Kentucky Private Residence Investigation

Location: Winchester, KY

Date: June 24 and 25, 2005

Moon Phase: Full

Solar Weather: Friday Night:
                        Geomagnetic: Storm!
                        Solar Flares: Active

                        Saturday Night:
                        Geomagnetic: Quiet
                        Solar Flares: Active

Investigators present: Hillary M., Paul M., and John M., and Robert H.

Equipment: Olympus C-3000 digital camera, four Sony digital video cameras with Nightshot and IR extenders, Extech EMF meter, Olympus DS-1 Digital Voice Recorder, Extech IR thermometer, Sony MINI DV, Kodak digital camera, Panasonic digital voice recorder, 2 remote sensor 35mm cameras, Olympus 2000 Digital Voice Recorder, Olympus C-4000 Digital Camera, Canon PowerShot S2IS digital camera.

History: The current family has lived in the house since May, 2000. They don't know much about the history, but the history of the house is being thoroughly researched by a third party. The family that is currently living here purchased the house from Billy Pace. Her husband purchased it at auction with his mother in 1950s. It is suspected that Mr. Pace died in the home. The home was also previously owned by the Rice and French families, separately. The house was actually named after Eva French. She was the oldest daughter of seven children to judge Charles Stevens French. He and his wife are also suspected to have passed away in the house.

Ghostly history: The owners have lived in the house for 5 years with their three children. They have experienced the following activity during that time:

· The first night that they spent in the house, Elizabeth and Craig were just falling asleep when they heard what sounded like a bunch of marbles hitting the floor, bouncing, and rolling. Upon inspection, they found nothing to cause the noise. Most of their belongings were still in boxes at the time.
· Within the first six months, Elizabeth would often feel a ghost cat jump up on the bed with her. After about six months though, this particular activity ceased.
· One morning, Craig heard an old woman say "Good Morning". The voice came from Elizabeth's side of the bed.
· Their pet cat would often hiss at nothing and run off.
· Elizabeth has heard her name called, loud unexplainable noises from the other side of the house, muffled voices (as if a party were going on), and music being played. She also often sees movement out of the corner of her eye.
· She was once awakened by hands running down both sides of her body. At first she thought it was Craig. The next morning she found out it was not him. A few weeks later, she had a girlfriend sleep over in another bedroom who experienced the same thing.
· One morning, after a snow, Elizabeth sent her kids downstairs to watch TV to see if the schools were closed. She heard footsteps come up the stairs, and down the hallway. She heard her bedroom door open, and she said "I guess there's no school today." She rolled over and there was no one there. She laid back down, and felt that there was someone right in front of her face. She didn't open her eyes, but reached over to turn on the light. She got the impression that it was an adult male.
· Elizabeth believes that there are many children spirits within the house, because her youngest daughter (2 years old) told her that the children were waking her up at night. Elizabeth made a deal with the children spirits that she would rock them in her rocking chair each night before bed if they promised not to wake her daughter anymore. When she's "rocking the children" at night, she's felt them touch her arm and face. She's felt their weight against her chest, gotten goose bumps, and felt light-headed.
· Craig's parents often stay with them for the summer. During one stay, his mother wrapped a broken piece of jewelry in a tissue and placed it in her purse in anticipation of a trip to the jeweler. When they got there and unwrapped the necklace, it was already fixed. Elizabeth was witness to the incident.
· After their youngest daughter had major surgery, she was in a bouncy seat on the kitchen table. Elizabeth turned around to get a new jar of baby food. When she turned around to face the baby, Elizabeth saw the baby reach over for the empty jar of baby food. The Velcro tabs on the bouncy seat ripped off, the baby fell out of the seat, but instead of falling, the baby hovered in mid-air with one foot sticking straight up, as if an unseen hand was holding her by the ankle. Then the baby was slowly lowered to the floor, like the whole thing was in slow motion. Another person was there to witness the incident as well.
· Elizabeth and Craig were sitting in the kitchen talking about the ghosts one night with some friends, and one of the light bulbs in the kitchen light exploded, sending glass flying everywhere.
· This house is often investigated by Katie and Neil of Ghost Chasers International.
One night, about a minute after they walked out the door, they came back and showed Elizabeth that their car key had been twisted in a corkscrew fashion. Another investigator had her car battery drained. Elizabeth has also had keys twisted slightly.
· Many strange occurrences such as temperature changes and light anomalies have been recorded by paranormal investigators in the past. Psychic impressions and dowsing have revealed that there is the spirit of an older gentleman within the home. An old wheelchair was found in the basement when the house was purchased, and it is believed that the chair once belonged to this older gentleman whom they call "papaw". Psychics, dowsing, and stories told by Elizabeth and Craig's two-year-old daughter have also led them to believe that there are the spirits of several children in the house. One visitor to the house even saw the apparition of a young girl in Victorian-era dress.
· Many other strange occurrences have been witnessed by the family, as well as by visitors to the home.

