuckled drive (there were several cars and a semi jack-knifed in the ditch) I arrived at the Palmer House.  I was the first to arrive and sat down to chat with Kelley while I checked in.  Kelley said “I think they know you guys are coming, they have been pretty active this week.”  At about the same time she said this the surround system for the lobby and pub music started hissing, crackling and popping.  The system had not been on at all that day.  We let it go without saying anything about it for probably ten minutes as we continued to talk about things.  The sounds would come from the speakers in very random intervals over that time.  Finally Kelley looked at me and said “Do you hear the speakers?”  Of course I responded with a “Sure do!”  “Well I guess they want the music on” Kelley said as we entered the pub and turned the system on.

I decided that was my queue to bring my stuff in and head upstairs to check things out.  Lee and I shared one of the double rooms on the third floor.  Room #16.  We have stayed in this room and all in all it seemed pretty quiet.  A couple of trips up and down the stairs I finally had all of my gear in.  Walking around the hotel and checking out the rooms the hotel seemed relatively quiet.  I was the ONLY person, besides Kelley’s father in his apartment on the second floor, that occupied the 2nd and 3rd floor.  I checked out just about every single room.

Everything seemed relatively quiet besides the children’s room.  I just felt a different kind of energy in that room.  Not really sure what it was, nothing negative.  My hairs on my neck and arms stood up and the “ghost compass” effect started to happen.  As I walked away from the room I as watching my arm hairs pointing back towards the room.  That lasted all while I walked up and down the 3rd floor hall until I went back in my room.

While sitting in my room I decided to jump on the Palmer House’s wireless and see what the weather was supposed to be like and if there were any emails or Facebook updates from the other team members.  Terrie and her husband were driving up from Ohio, so I sent her a few updates about my trip since she would be traveling some of the same roads.  While sitting in the chair with its back facing the 2nd room that Lee would be sitting in I heard what sounded as if someone sneezed a foot or two behind me.  Maybe I should have said bless you but being a paranormal investigator I got out of the chair and began to try and debunk the sound.  I looked out the window, no running vehicles outside.  Checked the bathroom and played with the various curtains to see if one of those made the sound.  Walked into the room and started playing with the blinds and curtains to see if I could reproduce the sound.  I could not get anything to sound like someone sneezing.

I headed down to the lobby to give a friend a call to see if I should let Lee in on this bit of information.  Of course we both decided against it.

A little while later Lee, Ashlee and Jay arrived.  I helped Lee carry all of his gear up to the room.  Those of you who know Lee he brings a TON of gear!  His gear suitcase was twice as large as his clothing bag.  Jay and Ashlee asked us to come in there room and check things out.  They were down on the 2nd floor in room 11, which we later found out was Annie’s room.  Upon entering the room I was overwhelmed by the heavy scent of perfume.  It was not what Ashlee was wearing and it was as if someone had just stood in the room spraying the perfume.  It was almost sickening.  Jay then told me to walk into the bedroom.  As I walked through the doorway to the bedroom I got a weird feeling of heaviness from about my chest down.  It was as if I wading in a pool.  It wasn’t a very comforting feeling.  We left then left the room.

We headed over to the 2nd floor conference room which Kelley had reserved for us for the weekend.  Another awesome gesture on her part.  We sat in the room discussing how we were going to do the investigation and how the webcast was going to work.  Kelley stopped in and started chatting with us, seeing how things were and what we were going to be doing for the weekend.  While we were chatting it ended up being an awesome information exchange session.  I asked her about some experiences Lee and I had when we had the whole hotel to ourselves a year prior.  She had never had anything like that reported.  Lee shared a very spooky EVP with her that he had gotten before one of the Darkness Radio Halloween parties.  We started discussing the feelings we got in Jay and Ashlee’s room.  She then let us know that was “Annie’s” room.  I don’t recall the exact story but it was something about Annie being pregnant.  She said several women have felt stomach pains in while staying in the room.  One in fact so violent that her friends thought they were going to have to take her to the Emergency Room.

During this whole time I had to sit across the table from a picture, which was harmless but just looked plain creepy.  It was one of the Palmer family.  In fact it is the picture we left on webcam while we went down and ate and several people remarked on how creepy it was.  Anyways, while we were chatting Lee suddenly stopped and says “Man, I keep getting the name Charlie in my head.  I don’t know why.”  I got really quiet all of a sudden, reached in my pocket, pulled out my cellphone and started going through my messages.  With a smirk on my face I slid the phone across the table to Lee.  He just got a huge grin on his face.  “What?” Kelley asked and we showed her the message.  The message was from Babs indicating she was getting a Charlie name tied to the location.  Kelley then got a really puzzled look in her face and went into the office and started digging through her things.  She returned with a notebook and started going through the pages.  She stops at one, looks up with a big grin and says “Look here….. 2007, the name Charlie kept coming up.”  She then let us know that this notebook contained notes on things she had experienced or had been told by other investigators, psychics and guests.

