TOP 5 Lesser Known Haunts of Virginia

Throughout the world, there are places imbued with history and heartache, tragedy and death--places where you can feel the energy grow thick and cool as you enter. They are the shadowy roads flanked by gnarled trees, devoid of foliage, that reach up like bony hands from a grave and try to snatch up your vehicle as you pass. They are the barren fields where a thick mist rolls low upon the ground, as if searching for an unsuspecting bystander to envelop and dematerialize, never to be seen again. 

These places are the foundations of America's most prolific urban legends and ghost stories. It seems that the creepiness of these places begs for someone to conjure a dark tale based upon them. And when someone gives in to the pleadings and creates a frightening tale about the place, those who visit are sure to experience events that will support the story. 

Still, there are other places--places from which dark tales are not spun. They are places where someone will experience the paranormal, but instead of dashing to the internet to post about the experience, they pass the story along to a family member or friend. This family member or friend passes it to another. Somehow, in this era when technology is used as a crutch to support a failing society, these true tales of dark happenings manage to avoid being sucked into the vortex of social media. 

These are the places that we seek. In our travels around Virginia and the surrounding states, we make it a point to ask the waitress in the restaurant where we stop for dinner, the cashier at the convenience store where we stop for coffee, or the person in line behind us at Walmart about the local ghost stories and legends. Occasionally, our VAPI shirts or vehicle graphics will elicit a conversation from someone in a parking lot. And the true stories, the ones that you won't find on the internet, are revealed. 

What follows is a collection of five of the least known haunts in Virginia. These are places that, whether creepy feeling or not, have been known to frighten locals for decades.

1. Ragged Island Wildlife Management Area

Lying at the southwest end of the James River Bridge, at the entrance to Isle of Wight County, is a marshy area that used to be frequented only by fisherman and those interested in a short walk down the marsh walk to the beach. In the mid-1980s though, the area became the site of a gruesome murder which some associate with the Colonial Parkway Murders. This was a string of unsolved murders of couples, each one like a rock being tossed into the placid surface of our quiet community. Each rock caused wake that rippled out and changed the lives of every local in Hampton Roads at the time. 

In 2019, VAPI created a YouTube series called Paranormal Shakedown, which sought information about unsolved crimes from spirits that may have been present when the crime occurred. Since the first murders associated with the Colonial Parkway killer, as well as the disappearance of another young couple who has never been seen again, occurred so close to my hometown, I suggested that this series of murders be the first for Virginia Paranormal to investigate for the new video series. 

After extensive research and planning, we began filming the video. Our first 2 stops were along the Colonial Parkway, an unlined road that meanders along from Yorktown to Williamsburg. It was on this road that the first of the murders took place, not far from Williamsburg. Our next stop was at Ragged Island. 

The sun had disappeared below the horizon, leaving the parking lot just off of Route 17 deep in the shadows. A single light in the parking lot did little to illuminate the area. 

Marsh grass rose above our heads on three sides. It swayed in the wind, whispering as if warning us to leave this dreadful place. A pathway cut through one section of the marsh grass and disappeared into the darkness.

It didn't take long for us to decide that this was one of the most unsettling places we had ever been. From the moment we stepped out of the car, we felt eyes upon us. We tried to ignore the feeling as we pulled out our investigation equipment and started it up. 

One of the first words out of the spirit box was "David," the name of the young man that had been killed there so long ago. He and the young woman that was with him had been shot in the back of the head at the other end of the long path through the marsh, where it emerged out onto the beach. David Knobling's truck had been found a day later. The truck was still running. The windshield wipers were on. The keys were in the ignition, and the young woman's shoes were found in the floorboard of the truck. 

We began asking questions, hoping to hear David speaking to us. But what we heard was "Leave." 

We glanced at each other. As we stood there, the tension had begun to rise. We all felt more and more secluded, despite the highway that was visible through a thin tree line. 

A moment later, "It's coming. Get out."

It was coming. We didn't know what it was, but we could all feel the thickening in the air. Our guts were telling us to flee the place, and quickly. 

Still, we stayed for a few more minutes, continuing to ask questions. When another warning voice came through the spirit box, we decided we had overstayed our welcome. We jumped into the car and made our way out of the parking lot. I turned in my seat to look out through the rear windshield as the parking lot disappeared out of sight. I could see nothing, but something had definitely been there, and it wasn't something as innocent as the spirit of a young man or woman who had been murdered there decades before. I was something far more sinister. 

To find out more about the Colonial Parkway murders and to see what happened on our visit to Ragged Island, check out this video from VAPI.

2. Crozet Tunnel (The Blue Ridge Tunnel)

In the late 1850s, two groups of Irish immigrants and slaves, covered in sweat, rock dust, and black powder, hacked away at the rock deep within Afton Mountain in western Virginia. The work was dangerous and tiring, and they had been at it for almost a decade. Many of their coworkers had fallen ill from Cholera or had been killed by falling rock. The conditions were nearly intolerable. In recent days, though, a rush of renewed hope had swept through the camp. The two groups of worker had begun to hear each other as they worked in the tunnel. Then, just a few days after Christmas in 1856, the pick-axe wielded by a worker on one team suddenly struck something far more brittle that the solid rock they were used to. And from the other side of the thin wall of rock before them, a coworker cried out with joy. The two teams had finally met at the center of what would become the Crozet tunnel.

