Date: Thursday October 23 1997 - Friday October 24 1997.
Time: We started at 11:45 p.m. and finished at 2:45 a.m.
Location: A home on Edmund St. in the Tacony section of N.E. Phila.
Equipment: Camera -- Cannon Snappy A.F. (auto focus) with no strap. Film -- Kodak gold with 400 speed film. Thermometer -- Radio Shack Temperature Alert With digital alarm. Records highest, lowest and present temps. Fast & normal settings to detect change in the temp.
Weather: We were inside the house the whole time and the thermostat was set on 74*. It was a nice comfortable temperature.
History: This location is definitely haunted! I can say that because of past experiences witnessed by myself, Lew, other family members, PGHA member Rachel G. as well as the occupants of this house. On many occasions a female apparition has been seen, as well as a male entity, once. Myself as well as others have had the following experiences happen: appliances going on and off by themselves, knocking on the walls, whispering, our name being called, items moving from one place to another and finally, the most startling of all, actually seeing apparitions.
Those Present: Lew G., Sharon G., Rachel G. and Bob G..
Report: Lew and I were given permission to investigate this house while the owners were on vacation. They are very close friends of ours. We also agreed to collect the mail for them while they were gone.
Lew and myself arrived to the house very early the night of the investigation. Since we hadn't been to the house in a while we thought it best to get there early and give the spirits a chance to get used to us again. We have, in the past as mentioned above, seen them on more than one occasion.
When we arrived we gave the house a scan with our EMF meters. This was around 7:00 p.m.. We had various readings throughout the first floor particularly in the living room and dining room where the apparition of a woman has been sighted by us in the past. We also picked up readings in two of the chairs. We made note of it and took some pics. We then waited a few hours and scanned the house again. This time we had NOT gotten any readings in the areas we did previously.
Finally the other members Rachel and Bob G. arrived and we got started. We split up in pairs. Rachel and I were one and the guys another. The guys took the first floor and the basement as their starting point. As you can guess Rachel and I got the upstairs.
I could go into ALOT of detail as to what we found upstairs but I'll spare you the agony. I will say that our EMF meters picked up alot of activity in the two back bedrooms. All possible sources of electricity was ruled out. The source would be there one minute and gone the next. Rachel and I also heard what sounded like a groan or a grunt coming from the master bedroom when we were in the upstairs hall. We know we both heard it because at the very moment the sound ended we looked at each other and said "did you hear that"! We then went on to, at the same time, repeat the sound in the same tone and pitch. Just as we had heard it. When we finished up in the upstairs rooms we switched places with the guys.
Neither of the groups talked about their findings until the investigation was complete. Once downstairs we picked up readings in the front enclosed porch in one of the chairs and also in the living room in one of the chairs. Now remember, there was no readings the second time around when me and Lew had scanned it earlier that night. We even picked up readings in the dining room. Alot of them over the dining room table, so we took some pics. We then went back into the living room.
Once there, we held the EMF meter over the one chair where we had the reading just a few minutes ago only to see, right before our eyes, the energy source move! It moved from directly in the chair, over about a foot next to the chair, and then disappeared as we followed it with the meter. Pictures were taken.
We finally ventured back to the dining room and upon inspection this time, found nothing over the dining room table. Off to the kitchen we went. Once there we got readings in the middle of the room right in front of the sink but in the middle of the floor. Pictures were taken.
We headed to the basement. We found absolutely nothing there except for this front room down there that is the owners workshop. We had readings in the middle of that room also. The funny things is, just as we had experienced upstairs, we saw this energy move right before our eyes. More pictures were taken.
Once again we swapped places. The guys came back down and we went back up, to the second floor. We went on to scan the rooms and to our surprise every single reading that we had picked up before was GONE! We even waited a while and checked again but nothing showed up. Whatever was there before was gone now.
After several attempts to pick up readings we were unsuccessful so we sat down in the hall of the second floor to write our notes. We then came up with, what we thought, a brilliant idea. Both of us decided to sit there in the dark hall to try and communicate with the voice we had heard earlier. Not really knowing if anything would happen. To our surprise something did happen! Alot of things actually.
I was seated at the top of the stairs so that I could see downstairs and Rachel was seated directly against the wall to the back room. I chose the position that I was seated in for one reason. I did it so that I could distinguish what noise was coming from upstairs and what was coming from downstairs.
