River Town Paranormal Society

Does tragedy always have to be the catalyst

RTPS — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 04:25:52 +0000

We are often bewildered at why the public as a whole believes that hauntings, for the most part,always surround a tragic event. Usually in the most horrific fashion. It’s a misconception that is widely accepted and urged on by the media. People like to be scared, this is more than obvious with box office sales for horror movies still holding strong in a weakened economy. But is it true? As paranormal investigators are we also, steering toward this trend or are our findings producing much different results.
Okay, well, one part of the process of a haunting, is the fact that for a haunting to take place someone has had to die. This can’t be denied unless of course you are being haunted by an elemental, or a “demon” had decided to rise from the depths of Hades in your basement or of course, the heavenly angels decided to come down and pay you a visit. Most research in documented case studies of paranormal activity have led to the death of a human being. Even poltergeist activity has been tied to humans who may not have been the sharpest individual in human form, but still a human.
Death comes in many forms to mankind. There are multitudes of people who have died horrible deaths due to war, plagues, accidents or murder. Can we dare say though, that there are probably ten times more deaths that have occurred because time has elapsed for us and our bodies just give way to death. If this is the truth then aren’t our odds of discovering the souls that haunt homes and buildings are not there because of a tragic death but because of a wonderful life. Our team has discussed this before and we are still finding in case after case that the haunting is not so much associated with a soul longing to find it’s murderer but for the feeling of love that surrounded them when they lived in their home.
At the time of our death, do we grasp the horror of our death or do we long to feel the energy of love surround us as we cross over. Which we would rather feel? As our team researches the history of a place, we find name after name, building a life path for the place. Yes we do look for death in those records but it doesn’t always show up. No, what we find is that George and Kathrine lived together in their home for a very long time. Jacob lived at his property at one time and took very good care of it. Little Betty liked playing a lot and still does. These are not evil emotions but they are as strong as any feeling of fear. Wouldn’t these be just as valid reasons for a soul to remain or a soul to not cross over, leaving it’s energy to remain earth bound?
We aren’t going to say that there aren’t hauntings that surround tragedy, there are. What we are saying is, for us to understand why a soul haunts a residence shouldn’t we learn to view this soul from a human standpoint. Why do we look for the scarey personal experiences, shouldn’t we be communicating to understand why that soul still roams this place. Do we not have a responsibility to help these souls by learning to understand them instead of stirring up a response to find evidence of fear? Don’t we? Do you? There’s not much excitement in that. Provoking will get a response, we all know that, but didn’t we learn that early on when we use to bug our big brothers or sisters? Continually punching them in the arm until we got a response? This was always fun, for about 5 seconds, long enough for the response to get ugly. Why do we continue this practice with those souls who just want to be left alone or are looking for our help? Team after team are recording evps that say “Help Me”. Are we helping them. We think it’s time we do.

Thank you!

RTPS — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 02:21:51 +0000

Yesterday River Town Paranormal Society hosted another informative event for the public. Last year we had our event at the Villa Kathrine and we had an really good turn out, this year it was held at Out to Lunch in the historical Busy Bee Building. These events are to share what we have captured so far and to spread some paranormal love by discussing what real paranormal investigators are all about.
Some of our guests are trying to begin their own groups, some of our guests have a great deal of interest in mediumship and the role it plays in paranormal investigating and some came because they have had their own experieces with paranormal activity and wanted to share it with someone. We hope we helped everyone feel welcome and truly hope that if they have any questions they now know how to reach us.
RTPS presented some of their past and present investigations with the guests through video and audio recordings. Then our guest speakers Les and Greg spoke on many different subjects including a presentation of Les’ photographic evidence of spirit activity that she has captured.
Sadly it was the last day for the owners of Out to Lunch. Sydne Holder opened her doors for one last time to allow our group to hold this luncheon in this historical buidling. We can’t thank her enough for allowing us to do this at no charge plus including such great food and service for our guests. She will be missed.
What is on the horizon for the group is always kind of mystery to us but sooner or later the spirits move us to journey down one more road they have chosen for us. The proceeds for this event will go to Quanada for their work with children to protect them from child abuse. Our departed ones may not be easily seen but we do believe they are always watching and encouraging people to live graciously on this plane, taking care of those who can not take care of themselves. Maybe this event didn’t raise enough money to make a monumental difference but it did raise enough to clothe or feed one child who may have just lost everything they have due to an abusive parent. So thank you to all who attended and helped with this event, spirits come in many forms and yesterday’s were spirits of the heart.