At the time, the Crozet tunnel was considered a feat of modern engineering. It was one of the longest tunnels in the world and without challenge, the longest in the country. Stretching over 4,200 feet through the Blue Ridge mountains near the town of Waynesboro, the tunnel was constructed as a railway passage that would allow trains to travel easily from eastern Virginia, through the Blue Ridge Mountains to the western part of the state and to states beyond. 

Accidents and a cholera outbreak were enough to cause spirits to linger behind at the tunnel, but these weren't the only deaths that occurred here. The tunnel had a fatal flaw.

On August 8, 1910, an Italian immigrant named Francesco Rancoli, his second wife, and their 4 children, boarded the Chesapeake and Ohio No. 3 train in Norfolk, bound for a new life in Cleveland, Ohio. The family travelled in a segregated car, reserved only for Italian immigrants.

They crossed most of Virginia as the sun began to set, and began to climb Afton Mountain after midnight. Perhaps lulled by the gentle swaying of the train car or exhausted by a long day of travel, the family somehow missed the engineer's warning to close the windows as the train passed through the Blue Ridge Tunnel beneath Afton Mountain. 

It isn't known who the first immigrant was to awaken and notice the train car filling with smoke, but what is certain is that chaos ensued. As people in the train car awakened to the yells and cries of others, they believed that the train had caught fire. They began opening more windows, which allowed more smoke into the train. As the panicked passengers tried to flee the train, they found one of the doors locked and began to break windows. Again, more smoke filled the train car. Virginia, the Rancoli's youngest, was the first to arrive at the rear door of the train car. She managed to get the door open, and without considering the deadly consequences, leapt down between the end of the train car and the one close behind it. She was instantly killed, her body shredded and mangled by the wheels.

At a stop further down the line, Francesco, his wife, and their oldest son left the train and headed back to retrieve the remains of Virginia's body. She is said to be buried somewhere in Basic City, but thus far her grave has yet to be found.

3. Meems Bottom Bridge

According to the Northern Virginia Daily, the Meems Bottom Covered Bridge in Shenandoah County bears the label of the longest covered bridge in Virginia, as well as the only covered bridge still open to vehicular traffic. 

There were bridges at this location as far back as the mid-1800s. The first was believed to have been burned by Stonewall Jackson's Rebels in 1862. According to Wikipedia.com, Confederate Captain John McNeill led a raid just before dawn on the Union troops guarding the Meems Bottom Bridge. Captain McNeill was mortally wounded in the raid. 

The second bridge to be constructed on the site washed away in a flood in 1870, as the one constructed afterward in 1877. The bridge that was constructed a year later remained there until the current bridge was constructed in 1894. 

On Halloween night in 1976, the bridge was set ablaze by vandals. Whatever remained of the original timbers were salvaged and used to construct a new bridge, which was also outfitted with steel girders. 

In July of 2003, a tragedy of a different sort occurred near the bridge. Brenda Paz was a teenager who, like many others, ended up running with the wrong crowd. MS-13 is renowned for being one of the most violent street gangs in America. They proved themselves to the community around Mount Jackson as being worthy of the title when the repeatedly stabbed Brenda. Her throat was slit almost to the point of decapitation, and her body was dumped along the west bank of the Shenandoah River. A fisherman and his son discovered her badly decomposed remains, tangled in some briers on the riverbank. Forensic analysis showed that she was dead before she was put into the river, and that she had been either killed at the site or killed somewhere else and dumped there. The multitude of gang-related tattoos were what led investigators to charge members of MS-13 for her murder.

Now, it is rumored that if you visit the bridge at night, you might catch a glimpse of the young girl standing in the bridge. VAPI visited the site about a year ago. Check out the video we posted on YouTube to see the bridge for yourself.

4. Park Gate Plantation

In 1687, George Brent, a colonist who owned a home called Woodstock on the Potomac River, was granted 7500 acres of land near the modern day town of Nokesville, Virginia. There, in the heart of his land, he built a small cabin. His grandson, also named George, came to the tract of land and built the Parkgate Plantation House next to the cabin his grandfather had constructed. The cabin then became a summer kitchen for the home.

The house was originally built for the caretake of the land. The 7500 acres of land was divided into 100 acre parcels that were leased out for tobacco growth. However, by the time of the American Revolution, the land was no longer able to sustain tobacco growth. The 100 acre parcels were abandoned by those who leased them. The land began to be sold off parcel by parcel. 

Just after the end of the war, the home and remaining 800 acres was sold to Thomas Jessie Lee and his wife, who was the niece of George Washington. At the time, Washington had business relations in the town of Culpeper, a 30 mile ride on horseback from his home at Mount Vernon. The Parkgate Plantation became his first overnight stop on the journey. 

After the death of Thomas Jesse Lee, the home changed hands a multitude of times. When the Civil War permeated the area, somehow the home managed to survive and became a field hospital for the wounded for about 2 weeks following the nearby Battle of Bristow. 

In 1976, the home was purchased and restored to its original condition. At that time it was placed on the county, state, and national registries of historic places. 

Tom Russell, the current owner of the home, operates River Eagle Stables on the property. There has been a great deal of paranormal activity in the home, the family cemetery nearby, as well as in the outbuilding used as the stables. 