NOTE: This house was featured on the front cover of the first issue of Fantasma Magazine!

Investigation: We arrived at the house and were immediately given a tour of the home by Elizabeth. Not long after the tour began, Katie, Neil, and Walli (members of Ghost Chasers International) arrived. Katie, Neil, and Walli have investigated this home many times. I began interviewing Elizabeth and her husband Craig while Paul, John, and Robert took control pictures and temperature and EMF readings, and mapped out the house. Temperature and EMF information can be found here. We then sat down with the Ghost Chasers for a short while and shared some delicious food and stories. It is important to note that during the interviewing session, one of the children's toys in the kitchen turned on by itself several times. It is also important to note that some toys have been known to do this when the batteries are running low. We did not check the batteries in this particular toy.
  We began our investigation by setting up video equipment in the attic, on the second floor, and in the hallway outside the living room, then heading to the living room for an EVP session just after 10:00 p.m. Neil and Craig joined us. Paul got a strange orange-pink stationary orb near Craig about a minute and a half into the session. About a minute and a half later, I got a bluish moving orb in the same area. John took a picture at nearly the same time and also got a moving orb in that area. Robert immediately took a picture and got a fainter bluish moving orb closer to us. About ten minutes into the session, Elizabeth and Katie joined us, and put a large blue ball on the floor in front of us. Elizabeth asked "the children" to move it. The ball did move slightly, but we determined that the movement was most likely caused by the uneven floor.
  At 10:45 p.m., we moved into the older part of the basement. During this session, Paul got a picture of an orb, which seems to be moving around a support beam. Robert also got a picture of a strange beam of blue light near my elbow. Seven minutes into the recording session, I thought I heard a whisper coming from John's direction, but no one else heard it. It also did not show up in our audio recordings.
  At 10:58, we moved into the newer part of the basement. Almost immediately, I got a picture of an orb in a hole in the ceiling caused by a missing ceiling tile. Both Paul and Robert, who were on opposite sides of the room, saw this orb with their naked eye in the light of the camera flash.
  Next, we moved our video cameras to the basement, and began an EVP session in the master bedroom, where Katie sat down to "rock the children" at 11:30. Two minutes into the session, I got a moving orb next to Katie. Almost 20 minutes later, Elizabeth's youngest daughter began to stir, so Elizabeth took her out of her crib and sat down to rock her. John took a picture and got a bright moving orb next to her. Then the motion sensor camera, which we had set up on the other side of the room, went off by itself.
Just before midnight, we headed up into the attic. Almost three minutes into the session, I got a bright bluish, moving orb next to the windows on the other side of the room. John also obtained a picture with two moving orbs in it - one white and one blue! Since it was still quite warm in the attic, we decided to call it a night.
  While Robert was packing up his video camera in the first floor hallway, he heard (in his head) a little girl's voice say, in a very fast, clipped tone: "I don't like you here". He looked around, but he was alone. Although Robert has had clairaudient experiences on a few occasions in the past, and was fortunate enough to corroborate one incident with a digital recording, his recorder was off at the time, so he has no proof to "back-up" the experience.

