I had the opportunity to investigate the residence and surrounding lands with New York Paranormal Investigators (NYPI) headed up by Jay Powell. A fellow investigator John Champlin coordinated this investigation through a client named Tracy.

History

The land Tracy’s parent’s house stands on was once used as farmland. The man who owned the land ended up having to sell, went into a deep depression and eventually drank himself to death. The current house was built back in 1968 and has had three owners, including her parents. They bought the house in 1985 and learned of other guests still residing in the house one evening during a dinner with the previous owners. The prior owner’s wife told a story of being home alone one day and heading downstairs to do laundry. She ended up falling down the stairs and breaking her leg but believed that someone had actually pushed her. The wife’s leg was in a cast at the time of the dinner.

The activity in the house seemed to peak around 1995 when Tracy’s mother got sick. There was an instance that happened while her parents and the family dog were sitting in the living room. Their dog began growling and looking towards the doorway that led out of the living room into the hallway. The mother didn’t understand what the dog was barking at and asked her husband what was going on. Her husband looked up and saw a brightly lit spirit floating above the doorway looking down on Tracy’s mom. Her mom saw nothing that evening. About two months after that, Tracy’s father was woken up by a bright light shining in the bedroom. He thought that the light was shining in from the outside through the bedroom window but when he looked into the mirror, he noticed something standing next to his wife’s side of the bed. He sat there frozen, not able to move until it disappeared.

The hallway at the top of the basement stairs, that leads out of the living room seems to be the center of a lot of paranormal activity. Once in a while there is a spirit who stands at the top of the basement stairs and looks into the living room. They believe the same spirit rushes up and down the hallway leading to Tracy’s parent’s bedroom. There was one incident when Tracy was coming out of the bathroom that is halfway down the hallway. She opened the door and saw a figure standing right in front of her that disappeared into the wall opposite her. When walking down the hallway one time, Tracy witnessed a figure standing by her parents bedroom door and again it disappeared into the wall. Her father has had similar experiences as well, all over the house. Tracy has, at times, gone down to the basement to do laundry and felt the strong presence of someone watching her. Her two cousins, at separate times, have stayed the night and slept in the basement only to run upstairs terrified claiming that someone was standing in the furnace room doorway.

There is a bridge not too far from the house that is believed to be haunted by a woman who drowned there. The woman lost control of her car, flipped over and went off the side of the bridge into the creek. She was knocked unconscious and drowned in three foot deep water. Many times people have driven by the bridge and witnessed a woman with long brown hair, an orange coat and blue jeans standing on the bridge only to disappear as the onlookers get closer. Every year before Christmas time her parents place a wreath and flowers there to memorialize her death.

Investigation

I met up with NYPI around 8pm and met with Tracy who gave us a tour of the house and the bridge site. She told us some more stories that were more recent and pointed out all the current hot spots. Jay, John and I set up the gear which included video surveillance with four infrared cameras, emf meters, emf data logger and voice recorders. Camera 1 was set up in the basement aimed at the furnace room doorway. Camera 2 was placed in the living room to try and capture the floating spirit. Camera 3 was aimed at the top of the basment stairs where activity of a standing figure that could have been the cause of the previous owner’s fall. Camera 4 was set in Tracy’s parent’s bedroom where there were numerous stories of activity including more recent ones of his dresser drawers opening on their own. While I was setting up the camera in the parent’s bedroom, Some dishes by the kitchen sink shifted in the drying rack. There was no one in there at the time and tried several different things to recreate it. We jumped up and down on the floor upstairs in several rooms and downstairs as well. We even tried the stairs themselves but to no avail. There were no random emf fluctuations or temperature changes. The dishes are just that, dishes. Who knows if we set them back up in the exact position they were in before they fell because we didn’t pay them any attention until the random noise in a supposed haunted house. These are the kinds of traps people fall in sometimes. When they think a place is haunted, every random noise that happens gets attributed to ghosts. Luckily this group as well as mine is based on science and reality first.

We continued the investigation in the basement where the suspected shadow-man hangs in the furnace room doorway. Jay went into the room and shut the door and hung for a while trying to bait the shadow-man. We also messed with the door to see how possible it was for the door to open or swing on its own. Even though nothing was said of the door moving, it was necessary to explore that possibility. Nothing really happened while down in the basement. There was an evp session but no evidence turned up when the voice recorders were reviewed. The rest of the night was pretty uneventful. We investigated all the rooms upstairs as well as the stairs themselves. We tried to look for possibilities of someone slipping and falling down the stairs whilst feeling pressure in there back. Did the previous owner’s wife just randomly slip and strain her back as she fell thinking that she was pushed down the stairs? It’s not meant to offend the occupants or clients, but we need to explore all the possibilities as investigator’s. We need to disprove or debunk everything first and foremost.

After about 5 hours in the house, we went to the bridge and investigated there. Luckily we were in the country and it was late at night so there weren't  a lot of cars out or random street and house lights. Just us, the bridge, and the darkness. We spent about 3 hours out there but no evidence was caught. I did have a personal experience though. The street sign on the bridge itself had a wreath of flowers on it and flowers with a little shrine down at the bottom of the post. I took a bunch of pictures with flash of the street sign and every time I did, I saw the silhouette of a figure standing in front of the sign. I did this three or four times and always saw the same figure. I looked at the pictures themselves and saw nothing but the street-sign.  I stood in different areas to try and achieve the same results but the figure was gone. I even moved back to my original position but the figure decided to leave. At this point, we decided it was a long night and wanted to wrap up.

We returned to the house and packed up all the equipment. John went downstairs to get the camera and on the way back up the stairs he claimed he felt something grab his arm. We didn’t investigate that and we totally should have. I think we were all tired and spent from a long day and a long investigation. NYPI is one of the few groups that I’ve had the pleasure to hunt with. They are great people and offer a truly scientific approach to the field of paranormal study.

Results

I am unsure if NYPI has a website but I’ve talked to Jay Powell and he said that they did find some evps from that night in the Marion house. I hope he gets to posting those results.