In early 2021, VAPI had the pleasure of investigating this lovely, historic home. While most of the evening was uneventful, there was some indisputable evidence of the paranormal that occurred in the stables while we investigated upstairs. Also, Mr. Russel graciously allowed us to sleep in one of the upstairs bedrooms on an antique rope bed. At around 8 in the morning, one of the investigators, Will, and I were awakened by footsteps coming up the stairway just outside our open bedroom door. I sat up in bed and watched the top of the stairs for someone to appear, thinking perhaps the home's current caretake or Mr. Russell had arrived. The footsteps stopped at the top of the steps, but no one appeared. 

Be sure to watch our video on the investigation to see the home, the land, and some of the activity we experienced while there. 

5. Triangle Hunt Club

This mid-1800s farmhouse, located in the lower end of King and Queen County, was given to the African-American family that ran the plantation just after the end of the Civil War. It has remained in the family ever since. Currently, the owner leases the land and home to the Triangle Hunt Club. The home is not only a headquarters for the hunt club though, it also acts as a social meeting spot for its members. In the fall, the property comes to life. Some members have parked their campers on the periphery of the yard and sleep there on the nights before they hunt. Others sleep inside the 3 story home. There are some, however, who refuse to sleep in the home alone. Although, even those who sleep in campers have complained of being awakened by spirits at night. 

One of the ghostly tales surrounding the home is of a woman in a long, white dress that is often seen on the second floor balcony overlooking the front yard. Many have seen here there, and when her presence was mentioned to the property owner, he remarked that the description sounded a lot like that of his nanny when he was a young boy in the 1950s. Why she remains in the home is unknown. 

One of the members of the club was asleep in his camper at the front of the property one night when a sound woke him up. Shaking off the sleep, he sat up and found a young girl in a very old-fashioned dress standing at the foot of the bed watching him. He recognized immediately that she wasn't a living child. Blinking and rubbing his eyes, he opened them again to find her still there. "I'm going to leave you alone, and you just leave me alone," he told her, and lied back down to return to his slumber. 

Men who have been hunting in the surrounding woods have claimed to hear flute music echoing through the forests. The sound grew louder and louder, then slowly began to grow quieter as if someone with a flute had approached and passed the hunter. There was a great deal of troop movement through the county during the Civil War as well as a skirmish that took place on the grounds around the King and Queen County Courthouse nearby. Could this be the source of the music heard playing in the woods?

Perhaps the most well-known ghost story is rooted in the tragic death of an 8 year old boy who was the son of one of the club members. It is common for the hunters to bring their families to the club for the weekend, and such was the case with one man who brought his son along to play with the other club members' children while he hunted. One evening in 2003, while the club members were out hunting, the 8 year old boy who was said to resemble Dennis the Menace, was left in the home with a 12 year old boy. While playing on the second floor, the 12 year old boy went to the 3rd floor and found a gun. Without realizing it was loaded, he brought it back down to the 2nd floor to show the other boy. While handling the weapon, it was discharged and the bullet struck the younger boy in the chest. In a panic, the older boy put the gun back where he had found it, moved the younger boy downstairs to the front porch, then ran out to try to find an adult. By the time the adults returned to the home, the younger boy was dead. 

Those who were members of the club in 2003 and have remained members since, as well as new members, have reported seeing and hearing the spirit of the boy in the home. While the adults were playing cards one evening, the kids were outside playing hide-and-go-seek. A mother decided to go looking for her children and, not finding them outside, walked up the stairs to the 2nd floor to see if they were there. Standing at the bottom of the stairs leading to the 3rd floor, she spotted the spirit of the young boy peering at her over the staircase banister. 

In 2020, Virginia Paranormal Investigations had the privilege of being the only investigation team to have ever visited the hunt club. We spent the entire night in and around the building, listening for the footsteps of the young boy, watching for the woman on the balcony, and listening for flute music echoing out from the forest. Take a look at the video below to see our investigation and to hear what we found. 

So there you have it: the 5 Lesser Known Haunts in Virginia. Thanks for visiting VAPI's blog, VAPI Unplugged, and stay tuned for more fascinating blog posts to come. Don't forget to subscribe so that you won't miss anything!

NEW LIFE. OLD DEMONS: Part 2 of 3

This is Part 2. If this is your first time visiting my blog, then you've missed something pretty cool. You should go and find Part 1 of this paranormal investigation post. If you're here because you read Part 1 and want to read more, then Awesome! Glad you made your way back to join us for the continuation!

The Investigation

We began in Kyle's apartment, since this was the focal point of the activity he had been experiencing. An entry hallway greeted us when we walked in the door. The hallway ran to the back of the apartment and ended at a door to the larger of the two bedrooms. The door to the smaller bedroom led off to the left.

A living room at the right front corner of the apartment contained only a couple of large boxes of unassembled furniture. Moving toward the back of the building from the living room, we found a stacked washer and dryer to our right before entering the kitchen.

New, walnut finish laminate flooring had been laid throughout the apartment, and new inexpensive light fixtures had been installed. The kitchen had also been recently updated with a medium oak stained cabinetry and granite countertops.

There was something sad about an empty home or apartment. Perhaps it was the lack of personal items that made a place home. Or perhaps it was the feeling of emptiness itself. No one was there to love the place or to spend time and energy fixing it up. 

As I walked through the apartment, I kept my senses tuned in to the energy. Most of the apartment felt normal, but when we entered the larger bedroom, suddenly the energy changed. The air became heavy and thick. It felt as if someone strong was pressing on my chest and preventing me from taking a deep breath. My eyes wobbled slowly in their sockets, as if I was opening my eyes underwater and the world around my was fuzzy, out of focus. My heart became a bass drum, pounding out a rhythm that I could feel in my ear drums.