This is the tale of a ………

RTPS — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 01:38:32 +0000

Let’s see, how did the Gilligan’s Island theme go…..”two hour tour? three hour tour?”…..something like that. And we all know what happened after that right? Tomorrow our team heads for places unknown, sort of. We have never been there but actually it’s just a little bit southwest of St. Louis. We don’t believe we will end up on a deserted island but just what happens when we get there is indeed a mystery to us.
Over a year ago our team had the pleasure of meeting another group from the Springfield area. Larry Wilson and his team contacted us and we started sharing stories about our investigations. One of their stories included their recent investigation of the Morse Mill Hotel in Missouri. They were very excited about what they had found in the way of evps and audible sounds. The activity here was quite appealing to them and recommended we try to come down sometime to investigate.
Well, it took us awhile to get the time to make plans to travel for this investigation. We set it up in late winter so we have been looking forward to it all year. The old hotel has been a home and hotel, seeing many different personalities come through it’s door. Al Capone was there, actually it was confirmed that he did come there on one of his many bootlegging expeditions. Charlie Chaplain used to stop by too to check out the young women there. Our favorite though is a notorious character named Bertha, the first female serial killer in the United States. Bertha liked to cook and did cook at the hotel at one time. It’s the spices that she added to her delicious meals that people died for. Literally, died for. Bertha is buried in the cemetery close by and we are hoping to get a glimpse of the woman who finished her days in an asylum for the mentally insane, howling like a dog.
We just never know what to expect when we go into an investigation, the same as all investigators everywhere. We will be trying a couple of different theories this time. We will be using one of Michael Esposito’s cds of vintage audio frequencies to see if it does raise the frequency level for sound waves to travel through. We will also get our drunk on, at least try to look like we are, to imitate the speak easys of old. It will be a long night but we truly hope an interesting night. With any luck, our ships will sail out of there with our full crew aboard, taking only evidence and experiences, leaving behind those souls and their stories for the next group of investigators to explore.

Review of the American Ghost Society Conference

RTPS — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 03:00:53 +0000

2010′s AGS conference in Decatur, Il was an event our team looked forward to, especially since most of the team would be attending this year. With another wonderful line up of speakers by Troy Taylor we anticipated an overkill of info by speakers who have been studying paranormal history and technology for most of their lives. Our team has only been investigating as a team for 2 1/2 years and have a thirst for new ideas to try out during investigating. As a team we often have unanswered questions which warrant further clarity. For the most part, the conference does not fill our quench. This is not to say that the speakers or Troy Taylor did not do a fantastic job, they did, it’s more to say that this type of conference is geared towards anyone interested in haunted history more so than paranormal investigating. However, Troy did bring in two speakers whom we enjoyed immensely for their technological research in the paranormal field. Our hats are off to Troy for this.
Dale Kaczmarek and Michael Esposito were the highlights of our weekend. Both brought a wealth of personal experiences as investigators to the podium. Dale’s work with the Ghost Research Society is known world wide and he is very respected in this field. One of his best comments was telling the audience that evidence may be missed because most researchers do not have the time to review video clips frame by frame. We whole heartedly agree with this statement so it was refreshing to hear Mr. Kaczmerak echo this.
Michael Esposito gave us more info to chew on about EVP research in 45 minutes than did all the speakers combined. Talking one on one with Mr. Esposito was like discussing our work with fellow team members. He was truly interested in our questions and found the time to answer them for all. We find his work using different forms of sounds waves such as white noise, colored noise and vintage audio frequencies intriguing. We look forward to using his theories in our investigations. Thank you Mr. Esposito.
Our low point of the conference was the insensitive parody of one speaker’s interpretation of orb photography. Throwing blue bouncing balls into the air while taking pictures of them using a disposable camera may be humorous to many, but rather closed minded to some. In a field where no one is an expert, it is a danger to not keep an open mind about what evidence research finds. Yes, 99% of orbs are bugs, dust or reflections, but there is that one percent to keep a watchful eye on. To boldly announce that they are not worthy to even discuss, shuts the door and minds to that one percent. Enough said.
All in all, our group had a great time at the conference. We look forward to going again next year when it will be located in the Jacksonville, Il. Troy Taylor has been living paranormal research for a multitude of years now and has written many books on the subject. We hope his interest never falters and he always has as much thirst for bringing this world to the public to share. As a final note, Mr. Taylor, would you like your Belwitch Cave rock back???? It seems one member of the team has already broken a toe and wonders…..could it be?

