30: OKPRI
2010
The weather we were experiencing the night of the investigation seemed to have been special-ordered for a horror movie. The moon was full and it eerily lit the fog that hung heavily over the house. Nearing the end of winter, it was already dark when the first member of OKPRI arrived around seven p.m. Shortly after, another one came, then another, then two more, and so on. I was surprised to see nine people show up for an investigation on my 1600-square-foot house, but it was obvious each person had a job to do.
Cathy first explained the process of how they conducted their investigations. She told us that Christy, the psychic, would want to do what she called a “cold walk-through” of the house. Christy preferred not to know about the activity we’d experienced, so she stayed outside while I took several members of the team through the house.
After the tour, the team began setting up their equipment and my home soon looked like a ghost-hunting set on TV. My dining room was now the “command center,” and there were cameras placed throughout the house. Each of the team members were equipped with digital cameras, voice recorders, flashlights, K-2 meters, etc.
With a final check of the equipment and the lights turned out, Christy came into the house and asked everyone except for Cathy to wait outside while she walked through the house. Wes and I, along with the rest of the team, stepped out onto the porch. The weather hadn’t improved. In addition to it being cold and foggy, it was now also drizzling. When the drizzle turned to rain, I suggested we go to the shop and wait.
With the temperatures still falling, Wes put some logs in the wood-burning stove and we all huddled around the fire. The team knew we had also reported activity in the shop, so they asked what we had experienced there.
Sitting around the fire, I began telling them about Albert. By the time Christy finished her walk-through of the house, part of the team had decided to stay and investigate the shop. Before Christy went back to the house, she told us that during her walk-through she’d encountered a young boy by the name of Timmy. Her impression was that he was probably about eight years old and had lived somewhere in the period of the 1920s to the 1940s. She thought Timmy was buried in the cemetery located close to our house.
The investigation had barely started and my mind was already reeling. A child … I’d hoped the team would find evidence of paranormal activity, but I wasn’t prepared to hear about the ghost of a child. Being a mother, this was a place my mind didn’t want to go. Even though I’d always wondered why we experienced so much activity, I had never considered the possibility that it came from the cemetery.
Christy continued telling us of her impressions. She said she thought Timmy looked to Wes and me as parental figures. She felt that he used to stay more in the children’s rooms, but since they’d moved, he tended to play in the computer room because that’s where I spent a lot of my time.
Christy’s impressions, at least in part, were accurate. The activity in the computer room had increased once the children left home and I’d never mentioned to her or any member of the team that I worked out of the computer room, yet she somehow knew that’s where I spent most of my time.
As I tried to process this information, Christy said they were ready for the next phase of the investigation. She and half the team went back into the house while Wes, the other investigators, and I stayed in the shop.
I’m not able to see very well in the dark, so I pulled up a chair and sat quietly as they turned off the lights and started the investigation. Not being able to participate, my mind kept going back to the things Christy had said. Had her impressions been correct? Did we have the ghost of a little boy living with us?
Even though I didn’t want to think of the ghost as being a child, I’d suspected it once before myself. Like now, it had been too hard to think about, so I chose not to. I now wondered if “Timmy” could’ve been the same ghost from all those years ago.
When my children were in elementary school, I’d gotten into the habit of taking a nap before it was time to pick them up. After lying down, I’d feel someone crawl over my legs and lie down beside me. A few minutes before my alarm went off, I’d wake feeling someone crawl back over me and out of the bed. If I didn’t get up at that point, I’d feel a little push on my shoulder.
Jolting me back to the investigation, I heard one of the investigators exclaim, “Did you see that?”
Personally, I couldn’t see much of anything, but I heard Wes say he’d seen a shadow pass in front of the window. I listened as he and the investigator talked about how the shadow had completely blocked out what little moonlight was coming in through the window.
Wes, several of our employees, and I had all seen shadows in the shop before. Typically, it was in the shape of a man and it would pass in front of the window, go down the long wall then disappear when it reached the back of the shop.
Without being able to see, I knew this must be what they were witnessing. Within a few seconds of the first investigator saying he saw the shadow, another investigator in the back of the shop claimed to see it in the beam of his flashlight.
As the shop team continued to investigate, there were no more reports of seeing anything unusual. One investigator said he felt a tug on his sleeve and we’d all heard several unexplainable noises, but we could only hope their equipment had captured something tangible to back up the claims.
The team investigating the house hoped for the same. They, too, had many personal experiences. Christy said they had started their investigation by doing a base reading of the electromagnetic field. She said that one of the investigators had taken the K-2 meter into my bedroom and set it on my bed. After a few minutes, the meter spiked. They couldn’t come up with a “normal” reason as to why this would happen. She said the meter ended up spiking twice in my bedroom and once in the hall outside of my door.
As she continued to tell me about their experiences, she said that two of the investigators had seen a shadow in the hall, and around the same time they thought they heard someone say “Hey.” Another investigator saw a face peer around the corner in the dining room, then again in the kitchen, and also heard the word “Hey” spoken aloud.
After sharing these experiences with us, Christy told Wes and me that she’d met another entity in what was once our daughter’s room. She said she thought his name might be George. She felt he had been a farmer and was killed in some type of accident involving a horse. She said she didn’t think we had anything to worry about with him. She did think he was a little grouchy and wanted to be left alone.
The word “grouchy” rang true to me. I could remember Keshia using the same word to describe one of the entities in her room. If Christy was right and he wanted to be left alone, that could also explain why her door would slam shut on the occasions I left it open.
As we talked, she said she thought “George” was also buried in the cemetery and that he might actually be Timmy’s grandpa. She said the ghosts seemed to be drawn here and she asked if I’d ever helped them.
Envisioning what I’d seen on TV with ghosts getting someone to help them solve their own murder or some such thing, I told her no. I explained Keshia and I simply acknowledged them and let them know we knew they were here.
Christy explained that we made them feel safe and by acknowledging them, we had in essence put a beacon on top of our house. With us living so close to the cemetery, she said she thought we had probably experienced a lot of activity over the years.
I knew she was at least right about that.