This was nothing unusual for me. I'd learned over the years of investigating that there were places like this. Sometimes it was an entire home, and the moment I crossed the threshold of the front door, the sensation arose. Other times, like this, the feeling arose only when I entered one room. I decided long ago that this was my body's reaction to spirit energy. What kind of spirit, I'm still not sure. What I do know is that the stronger the sensation, the stronger the spirit.

I tried to draw in a deep breath. "Oh, yeah. It's in here," I announced. 

Jeff and Kyle entered the room behind me, but I didn't turn my attention to them. I kept it focused on the room around me. 

Like the other parts of the apartment, this room was also empty. A small closet had been built into one corner, but lacked a door. A single window at the center of the wall to my left looked out over the landscape of corrugated metal buildings and parking lots cluttered with old vehicles. 

Standing at that window, looking out, I could feel eyes upon me. I knew it wasn't Jeff or Kyle staring at me. This was something else. When I turned to face them, I said, "There's definitely something in this room."

This was the first hot spot, the first location where we would set down the equipment to investigate. As if reading my mind, Jeff stepped to the center of the room and placed the digital voice recorder on the floor. "Let's try an EVP session, then."

"Okay," I responded, and moved the wall adjoining the kitchen. I stood with my back against it, waiting as Jeff stood against another wall. Kyle, who had been carrying his camcorder with him, stood outside the bedroom door and began taking photos and video. 

"I'm Jeff."

"And I'm Linda."

Our typical introductions were always followed by a short speech, usually given by Jeff, that was meant to not only tell potential spirits more about ourselves but to explain why we were there. We also made it a point to state that we had no intentions of harming them. It might not be possible to harm a spirit anyway, but if the spirit didn't know it was a spirit, then a simple statement like this could be enough to calm his or her nerves. 

What followed was a series of questions, not always in the same order, that were intended to draw basic information out of a potential spirit. We always asked his or her name, why it stayed there, if it was attached to the home, the land, or an object in the home. The questions were separated by an intentional silence of between 10 and 30 seconds. This would give a spirit plenty of time to answer the question before we asked another. There is nothing more annoying than hearing a disembodied voice while reviewing the audio files, but being unable to tell what it was saying because an investigator was speaking at the same time. 

Throughout the EVP session, the room remained somewhat heavy. I glanced around the shadowy room, illuminated only by dim light from the window and from the living room. If I were blind, I would have believed at that moment that there were more people in the room than just Jeff and I. "There's a female energy here," I told Jeff and Kyle. "Her bed was in that corner." I pointed to the corner farthest from the door, to the right of the window. 

"Someone used to come in here and abuse her." Neither Jeff nor Kyle responded, so we continued with our questions.

After about 10 minutes of asking questions and waiting for a response, we ended the session and went about reviewing the audio. Occasionally, when listening through the digital voice recorder, you can hear a disembodied voice. Other times, we have to wait until we can run the audio through analysis software on the computer. With the aid of noise cancelling, over-the-ear headphones and the software, quiet voices and whispers often appear. 

I listened carefully to the audio, with the digital voice recorder pressed up against my right ear, but after listening to the entire session, I hadn't heard anything out of the ordinary. I stopped the playback.

"Nothing," I told Jeff. 

"Well, should we try going downstairs?" he responded.

"Yep. Let's do it."

We stuffed our equipment into our pockets and made our way back out of the apartment and down the steps to the front door.

The double doors had been painted forest green. Each had multiple panes of rectangular glass, separated by mullions, in the upper half of the door. Pulling the door open, we stepped inside and found ourselves standing on a landing, with one staircase leading up on the right side and another leading down on the left. 

The steps were covered with12 inch square tiles that resembled white marble. We made our way down and found a long hallway leading away into the darkness. To the right was a doorway, and we walked through to find a kitchen on the left. A dim, fluorescent light fixture hung precariously from the center of the dingey, white ceiling. It seemed as if a good stomp on the floor upstairs might send it crashing to the white tile below. What drew my attention, though, were the walls. Someone thought it was a good idea to paint the kitchen walls with a shade of green a bit less vivid than lime. Holes in the sheetrock walls had been recently patched with white spackling compound. Red spray paint had been used to paint a crude daisy-like flower on one wall with a speech bubble emerging from it. The text within the speech bubble had been spackled over. 

Against the walls in the small kitchen stood stainless steel work tables, each dotted with various construction remnants. One held pieces of old wood trim, a can of paint, and a 90s style boom box. The tables and the items they held appeared to have been caught up in a spontaneous flour fight between contractors. White dust, no doubt resulting from sanding the white spackling compound that dotted the walls, covered the tables, their contents, and the floor around them. 

I moved through the kitchen, toward the back of the building, far enough to see that the kitchen ended at a griddle with a range hood caked with years of sticky, amber residue. At the opposite end of the kitchen, against the front wall of the building, was a small nook that could've held a dining room table at one time. Medium stained oak panels clad the walls. A chocolate brown-painted window, wider than it was tall and with multiple panes of glass, cut through the longest wall. The top of the window butted up against a sagging drop ceiling as if attempting to hold it up. At the center of the nook, the floor tiles had been scraped away, revealing a dark brownish-black spot on the concrete floor beneath it. 

