As I pulled up to Tracey’s house on Sunday night, I was excited and nervous. I was going to conduct my first paranormal investigation of the rooms where Tracey and I both felt incomfortable: the office and the blue carpet room a.k.a. the blue room. I walked up the front steps and see Tracey coming down the stairs.
“Perfect timing! I was just coming down stairs.” She ushered me in and shut the door behind me.
I point to the top of the stairs to her daughter’s closed bedroom door. “Is she asleep?” I ask in a whisper.
Tracey laughs. “Yeah, she’s out so you don’t need to whisper. Come in.” She leads the way into the kitchen. “Don’t mind me, I really needed a glass of wine. Can I get you something? I have wine, water, or a beer if you want one.”
“Water would be great, thanks.”
“It’s been such a crazy week because the baby has been sick,” Tracey says as she pulls a pitcher of water out of the fridge and fills my glass. “I think it might be allergies, but she’s been so fussy this week, so I don’t know if it’s like a cold and allergies. I think I’ll take the day off from work tomorrow and take her to the doctor.” She hands me the glass and makes herself comfortable at the kitchen table and I do the same.
“A lot of people have been getting sick lately. My youngest sister has been so sick for almost two weeks now. She just can’t get rid of whatever it is,” I say as I take a sip of water and almost spit it back out. “Oh!” Willow, one of Tracey’s two cats, jumps up on my lap and starts rubbing my leg.
“Is it Willow? She’ll be so happy to have some attention. We’ve been kind of ignoring the cats this week because of the baby.”
I pet Willow’s head and back. “I will give her all of the attention she wants!” I scratch behind Willow’s ears and she climbs on my lap for more. “So, did anything strange happen after the interview?”
“Not really. I mean, I felt really uncomfortable, but that could just be because I was thinking about it. I will say I felt kind of threatened…well, maybe not threatened, but like something was watching me. I even thought about emailing you and telling you not to come, but I waited a few days and the feeling passed. Now, I haven’t felt anything, heard anything. It’s been really quiet.”
I breathe out a sigh of relief. “Good! I was so worried that something would happen after the interview. I kept checking my emails looking for a message from you telling me not to come back!”
“No, nothing happened. Jimmy (Tracey’s fiance) did try to sleep in the blue room last night so he wouldn’t wake me up, but he couldn’t. He felt like someone was watching him and, of course, no one was there. So, he eventually came back in our room and slept on the floor.”
I cringe, knowing I plan on spending the majority of my time in the blue room. I couldn’t get the uncomfortable feeling out of my mind. I wasn’t looking forward to locking myself in that room. After telling Tracey that, she looked out of the kitchen window.
“Well, at least it’s still a little light out, so you won’t be in total darkness, at least when you first start. Do you want to go up?”
“Sure.” I gently prod Willow off my lap and follow Tracey upstairs. She stops in the office at the top of the stairs and I continue down the hallway to the blue room.
“Do you want me to turn off the light in the hallway?” Tracey asks, her hand on the switch.
“No, that’s ok. I kind of want it on.” I laugh and take a deep breath before going into the room.
I turn on the light and am surprised by how…normal the room feels. I walk into the room and still can’t feel that opposing presence that was so prevalent the last time I was here. I unpack my things and take a reading with my EMF detector. Normal. I open the closet and take another reading. Normal. I get everything situated on the bed, shut off the lights, and close the door most of the way.
I immediately feel uncomfortable after shutting off the lights, mostly from my nerves. I sit back on the bed and start my digital recorder. I sit still for a couple of minutes before asking, “Is there anybody here with me?” I have to say, I felt pretty stupid asking questions to…well…no one. I sit quietly, giving…whoever…a chance to answer. I click on my flashlight so I can see as I take notes.
“Oh my god!” I fling my pen out of my hands. “You scared me!” I say to Willow, who is sitting in front of the bed staring up at me. I pat the spot next to me. “Come on. If you’re going to be in here, you might as well keep me company.”
She climbs on the bed and makes herself comfortable in my lap, and I resume observing. One of the things most of the paranormal investigation shows don’t mention is how boring ghost hunting can be! In one of her interview responses, Jen Deviliier, EVP expert for The Ghost Guys, said “Ghost do NOT act out for us every single time we go out…They are NOT going to appear in the same place at the same time every single time.” The South Jersey Ghost Research group said something similar at the bottom of the application to join: “You will spend hours in the dark, sitting doing nothing, with absolutely nothing happening supernaturally.” After sitting in the dark for almost an hour, I decide to play back my digital recorder to see if I caught anything, and I was doubtful that I did.
