Selmer, Tennessee. A Nice Place to Visit. . .

Last night (January 2, 2010) part of our team was invited to investigate a private residence in Selmer, Tennessee. When most people think about haunted houses, the old, gothic mansions dripping with cobwebs and mist (the kind you see on Scooby-Doo) come to mind. But they are mostly Hollywood images. This house, on this night, was a normal house, on a normal street, and it could have been literally Anyhouse, USA.

The history of the land and the house that sits on it is an interesting one. Apparently, in the early part of the twentieth century (about 1912 or so) a school sat on the property that this house now sits on. Being a predominately African-American part of town at the time, the school itself was an African-American school. According to county folklore passed down through the years, a little black girl was murdered, her body put into the school, and the school then burned down to conceal the crime. Historical accounts of this incident are sketchy and because of the time and place, it apparently didn't get a lot of press attention.

Which brings us to the house we went to. Part of the house had burned down several years ago and had to be rebuilt (remember this is on the same land as the school). When the house was rebuilt, most of the flooring and bricks remained. The owners of the house began hearing things and seeing things in and around their house. They would hear sounds of a baby crying, the water would turn itself on and off inside the bathrooms, doors would be found opened and closed on their own. When the owner of the house would lie on the couch, she would sometimes awaken with a tickle on the nose. There were also reports of the television volume mysteriously turning itself up and down and changing channels, even though a repair technician said there was nothing wrong with the television itself.

She (the owner of the house) also reported seeing three little black girls in period dress (common around the early 1900's) moving through the house. There were also sounds of singing "ring around the rosey." The apparitions of the little girls would float through the house, not acknowledging the owner's presence, and then exit out the back where the laundry room was located. The owner of the house's daughter (approximately 5 or 6 years old) also reported seeing a man in an orange hat and clothes in the back yard and complained about things being above her bed in her room.

All of this activity had the owner concerned, although she didn't seem too frightened by it. She mostly wanted someone to believe these things were happening in her house. The people around in her neighborhood (who are mostly African-American) were also convinced her house was haunted, and they were reluctant to speak about the incident that happened in the early 1900's. The neighbor across the street even claimed to have seen figures floating out the side door of a nearby church and then vanishing towards the backyard of the house.

The owner of the house was gracious enough to leave us in her house without being disturbed while we set up our equipment and went to work. The first thing we did was make an E.M.F. sweep of the house to determine any strong magnetic fields in the house. We noticed very quickly that there were very high E.M.F. readings in the master bedroom and along the southern side of the house. (A quick note about E.M.F.'s: high levels can cause a feeling of dizziness, unsteadiness, queasiness, and just a weird-all around feeling. In extremely high levels, it could lead to hallucinations). This side of the house was part of the original house that was still standing after the house burned a few years back.

Other than the master bedroom and the southern side of the house, the rest of the house seemed to have normal E.M.F. readings and everything seemed to be shielded properly. After we did our initial E.M.F. sweep, we took average temperature readings throughout the house to see if we could pinpoint any abnormally hot or cold areas. The temperature all around the house seemed to average about 65 degrees.

We set up recording devices in the main areas of the house where activity had been reported. We put one in what we'll call the pink bedroom (the little girl who saw the man in the orange hat's room), one in the laundry room (where the apparition of the little black girls seemed to float out of the back door), one in the master bedroom (where the high E.M.F. readings were), and we left one in the living room (the main part of the house). We set up a motion detector near the stairs leading to the laundry room that would sound if anything passed by. We also focused a laser beam across the living room floor with our video camera recording to see if anything broke the beam.

A few of us went outside to investigate the nearby church and photograph the house and the yard around it, while the rest of us stayed inside to do some E.V.P. work and see if we could pick up on any usual sounds. We cut the main power off to the house (except for the heat: it was very cold that night, of course) and waited in the darkness.

Because it has been reported that spirits of children sometimes respond to items that they might have been familiar with in their lifetime, we had brought with us a few toys that might have been common around 1912 (a doll, some balls, a little marble board game that was said to have been popular at the time) to try to see if it would help in the responses. After the power was cut, we did E.M.F. readings in the high level areas again, and they seemed normal, indicating that the wiring in the walls might have been shielded property when the power was on.

The early part of the night was fairly quiet. We did some more E.V.P. work and then focused on the laundry room (where a large part of the activity was said to have occurred). We sat in there about thirty minutes, and then decided to move back out into the living room.

Approximately two minutes later, the motion detector sounds (remember it is set up in the laundry room stairs).

We turn off the motion detector and everyone immediately says "it wasn't me, I was over here. . ."etc. We are baffled about what could have set off the detector (even the dog who was in the house at the time was asleep on his pillow). We ran through the questions, did someone get too close? No. Did someone accidentally hit the button? No. The button was on the bed and no one was touching it. Well, how sensitive is this motion detector? We took one of the balls and rolled it by. We bounced it. We shined lights down at it. Someone or something else other than us set off that detector, and we remained baffled by it.

In the pink bedroom (the little girls room) two of our group reporting have cold spots independently of each other at the same time. We checked all the temperatures and they turned out normal. Nothing coming from the air vents overhead. No cold spots coming from our spot checks.

It was drawing close to midnight when these events occurred. We would have loved to stay longer and push the issue, but the owner of the house (who had been kind enough to leave for us to do our investigation) needed to come back home (and who could blame her, it was cold, and she had kids with her who needed to sleep) so we told her that would be fine and we began packing up our things.

As far as things go, we probably needed to be there a little bit longer to try to debunk some things. The strange feelings we could dismiss as high E.M.F. levels in the bedroom. The little girl seeing things floating in her room (she had butterflies and little bird things hanging on her ceiling that moved a little when the air from the vents came on, which , in a darkened room, could be a little weird looking to a small child). There were a lot of shadows outside from the street lights that could very easily be seen inside the house when someone walked around outside in the yard. Even the television could be explained as having power surges from being plugged into the same wall as the high E.M.F. readings.

But that motion detector going off as soon as we left that room we still can't explain. We can't explain those cold spots, either.

As far as the house being haunted, we're going to go with a nice, safe, "we don't know." Most things people see and hear can be explained away 99% of the time.

It's that 1% that will get ya.

We do want to thank the owners of the house for letting us come down. You were very kind and generous, and if you need us to come back, just give us a call.

Dispatches from the Undiscovered Country

There have been a lot of questions and speculations about the true nature of what happens after we pass on. Aside from the religious beliefs of an afterlife, let's assume that if Einstein was correct, that if energy never really dissipates, it just changes forms, then what is human life? If we go with the argument that human life is a series of electrical impulses, charges, and a mass of energy, what happens to all that energy after the body shuts down? Does it vanish? Or does it "go" somewhere? A lot of theories behind E.V.P.'s (electronic voice phenomenon) say that the voices and sounds that show up are captures of this energy that is still just kind of hovering around.

Whether or not one believes this theory, one must take it as just that: a theory. Tonight marks the first investigation of 2010 for us (and possibly the last, but more on that later). We are traveling down to McNairy County, Tennessee (not to find the ghost of Fielding Hurst) but to investigate the site of an old school fire that happened in the early part of the 1900's (around 1912) and the house that is near this property. We'll keep an update after the investigation.