At the sight of the large, dark spot, my overactive imagination began pouring through possible scenarios. I imagined people sitting around the dinner table, feasting on partially decomposed steak from a nearby grocery store dumpster, when a young man says something that angers another. The second young man lunges across the table and plants the blade of his dinner knife deep in the chest of the first, who falls out of his chair and onto the floor at the exact location of the dark spot. He bleeds out on the floor as the rest of the diners return to devouring their rotten steaks. 

Standing in the kitchen, staring into the dining nook, I looked to my left and found another doorway. This one led down a short hallway. On the left side of the hallway, a set of stairs covered in navy blue carpet led up to a ceiling, not unlike a staircase I'd seen in pictures of the Winchester House in San Francisco. "What the hell?" 

Kyle appeared beside me, looking up the staircase. He chuckled. "My boss said he is going to get one of those Halloween skeletons and set it up there, then wall-in the stairs."

The next people to renovate the building were certain to get a scare when they busted a hole in the wall, shined a flashlight through the hole and illuminated the skeleton lying inside. 

Sounded like a good idea to me, although closing off a perfectly good staircase seemed like a waste of space. At the very least, the area could've been used for storage. 

A few steps further down the hallway, and we entered a room filled with an energy that caused me to stop just a few steps past the doorway. The floor of the room, like the others, was covered with tile. The room was devoid of furniture. Light from surrounding buildings angled into the room through a few windows and formed clusters of golden rectangles upon the tile floor. 

"Whoa," I said, looking around the room.

"What?" 

I didn't turn to face Kyle, but continued to look around the room. "This isn't a good feeling in here." 

He didn't immediately respond, but looked around the room for a moment. Then, "The air is really heavy in here."

I nodded. "You definitely have something in here, too."

I took a few steps into the room, then made my way around the perimeter. The energy began to subside as I moved through the room, and I decided to check out the other downstairs rooms. I had yet to explore the rooms at the end of the hallway I'd encountered when I first walked down the steps from the front door. 

The hallway had chair rail molding with more wood paneling below it. More sagging acoustic tiles, some stained by old leaks, loomed over the hall. An exit sign, illuminated with red letters, hung by its electrical wire just outside the doorway to the kitchen. 

We met Jeff halfway down the hall. "Go down there," he said, in a tone that I knew meant he had sensed something at the end of the hall from where he had just come.

The hallway receded into shadows as it led to the back of the building. A small, empty room led off to the left, another to the right. The room that drew my attention, though, was a utility room at the end of the hall. It held a water heater, a washing machine, and a dryer. 

When I got to the threshold of the room, I stopped. Again, the energy was strong and dark here. In my mind rose the image of a young man hiding in the room. He would come to this room and use some sort of drug. 

"A young man would come here to hide. He would do drugs in here," I told Jeff and Kyle. "I don't like this room at all. It feels terrible."

There was a sense of chaos in the room, of dark impulses and frightening thoughts. The man who hid there was troubled, to say the least. 

"Let's try here," I told Jeff. We set our REM pod down just inside the door of the utility room, placed the digital voice recorder a few feet away from it, and backed out into the hallway.  

For a few minutes, we stood there asking questions, hoping to elicit a response through the REM Pod. As we stood there though, I began feeling as if there was a young man behind me, back toward the front of the building. I looked back and examined the space. I couldn't see anything but the illuminated kitchen doorway and the base of the steps leading down from the front door, but I knew he was there. He was on the top of the steps, squatted down so that he could see under the drop ceiling to the end of the hallway where we stood. He was keeping an eye on us.

I voiced my feelings to Jeff, who then began to watch the stairs for signs of movement. He snapped a few photos in that direction, and I did the same. As I clicked off a photo, Jeff said, "Whoa. Did you see that?"

"What?" I hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary. 

"A small shadow just moved near the bottom of the kitchen door." He set off down the hallway and stopped at the kitchen doorway, pointing down to where light from the kitchen illuminated the hall floor. "Right here, something just moved, like a shadow. Take another picture." 

I snapped off a few more pictures, taking a moment to look at each one before taking the next. 

Nothing.

Jeff had began taking his own pictures of the room across the hall from the kitchen and of the kitchen itself. He took a few more of the shadowy stairs and the landing at the front door. Then, he turned to me. "Move around a bit. I wanna see if there's a way we could've caused the shadows to move."

I did as I was told. I swayed back and forth, took a few steps toward him then a few steps away. Nothing that I did could've created the movement that he saw. Whatever caused it had to have been either in the kitchen or in the hallway with us. 

We walked away scratching our heads. Up the steps to the front door, we turned 180 degrees to walk up the second flight to the upper floor. The condition of the upstairs rooms was much the same as on the lower floor. It appeared that renovations had begun here, as well, but hadn't gotten very far. 

We chose one small room that felt different than the others. Standing against one wall in the room, I began asking questions. The voice recorder and the REM Pod both sat at the center of the floor before me. Jeff and Kyle wandered through the hallway and the other rooms on the upper floor, leaving me alone to try and communicate with whatever might be there. 

There was a sense that perhaps a young man who was mentally handicapped might've resided in the room at one time. His childlike energy was still there. I could sense the love he had for his mother, as well. He had never known his father. 

I spoke as if there were a child in the room. I asked about his mother. I asked what games he liked to play, but the REM Pod never responded. My only hope was that the voice recorder had picked up a voice besides mine. I would wait until I could run the audio through my analysis software to determine if the young man's spirit was still there or if it was simply his energy that remained.