After listening, I found that every two minutes or so, there was a strange beeping noise, but I figures it something to do with the recorder rather than something paranormal. As I continue to listen, I hear Tracey leave the office and head down the stairs. Willow, hearing the disturbance, rolls over on my lap for a stretch before hopping off of the bed and sashaying out the door. I gather my gear and follow her.
I move into the office to investigate before Tracey comes back up to finish her work for the night. Willow trots in after me while I set up my gear and take my initial EMF readings. Again, normal. I couldn’t believe how comfortable and at home I felt in the room. The last time I was at the house, I only spent ten minutes in the office, and I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I step into the closet, which Tracey left open, an unusual move since she didn’t want any of the closets open during the interview. Normal EMF reading and I don’t feel that foreboding, oppressive presence like I did before.
I sit at the desk with my back to the closet. Unlike the last time, where I felt chills up my spine every time I sat this way, I feel nothing. Still, I pull out my recorder to try an EVP (electronic voice phenomena) session. I hear Tracey working in the kitchen, clinking plates and glasses as she puts them away, so I close the door before getting started.
“Is there anybody here with me?” I’m quiet for a minute before adding, “Did you not like people coming in here before? Is this your room?”
I fall quiet again. I don’t know how paranormal investigators do it, but I feel ridiculous sitting on an empty room (and it actually feels empty this time) asking questions. I sit in silence for the next twenty minutes before I decide to move on. Nothing was happening in here tonight. As if on cue, Tracey comes back up the stairs.
“Oh, do you mind if I use the computer? I just have some last minute things to add.”
“No, that’s fine. I was just finishing anyway.” I head to the door to go back to the blue room.
“You can stay, if you want. I’ll only be typing, nothing loud…”
“No, that’s fine. I think I’m almost done. Coming, Willow?” She follows me out the door.
Back in the blue room, I go over the recording from the office, and as I suspected, nothing happened. The strange beeping noise continued about every two minutes, so I officially rule it out as anything paranormal. I decide to try the bathroom quickly, but I’m not expecting anything out of the ordinary. I sit on the closed toilet lid and feel absolutely nothing. I take an EMF reading, which comes back as normal.
I go back to the blue room and realize it’s getting late and I have class in the morning. I gather my equipment and head downstairs. Tracey’s in the kitchen, unpacking boxes of tea cups, tumblers, plates, and bowls.
“We have so much china that everyone has been giving us, and I have no idea where to store it all!” She finishes tips the stack of plates she’s holding onto the top shelf of the cabinet and turns to me. “So, how’d it go?”
I shrug and reach for the extra tea cups she’s storing in a separate cabinet. “It was ok,” I say, handing her the extras, “It’s so weird, but it doesn’t feel like it did the last time. I was in the blue room for almost an hour, and I wasn’t uncomfortable or anything. It was the same in the office. It’s like whatever was here is gone now.”
“That’s strange, but it makes sense. I haven’t felt anything since right after the interview.” She gathers the paper the china was wrapped in and stuffs the sheets into boxes. “I hope this helps your project though, and wasn’t a waste…”
“Oh, no! It definitely wasn’t a waste. It’s actually kind of good in a way that nothing happened because it shows a side of ghost hunting that none of the TV shows do. Something doesn’t happen every time you go out.”
Reflections:
- This outing, while anti-climatic, did open my eyes to as aspect of paranormal investigating I wasn’t aware of: it can be really boring. I was expecting, and trying not to at the same time, to get something at Tracey’s, but to my surprise and hers, nothing happened. All of the uncomfortable energy in the house was gone. It almost felt like a different house.
- If I had more time left in the semester, I would have liked to go back to Tracey’s and spend an entire night in the blue room, but I doubt that will happen during the final few weeks of the semester.
- Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes by Robert M. Emerson, Rachel I. Fretz, and Linda L. Shaw stress the importance of writing down initial impressions, details about the physical setting, and what seems strange about the setting. I used this approach and compared this experience in the same location to my previous experiences and impressions. As a result, I was able to convey how different the rooms felt during this visit as opposed to the last time I was there. In this case, the lack of “strange sights and sounds” made a larger impression than if they had been there (p. 26).
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