Private Residence Investigation
Location: Outside of Searsport, Maine
Date: Saturday night, February 21, 2004
Moon Phase: Waxing gibbous
Solar Weather: Unknown
Investigators present: Hillary M., Paul M., Candi B
Equipment: Olympus C-3000 digital camera, RCA digital voice recorder, Sony
digital video camera with Nightshot, Extech EMF meter, Olympus 2000 Digital
Voice Recorder, Extech IR thermometer, Olympus Camedia C-2040Zoom digital camera
History: The house was built between 1850 and 1860 and is in the typical New
England Cape Cod style. There is an open floor plan on the first floor and two
bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. One of the open beams above the front door is
charred, showing evidence of a possible fire at one time. There is a mudroom
between the house and the garage. The property was a farm for many years, and
there was once a barn where the garage stands now. At least one person is buried
on the land, but the homeowners don't know the exact location of the grave. An
enclosed porch was added to the back of the house a few years ago.
Autumn and Adam have owned the house for a little over a year and a half. They
have two dogs. They have not seen any apparitions, but they have heard voices
outside the house quite often, and have heard a dog whining (not their own)
inside the house. They have also seen flashes of light or movement out of the
corners of their eyes both inside and outside of the house. Sometimes they hear
banging and crashing noises, as well as footsteps, coming from the second floor,
when no one is up there.
In late August of 2003, on the exact same night, they both dreamt of a little
girl in the house who told them to leave because it was her house. They both
woke up noticing a temperature drop.
What they find most unsettling about the house though, is the feeling of being
watched. They've experienced this feeling in the basement, on the main floor at
the bottom of the steps, and in the area of the mudroom. When Adam comes
downstairs at night to stoke the wood stove, he always gets a bad feeling when
approaching the bottom of the steps…and he refuses to turn around and look at
the mudroom door.
Investigation: We arrived at the house at about 7:45 p.m., not long after it
had begun to snow. Adam and Autumn gave us a quick tour of the home, without
revealing their experiences. Then, Candi sat down to interview them while Paul
and I went about taking temperature and EMF readings and control pictures. I
purposely stayed out of earshot of the interview, because I wanted to make a
determination solely from our investigation results.
Almost immediately upon entering the house, I felt drawn to the area around the
front door and at the bottom of the stairs to the second floor. I couldn't help
but feel that there was a male at the top of the staircase watching me. I found
this fact particularly interesting after listening to the interview months
later, since the homeowners identified that exact spot as a place in which they
always feel that they are being watched.
At 8:22 p.m., we decided to begin the investigation. I set up the infrared video
camera in the upstairs hallway, and we sat down in the living room/dining room
area to begin an EVP session. I stood at the bottom of the steps, by the front
door, Candi stood few feet away in the living room, and everyone else spread out
toward the back of the house. Three minutes and ten seconds into the recording,
Adam and I heard a moan, but the others did not. About a minute later, I began
to get a series of pictures with a stationary orb around Candi. At 8:28:40, we
heard a loud scratching in the wall, but determined that it was most-likely a
mouse. Almost nine minutes into the session, I asked if whoever was with us
could whisper their name into my ear. A minute and twenty seconds later, I heard
a male voice whisper into my left ear "I…", but I couldn't hear the
second word. We ended the session at 8:39 p.m.
At 8:41 p.m., I moved into the kitchen, and Candi moved out to the dining room,
just inside the mudroom door. Two minutes into the session, we opened the
mudroom door, to cut down on flash reflection. A little over a minute later, we
heard a loud knocking coming from the mudroom, which we could not identify. At
8:48, Adam heard a high-pitched whistling in his left ear. We ended the session
at 8:53. Paul got one moving orb during the session, near the front door.
We then decided to take a 25-minute break, hoping that the spirits might become
interested in our conversation. We obtained two pictures of moving orbs during
that break.
At 9:20 p.m., I moved the video camera to the living room, and Candi, Paul, and
I spread out in the two bedrooms and hallway for an EVP session. We obtained an
EVP of a male voice saying "Oh my God" 36 seconds into the recording.
Paul also obtained one picture of an orb moving next to Candi. Nothing else was
obtained during this session. We ended the session at 9:35, and decided to cut
the evening short, since it was snowing heavily during our entire investigation.
Conclusions: After reviewing our results, we found that we had obtained four
moving orb pictures and two EVPs. No moving orbs were found on the infrared
video. Both of the EVPs sound like the voice of an adult male. We believe that
the area at the bottom of the steps may be the most active area of the house.
However, we would like to study this house further, concentrating on the outside
property and the area around the mudroom. We would also like to conduct further
historical research on the property. In conclusion, we believe that our results
may show a low-level haunting by an adult male, but more research will be needed
to support this conclusion.
We would like to thank the owners, Autumn and Adam, for allowing us to
investigate their home.
Submitted by Hillary Murdoch