We sat there in the dark upstairs with only the bathroom light on. As we were sitting there in silence we heard what sounded to us like a light tapping on tile. That's the best way to describe what we heard. This just didn't happen once, but four and five times! It seemed to be coming from the bathroom. We just sat there very still and silent. We didn't try and talk to whatever was there just yet. We wanted to see if the tapping would go on. It did. A few more times. Then out of no where we heard knocking on the wall that connects the bathroom to the front bedroom. It knocked six times and then five directly after that. We knew it was coming from the wall because we were only about 4 feet from it at most.
Now no one was up there but us. The guys were still in the basement. And we know that the knocks came from there because it was so loud you couldn't miss it. We were a little shaken but we stayed put! We then went on to talk to whoever may be there and told it that it was ok and that we weren't going to hurt "him" or "her".
It may seem a little strange that we would sit there and talk to nothing, in some people's minds it may be nothing, but after living with ghosts almost all of your life, this isn't strange at all. You get use to them and really do start to talk to them. Well no sooner after our little talk with the spirit or spirits (we knew at this point something was present), we heard whispering coming from the front bedroom. We couldn't believe all that was happening. We didn't want to move. We were hoping that something else would happen but about five minutes after we heard the whispering, we heard the guys coming up from the basement.
We then again heard whispering coming from the front bedroom. We were straining to pick up on what was being said but then they guys started for the stairs and the whispering ceased. We told them to go back back down and sit in the living room because we wanted to hear more. So they went down and sat there and waited for us. We stayed there a few minutes more but nothing happened so we went down.
The four of us sat down to talk about the others experiences. Some of the places that we had picked up readings they also got. Many things that had happened to them didn't happen to us and vice-aversa.
The one thing that we thought was really strange about their findings was when they were in the basement. They said that they were at one end and the light at the other end of the basement went out. They checked under the light that had gone out with the EMF meter and nothing happened. Then out of no where, while standing under it, the light went back on. As they walked away from it to investigate another part of the basement, it went out again. Lew then went back over to it and just as he did it went on again. He then twisted it to see if it was screwed in tight and it was.
Me and Rachel didn't have that happen to us at all. Just like they didn't experience the things we did upstairs. Either way we all had some pretty strange findings. So strange that we just can't explain any of them!
Impression: Even if we didn't get the results we did during the investigation, I still know that the house is haunted. There are at least two ghosts, that we know of, there. One is a man and the other a woman. Who they are, we really don't know for sure. A number of people that have been in the house has had many strange things happen to them while there.
I'm sure that our ghost friends aren't leaving anytime soon. Afterall, we have been having experiences with them for 10+ years. The male ghost we only encountered once, but the female ghost we have seen many times. Maybe one day we will find out who they are. Maybe not! All I know is that they are there and they seem to be harmless so we're not in any hurry to get rid of them.
Sharon G. (Vice-president and Co-Founder -- PGHA)
11/5/97
Note: After the investigation was over and Rachel & Bob had left, Lew set up the tape recorder. We were hoping that maybe we could capture a ghostly voice on audio cassette. I waited in the car while Lew was the only one in the house setting up the tape recorder. He set it up in the upstairs hallway in front of the one bedroom where Rachel and I heard the first voice. It took him a rather long time to come out. When he did come out I had asked him what took so long and he said that he couldn't get the tape recorder to go on at first. We didn't use batteries. It was plugged into the wall socket. It just wouldn't work. Then after repeated attempts, it finally started working.
We got the tape recorder the next day. When we played it back there was all sorts of interference. We assume that the recorder itself on the radio is bad. We then went back to the house 3 days after that. When we got in the house our three year old son opened the door to the basement to see if our friends that live there were home. We knew they weren't due home for another day.
When he opened the door he said "mommy, look at the big mess". Lew and I went to see what he was talking about. When we did look down all the things that had been placed on the platform in the basement, was now out in the middle of the floor. The stuff that was being kept on the platform looked as though someone had taken it's contents from about halfway and just pushed it off. Spilling everything over and out into the middle of the floor.
We cleaned it up and went back upstairs. We also found that a pig statue on the dining room table had been knocked down and broken. We don't know if this had been broken in the past and was just laying there because none of us can recall seeing it there during the investigation.
We do know, however, that the mess in the basement had to of happened after the investigation because it wasn't like that when we left. One more thing, when we had first arrived at the house the night of the investigation, Lew had turned the thermostat up from 64* to 74*. We had forgotten to turn it back down that night. The next day when he went to get the tape recorder he went to turn it back down and it was already back down. None of the four of us had done this.