  The following night, we arrived at the house around 7:00 and set up our video equipment in the basement. We then headed into the unfinished bedroom at the back of the house, which is under construction and will one day be the master suite. Paul recorded fluctuations on the EMF meter of 2.0-3.0 milligauss in this room, which he was unable to trace. We also recorded a 20 degree temperature climb in a small crawl space above the closet. We theorized that it could simply be radiant heat from the sun on the outside roof, but after going outside to check on the angle of the sun, we found that this area had already been in the shade for quite some time. At one point, John and Paul actually watched the temperature on the infrared thermometer climb ten degrees in as many seconds. However, we still cannot be certain that this temperature change was not caused by radiant heat through the bricks.
  Over the next 20 minutes, we spread out and held EVP sessions in the kitchen, guest room, dining room, and den. The only things that are noteworthy in these rooms are the picture of a small moving orb that Robert obtained in the kitchen, and John's feeling of being watched while he was in the dining room.
  At 8:12 we moved into the living room. John sat down in the antique wheelchair which the homeowners found in the basement when they moved in (which may be tied to the haunting). Robert and I both got several pictures of stationary orbs near John in the beginning of the session. John later revealed that when he first sat in the wheelchair, he got an overwhelming feeling of discomfort, like he was being disrespectful by sitting there.
  At 8:53 we headed down to the basement, but recorded no anomalous results. Since we weren't getting much, we decided to take a break.
  At 10:00 p.m. we moved our video equipment to the attic, and spread out on the second floor landing. I noted that there was a bird caught in the dropped ceiling of the playroom, which kept chirping. Since we still weren't getting any results, John went downstairs to ask Elizabeth to join us. As John and Elizabeth were coming up the stairs, approaching the second floor landing, the door at the top if the steps opened for them. They thought that I had opened the door, but I was several feet away from the door at the time. It seemed that the door had been opened for them at just the right time by unseen hands. They had even heard the doorknob unlatch from the jam. Unfortunately, after a series of tests, we discovered that we could cause the door to unlatch and swing open by itself by hitting just the right floorboard on the landing, or just the right spot on the step in the stairwell.
  At 10:15, we went into the master bedroom where Elizabeth "rocked the children". This session was uneventful.
  Next, we headed up into the attic, which was 89 degrees even that late at night. About five minutes into the session, I felt that I couldn't take the heat anymore, so I went back down to the second floor while the rest of the team remained in the attic. I walked into Elizabeth and Craig's son's room and stood quietly, realizing that the rest of the team would hear any movement I made, which could affect their audio recordings. The only light in the room was from the lava lamp against the far wall, and the light coming in from the hallway. As I stood in the middle of the room, I looked around and tried to get a feel for the atmosphere. I felt very comfortable and was actually thinking "how great it must be to have such a nice, big, comfortable room as a child" when I saw something strange. The best way that I can describe what I saw is to say that it looked like a large mosquito, illuminated by light, hovering about 18 inches off the ground and swinging back and forth as if on a pendulum. It only lasted 2-3 seconds. My initial thought was that it was a mosquito, so I immediately leaned over and hit the overhead light switch. I searched the room, but could find no insects at all. I then thought that I was maybe hallucinating due to the heat. But I felt fine and wasn't dizzy or lightheaded at all. When the rest of the team came down from the attic, I told them about my experience. They thought that maybe it was glare from light coming in through the window. Upon further inspection, we found that the shade was pulled down and taped to the woodwork around the window, so it is not possible that any light came in through the window.

Conclusions: During our initial walk-through of the house, we determined that it is situated on a fairly busy road, and that the house next door has been split up into several apartments. We also noted that since the house is still being renovated, it is not tightly sealed, allowing for birds, bats, bugs, stray cats, opossums, and maybe even raccoons to gain entry (some of these animals were caught on our video cameras). These things must be considered in regard to the noises heard so frequently inside the house. Also, because there were several other people in the house while we were investigating, several hours of our audio recordings had to be deemed invalid. This may explain why we obtained no EVPs.
  However, even so, we did obtain several excellent pictures during our two-day investigation. One of these pictures was obtained on a 35mm motion sensor camera, which went off by itself while in the master bedroom. This picture shows swirls of orange, red and yellow, which we cannot explain. The other pictures on the roll (including the pictures immediately before and after this one) were normal. We also experienced a 20-degree temperature fluctuation (which may or may not be explainable) and some strange EMF fluctuations. Two of the investigators in our group had their own personal experiences while in the house, however, the other two investigators had no experiences or impressions.
  The evidence that we were able to collect does point to some level of ghostly activity within the home. To be fair, of course, we only investigated the home over two days, and unfortunately, we cannot make ghosts perform at will. This house has been investigated many more times by other groups who have obtained some impressive results. If we lived closer to Winchester, Kentucky, we would consider this property for a long-term study to see what happens on multiple investigations. It was noted that the level of activity seemed much higher on the first night, when the investigators from Ghost Chasers International were there with us. Were the ghosts just shy, and therefore unwilling to show themselves to the investigators of the PRSNA? I can't help but make the connection between this possibility, and the behavior of so many children that I know, who will hide behind their mother's legs when confronted by a stranger who is trying to communicate with them.
  The person who has been researching this property for quite some time has agreed to share her research with us, once our report has been finalized (so that her research does not skew our results). It will be interesting to see if the historical research does support the theory that this house is haunted by several children, thereby, possibly explaining the pattern of our results.

Afterward: After the investigation report was completed, Polly Dame and Cindy McFarland were nice enough to send us information on the extensive research that they have done on this property. You can view this information here. This information is believed to be accurate, but cannot be guaranteed by the researchers or the PRSNA.

Please note that the owners of this property welcome the investigation of their home. If you are in the Winchester, Kentucky area, and wish to investigate this home, please contact the PRSNA for further information.

Special thanks to owners Elizabeth and Craig for allowing us to investigate their home. Not only did they provide us with scrumptious snacks, but they even sent two out of three of their children to their grandparents for the weekend so that we would have better conditions for our investigation. Thanks also to Katie, Neil, and Walli, who were nice enough to share the results they've obtained in the home during several past investigations, and to Polly Dame and Cindy McFarland for sharing their research on the property.

Submitted by Hillary Murdoch