While standing outside, taking a short break, we tried to decide if there was something more we could do and if we did, where we would do it. We decided that we needed to try something more in Kyle's apartment. That was the section of the building that would be occupied first, and his safety was our priority. 

Since we hadn't taken the REM Pod or the spirit box into the apartment yet, we carried both back up the newly built steps to the apartment, and made our way back down the hall to the larger of the two bedrooms. I set the spirit box down in the center of the floor and set the voice recorder on the floor about halfway between the spirit box and me. 

This time the energy in the room wasn't quite as heavy. Still, I hoped that something remained there to communicated with us. As I asked questions, Kyle began to ask questions of his own. Jeff went to the corner to the left of the window, stood there for a moment, then moved to the corner to the right of the window for a moment before returning to the other corner. He moved back and forth between the two corners a few times before I asked him what he was doing.

"Seeing if the energy is different in each corner. It is. The energy in that corner is worse." He motioned to the corner to the right of the window. 

"That's because that's where her bed was," I told him. I could see her sitting on the head of the bed, her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms curled around her legs as a man walked into the room and shut the door behind him.

I decided to try Jeff's experiment, and soon decided he was right. The energy in the corner to the left of the window felt almost normal. The other corner felt strange, like fear and pain had been so profound at one time that it morphed into some tangible creature that occupied that corner of the room.

I returned to my line of questioning, with Kyle chiming in every so often. Between questions, the building was silent. Then suddenly, Kyle began yelling like a drill sergeant. Jeff and I jumped and our hearts leapt into our throats. We couldn't understand what Kyle was saying, but it would've intimidated even the most strong minded. When the sudden shock of so much yelling subsided, Jeff and I exchanged a slight smile. Our investigations never lacked entertainment. 

Yelling was a good idea, despite our amusement. So far, we had spoken in soft tones, careful not to anger anyone. However, that hadn't seemed to garner any responses. It was time to try something different. 

Voices had been emanating from the spirit box steadily since we turned it on. We quickly noticed though, when Kyle yelled, the voices coming through the spirit box fell silent for a minute. 

We lingered in the apartment for a while longer, then decided it was time to pack up and go. We had a bit of driving to do before the night ended. As we said our good-byes, Kyle offered us money. We told him we couldn't take so much, and ended up leaving with only a fraction of what he offered. We told him that we intended on giving it to our church, and he was fine with that. To make up for the money we didn't take, he offered two small mason jars of a thick, red hot sauce he made and was trying to start marketing. That was something we couldn't turn down. 

It was one of the best sauces I've had. I slathered everything with it for the next few weeks until it was gone and plan on returning to purchase more in the near future.

Well folks, it's about time for me to end this and get on with life. Sitting here writing is a wonderful escape from reality, and with a hot cup of coffee beside me, I could sit here for another couple of hours with ease. But the responsibilities of life call to me. I hope that you'll come back next week to check out the last part of this investigation post, where I'll talk about the evidence we got from the investigation and our recommendations for what course of action we believed Kyle should take.

There are more interesting stories to come!

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NEW LIFE. OLD DEMONS: Part 1 of 3

As a developer attempts to bring new life to an old building formerly used as a home for the insane, it seems that old demons still remain.

"I don't want to be attacked by things I can't fight back against," he said in a slow, southern drawl. 

I had only been speaking to Kyle on my cell phone for about 10 minutes, but I already liked him. Perhaps it was the sense of automatic kinship that I felt for those who spoke with a deep, southern accent like my father did. It was "furry" instead of ferry, "lot bub" instead of light bulb. Or perhaps it was the ease with which he laughed and joked--another of my father's qualities.

"Well that's perfectly understandable," I responded, staring out the windshield of Jeff's Ford Bronco at the interstate pavement as it rushed toward us and slipped beneath the front end of the vehicle. Our headlights pulsed against the trunks of the pines, maples, and other trees that flanked the road. "You said it wasn't until you returned to the camper that you felt it, though?"

"Yeah, I'd been watching a movie when I went to get my laundry out of the apartment. So when I came back to the camper, I sat down on the sofa and started playing the movie again. That's when I felt the burning, like hell fire all the way down my side."

Kyle was the property manager for a two-story, colonial-style building that stood in a run-down, industrial area on the outskirts of Richmond, Virginia. His boss had recently purchased the building and was converting it to apartments upstairs and a leasable business on the lower floor. Even though renovations to the apartment Kyle would soon occupy were already complete, he had been reluctant to move in. The heaviness of the air in the apartment was only the secondary reason. The primary reason was the persistence of vandals who had come onto the property and broken in through ground-floor windows to gain access to the building. To protect the property, Kyle had pulled his camper up in front of the building and was staying in it while deciding whether or not he could handle the paranormal activity he had been experiencing. He still wandered up into the apartment to use the bathroom and to do his laundry though, and it was during one of these times that he had been attacked by an unseen entity. The attack resulted in 3 bloody, hairline scratches running from his right armpit all the way down to his hip. The shirt and leather coat he had on at the time were still intact and devoid of blood. 

"The man who owns the transmission shop across the street told me it used to be a home for crazy people," Kyle had said. "There was a woman that lived here who--excuse my language here--used to strip down naked and, well, hump the fire hydrants." 

