Over the River and Through the Woods: To Tracey’s House We Go

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).

 

 

Harper’s Object Annotation

The last time I met with my Core 2 class in the classroom, we had to present our ideas for our object annotations based on the annotations Harper’s Magazine periodically runs.  I waited anxiously for my turn to come, my legs bouncing up and down with nervous energy.  This will be the final project before we begin work on our “final” projects for the class, which means the end of the semester is quickly approaching (not such a good thing at this point when I could use a little more time to work).

As Dr. Wolff motions for me to take my turn, I hold up a picture of a digital voice recorder typically used on the paranormal investigations shows on television and explain what I hope to explore in the call-outs.  As soon as I finish, a sea of hands shoot up to add suggestions and ask questions.  After a lengthy discussion, I’ve settled on the following topics for my call-outs:

• A brief history introducing the concept of trying to capture EVP (electronic voice phenomena with a digital voice recorder, the rising popularity of ghost hunting reality shows, and the skeptics’ view of the industry’s growing popularity.
• How this theory came to be (and that is partially due to Thomas Edison, oddly enough) and the Spiritualism movement that took place from the 1840s to the 1920s.
• The growing billion-dollar ghost hunting industry which includes reality shows, books, DVDs, tours and special appearances, apparel, and equipment.
• Comparison of both the believers’ and skeptics’ argument for why EVP are and are not the dead trying to communicate with us.
• What an EVP actually sounds like and what to expect from one
• Lastly, I hope to touch on some of the reasons why people have become so fascinated with the paranormal and communicating with the dead.

Class will be meeting online in groups via Google Docs and Twitter this week, and we’ll be peer reviewing one another’s work.  It should be interesting, to say the least.  The last time we met online in the beginning of the semester, I was overwhelmed and had trouble keeping up with the conversation.  I feel better equipped for this round, but keep your fingers crossed for me anyway!

Ghosts of Cape May

Saturday night, I ventured all the way down to Cape May to take the Ghosts of Cape May Trolley Tour, the only haunted tour running in the off-season.  Christen, my friend and classmate who lives just outside of the city, joined me for both the tour and then dinner after.

I got to the beautiful and historic town in just under an hour and a half, so after parking the car I took some notes of my initial impressions of the city.

TRANSCRIPTION:

I knew the city had a rich history, which is what would help establish it as one of the most haunted city’s in America and the most haunted city in New Jersey, but I had no idea that it was so beautiful!  As I drove over the first of two bridges and enter the city limits, I notice a banner advertising psychic readings provided by a medium.  I continue deeper into the city and slow down to obey the twenty-five mile-per-hour limit, and marvel at how much slower the pace of the town seems to be.  Even though it is a Saturday, the couple of people I pass walking on the sidewalks move at a leisurely pace.  It’s as if the town is still partially stuck in the past, and it’s calming nature is contagious.  I roll down the window and breath in the sun-kissed air.  After a hectic week, I finally feel the tension in my shoulders dissipate.

I pull into the parking lot for Washington Commons, and look around to see if I can spot either Christen or the Chinese restaurant we’ll be eating at once the tour is over.  I give her a call, and she says she’s right down the block and will be here in a minute.  I watch the parking lot begin to fill and wonder how many of the passengers will be joining us on the tour.  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Christen get out of her car, and gather my things to go meet her.  She leads me through the shopping plaza to the booth across the street where she thinks the tour tickets will probably be sold.  As we approach the booth, we see we’re in the right place, purchase our ticket, and cross the street to the green bench the woman selling the tickets indicated where the trolley will pick us up.  We chat a bit about my ride down and hope that it won’t get too much colder as the sun begins to set.  The church across the street begins to chime as the minute hand of the clock tower ticks forward to seven.  As if on cue, the trolley pulls up the bench, and we climb on board.

The tour guide, Caitlin welcomes us on and says the trolley should be nice and toasty once we get moving.  As a Florida native, she chats with us about impatiently waiting for spring and summer to come, and Christen and I agree as we pull our coats tighter around us.  I pull out my camera, notebook, and pen and watch as a flood of people suddenly appear to board.