While sitting in the conference room I kept noticing Jay brushing his forehead and ear.  I asked him what was up and he said it keeps feeling like someone is running something across my forehead and ear.  I thought that was very odd.  Then the both of us kept thinking we heard footsteps out in the hallway.  He would leave the room, then I would leave the room.  We never saw anything or really explained why we kept leaving the room.  Then we thought we heard footsteps on the 3rd floor so Jay and I went up to investigate.  We peaked in all the rooms and there was noone to be seen.  Lee and I were still the only two occupying the 3rd floor.  As we started our way back down to the conference room I thought what I heard was a dog whimper coming down the hall from the “Children’s” room side.  I turned around and walked down checking out all the rooms again.  Came back and Jay just looked at me puzzled.  “Nevermind” was all I said.  Then as we started back down he stopped, went back up and headed down the “Lucy’s” room side looking in each of the rooms.  He came back and asked “What did you hear?”  I started explaining it sounded like there was a dog up here.  He said “Was it whimpering?  Like it was in pain?”  I said “Yup!”  It never happened again on the way back to the conference room or the entire weekend.  When we got back in the conference room we asked Kelley if she had ever heard anything about a dog whimpering.  She said no, but there are always reports of bird sounds coming from up there, not local birds.  She said there have been teams that left recorders run the entire night and the recording is filled with tons and tons of bird sounds yet noone else hears them.

Terrie, Ashlee’s mother, arrived from her long trip from Ohio.  We headed down to the lobby to meet her and figure out the next plans for the evening.  After Terrie got situated we decided we would start moving equipment into the conference room and work out the details with the webcast.  Lee and Jay had TONS of equipment.  Just about every paranormal toy out there, these guys had.  Ashlee brought in a bunch of toys that she went to the dollar store and bought to use as “trigger objects” for the children that reportedly haunt the Palmer.  We set everything up in front of the “spooky” picture in the conference room, pointed the webcam at it and started broadcasting.  We then headed to the pub for dinner.

While in the pub, Lee’s family and friends showed up.  An additional 4 participants in the fun for the weekend.  None of them had been on a investigation before but were really looking forward to it.  After dinner we were about to head up to the conference room when all of a sudden the entire hotel went dark.  The lights came back on for a bit and then back out.  At first we thought “sweet activity already!”  Then we heard a loud bang outside and looked out the windows.  Sauk Centre was completely out of power.  The next I found out it was actually 5 counties that were completely out of power.  The ice storm wreaked havoc on the local power grid.  To me the hotel started to take on a whole different vibe.  Almost as if the spirits were ready to come out and say “Hah, no turning on light switches for you.  You are in our world now!”

While we were trying to figure things out I talked to one of the girls that works at the hotel.  Asked her if she had any experiences there.  She told me she sees a lot of things out of the corner of her eyes but one time she did experience something pretty cool.  She then went on to tell me about having a milk bottle with a push on cap sitting on a counter.  As she walked past it she noticed the cap lifting up and going back down, like it was on a hinge.  She stopped and watched and it continued to do it until she told one of the other workers to take a look.  It then stopped.

We figured we might as well make the best of it and start investigating.  We found out in the conference room that the batteries in the laptop and camera were running low.  The wireless was down for Internet but Lee being the gadget geek he is pulled out his Sprint WiFi and we were back online but still running on batteries.  We decided to investigate Lucy’s room first, so we moved all the equipment up there.  Immediately upon entering the room we started to have camera problems.  The camera we were using for the webcam would not display anything but static but the sound worked.  Ashlee’s HD camera started to malfunction.  We ended up having to swap cameras for the webcast and Ashlee wrestled with hers for a while resetting it, changing batteries and it finally worked.

The power came back on!

LUCY’S ROOM

On a previous visit to the Palmer we had a motion light turn on in that area while investigating the room, so Jay set up a motion light in the bathroom area of Lucy’s room.  It has been reported that she will retreat into the bathroom when there are a lot of people in the room.  Jay took a seat in Lucy’s chair.  An EMF meter with audible tone was set on a table.  Ashlee and her mother took places on the bed.  Lee’s niece Amanda sat on the floor next to the bed.  Lonnie and Chris stood in the doorway.  I leaned against the wall checking out the chat room on the laptop.  Lee and his sister Toni headed down the hall to check out some of the other rooms.  A few recorders were placed throughout the room as well.

