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

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.