“Where did all of these people come from?  I thought it was going to be just us and the guide?” Christen asks.

I take in the strange mix of people as they take their seats: a large group of maybe six or seven with ages ranging from teenagers to adults in their forties file to the back of the trolley, a family of four take the two benches in front of us (the teenaged girls directly in front if us excitedly chat about which B&B’s will be mentioned and plan to visit every location mentioned), and a trio of friends in their forties take the seats across from us.  Once the trolley is nearly full, the guide welcomes us to the tour and asks everyone who believes in ghosts to raise our hands.  Most of the passengers do, but there are a handful who claim to be nonbelievers.

Caitlin has the driver close the doors, and we’re off.  As we head to our first destination, Caitlin provides some basic facts about the tour, like the buildings on the tour have had paranormal activity verified by paranormal investigators, mediums and sensatives, historical facts, and eyewitness accounts.

She then goes on to ask us if we’ve ever woken up at 3 AM for no reason.  Several of us say that we have, and she goes on to explain that 3 AM is considered “the witching hour,” or the time of the day when the baromectric pressure is at it highest and ghosts can supposedly use that energy to manifest.

“So, all of you who said you’ve woken from a dead sleep at 3 AM, there was a ghost in your room,” Caitlin says and several of the passengers gasp.

We then pull up the Physick Estate, the home of the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts and Humanities.  The house was investigated by Ghost 1, a paranormal investigation team that was able to capture some impressive EVPs (electronic voice phenomena).  Caitlin goes on the describe how footsteps are heard regularly throughout the house, and a lot of Dr. Physick’s dogs still wander around the house.

“The maid, while she was dusting, heard panting and felt something brush her leg, so she bent down to pet the dog and then went back to dusting.  After a minute, she realized there weren’t any dogs in the house, so she spent the next hour looking all over the house for dog but never found one,” Caitlin says as we pull around the back of the estate.

As we approach the main road, Caitlin describes how there have been several shadows and cold spots felt throughout the house.  “Ghost 1 will be conducting an investigation this summer, so if you’re interested, you can come back and be a true ghost hunter for a night.”  We pull back on the main road, and Caitlin jokes about how she always finishes talking too early for the estate.  We then pull up to Southern Mansion, which was built in 1876 and featured on the SciFi popular paranormal reality show “Ghost Hunters.”

Apparently, the owner’s daughter, Esther, loved to party, dance, and drink alcohol, so several guests have had their champagne and wine glasses and bottles shatter for no reason.  There have also been wine and champagne glasses found around the house with red lipstick on their rims.  Ghost Hunters, during their investigation of the house, heard a lot of footsteps walking around.  We turn onto Columbia Ave, which is said to be the second most haunted street in Cape May.  Caitlin explains the it used to be marsh lands, and water is said to be a good source of energy for ghosts to use, and therefore the cause of a lot of the hauntings that take place on the street.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An old man walking with a cane in the middle of the road that has caused several people to slam on their brakes, get out of their cars, but nobody’s there.  Further down the street is Mason Cottage.  Several of the guests with children have been known to ask the front desk about the little boy, Steven, that plays with their children, but there is never a Steven registered and more often than not, that family will be the only one with children staying at the house.  Steven is allegedly the son of the original owner, and the man with the cane walking in the middle of the street is said to be Steven’s father and owner of Mason Cottage, Edward.

As we continue down the street, I get my first glimpse of the ocean in months.

“Coming up on your left is The Inn of Cape May,” Caitlin announces as we pull up next to a large white building.  This is the first building that’s been on our side of the trolley, so I quickly fumble with my camera and snap a few pictures.  Most of them are too blurry to use, but the two that are usable have some strange things happening in them.  In the one on the left, the bottom window is almost highlighted.  I’ve looked at the picture several times, but I can never come up with a logical explanation: it’s not a reflection from the other trolley windows, I didn’t have my flash on, and nobody else on the tour was taking pictures.  The picture on the right I took quickly as we were leaving the street.  On the left side of the balcony is a red orb.  I know orbs are not generally considered evidence of the paranormal, but it’s still strange.  You be the judge: did I capture something in these pictures?