Testing 1,2, 3…………

RTPS — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 01:57:51 +0000

On June 5th our team decided to test our audio recorders for those never ending questions that eat away at us about what we are picking up when we investigate. Once an investigator logs more than a couple hundred hours listening to audio recorders, whether digital or analog, you are confident in what you are listening to and what is NOT paranormal evidence. However, there are still many,many voices that are picked up that can’t be explained away and yes, at the time we will consider them to be paranormal but it haunts us as to whether or not we can say with certainty that this voice is that of a spirit.
Our group has learned some of the technical aspects of using recorders, how to transfer them, how to clean them up to hear a clearer version but we are still far away from being experts in using audio recorders. It is our intention to learn and grow in this field of paranormal research so with that in mind we decided to test our equipment in a very closed enviroment to see if we pick up the same voices that we have picked up in places such as Prairie View Nursing Home, The Villa Kathrine and especially the Cunningham house where we picked up numerous voices that were not ours.
At Prairie View we picked up children’s voices saying “Get back” and “laughing” even though there is nothing around the old nursing home for at least 2 miles. It also, does not have any electricity in the building itself although the barn, probably 100 ft away does have lighting. At the Villa Kathrine, we picked up so many undercurrents of voice inflections that it was clearly hard to find evps amongst all the undertones. Yet we did, clearly. And clearly they were in response to what we were saying. The Villa, however, is located on one of the highest bluffs in Quincy Il, along the Mississippi River. There are many radio towers in the area, was it possible that we picked radio waves that just sounded like they were in response to us? Finally, The Cunningham house. Wow. In a word , Wow. Not just one recorder, or a couple of recorders but many recorders picked up evps. This home is in the middle of a small town in Illinois. They do have neighbors and those neighbors did come out on occasion the night of our investigation, but it was all noted by us on our recorders and in our logs. Still, in the wee hours of the morning, we pick up “Kathleen bring my coat”, or “I saw you coming” and probably most importantly, 2 recorders picked up the sound of a ball bouncing at the same moment the team heard it. In our hearts we believe this was all paranormal, but what kind of investigators would we be if we never questioned our work??
On the first Saturday of June, 2010 we traveled to one members house in the countryside of Missouri. The closest neighbors are 1/2 mile down the road and there are trees between the homes. The closest radio tower is over two miles away. The house itself is modern with all the modern conveniences, such as TV, DVD player, computers, CD players, etc. Only our team members were present for the testing and we decided to test a couple of our own theories about evp recordings. The first one is whether or not a digital recorder could pick up someone calling on a cellphone, talking into their cellphone while calling and the person they are calling not picking up. The second theory, whether or not recorders can pick up voices as far as a mile away or as close as 50 ft away. And our last theory, can recorders somehow pick up thought waves. Again, let me say we are not experts on technology, no one is our group is an electronic engineer, so most likely according to the electronic schematics, some of these theories are not possible. The reason we tested these is because we have had a couple of occassions where it made us wonder if what we caught on our recorders wasn’t what had transpired away from where we were. So we wanted to test these for those reasons.
We had two recorders going simultaneously in each area that we placed them in. Two were in the upstairs kitchen, 2 were outside on the front porch and two were in the basement of the house. We had two members drive a mile down the road and say something in their vehicle. We had two members seperately walk the perimeter of the property and say things out loud or bang on things. We also, had the members in the vehicle make a cellphone call to two members sitting in the kitchen who did not pick up the call. Very simple testing for us, we weren’t worried about the megahurtz as much as we were worried about the recorders being set exactly alike.
The results are uneventful. We picked up absolutely nothing on our recorders, except for the banging on a metal shed which was picked up on the outside recorders, so apparently metal banging sound waves can travel further than a human voice sound wave. No evps were picked up from the members voices only 50 ft away from the house, no evps were picked up from the cellphone call and definitely no evps were picked up from the thoughts waves being sent to the two members in the kitchen. So what is our conclusion to our testing???
Honestly, it isn’t conclusive of what evps are as much as what we know isn’t happening now. We are more confident that when we do pick up a voice that can’t be explained with the surroundings of the building, that it may be paranormal activity. Our team will continue to work on evp’s and decipher what we have but at least now those nagging thoughts that it’s something we are doing can go away and leave us open to other possibilities. We know many people do not believe we have picked up these evps. We know that. Yet, when you have an evp that is picked up in the middle of nowhere of a child’s voice where no children are living or visiting, tell us how to explain that away. We will listen. We are open to this and love to find answers to the questions we ask. Our forum is for learning and we welcome other investigators points of view. For now though, we will continue to search those areas that are said to be haunted, we will listen closely to our recorders for any sign of paranormal actiivity, no matter how faint and we will believe that audio recorders are indeed one of the strongest tools in paranormal investigating. Without them we would never have received our very first evp recording in the Villa Kathrine of the german woman’s voice yelling at two of our investigators which mapped out our course for future investigations. Our photographic evidence had nothing. Our personal experiences were nil. EVP recordings have been and hopefully will be our key to researching the paranormal and without them our journey would have been much different.

