by Rich Newman
Once we had extinguished all the lights in the trailer, we were then able to turn on all the night-vision cameras and kick off our investigation. Gear was distributed throughout the team and the residents were informed to stay quiet and out of the way during our visit. The Mississippi investigators gathered to plan their approach for the evening as I took a few moments to go through a few preliminary steps.
After taking some base readings throughout the house (EMF levels, temperature, etc.), I then took an extensive number of reference photographs, covering almost every inch of the place. I would turn to these photos if I needed to see the original position of a particular item, piece of furniture, or whatever during my review back home. During this photographic trip around the trailer, I noted some strange things.
First off, there seemed to be a lot of magic/occult-
oriented items about the home, including small bottles of herbs (marked with their own magical attributes), a small wand carved with symbols that were unfamiliar to me, and some sort of ward/mandala that was drawn on paper and tacked onto the wall. This disturbed me in a small way.
It was one thing to say your home is simply “haunted,” but it’s quite another thing altogether if you are actually performing rituals and/or attempting to conjure something. I made it a point to ask Joanne about these things. In the meantime, I simply noted (and photographed) the unfamiliar items and continued my walkthrough.
Soon I was confronted with an even more disturbing discovery. Along with the magical paraphernalia, there was also paraphernalia of a different sort: drugs. At least one person in the home was engaging in casual drug use. While this might not have been the case for the majority of the inhabitants—or even explain the ghostly happenings—it definitely meant eyewitness accounts would have to be taken with a grain of salt.
In addition to documenting the environment, walking through the trailer also allowed me to smell for natural gas. There were no signs of the telltale odor, and though this did not completely rule out a leak, it did mean the egg scent that they had smelled was probably from a different source, since the scent would still be present if there was a leak.
Once we had our base readings and everything had been photographed for posterity, we then placed some environmental monitoring devices (digital thermometers, EMF detectors, etc.) strategically within the trailer and took up positions throughout the property to wait for activity. I thought it best to start the night at “ground zero” because of the events reported there, so I took up a vigil in the master bedroom along with Terri of the Mississippi group.
While Patricia, Tom, and Blake staked out various other hot spots in the trailer, Terri and I did some EVP work in the bedroom. Again, this is an attempt to record ghostly voices on our audio recorders. This is done by asking questions and then waiting for a reasonable amount of time for an answer.
Typically, these answers are not heard right after asking the questions, but appear later when listening to the audio during the review. On occasion, if the haunting or entity is strong enough, the answers can even be heard as a disembodied voice in real time during the investigation, though this is actually a rare event.
Making ourselves comfortable, I ran through the usual EVP questions: Is there anybody here with us? Can you make a noise for us? And so forth. As I mentioned in the prologue, it was after I asked, “How long have you been here in this house?” that IT happened. A long, loud rumble coursed throughout the room, shaking the walls around us. I blinked in disbelief and looked over at Terri. She was sitting, eyes wide, looking for anything that might have caused this to happen.
Tom and Blake then came crashing into the room to see what the noise was. Shaking off the surprise of something actually happening, I asked Tom if he had ever heard anything like this before. Though he thought it unlikely, he suggested trying to re-create the sound by messing with the trailer’s plumbing.
The underside of the structure was completely open to the elements, so he was concerned that maybe an animal had bumped into the pipes beneath the place. I thought it was worth checking out, though I could not imagine any plumbing-oriented noises that could create the sound that I had just heard. Joanne, pleased that something had happened with new witnesses present, watched as Tom went outside to check everything out.
To that end, he crawled under the trailer and proceeded to shake and bang on various pipes while the rest of us listened inside the trailer. Nothing was even close to the sound we had heard. I had an audio recorder in the room, so I knew the sound of the rumble was definitely captured by the device—along with, hopefully, some good EVPs. I noted the time of the event in a small notebook and waited for Tom to come back inside.
When he returned, Tom stated that although there was nothing under the home to account for the sound we had heard, there was evidence of animals living under the trailer. This could explain some of the knocks and bangs the family had heard on a regular basis—and possibly even be where her missing pets were taking refuge on occasion. But, again, it did not explain the rumble we had all just heard.
Now the air surrounding this investigation was considerably different. Suddenly everything Joanne had said during the interview carried the weight of possibility. As a result, everyone was now motivated to experience even more activity. So we all switched into high gear and continued.
Several of us stuck around in the bedroom, attempting to get some interaction from any entity that might be present, while the remainder of the team went into the room with the magical items. We were about an hour into investigating in the master bedroom when another strange thing happened.
I had just asked anyone there in the bedroom to “make their presence known” when a loud metal-on-metal clang was heard from right beside me. Startled, I fumbled for a light and quickly looked around the room. The only metal object in my vicinity was an electric radiator/portable heater that was lying on its side on the floor, directly in front of me.