Laughter burst out of me before I considered whether or not it was politically correct to do so. This happens more often than it probably should. I suppose the older I get, the less restrained I am in expressing myself. I was relieved when I heard him chuckle on the other end of the line. 

"What the hell?" I asked as my laughter subsided.

"Yeah. Well she used to walk down to the local dollar store and beg people for money. One of the people she was begging one day was a social worker with the county, who told her she was going to take her back home. When the social worker walked into the building, she found out the owner had been feeding the residents with food that he'd gotten from dumpster diving. There was no running water, no heat or A/C. And the owner of the transmission shop said they were pulling dead bodies out of there."

I gasped. "Holy shit. Are you serious? There were dead people in there?"

"Yep. They shut the place down." 

My mind immediately began pouring over all of the possible reasons why these people had died. Severe food poisoning? Exposure to frigid, winter temperatures? Physical abuse? Or perhaps something less predictable, like a drug overdose?

No matter the circumstances of their deaths, the idea of people living their final days in those conditions sent an icy shutter through me. We had to investigate, and fast. Kyle was trying to move into the apartment in the next week or two. He would either be residing with unsettled human spirits, or with a dark entity that had already revealed itself as a valid physical threat. It was imperative that we find out the nature of what Kyle would encounter before this spirit revealed just how dangerous it could be.

The Interview

The building stood only a few minutes from the Interstate 295 off-ramp, down a quiet highway lined with older buildings and warehouses. A few run-down, 40s-style homes sprang from the garden of corrugated metal, broken asphalt, and chain link fencing, stubbornly refusing to succumb to the environmental changes that time had thrust upon the area. 

"Turn right onto Birch Street," the GPS commanded. 

Jeff slowed the Bronco and did as he was told. The Bronco bucked and swayed as he crossed over railroad tracks that ran parallel to the highway. I hadn't noticed the tracks before, but made a mental note of their presence. Railroad tracks conducted energy, and tracks so close to the building we were investigating could've been lending to the paranormal activity.

Prior to an investigation, I always went to Google Maps to research the location. I wanted to get the lay of the land, to see if the building stood close to the street or down a long lane shrouded by trees in Google's satellite view. I also looked for nearby rivers, highways or interstates, airports, or other locations that could either be sources of energy or which could cause a noise disturbance during the investigation. Satisfied with my analysis of the satellite view, I would then go into Google Street View to get a look at the building from the front if possible. This type of research was normally assigned to the Environmental Specialist. David had taken on the role for a while, but since leaving the team to take a job in North Carolina, I had begun to fill the role. 

Having researched the location a few days before, I knew before Siri announced it that we had arrived at our destination. I pointed out at the street ahead. "Just beyond that clump of trees, on the righthand side." 

Jeff and I peered out the windshield in anticipation of the building's appearance and were somewhat startled when Siri spoke. "You have arrived." 

The Bronco turned to the right and emerged into a small, unlined parking lot dominated by Kyle's 32-foot camper. It stood parallel to the front of the building, mostly obscuring the first floor and a bit of the second. The two-story, brick building behind it, with shadowy windows on both floors, stretched to peek over the roof of the camper at us as we maneuvered past the end of the camper to fill an empty parking space. 

With the front of the building in full view before us now, I leaned down to gaze up through the windshield at it. "Creepy," I muttered, thinking back on the stories Kyle had told us about the place. 

The stories weren't the only reason why the building was a bit unsettling, though. The structure seemed out of place among the dilapidated homes, warehouses, and auto repair shops surrounding it. It stood about 50 feet off the road, snuggled into its cloak of pines and sweet gum trees as if attempting to hide from the world. A dim, golden glow from fixtures mounted to either side of the double front doors, and amber light that sliced its way through the cracks between the camper's window curtains, proved to be the only sources of illumination bold enough to fight off the army of shadows were encamped in the front lot.

I opened the passenger door and slid off the seat, stepping out and shutting the door behind me. My attention remained on the front of the building, switching from window to window. I expected to see a dark figure standing in one of them, staring back. But the only thing staring back was a blackness that seemed to press against the inside of the glass panes in an attempt to escape.

When Jeff and I met at the front of the Bronco with our paper coffee cups in hand, our attention was drawn away from the building by a sound to our left. The quiet click was followed by a creak, and the front door of the camper swung open. A surge of light rushed out to join the fight between light and shadows in the lot around us. 

If Kyle hadn't mentioned on the phone that he had served in the Marine Corps, I still would've known without a nanoparticle of doubt. Having grown up in a town where you could throw a stone and hit one branch of the military, I had developed the ability to identify whether someone was military or a veteran, and which branch he or she had served in.

Kyle wore the typical high-and-tight cut. His face was devoid of stubble and seemed to have been chiseled from stone. Each line etched into his granite face told a tale of strength, victory, courage, or of deep-seated pain he kept buried within. 

"You must be Kyle," I said, walking to meet him. I expected nothing less than the firm handshake I received as I greeted him. And even though his large, firm hand seemed to envelope mine, I returned the firm shake as my mother had always taught me to do. A weak hand was a sign of a weak mind. And when meeting a stranger for the first time, you never showed weakness--especially when meeting someone who appeared capable of snatching you up with one giant hand, squeezing you until your bones turned to dust, and sprinkling you over his eggs in the morning. 