The Orf

RTPS — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 02:47:10 +0000

Boy if we thought investigations were hard work we found that trying to raise monies for new equipment is even harder work! The group feels like they just ran a marathon with putting our new cook book together and getting ready for a yard sale. It was work, not necessarily the kind we like to do but the kind that has to be done. So thank you to everyone who came by and bought something from us. The weather was HOT! MUGGY! and WET! but we survived and had a great weekend meeting up as a team with friends and for a once, a casual few hours of conversation.
The one bright spot of the week and the weekend was bringing on board Andy Orf as an intern for the summer. Andy already has experience with being part of Pike County Paranormal in Pike County Missouri, so we feel like he’s going to be a great addition to the group. He joined right in and helped set everything up. Andy and Elmer even wooed the female yard salers, convincing them they did really need to take all this great stuff home with them! Thanks Andy, hope you don’t get too bored with us old folks!
Now that the yard sale is over we look forward to our first investigation since March. We have two investigations in the next month and both places have a significant amout of square footage. It will take every piece of equipment that we have but each place has a history of paranormal activity and we are pretty hyped about that. Every investigation poses new opportunities for our team to learn and this is what really make all the prep work ahead of time for raising funds for new equipment worth it. You just never know what is going to show up! So this Saturday we investigate a 12 room Victorian Lady and then a month later we investigate a haunted hotel. It doesn’t get any better than this for PI’s and look forward to sharing our findings with everyone!