Jay started out by asking questions.  Nothing seemed to happen while he was asking questions, obviously the footage needs to be gone through yet.  I had to giggle a few times watching the chat room.  Of course with any sort of public broadcast you will get the naysayers and the troublemakers.  One guy kept saying this is faked.  Which was what made me giggle as nothing was happening so I guess us sitting in a room was indeed all fake.

Terrie decided to bring out her dowsing rods.  I have never seen them used on an investigation so I was curious.  Terrie is very soft spoken, completely opposite of Jay.  While she asked questions I watched as her dowsing rods would start turning and pointing first at Lucy’s chair and then at the bathroom.  Terrie had no prior information of the Palmer or our prior investigations.  As her dowsing rods turned towards the bathroom the motion light went on.  Jay let everyone know the light went on.  I was watching the broadcast and really couldn’t see it.  As I looked up the light was off, then it went back on.  When it went off I fixated my eyes on the blinds and curtains in the bathroom to see if maybe there was wind coming from the outside and moving them.  I saw no movement.  The light turned back on.  The EMF meter on the table would set off an audible alarm during this as well.  Jay went in the bathroom but there was nothing in there.

Terrie then decided to try a technique that Chris Fleming has used in the past asking the spirit to drop the temperature.  Terrie had a digital thermometer in her hand and Jay had another about 1 1/2 feet away.  As Terrie would ask for small temperature drops, the thermometer would follow a few seconds later while Jay’s stayed at the same temperature.  A few minutes after Terrie had started this experiment the two thermometers were about 10 degrees different.  I was sitting near a window and there was no temperature change around me.  I was watching the webcast and passing on information to the chat room.  At this point I started hearing Ashlee whisper that something was touching her.  Then she started saying she wasnt liking what was happening and she was getting uncomfortable.  Jay moved over to the bed and told her to tell it to stop.  She started saying please stop it but it never came out much more then a whisper.  I told her to to it to stop loudly but she became unresponsive.  I looked up over the laptop screen and what I thought I saw was Ashlee’s pupils and then they looked to roll up into her head and all I could see was the whites of her eyes.  It could have been my eyes adjusting to the lighting in the room and I was just seeing her eyelids.  I couldn’t tell.  I put the laptop down and got up to help her off the bed.  She was now an emotional wreak.  It took some coaxing to get her to get up off the bed and actually respond to any of us.  I helped her up, out of the room and down to the lobby.  Something similar to this happened on our first investigation at the Palmer.  When I got her into the lobby she was shivering and looking in her eyes I could see what I thought was genuine fear.

I’m not sure what else went on in the room as I stayed down in the lobby with Ashlee until the others came down.  While we waited for the others I asked Ashlee if she would help me out with an experiment I wanted to try.  I have read reports of the silverware being moved in the diner, so we went in and set every piece of silverware at the top of the place mats.  I then took pictures of each and every one so we could reference them later.

Finally the group came down.  I have no idea what else occurred in Lucy’s room.  Lee and his family/friends wanted to investigate the basement so they headed down.  Jay and Terrie also wanted to go but had a very hard time convincing Ashlee to go.  I was pretty intent on staying with her until she figured out what she was going to do.  As long as she was with people I headed outside to take some outside shots of the hotel.  Sauk Centre gets very quiet at night, especially with the whole power outage deal.  When I got back inside Terrie and Jay had convinced Ashlee to head to the basement.

Some times the basement at the Palmer feels really heavy and crowded.  It wasn’t like that this time.  It felt….. well like a basement.  The group was in the “snowman” room conducting an EVP session.  While standing in the doorway Lee’s sister Toni looked at me and said something keeps brushing my forehead.  At that exact time it felt as if someone brushed past me from behind and I felt my shirt move.  Lee was walking around with the FLIR and Jay was conducting an EVP session.  For some reason me and Lee got into a major laugh fest.  That happens to us occasionally when investigating.  I think it comes from being so tired, everyone trying to be so quiet… some times it just becomes funny.  We decided to finish our work in the basement.

By this time it was about 2am and I was just beat.  I decided to take one final look in the diner to see if anything had moved and nothing had.  Headed up to the room and went to bed, most of the others stayed up till about 4:30am.

