The Burnt House

the burnt house

3/7/2009

General Information

Investigators: Christy, Deb, Amanda and Stephanie

Equipment used: Sony video cameras, personal audio recorders, digital cameras and various EMF meters

Initial Interview:

This residence is currently unoccupied due to it burning down. The former but current homeowners had previously lived in the house for around 1 year prior to its demise and noticed activity taking place as soon as they moved into the residence.

Some of the current experiences in the home include:

They have seen shadows and strange figures that would go in and out of the walls, especially at night.
The family would hear audible voices throughout the house on a constant basis.
They also noticed things being moved around or "misplaced" in the home.
The family would constantly felt what they considered to be "cold spots" in various areas of the home.
The entire family of 5 noticed the lights in the home turning off and on by themselves, light bulbs constantly blowing out.
Doors would open and close on their own.
The family feels like they are always being watched and it makes them feel uneasy.
the most troublesome however were the activities taking place with their 5 year old daughter as she seemed to have an imaginary friend whom she would frequently speak to. When questioned about her friend, this little girl would never divulge any information, only smile like she was embarrassed to speak about it.

There have been no deaths in this home.

Historical/Factual/Relevant Info:

According to Sanborn Maps, a structure was located on the property in 1924. According to city directories of the time, In 1928, George L. Dawson (wife Mary) was listed as the residents. George was listed as an oil field worker. In 1961 George died and the property went to his family where it remained until the property changed hands on April 18, 1985. At some point between 1924 and 1945 a new building structure was erected as the records stated that the current structure was built in 1945. For a long while many people believed that this residence was a church however after our research was conducted, we found out that it wasn't a church after all and it has always been a private residence. After 1985 a family who owned the home for 3 generations had a minister who pastored a church at another location and he had some of his mail addressed to him at the "Church of Christ" sent there to his residence and mail for himself and the church still came there years after he and his family moved out of the home. Our group was able to clarify this information by conducting research on the location.

To our knowledge there has been no deaths in the location which left us with the question, "Why would this location be haunted." Our group was able to interview the past 3 generations of family members who lived in the home and all 3 different families stated they had never noticed any paranormal activity taking place in the home nor did they have any unique or weird experiences go one while they lived there.

Investigation Report

Client Interview

the question remained as to why this location would have activity when none of the other families experienced anything. We do know the current homeowners enjoy the paranormal field of study as well and have on occasion gone out and conducted their own investigation in a few different locations but found it odd when they realized that their own home was haunted. They were now questioning themselves about if they had perhaps brought something back with them but they didn’t think so since they had been experiencing strange activity in the home prior to their excursions. The only thing our group could come up with is that the current homeowners had somehow in their ghost hunting adventures had brought something home with them which never left.

They decided to contact us at OKPRI for help and after their initial contact we were in the process of arranging an investigation date when we received a phone call from one of the homeowners stating that the home had burned down. After speaking with the homeowner, she told us that they didn’t know how the fire had started and the fire department was still doing their report on it. What they found even more strange was that her daughter’s bedroom had no been burned except for some smoke damage and this was odd since the fire’s beginning started in the boy’s room next to this little girl’s room. Also the homeowner’s thought that perhaps they had some friendly ghosts there too because they believe that something tried to warn them about the fire before it started but they didn’t understand the warning until it was already too late. One of the homeowners was getting ready for work when she noticed that her clothes were missing and she couldn’t find them anywhere. Suddenly a

few minutes later she found them in the spot she had left them but this caused her to be late for work. She had only been to work for a short time when the fire started. Both homeowners had a lot of questions so they still wanted us to come out and investigate not only their new house but the old one as well since they felt like that perhaps something might have followed them from her old house to her new one. We decided to check out both places while we were in the area so we confirmed a date and scheduled to be there.