Warp Speed Summer

RTPS — Fri, 28 May 2010 03:21:52 +0000

Pass the caffeine please and plenty of it! Next weekend jump starts a very busy summer for River Town Paranormal Society. We are really looking forward to all of it but it’s going to take every free moment we have. The dust bunnies will be multiplying by the hundreds!
Next weekend we will be gathering at one of our member’s house in the boon docks of nowhere man land. It’s secluded and she likes it that way. We like it that way because we are going to put our audio recorders to the test. We often question why we pick up so many evps and feel that if we can test our equipment in every imaginable way that we may have a better understanding of the audio recorders and what they record. We will be posting our results on our website after we review everything.
On June 12th RTPS will be having a much needed fundraiser in the form of a garage sale. We need to update and improve our IR lights and increase our supply of discs, tapes and batteries for the next two investigations which are coming up soon. We hope everyone comes by and says “Hi” and takes a trinket or two home with them!
Our last big event of the summer is a Paranormal Luncheon on July 24th. RTPS is hosting this event with guest speakers Les and Greg Haslem. The Haslems have a very interesting and unique interest in blue orbs and will be speaking on this subject along with showing their wonderful gallery of photos of paranormal energy. The luncheon will be held at “Out To Lunch”, a really cool restaurant in one of the oldest well known buildings in downtown Quincy. The luncheon will be held from 11am to 2pm with RTPS opening up the luncheon with a brief overview of their past investigations. We will be posting all the info soon on our website and hope everyone comes out to spend a lunch period talking about the paranormal. All proceeds from the lucheon will be donated to charity, not ours, but a charity against child abuse. We hope to have a great turn out for Out to Lunch’s final day at the Ol’ Busy Bee!
That’s it for now, we will keep you posted as we go along!

One of THOSE stickers

RTPS — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 03:17:34 +0000

Maybe it’s because I am so tired from working so much or maybe all this paranormal investigating has pushed me over the edge of reason, but as I drove home today from work I sat behind a vehicle with another one of THOSE stickers. They are popping up here and there, it’s not the first time I have seen one. Those stickers that make you think, who was this person to the person driving the vehicle. Perhaps you have seen one of THESE stickers and it made you wonder too, even though you are not tired and you never investigate the paranormal. They are quiet stickers that speak volumes which I find to be a very curious form of media, so I sat there asking myself “would I have one of these stickers?”
Who knows when mankind first decided we needed to honor their departed loved ones. I am sure there is a book on it somewhere that suggests they know. From the burial grounds in South America where the cone head tribes proudly displayed the cone shaped heads of their departed,to the Great Pyramids of Eygpt that honored their beloved kings with gold, hidden chambers and their pet cats, for some reason along our path of evolving we as a race decided that we must do this. For our team, it’s been a great privilege for us to be able to view many headstones of family members, each one telling a little story of who this person was, whose bones now lay 6 feet under. Headstones and monuments have been around for quite a while now, it has been a very accepted form of tribute to past lives. Yet today I find myself wondering……where is this going?
So first we piled mounds of dirt and rock upon our loved ones in memory. Then with religious practices we may have turned to putting a cross or another symbol upon the gravesite in memory. With the technology of being able to carve stone, the headstone came along with names, date of birth and date of death. Today’s headstones are pretty darn fancy with wonderful engravings but it still isn’t enough. Pictures of our loved ones are now on headstones so we can put a beautiful face to those bones buried 6 foot under. Solar power has brought new forms of memorials with ever lasting light affordable for everyone. But now this, this today made me think even more so, this sticker which brought this person to life for me, sitting at a light waiting to go home. Of course I am talking about the window decals that we can now place on our vehicles in loving memory of someone who meant the world to us. Death, always a mystery to human beings,has forced us to put life to the soul that once graced our lives. Everyone that has lost someone who meant the world to them, found a way to bring life to their memories by any means of comfort. So reading this family’s window decal and realizing that this man was their father, not only brought comfort to them but comfort to me as I sat in car waiting for the light to change. It is so curious, but one has to wonder……what next? Can halographics images be right around the corner? Will my children want a image of me constantly staring at them after I am gone? Images popping up as we walked by with a motion sensor eye would decrease the need for paranormal investigators because the spirits of departed souls would be smiling at us from every direction as we walked through the cemetery. Yea, okay, maybe I have been working a little bit too hard lately…….because now I am thinking, this would make a really great scary movie. All because of one of THOSE stickers I saw today while driving home.