Saturday, January 23rd

I was the first to wake up.  I headed to down to get some breakfast at the diner.  Only one other table was being used so I checked all the tables again, nothing had moved.  I then got to share the diner with a Pee-Wee hockey team.  I heard the waitress on the phone and working with the cook trying to get setup to accommodate 20.  Well when they showed there was more like 50.  While I was finishing up my phone indicated a text message.  It was another text from Babs.  This time “Totally unrelated to the other information I sent, someone living at the location is supposed to heat up their tea or coffee.  Its getting cold.”  I had no clue what she was talking about but saved it in case anything came up later.

Finally the others woke up and got some food in their bellies.  The hockey team had left and everyone was in the diner chatting it up about the experiences from the night before.  Its always cool to have “seasoned” investigators along with  “newbies.”  I just sat back listening to the stories about the night before and how they felt about their experiences.  Several discussions were going on about what was planned for the rest of the day and night.  Jay was telling us about an incident while brushing his teeth, he said the water was off as he spit the toothpaste into the sink the water turned itself on.

Babs sent a message asking if I had found the room she was describing yet.  She described the walls and was very particular that what she was describing was the walls and not the ceiling.  So Jay, Lee and I decided to head to the basement.  Lee had ideas where he thought the room was but there was one key thing that was missing there and that was a particular color.  She described slatted walls with paint on them, but it was graying.  Like it had been white at one time but is now dirty or almost gone.  We found a whole bunch of walls that looked like that in one particular part of the basement.  I took pictures of all of them to pass along to her later.  (Later she identified two pictures taken from different angles as being the one she was describing.  I will be checking out that room next time I am there.)

Due to the storms Kelley let us know that we would be sharing the hotel with two other people that wanted to avoid the treacherous roads on their drive home.  She also filled them in on what was going on and they were fine with that.

I passed on the information from Babs to Kelley.  She kept some for her notes.  She laughed at the “Totally unrelated to the other information I sent, someone living at the location is supposed to heat up their tea or coffee.  Its getting cold” message.  I asked her what was so funny and she called over the waitress.  They both went on to tell me that her (the waitress) coffee always is getting cold, including around the time that I received the text from Babs.

Ashlee wanted to film a bunch of footage for her project so we spent most of the day filming a walk through of the hotel with us describing things we knew and what we experienced in various rooms in the hotel.

LUCY’S ROOM – Day 2

While in Lucy’s room filming; Jay, Ashlee and myself were talking about the experiences we had the first time we visited the Palmer.  When we were done they wanted to talk about the previous nights experiences so I decided to wait in the door way while the filming was going on since I really wasn’t involved much.  As I stood in the doorway I had the second most disturbing thing happen to me at a haunted location.  Out of nowhere it felt as if the world dropped from under me and I fell a foot.  My brain felt as if it was jostled (flashbacks to martial arts days getting punched or kicked in the head), my stomach dropped, my heart felt like it skipped a beat and then went rapid.  I looked at Lee and shook my head.  I felt like I was completely off balance and couldn’t get my bearings.  I immediately left the room and went down to the lobby and sat in a chair, sort of in a vegetative state.  I still really don’t know what happened to me.  Several people think I had someone or something walk through me.

For pretty much the rest of the day/night I just felt on edge.  I was dizzy, my hands were shaking, I was on edge, my hairs kept standing up on my neck and arms, I kept getting chills.  It was weird!

I thought maybe it was something as simple as I needed some sugar or food.  When the group was done filming they came down to the lobby and we decided to get dinner.  Even after having some awesome Walleye in the pub I still didnt feel right.

We decided to start the webcast early so up to the conference room we headed.  Everyone started talking about ideas for the night.  Terrie had some experiments (none that were negative, provoking or anything like that) she wanted to try but wanted few people with her.  So Jay thought it would be a good idea to break up in teams.  Discussions started about what was going to happen in each room and Jay started mentioning the Frank’s box.  For those that don’t know what it is Im not really sure how describe it but my buddy and SpookyDude’s team member Tom had a good easy to understand explanation.  It is a machine that scans through the radio and spirits can supposedly manipulate it to talk, sort of like Bumblebee on Transformers.  Personally I am not a big fan of this and I think due to what had happened earlier I got rather argumentative about it.  I said teams are fine but once that thing goes on I am out of the room.

While we continued to discuss things some weird rhythmic knocking came from above us, which would have been the “children’s” room.  Lee and Jay ran up to check it out and there was noone in that room.  The knocking continued while they were in the room as well.  There was really no logical explanation for it.

