by Rich Newman
These seemed to be the five strongest arguments for a haunting taking place in the Martin property. Before moving on to the cons, though, I decided to make a “maybe” list. This list would itemize the events and occurrences that were alleged, but not much in the way of evidence seemed to support them. Here are the maybes:
A young girl named Emily could be haunting the house. Though a female face had been witnessed peering in one window—and I had EVPs of a female voice—there was nothing that definitively pointed to an entity being a child named Emily. Furthermore, there was no supporting evidence of any Emily drowning in the area. All the information regarding an Emily came from Julie and Julie alone.
Julie’s father Keith could be haunting the house. Anything to do with Keith came from “feelings” that the residents there had; they felt like Keith was there protecting his daughter. And all information/details provided about Keith being in the trailer came from an entirely unreliable witness: Tim. I had captured a few EVPs of a male voice—but there was no way to know if the voice was Keith, John, or simply some other male entity (there’s no telling how many Martin family members had perished on the family land over the decades).
Several types of activity had happened only once or twice and/or were unable to be documented or recorded. These events included the strange scents of rotten eggs and feces that had appeared during the worst of the activity, but also included all the instances I detailed where something happened with only a single person in the home to see it.
Now came the cons—the things that hurt the case for the Martin family experiencing a haunting. They are few, but they are big ones …
Joanne Martin. She is her own worst enemy. She had conveniently left out key pieces of information throughout the investigation, she had seemingly drawn upon events from horror movies to build support for her home being haunted (such an instance would be the demonic moth incident), and worst of all, she clearly had at least contributed to her own situation by allowing her family to indulge in séances, the use of a makeshift Ouija board and incenses, and the like. But worse than all this, she wanted to capitalize on what was, according to her, terrifying her family. This was confirmed by her interest in wanting to shoot a movie about her family’s ordeal—even if it was for a good reason (improving her family’s financial situation, etc.).
The use of drugs. With paraphernalia littering the home, it was obvious that some members of the household were quite probably under the influence of drugs when some (or all) of the activity was happening in the trailer. How reliable could such people be as witnesses? I hoped that Julie and Katie were free of such influences, but nobody else in the household could be ruled out in this regard.
Conflicting information and rarity of activity. While this cannot definitively be called a “con,” it still has to be noted as a negative aspect of this case. Interviews with the members of the household had brought to light aspects of poltergeist activity, possessions, and (possibly) demonic activity, and even suggested that multiple types of sometimes extremely rare activity were occurring in the home (as mentioned above). How could one double-wide trailer in the heart of the Mississippi delta have so much going on? Was it possible?
Just writing down all this information and detailing
what I had gathered from my two trips was cathartic. Though I still had no explanation for what was happening at the Martin property, it was nice having all the facts and details listed in front of me. I felt like I could now move forward and take a look at the audio, photographic, and video data that I had collected during my second visit.
Since I had been limited to the battery power I had on hand during the second investigation, there was significantly less to go over this time around. This would get no complaints from me, however …
Back to the Drawing Board
With one successful session of reviewing evidence under my belt, the second go at it was tackled with a bit more enthusiasm, though peppered with the occasional yawn. It helped to know going in that I had already captured some great evidence at this location, so this increased my odds of getting something great this time around, too.
As I have learned in the past, even though you may have had a dead investigation (excuse the pun), careful attention must still be given to the data collected during any investigation. As with the Devil’s Backbone case mentioned earlier in the book, you never know what you will end up with.
In addition to all this, I was also motivated by the fact that, since I had been on a battery-powered excursion, it meant that I could wrap up my review in a mere three days instead of five or six. Sweet! So, once again, I sat down at the computer, sipped coffee, listened to hours of audio, watched hours of video, and sifted through hundreds of still photographs. All with the hope of finding a definitive piece of evidence that would point me in the right direction with this case.
As I slowly waded my way through all the files on my computer, it became clear that this review was going to be basically like every other one I had done in the past: photographs would mostly serve as reference material, video would be boring and eventless, and audio would be the bread-and-butter of the trip. Big surprise.
The second batch of files yielded no video evidence—and unlike the photo of the “face” captured during my first visit, there would be no interesting images to dissect this time around. As is the case with so many investigations, the evidence would have to come from the hours of audio recordings captured at the site.
More Findings
The first interesting audio clip I found during the review was captured while performing an EVP session in the master bedroom. Patricia and Terri were attempting to communicate with the entity called John when they thought they heard a voice in the room with them. Unfortunately, other investigators were chattering away in the next room, so they had a hard time hearing what was happening. Fortunately the audio recorder in the room had no such difficulty.