Set up/Sweeps

When we arrived at this location we didn't know what to expect because we had heard so many strange things about this case. Our group arrived early at the burned down residence, as we wanted to have enough daylight where we could see inside the home. We wanted to make sure the area was safe before our group proceeded with the investigation since about 40% of the home was still in tact but in its burned state. There were 4 of us that went to this investigation and upon our initial walk through of the home, we conducted a light walk-through sweep. One of the investigators with us

became very ill as her head started hurting and her stomach felt very nauseated. We initially thought that perhaps it was the left over burn stench left in the home but after a while she was fine and returned back inside the location.

Walkthrough

Upon doing our walk through, Amanda was running the camcorder and noticed that there were several flickering light anomalies that were in the camera’s view. She thought they might have been dust but upon review of the video, we discovered that these appeared to be real light anomalies that flickered like a strobe light in front of the camera’s view. The time for this initial walk through was around 7pm. (See video collage to the right)

Our team left to go to the new home that the homeowner was currently living in to conduct an investigation there. The home seemed pretty quite and there was nothing out of the ordinary that appeared to happen. During our sweeps, we did notice very high baselines throughout the home, especially in one of the children’s bedrooms. This emf reading seemed to change though as it would decrease later on when a secondary baseline was taken. Upon review of our recorded data, we found nothing that could say the new home this family was living in had paranormal activity.

We spent around 45 minutes reviewing some audio from the initial walk through of the burned home, we found several evps of interest. These evp’s ranged from We decided to head back out to the burned down house since we had seemed to have some luck there. We conducted a full walk through and sweep again and during this time our recorders picked up a few strange evps. One of the stranger things was that while we were conducting our sweeps, several of us witnessed shadows passing in between the partial walls of the home and whispering was also heard and recorded on our audio. Another strange occurrence during our sweeps was something that happened to Debbie. She stated that she felt like someone had touched her arm. The odd thing about

this was that during the video clip, right before

Debbie moves her arm and states that she has been touched, you see something twitch her arm and then there are 2 light anomalies that shoot out from behind her.

review, we recorded something quite interesting. It was during the time when we were all outside of the home and the equipment was left recording by itself in the home. Our camcorder picked up heavy footsteps that walked walking towards the camera then stopped. You can then hear something moving our stuff around for a few seconds then heavy footsteps walking off again. (See video below) Here is the audio clip from this time: Footsteps and movement

Conclusion:

All in all we feel like this family has paranormal activity taking place at their old place of residence. We were also able to record some evp’s that correlated with some of the things that Christy was able to pick up on psychically and things that the homeowners had reported.

Psychic Investigator’s Comments

In my previous ten years of investigating, I have investigated a few burned down places before but none like this. A lot of people question why a location would still be haunted if it were damaged or no longer standing. I honestly had expected that here at this location, but I tried to keep an open mind when I arrived. This location was still in pretty good condition when we arrived and I was quite surprised. When we did our initial walk through of the home in daylight, I picked up on a woman who seemed to be from the 1960’s era. She had a little girl with her who I assumed was her daughter. She seemed to be really set on peace and in a sense reminded me of a hippie woman. She had reddish brown hair and was wearing a loose dress that looked like it was from the hippie era. The little girl with her had long blondish-brown hair that she wore in low ponytails and she is the one who seemed to be really fond of the homeowner's daughter. Upon talking with the woman, she told me that she and her daughter had left in the middle of the night because they were trying to get away from a mean man. There was also a man there who would not reveal any information about himself but he did let us know that he did not care too much for the last residences. He also made it known that he did not approve of us being there and he wanted us to leave. He tried on several attempts to scare us and let us know that he was there and around and that he didn't want us there.

Sit Down

Our sit-down was really interesting because several of us heard audible footsteps, which appeared to come closer and closer to us before suddenly disappearing. There was also audible whispering and shadow movement that seemed to be near us but then change directions. Aside from the audible footsteps and whispering, the sit-down appeared to be quite so we decided to leave the equipment running and exit the home for about 30 minutes. After we all exited the home, we returned back to conduct another sit-down to see if the activity had changed any. We again heard the footsteps and a bit more audible whispering. We did not know this at the time but upon video

evidence collected

There were 8 EVPs that was recorded during this investigation and 2 sound clips.

There were no positive photos and several video clips placed into a collage.