Photography © Sarah
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Fortunately, the Villa had no shortage of genuinely bizarre occurrences for us to puzzle over. Sleeping in the master bedroom overnight, Erin and Mike were disturbed by the sound of heavy footsteps walking around on the second floor (the rest of us slept like the dead). None of the motion cameras were set off, so whoever — or whatever — was responsible, either stayed out of range or did not have physical mass; perhaps a residual echo of a bygone tenant, still making the rounds years later. It’s a rather comforting thought, at the end of the day, the possibility that somebody could love a house like this so much that a part of them would linger behind after their death.
One of our investigators is taking a shower in the second-floor bathroom. When she emerges, she glimpses a shadowy, human-shaped figure lurking on the landing of the back staircase. Upstairs in the library, we gathered to carry out a Phasma Box session at the behest of another colleague, who prioritizes the software over most other investigation techniques. I have heard a lot of gibberish come out of the Phasma over the years, but also some startlingly impressive hits. So, it was to be on the 4th of July, when, after a few minutes’ worth of meaningless jibber jabber, we all heard the very clear and distinctive sound of a single gunshot emanate from the box. Now, THAT got our attention. I have never heard anything quite like it come from the Phasma Box before, and to hear it come from within the same room where Charles had died of a self-inflicted, .22-caliber gunshot wound seemed to stretch the bounds of coincidence too far. The sound came again later that same evening, once again in the library. We did not hear it anywhere else in the house, nor (to the best of my knowledge) has it come up at any other location; if readers have experienced this themselves, do please write in and let us know.
D
ebunking is all part of the paranormal investigator’s stock in trade. Having rigged up motion-triggered cameras throughout the building, we were initially excited when one of them was set off by a bedroom door on the second floor apparently opening itself. It was a very impressive piece of footage, and it would have been easy to simply label it as being paranormal, without digging any further. That’s not the way we work, though, and our efforts at debunking it were subsequently rewarded when we finally discovered that the negative air pressure of a door opening further down the hallway was responsible for it. A thumbs-down for the paranormal but a win for intellectual honesty.
HAUNTED MAGAZINE
Before she can grab her camera, it is gone. I always take solo shadow figure sightings with a grain of salt, simply because of a) the human brain/eye combo loving to play tricks on us, and b) the fact that there is only a single observer, and no corroborating second eyewitness. Therefore, although she is not the first person to see shadowy activity in this part of the building, this experience gets filed under “interesting anecdote, but not hard evidence.”
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