On the recorded audio, you can clearly hear Patricia state that she cannot hear over the people in the next room, so Terri gets up and goes to the door to shush them. Right after Terri admonishes the neighboring investigators, you can clearly hear a harsh, whispered voice say, “Shut up!” Apparently one of the entities in the trailer was as frustrated with the chatty investigators as Patricia and Terri were!
I made a note to contact Patricia with this particular EVP just to make sure it wasn’t her or Terri chiding the talkers (even though the voice doesn’t sound female) and moved on to more of the audio. It wasn’t long before I heard the next interesting EVP.
This one was captured in Julie’s bedroom—when it was completely empty. It was faint, but definitely there: a long breath and the sound of a girl humming. The voice sounded young, like a small girl, but Julie was not there during the recording. A minute or so later, on the same recorder, the voice is followed by the clear sound of something hard banging/moving in the bedroom.
Around the same time these particular clips were captured, a second audio recorder—this time in the second family room—turned up a male voice while Patricia, Terri, and I were doing some EVP work.
You can clearly hear a gasping voice say two quick words, though I have not been able to decipher what’s being said (another typical occurrence in the paranormal field). I had to suppress the urge to try and form words out of the syllables. Though I knew that whatever I thought was being said, it could be debated by others and would most likely be a form of audio matrixing (or wishful thinking).
This same EVP session would also reveal a second piece of evidence. Patricia was attempting to speak to the spirit of Emily. She was asking why Emily was there in the trailer and if she could “see the light.” This question was answered by a young female voice quickly saying either “Uh huh, uh huh” or “Unh uh, unh uh.” My instinct says it’s the latter because the voice sounds distressed rather than upbeat (which I would hope would be the attitude associated with
“seeing the light”).
The part of the audio review that paid off the most for me, though, was the portion that was captured during our little K2 chase between Julie’s bedroom and the bathroom. While we were pursuing the strange burst of energy that seemed to be avoiding us, the audio captured a loud and clear EVP of a young girl. It is clearly a frustrated sigh that attests to the fact that this particular entity was attempting to get away from us. And though the spirit did, indeed, get away, we had managed to get evidence on our audio recorder.
A few hours later into my review of the audio, I found even more. Besides the EVPs already noted, two more interesting clips were captured on the audio recorder that was placed in the trailer’s kitchen. During what was clearly the chase of the entity with the EMF detector (an act that all the investigators present were participating in), the sounds of whispered voices were recorded in the kitchen.
At first, the words are unintelligible. Then there’s the clear phrase, “I know it.” It was almost as if there was an otherworldly discussion going on in the kitchen while we were working just down the hall—a rather spooky-sounding discussion.
Later on, on the same audio recorder, the sounds of Joanne returning to the trailer can be heard. I had left it running as we wrapped up the investigation for the night. This is a practice I recommend for investigators in general; many times over the years I have gotten my best EVPs/evidence during our set-up or tear-down of the gear. I attribute this, once again, to the fact that we are “ignoring” the spirits during these periods.
Once we were packed up, I had sat down with the other investigators and Joanne to confront her about the makeshift Ouija board and exorcism incense. You can hear all of this in the recording. At one point, Joanne began to reiterate some of the facts regarding the land’s history and was mentioning her grandfather when a strange EVP is heard.
Specifically, Joanne says, “When my grandfather was alive, he came down here … ” At this point, a loud male groan is heard in the background—a very loud groan. And it is clearly an EVP because nobody in the room reacted to the sound at all (something we would obviously do if we heard a male voice make that sound). The groan itself is interesting in that it could either be interpreted as angry (maybe John?) or simply as a response to the word “grandfather.”
Could the spirit of the grandfather still be in the trailer—
or more accurately—attached to the land in some manner? This was an angle that had not been considered, but made a lot of sense.
Oftentimes spirits seem to want to stick around to atone for the deeds they did while alive—or are so attached to doing worldly things that they don’t want to move on. Both of these could be a great excuse for Joanne’s relative to still be present on the property. It was just one more detail that had to be considered in the case. Now that I had even more audio evidence to relay to the Martins, it seemed that I would get the chance to discuss the grandfather again with Joanne.
Unfortunately, though, major changes would occur in the Martin household and I would not get the chance to follow up with my findings …
Drastic Changes
Though I had gathered significantly more evidence concerning the haunting of the Martin property, it became abundantly clear that I would not be returning there again—at least not if I wanted to talk with Joanne or her family. Not long after the blessing of the trailer (or the ineffectual blessing, if you want to believe Joanne), the family decided it would be better if they moved out of the cursed abode. This was probably their best decision ever!
Over the years, I have learned that when a family goes through a lot of traumatic, paranormal experiences in a place, it’s often impossible to move past them and to live comfortably in that home again. And though it may be the most drastic form of resolution to deal with a haunting, sometimes it’s simply a necessary means to an end. If nothing else, moving out would ensure that Julie and Katie would no longer be exposed to something that may potentially scar them psychologically for life.
