Wee Ghosties: ask the ghost hunter

A recent investigation on the bare outskirts of Manassas (or Bull Run) Battlefield yielded more than Civil War souvenirs for the WEE Ghosties team on March 13, 2010. Earlier phone interviews with the homeowner told me that while eager for us to come and find out what was in her house, she was more concerned with what we'd discover - or worse, nothing at all and we thought her insane. Meh, it happens.

Susan and I arrived early to scout out the battlefield and see where in relation to the fighting was the house - we discovered it was no more than a couple of miles from where the start of the 2nd Battle of Manassas began and a stone's throw from General Lee's headquarters. It was possible that what was disturbing the family had its roots in those bloody days in August, 1862.

In previous phone interviews, the homeowner described shadowy figures roaming her house at odd hours, whispers to her teenage son, audible signals to her other children and visuals of a young girl in the dining room with regularity. I suggested keeping a journal so the family could record the occurrences along with who was in the house, the weather, time/days to see if we could form a pattern of the anomalies. The homeowner did a great job in keeping me informed of their progress and looked forward to us coming on the 13th.

After we arrived, we met the family and toured the house. I learned more about the teenage son who had seen an arm waving to him from the master bathroom as he used the computer in the bedroom and was glad he had agreed to stay with us during the investigation. Both mother and son were open, funny and had a healthy skepticism but wanted answers. We taught them the basics of ghost hunting with minimal equipment so they would be able to continue work after we'd left.

Soon after videotaping interviews of the mother, son and neighbors who were having similar intrusions, we began our work. My team sat in separate places in the house with recording devices, and the family with me. We had a prolonged silence and recorded for ten minutes. Susan, placing her recorder in the hall bathroom where the teenage son repeatedly heard whispers and closing the door which later revealed a successful EVP.

Photos and videos of the reported active areas were recorded but yielded no results. As the night wore on, there was one sighting by the son of the young girl during another period of silence for EVPs. My back was to her so I failed to see what he reported as a girl of about 12 years old in a white dress (tenant farmer style) and long hair. The mother had also seen her on previous occasions. They both described her to me as looking as if she had been in an overexposed photograph - too much flash. She moved from one end of the dining room to the other, only seen framed through the doorway from the kitchen.

As we gathered our things to leave late that night, I glanced up to see a shadow figure moving in the master bedroom. It was the first time I'd personally seen a dark figure so thought, even after all these years, my mind was playing a trick on me. After that night, now I'm not so sure.

Stay tuned!

Photo credit:http://www.historycentral.com/

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