Upon closer examination, I noticed that an old gold watch was now lying on it. It had not been there before. I know this because I had actually sat on the radiator and used it as a makeshift seat for a good while. I carefully picked up the watch and took it with me into the living room.
When I held up the watch for everyone to see, Joanne informed me that she had never seen the watch before in her life. According to her, it wasn’t her watch—or anybody else’s in the house. Strange. Much like the mysterious materializing coins, it seemed that the old watch had spontaneously appeared in the bedroom—and where it came from, nobody knew.
Luckily this had happened a mere foot in front of my face, albeit in a darkened room. A surveillance camera (with night-vision capability) hooked up to a DVR system was recording in the bedroom, so I hoped the materialization was caught on video. It would be a great piece of evidence if the act had been recorded. Again, I noted the event and the time in my pocket notebook.
Both of these events had happened early in the investigation, so all of us were now quite excited. What was next? The answer: not much. As is true with most paranormal cases, when you want something to happen, it usually doesn’t. We would go on and spend hours doing EVP work, roaming room to room with cameras and camcorders, coaxing spirits to do anything to let us know we weren’t alone. Unfortunately, only one other unexplainable thing would happen during this trip to the trailer.
I was making my way down the hallway that runs past the children’s bedrooms when I thought I saw a black shape shift ahead in the darkness. It appeared to move quickly from the hallway into a side room.
I know from past experiences that these events usually pan out to just be a trick of the light and/or my eyes attempting to adjust to a different level of darkness. On the chance that this was neither of these things, I moved quickly into the area where I saw the shadow go. This was the youngest daughter’s (Katie) bedroom.
Moving into this room, I again saw the strange black mass shift�
��this time toward a closet. I was now sure this was no natural shadow. Whipping out a K2-style EMF detector, I walked toward the closet door. EMF stands for “electromagnetic field” and most paranormal researchers believe that spirits, in order to exist, must give off this type of energy. As a result, carrying a plethora of assorted EMF detectors during an investigation is a ghost hunting standard.
As I slowly crept toward the closet door, I stared at the device in my hand. It was when I reached the outside of the door that the K2 lit up like the Fourth of July. It had picked up an unusually strong reading—but only for a moment. Then it died completely. During our walkthrough of the trailer, we had found no EMF levels above 1.0 milligauss (and this is natural since even well-insulated wiring can give off a low EMF reading), but here there had been a short, sustained spike that literally maxed out the detector.
Though I would spend the next fifteen minutes trying to figure out what caused the spike—or where the possible entity may have gone—the single occurrence was all that happened. The EMF detector would pick up nothing else out of the ordinary and I would see no more strange shadows.
After hours of nothing else of paranormal significance happening, the night began to wear on me and the other investigators. At one point, I took a lap throughout the trailer to check in on the Mississippi team and was greeted by sets of bleary eyes and yawns. Blake was actually asleep on the living room couch, still clutching an audio recorder. It seemed that nothing more of note was going to happen this evening.
In the living room, Joanne wrung her hands with worry. She couldn’t understand why “nothing was happening.” I explained to her that this sometimes happened when new people came into a place and that it’s common to think nothing is happening during an investigation, but then discover later during a review of our audio and video surveillance that we did, indeed, have something paranormal going on. This was when Joanne said something that completely took me by surprise.
A Demonic Moth and a Practical Joke
I had just taken a seat on the couch when Joanne stated that she did not understand why nothing was happening in the trailer since a “demon” was watching us “right now.” This was the first mention of anything to do with a demon or anything religious, so it immediately struck me as an odd thing for her to say. Cautiously, I took a look around the trailer. Nothing seemed amiss.
When I asked her where this demon was, she pointed at the wall directly over my head. Cautiously, I peeked in that direction. There was a moth that was perched on the wall just above me. “Huh?” I asked to make sure. “You mean the moth?”
She nodded. “It likes to watch us.” Simply put, I was dumbstruck. I had no idea of what to say to this. I struggled to hold my tongue and suppressed the urge to swat the insect dead. Instead, I nodded politely and asked Tom and company to take a walk outside with me. This had to be discussed.
Though I had experienced several unexplainable things over the course of the evening, and it was apparent that paranormal activity was actually happening on the property, I now had serious misgivings concerning the veracity of Joanne Martin. Could she simply be paranoid and actually believe she is under constant surveillance? And why was she suddenly talking about a demon being in the trailer? And, more to the point, why a moth?
I was discussing this very subject with Tom and Blake when Joanne came outside with the remaining members of the team. As the women talked about the lack of activity in the trailer, I saw Blake reach into his pocket and grin. He held out three or four coins in his hand for us to see, and then he snuck around the backside of the inoperable car in the driveway. I groaned as I realized what he was about to do—re-create the materializing coins incident—but then decided to let him do it.