 

 

 

 

 

Caitlin explains that some of the most commonly reported activity includes children playing in the halls, someone walking up and down the hallways, and the furniture in the rooms being moved around the rooms while guests are out.  We continue down a side street and come to Hotel Macomber.  Again, after reviewing my pictures, I found that the only one of the hotel that wasn’t too blurry was this one.  If you look on the right, there’s a glowing red orb next to one of the windows.  I have no explanation for it, but if you do, please pass it along.

“The most haunted room in this hotel, even though they don’t want me to tell, is room 10.  It’s supposedly haunted by a woman that the hotel refers to as ‘the trunk lady.’  She used to come and stay in room 10 every August, and it’s rumored that she loved this place so much that she has chosen to come back even after she died.  Many guests in room 10 have been startled when they come back to their room and see an old woman sitting on the bed,” Caitlin says as we round the corner of the hotel.

We continue on to Hotel Chal-Fonte, which was built in 1876.  The most haunted room in this hotel is room 19.  The ghost haunting the room doesn’t want anybody to stay in the room.  There has been a lot of activity happening at 3 AM.  Guests have called down to the front desk to report banging on the walls and brass bedposts, assuming the noise was coming from the room next door, but there was no one staying there.

“One guests,” Caitlin says, “woke up in the morning on the floor with the mattress from the bed covering their face, and they had no idea how they wound up like that.”

We turn back onto Columbia and approach Cabanas Beach Bar and Grill.

“Has anybody ever eaten here when it was not called Cabanas?” Caitlin asks.

“Yeah,” a man from the back of the trolley calls, “I ate here a long time ago.  I think it was named after a woman.  Julia’s maybe?”

Caitlin nods.  “Yep, it was called Gloria’s after the owner’s daughter.  Apparently she had a summer romance, wound up pregnant, and her father disowned her.  A couple of years after Gloria gave birth, the child was hit by a trolley car and died, and year later a similar accident happened to Gloria and she died as well.”

Some of the activity reported include exploding light bulbs, doors slamming shut on their own, and the staff being paged to the front desk only to be told when they got there that they weren’t called.

The next stop on the tour is the majestic Congress Hall. It was originally built in 1878, but was burned down the following year in a fire that consumed 40 blocks of the city.  The owners decided to renovate the hotel in 2000, and encountered a lot of activity during demolition.  The most commonly reported activity is said to be from residual spirits, or ghosts who practice the same behavior as they would have when they were living.  One of the EVPs captured during the investigation said “Don’t hurt Schmiddy.”  The investigators later found out that Schmid is the brand of boiler the hotel uses, so they assume that the spirit they contacted was a maintenance man.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The last spot on the tour is the beach!” Caitlin announces.  “Cape May was founded during colonial times, and there has been so much loss of life on these beaches since then.  The entire Atlantic coast is known as ‘the graveyard of the Atlantic Ocean,’ and drowning is said to be the most traumatic and horrible way to die.”  Along the Cape May coast, a shadowy figure of a man has been seen walking close to the shore and a woman in white as been spotted roaming closer to the boardwalk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

REFLECTIONS:

The trolley tour provided me with a lot of great information even though the tour itself was only a half an hour long.  I was a little disappointed that I wasn’t able to go on any of the other tours, such as the walking tour that takes guests through the hotels, but those don’t run until the warmer months.  Hearing all of the eyewitness accounts makes me anxious to explore more haunted locations for myself.  I’ll be traveling to one tomorrow for my next in-person interview with Rich, Tracey’s father and Civil War re-enactor.

One of the things I wish I could’ve done on the tour was speak to the other passengers on the trolley, but because the tour was so short and everyone had their own plans, I wasn’t able to talk to anyone.  I would like to say that I’ll be able to get back down there before the semester’s over, but I don’t think that will be possible.  I was also disappointed that because I was focused on writing my notes, I didn’t get to enjoy just being on the tour, and as a result, I wasn’t as aware of my own “activities, circumstances, and emotional responses” (p. 11).

Also, because of the amount of information, I had trouble “strik[ing] a balance between describing fully and getting down the essentials of what happened” (p. 47), but I think it all came together nicely.