A Night at the Mausoleum

RTPS — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 03:04:00 +0000

Well, their weren’t any large T-Rex’s chasing us around and Teddy Roosevelt wasn’t riding through the hallways but our visit at Woodland Mausoleum last Saturday was just as much fun as the movie by a similar name. The historical replicas did not come to life at the mausoleum but something did. RTPS asked medium’s Les and Greg Haslem to go with us to the mausoleum since Les has never been there. Les is newly transplanted from California yet many parts of this area seem like home to her. She and Greg often walk the cemetery but had not been able to get into the mausoleum yet.
The mausoleum is one of our favorite places to investigate, along with many other paranormal enthusiasts in the area. To give something back for being able to come and spend time with many of the families who have been placed there lovingly by their family members, we offered to do some clean up before we went “lights out”. RTPS feels that working with people like Keith N., manager of the cemetery and mausoleum, keep these resting areas clean and maintained, together we can keep these pieces of history alive for future generations. The cemetery is large and does depend on volunteers for the monumental job of clean up in the spring after a long, windy winter. It’s a privilege to be able to help. Even though we started off cleaning, as always, we turn our audio recorders on as soon as we get there.
It hard to say why it happens this way so often, but many times some of our clearest evp recordings are caught right when we first enter a building. Is it because the spirit energy becomes highly charged by our energies as we walk in? Are they very curious at first, then back off and follow us around? Are they upset with us and are yelling at us to get out of their peaceful surroundings? We aren’t sure, but hopefully they appreciated us giving the mausoleum a little shine and clearing the cobwebs that have set in over the winter.
We did capture several evps once again last Saturday. The Haslems did pick up on several spirits there, one in particular, a little girl named Betty. We believe our group was able to work with the Haslems energies to pick up new evidence of paranormal activity at the mausoleum. As this week goes on we will begin posting some of our evidence. One particular piece of video is possible evidence of the energy of Betty the little girl who plays at the mausoleum. She came out to play and we believe we have captured evidence of that. Stay tuned!

Changing Lanes

RTPS — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 02:53:37 +0000

The team is looking forward to the weather warming and being able to change lanes with our investigations. We have truly enjoyed investigating the private residences we have done this winter but as cool as they were to investigate for paranormal activity, nothing is quite as delightful as tromping around in old cemeteries during the midnight hour. I doubt that many of our readers would disagree for paranormal investigators truly enjoy sitting in the peace and quiet of the headstones and luckily we have an occassional paranormal friend who reads us and knows of what we talk about. What used to scare us to “death” as a teen has now become a comforting scene of souls who just want to be heard. Of course, there are always those who want to be heard more so than others, but in the total quietness of marble, granite and limestone, you do get that small voice that finally comes through, wanting to share their secret that life goes on.
As investigators our job is to test this secret. Does life go on after death? The pictures of forming mists and black shadows in amongst headstones……are these really evidence of a lifeform that still exists or is it a trick of the eye? The voice that we pick up of a child laughing where no children were known to be……did we really pick up the sounds of children still living in an existence from times gone by? Can we as investigators pick up the essence of an energy of a soul who wants to travel with us, to be part of this world once again? Is all of this really evidence of what our investigations produce or are we still just beginning to understand and research a law of physics that common women and men have not researched before?
As you can see, investigating only validates the fact that we have much more to learn. We may be able to go into an investigation and give our clients “proof” that paranormal activity exists in their residence or business, but do we truly feel 100% as an paranormal investigator that we have captured real evidence or do we still have that itching feeling that we need to research this further. I think most teams would agree, nothing is set in stone, paranormal activity takes on many shapes and ever changing waves of attitudes. To be complacent that we know it all, can say for sure that what we have is proof of spirit, to show the world that every orb we capture is a ghost and every voice we pick up on a recorder is the voice of a departed soul, is a discredit to paranormal investigating.
Luckily, from what we see and read, we think that paranormal investigating is evolving. There are such a large number of groups doing research, comparing notes, testing theories, that we do see a growth in this field. It’s encouraging to the say the least. In two short years our group has traveled a multitude of roads in investigating. We have had to switch lanes many, many times. Sometimes the road ahead is mist covered and we have no idea of what lies ahead for us, but we travel on. The end of the road is not in sight for us yet but that rising sun at the end of the road encourages us to keep our sight on the process. We don’t know where this leads us but as with all paranormal investigators, we hope it leads at least to one more road that needs to be traveled. Yep, it will be good to get out and change lanes once again this spring, we just never know who is out there waiting to meet us.