The way I figured it was this: when he tossed the coins into the air to drop in front of Joanne, she would be startled to find money that “materialized” in front of her—which would beg the question, “If this has happened before in the past, why are you so surprised?” Of course, when Blake threw the coins into the air, the exact opposite happened.
After settling in behind the car, Blake quickly flipped the coins into the air. They landed right at the feet of the astonished group talking outside the front door. Terri and Patricia immediately reacted with surprise and excitement. Joanne and Tim barely blinked an eye. Joanne picked up one of the quarters, handed it over to Patricia, and said, “See? This just keeps happening.”
While Tom and Blake struggled to control their laughter, I found myself even more perplexed. With such a complete lack of surprise, it was obvious to me that they had experienced this very thing before and were not lying about the previous incidents involving materializing coins and rocks.
I could feel my head beginning to throb … Everything was getting quite confusing and it was becoming harder and harder to know what was fabrication and what was truth concerning this case.
Wrapping It Up
With the night waning and activity that had (apparently) ceased, we decided to wrap up the evening’s investigation. We gathered up the gear, said our goodbyes, and drove back into town. For me, it was only the beginning of a very long drive back to Memphis. During this ride, I would mentally assess everything that had happened during the investigation.
On the one hand, I had experienced activity in the master bedroom for myself (there was the loud rumble and the materializing watch) and witnessed a massive black shape move into one of the children’s bedrooms. This had been corroborated by the large spike on the EMF detector.
On the other hand, it was apparent that not everything happening in the trailer was of a paranormal nature—there was clearly an element of hysteria that managed to turn things as mundane as a moth flying into the room into a thing of ominous portent. Of course, it could also just have been wishful thinking or desperation on Joanne’s part to prove her case. Either way, I had a hard time believing I had encountered a demonic moth.
And on top of this, there was clear evidence of drug use, as well as articles used for magical/ritual purposes. Maybe the Martin family actually wanted something to happen in their home—and that, coupled with their obsession with ghosts and the occult had attracted something to them. Something that was pretending to be a little girl named Emily or Julie’s dead father. Or maybe even John … whoever that was.
It was all very confusing for my extremely sleepy head, but any way it went, I would have to go over the audio, photographic, and video evidence from this investigation very carefully. The results would have to be the deciding factor that would help form my final opinion as to whether or not the place was, indeed, haunted.
As I drove the seven or so hours back to Tennessee, I went over several past cases that I had conducted along with the other members of Paranormal Inc. Perhaps there was an experience or lesson learned from a previous case that I could draw upon for guidance. There have certainly been moments of enlightenment and, of course, terror over the years …
[contents]
4
War Stories
The road trip back to Tennessee was long and boring—perfect for doing some thinking and reminiscing. As I mentioned earlier (probably several times), personal experience can make a huge difference in just how a paranormal case is investigated and interpreted. And I was convinced that, despite the outright challenges of the Martin case, there would be past instances that could help me discern what was what in this investigation.
For most investigators, personal experience can often determine the verdict concerning the disposition of a haunting—and whether a place is even haunted at all. The problem can be, though, that different people have different experiences, so oftentimes there can be multiple opinions concerning a haunting (or lack of) and various ways to approach investigating it.
Personal experiences are also essential because they teach investigators important lessons in the field—some basic, some more advanced and unique. Things you would hav
e never known had you not gone out and visited a place for yourself. Despite the plethora of information available about the paranormal, nothing beats actually working on location with clients and capturing evidence for yourself.
Since the formation of my investigative group Paranormal Inc, my team has explored hundreds of unique locations—state parks, battlefields, hotels, restaurants, bed-and-breakfasts, museums … well, you get the idea. And no two investigations have been the same. At least that has been the case when the place has actually been haunted!
If a location is not haunted, it’s pretty much like every other investigation that goes nowhere: boring. You can probably imagine how much fun is involved with sitting in a silent, dark place and having a conversation with nobody for hours on end. It’s the kind of situation that often drives paranormal wannabes back to watching ghost hunters on television instead of actually doing it. But visiting places without hauntings is extremely important to researchers in the field.
An investigator has to learn what constitutes paranormal activity and what does not. Ever notice how people on paranormal television programs always seem to encounter a ghost and how they always appear to be in an actual haunted location? Well, it’s not like that in real life. In real life, finding a real haunt is a rare and exhilarating thing—but it does happen on occasion.
And there are always lessons to be learned and personal experiences to be had when you investigate these real places. As I went over some of my past investigations in my head while driving (always with my eyes on the road!), I just knew that there were some past cases that could help me with the Martins.
Devil’s Backbone
One of the hardest things for new paranormal groups to do is to get their first real case. As a result, most first-timers usually end up doing a public, outside location. We (Paranormal Inc) were no different. Though Mike and I had already been investigating the paranormal off and on for many years, actually doing a case by the book and working as a formal investigative group would be a new experience for us, so we wanted to do it right.