As we started moving to our first locations I decided due to me still not feeling right I was going to remove myself from the investigations.  Terrie took a small group of women into Lucy’s Room.  The rest of the group headed in to Raymond’s room (Rm 22) and the webcast commenced.  I decided to stay out in the hall and pass on information with the chat room.  Tom did have to point out, in the chat, that I am not a big fan of hallways either on investigations.  My first experiences of my adult life happened to me in the hallways of a hotel for quite a few days in a row.

About an hour went by when all of a sudden I heard loud crying, so loud the people on the webcast were asking who was crying and the doors to both rooms were closed, coming out of Room 17 and Lee’s sister, Toni, came running out of the room in tears and crouched down in the hall next to me.  I don’t know the full extent of what Terrie was trying in the room was but I know they tried the dropping of the temperature deal.  She had the temperature drop from around 38 degrees (which was cold as it was) to 1 degree in less then 8 seconds.  She was one heck of a trooper though, she would not leave the room until someone took a picture of the thermometer she was holding.

A few people went with Toni as she went outside to have a smoke to calm her nerves.  The others flooded the room to confront whatever they felt was “attacking” her.  I was typing away, passing on information as I could get it.  I heard Terrie say I am not afraid of you several times.  The room seemed to calm down some.  We all decided to regroup downstairs and make sure Toni was OK.

All the equipment was left on in Rm 22.  It was interesting to check the chat room while noone was there.  They were trying their own experiments.  The Ovelus was speaking back to them when they would all type the same word.  My buddy Tom started looking up the atmospheric conditions for the area.  He filled me in that everything was prime for EM spikes.  He is a pilot and he said the conditions around our location is the kind that really mess with aircraft instrumentation and electronics.  During all this Lee kept disappearing.  He was setting up a bunch of static cameras in the basement.

The group decided to head back up continue the investigation.  The webcast was moved to Lucy’s room and Terrie’s group moved down to the kids room.  I sat at the top of the 3rd floor monitoring the webcast.  Lee and Lonnie came out to get a break for a while, as we sat at the top of the staircase we heard what sounded like a woman laughing coming from downstairs.  We yelled Hello a few times but noone responded.  So Lee and Lonnie went down to check things out.  Noone else was in the building and they found nothing when they investigated.

I finally got sick and tired of sitting in front of the computer screen and was starting to feel good so I went outside to take some external shots of the hotel.  The fog was really low and it just looked spooky.  While I was outside I debunked the woman laughing.  There are several taverns down the road from the Palmer and there was a class reunion going on.  A large group of ladies were outside having a good old time and it was echoing like crazy throughout the whole downtown.  When I went back inside I could hear the laughter and much more.

Heading back upstairs I found the groups re-situating themselves again.  Terrie’s group went back in to Lucy’s room.  Lee went back downstairs to change tapes and investigate more of the hotel.  Ashlee and Jay decided to take a break.  A few of the others ended up going to bed.

Since I was feeling good I figured it was time to walk around the hotel a bit and take a look in some of the rooms and also pack up any of my equipment I had laying around in the conference room.  As I unlocked the door to my room I could hear Terrie, Toni and Chris yelling in Lucy’s room for help.  I threw all of my stuff down on the floor and ran down to the door to the room.  I could not turn the door handle.  The door was not locked as Ashlee had just walked in about 30 minutes earlier.  Chris got up and opened the door and I pretty much threw the door open.  Lucky for me the warped floor stops the the door from opening all the way or I would have been paying for some drywall replacement.  The room was FREEZING!  The thermometer was showing negative 2.  I’m not sure what was going on but I know the room was cold and when I opened the door it seemed like a rush of energy flew past me out the door.

I was beat so I decided to turn in for the night.  The rest of the crew that was awake continued on investigating on through the night.

CONCLUSION

Personally I was a little disappointed in myself as I didn’t investigate much after what happened to me on Saturday in Lucy’s room.  I wanted to challenge myself with something I had planned but I could not go through with it.  Now that I look back at it I think I did the right thing.  I would rather be safe then sorry.

The webcast was an interesting experience and very cool to see family, friends and fellow team members interacting.  It was also neat to find out there were over 600 unique viewers and I saw one state they were from the UK and another from Canada.

We have hours and hours of film and digital voice recordings to go through.  We will try to share what evidence we captured, if any.

I have now been to the Palmer House three times and para-normally speaking, the Palmer House has yet to let me down.

For any of those that have not gotten to experience the Palmer House hotel in Sauk Centre, MN, I would highly recommend planning a trip up there.  Kelley and her staff are AMAZING!  Everyone is so friendly, their hospitality is second to none and the food in the Restaurant or Pub are fantastic.  If you are lucky enough the spirits within the hotel will also make an appearance and you will leave with an amazing experience.

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