I asked Patricia and Terri what made Joanne finally decide to leave and they told me an interesting couple of tales … Apparently, the family was staying with relatives and was telling them about the horrible things that had happened to them while living in the trailer. Rather than getting sympathy, or even empathy, the family members thought it was “cool” that there were ghosts in the trailer.
As mentioned previously, one male relative had already decided he would go “ghost busting” at the trailer and ended up getting more than he bargained for. According to Terri, he arrived at the trailer and was checking things out when he heard a loud bang in the living room.
When he walked into that area, his overnight bag flew through the air, striking the wall beside him. He promptly fled into the night with the distinction of being the shortest-lived paranormal investigator ever to enter the field! Apparently, since this incident, even more of the Martin clan (and most likely friends as well) had visited and been frightened away from the property.
Another incident (not long after my visit) was a little more sobering, and it involved Joanne’s youngest daughter—Katie Martin. According to Terri, Joanne was cleaning up the trailer when the small girl suddenly began to behave erratically and started crawling all over the floor (she’s well beyond the toddler years, so this was not typical behavior). As Joanne questioned her, the girl began taking off her clothes and speaking incoherently. A frantic call was made to Terri, who then dispatched an ambulance to the Martin residence.
Young Katie was kept at the hospital for a week for observation, and Terri would go on to learn from Julie that Joanne was now addicted to crystal methamphetamines and that Katie had gotten into her stash! Yipes … I could still remember hearing Joanne dismiss the drug paraphernalia we found in her trailer as belonging to her tenants.
Katie’s incident would go on to be reported to child protective services in Mississippi and the family would end up moving again—this time to be with relatives in California. I didn’t know if this was to avoid having Katie taken away permanently or if they simply wanted to be as far away from the home in Mississippi as possible. Either scenario could have been the case.
As far as the trailer was concerned, Joanne planned to sell it (separate from the family land) so that it could be relocated with a new owner. It would be interesting to know if the paranormal activity goes with it (though I rather doubt it and believe the haunting has more to do with the land and the surrounding area than it does with the trailer itself). But finding a buyer for a trailer in such a dilapidated state would certainly be a challenge.
Luckily, Terri and Patricia were able to meet with Joanne one last time (before she was completely relocated in California) to discuss the final round of evidence we gathered during our final investigation—and to obtain permission from her for me to write this book—before she moved west. She seemed pleased that many of her family’s claims had been validated with audio data, but I would not get the chance to discuss the findings with her personally.
Observations and Suggestions
Oftentimes, it’s hard to separate a haunting from the family that’s experiencing a haunting. In the case of the Martins this is especially true. Would “John,” “Keith,” “Emily,” or possible even a grandfather haunt that trailer if they had not been there? Or even more pertinent, would there have been any activity had they not been the people using instigators (the magic rituals and paraphernalia, the Ouija board, etc.)?
I feel that some stories just have to come out. If a man named John was, indeed, killed by a member of the Martin family—or came to a horrible demise there without their help—it’s probable that something would have eventually happened to someone there.
Tuning into the paranormal by using occult practices and other mystical means simply helped usher the activity along. Things like Ouija boards are not, in themselves, anything mysterious or magical. (It is a board game by Hasbro aft
er all). But when the human mind wills something to happen and there are spirits paying attention, things happen. Things that aren’t always explainable or even completely understandable. Such are the circumstances of this case.
In the end, my suggestions to Joanne and her family would have included the possibility of her moving away from the trailer and leaving her family land behind. It is clear from her opinion regarding the blessing of the home that neither she, nor her daughters, would have ever felt completely at ease there. After enduring some of the experiences they related, who would? And with so much negative, possibly nonhuman, activity going on as well, it seemed an even better decision for them to move on.
I’m just glad they decided to do it on their own and that I didn’t have to drive back down to them and tell them I thought they should leave!
After all of this, it would be some time before I would hear anything further about the cursed trailer or the Martin family, but it was (of course) inevitable that I would.
[contents]
9
A Final Trip
After a few months without any word from the Mississippi team or anyone in the Martin family, I was contacted once again out of the blue by Terri. The circumstances concerning my favorite paranormal location in the Mississippi delta had changed again.
Terri informed me that Joanne and her family were once again living in the area—in a home closer to town, though she still owned and was renting out the trailer—and that they were making another attempt to get some answers concerning the haunting of the family land.
To this end, she had invited yet another paranormal group to the site, who intended to perform an investigation the upcoming weekend. Terri wanted to know if I could also be present because things in the trailer had evolved to some strange new territory. She also hoped that my experiences there might serve to assist with the new investigation.
