“
I
t was a long four-and-a-half-hour drive from Davenport Iowa. I passed the time by staring playing games on my phone and watching YouTube videos. My stomach growled from hunger as dad parked the car in the driveway at 103 E 3rd Street. We have arrived at Malvern Manor. It’s an old hotel built in the 1860s. You see, when the “Malvern” was built, it was part of the local community, with town meetings, weddings, and special events. It was also a temporary stop for people traveling by train on their way to larger cities. Everything in Malvern, Iowa happened here.
It’s crazy to think about. These people actually lived here; they did everything here for years. After being sold a couple of times, the building has been a care facility for mentally challenged people as well as a nursing home facility. I imagined people visiting, sitting laughing and eating together. Their energy filled the rooms here. It still does. It’s sad to think about, but people also died around here. Bad things happened here. Very bad things like bullying, physical abuse and over medicated patients by caregivers so the patients would be like zombies and not “cause trouble”. One story I always think about is of a young girl. The same age as me, twelve. her name is Inez. In the 1900s Inez and her family occupied the hotel. Inez died a couple of blocks from Malvern, but her spirit is said to haunt these halls. Over this weekend, I want to connect with her and some other spirits. As I got out of the car, I could see the awesome new sign they installed out front. Its large with big letters and the smell of new paint. Now visitors can see they are welcome to stop in for a visit and a ghost tour when they are in town. As I turn to look at the front of Malvern, I see two people sitting on the front porch. Dad helps me unload some of my gear, I grab my camera and snap a picture of myself in front of the new sign. I see the people on the porch. They are also paranormal investigators just like me!
As we pull up at noon on Saturday the place looks pretty quiet. I walk in and see Josh Heard the owner, giving a ghost tour to some new lucky visitors, so I dropped off my backpack in his office. I quietly listen in to the story of the Manor again, which Josh always makes exciting. He is a great storyteller and shares about the interesting people who lived here. As we walk down the “shadow hallway” Josh tells the story of the Shadow Man often seen wandering around. We go upstairs and learn more about the other spirits I have come to know like Inez and Hank. I sort out my ghost hunting devices and get ready for the next ghost hunt. I download evidence off my video camera and digital recorder onto my computer. I save the evidence I captured to research later when I get home. I also take out the used-up batteries from my camera and digital recorder from the day before and put new ones in. After dinner, I team up with other paranormal investigators. We get the whole second floor to start with. As we begin the tour, I show the guests my lighted dowsing rods and how they work. They are pretty cool, and glow in the dark. I ask the spirits questions and get direct responses. Then, I have the guests ask questions. They watch in surprise as the dowsing rods answer their questions. Then my team walked down to the other end of the hall into Hank’s room. We did a Spiritus session. It is a device that communicates with spirits. It has a dictionary where the spirit energy can communicate by using words from its database.
Inside there is a moist, stale smell, the kind that makes you shiver, and paint is peeling off the walls but in a cool way that makes you think of a real haunted house and adds to its charm. The main room is dark and most of the windows have covers on them that give me a creepy eerie feeling.
As we start our second session, we take our group down to the “Shadow Hallway”. I awaken the spirits and the air using my Singing Bowl. After doing this three times, my teammate starts the Spiritus App and we start communicating with the spirits. We used a device called a Parascope. It detects static fields. We use the static electricity to detect the energy in the room we can’t see with our own eyes. At the opposite end of the hall someone notices one of the lights is starting to light up on the Mel Meter. My teammate asks spirit to light up the next light. It follows her commands. One by one. Eventually we visit Inez’s room. She’s the girl I was talking about earlier. She was my age when she died. In the papers, she had told a relative, she would “rather die than live with her birth mother” and was later found dead in a closet hanging by her jump rope. Some say she was depressed after she didn’t get good grades on her report card. The spirits were active again today. Inez wanted to play. She liked the gift I gave her, and she kept repeating the word “gift”. Hank was as stubborn as always. He kept repeating he wanted all the females to get out and leave his room.
Once everyone arrived, me and Josh’s daughter hand out the gifts I had brought for the spirits who live here. I always try to bring something to show the spirits I care about them. We take one gift to leave for the spirit of Inez, and Susie the owner’s daughter, leaves the other gift at Hanks room. Hank hates kids. I gave him a gift anyways. “Kill them with kindness” my dad always tells me. Hank was a bully to the nurses that tried to take
Soon it was time to pack up for the long drive home again. I repeated the singing bowl technique until the spirit activity died down closing the portal to the spirits. To end the night, I took a small group of visitors investigating around the manor grounds. As I walk out of the Malvern I look back and say goodbye to all the spirits I met tonight and tell them I will be back soon to chat and play.
We chat a little, and I decide to sit outside for a little bit to get my bearings. After about twenty minutes I walk in and take a good look around. Hmm! “Malvern” hasn’t changed much since I was here last June. In fact, it probably looks nearly the same as it did back in 1860.
46
care of him. He is already dead. But I can be kind to his spirit. After that, everyone decides it’s getting late, so we all go back to our places to sleep. We have a full day ahead of us tomorrow.
Haunted Magazine
”