When the initial greetings were over and when I was sure I wouldn't become a seasoning on this Marine's breakfast, Kyle led us into his camper where we sat and talked for a bit about the activity he had experienced in the apartment. A few steps led up to a concrete front porch that ran the width of the building. To the left were newly built wooden steps leading Kyle's apartment door on the far right end of the second floor. In the center of the first floor were the set of doors leading into the first floor. 

In addition to the overwhelming heaviness in the apartment and the scratches Kyle had incurred, there was also an instance where he had been descending the steps to the front porch and felt as if someone pushed him. Still, I wondered if this could be an angry human spirit. It's never good to jump to conclusions about the nature of a haunting until you've gathered evidence and given whatever it is a chance to speak. 

After sitting and discussing his experiences for 15 minutes or so, Kyle placed his hands on his knees and asked, "Well, should we get to it?" 

"Sure," Jeff responded and stood up from his chair. 

We followed Kyle out the camper door and down the shaky metal steps, which felt like they might give way under my weight. It was a reminder of my goal to start getting more exercise. 

The liftgate of the Bronco revealed a neatly stacked pile of toolboxes and bags. It wasn't the full arsenal this time, but certainly enough to get the job done. I stood to one side as Jeff pulled some of the equipment out of the bags, but my sight was drawn again to the front of the building and to its dark windows. I couldn't shake the feeling that something was standing just inside one of them, staring out at us. Glancing from window to window, I finally pinpointed the one from which I felt watched. To either side of the front doors was a large window, at least 4 feet wide and equally as tall. I would bet my life that something was standing in the one just to the left of the doors, watching us. Of course, these feelings that I get could simply be the product of an overactive imagination. After voicing these feelings enough times and then later finding some evidence to support their validity, I'd begun to feel that it wasn't a matter of imagination so much as the honing of my sixth sense. 

When Jeff handed me the digital voice recorder and one of my umpteen million flashlights, I tore my attention away from the window to receive them. As he shut the liftgate and we made our way up the front steps, though, I couldn't help but to take another look at the window. 

Who was it standing there watching us? I couldn't see anyone. I could only feel them. It felt like a male presence, but I could sense nothing else. Was it the angry presence that had scratched Kyle, standing there sizing us up and trying to decide what it could do to us? Or was it a lost spirit of someone who had died within the building on a frigid winter night after eating a half-rotten taco from the nearby Taco Bell? 

There was only one way to find out.

As twilight gives way to darkness, my eyes have grown weary and my fingers have begun to stiffen. It's time for a hot shower, an episode of Star Trek, and then bed. But if you liked reading the first part of this investigation series, be sure to return next week to read the second part, where we enter the building to discover what lurks inside.

The Foundations

People often ask how I got into investigating the paranormal. So perhaps this is where I should start this blog.

The answer is: It's in the blood.

That's it, summarized into a four-word sentence. So if you want to return to watching TV or working (like some of you should be doing), then you got your answer and can move along your merry way.

For those who like being bored out of their gourds by long, often unnecessarily detailed stories, here is a little something more to satisfy that masochistic desire...

As the youngest of two girls, I worshipped my father. And rightly so. He's a great man. "Now, I never went to college. But...." he will often say in his slow, southern drawl before revealing something that even the college-educated often do not comprehend. 

He was an extremely talented man, able to craft anything out of wood, to invent and engineer the most amazing things. He was a man of strict, Christian morals and values, despite being raised in a poor family with an alcoholic, brick-laying father with highly questionable morals. 

Daddy and I beside an ancestor's grave

As a young girl, I was like my father in so many ways. I was a tomboy, hanging out in my father's workshop, happy to be the son that he never had. I was raised around grease and sawdust, happy to be listening to the forlorn voice of Hank Williams, Sr., the depressing songs of Patsy Cline and the banjo-picking of Ricky Skaggs. I watched CHiPs and Nascar with Daddy because we loved to watch the wrecks. We went to the shooting range and became connoisseurs of barbecue sandwiches. He taught me to fly fish on the banks of the reservoir where my grandmother lived. 

Perhaps the most memorable thing about my father is when he took me along on his motorcycle rides--the kind where you get up at the crack of dawn, climb onto a Lazyboy recliner on two wheels, and spend the day cruising the back country roads without returning until dinnertime. We went in search of the heat of Summer, the sweet smell of Honeysuckle patches that we passed, long-forgotten graveyards, rolling green battlefields, and the broken and dilapidated, grey remnants of long-abandoned homes that were slowly being overtaken by nature.

We would marvel at some of these magnificent homes, and wonder why someone would ever abandon such a place. We would also wonder about what mysteries and secrets these homes would hold, and if spirits from their past still lingered inside, perhaps watching through broken windows as we passed. 

One of the many abandoned homes we encountered

When we weren't riding the motorcycle, my father kept the subject of the paranormal in my head by telling me stories of haunted places, U.F.O. sightings and abductions, and Bigfoot sightings that he'd read about. I would listen in wide-eyed wonder at the stories, and soon found that the paranormal was a fascination that would last well into my adulthood.

I wasn't your typical teenager. Instead of finding interest in things like friends, sports, social gatherings, or the latest TV shows, I was drawn to philosophy, theology, and researching subjects like the paranormal. I wanted to know the truth about life and about all of its mysteries. So, of course when a friend suggested that we go visit a place that was rumored to be haunted, I was eager to go along. 

Our outings gave me first-hand experience with spirits and other things that science could not explain. I can remember trekking through the woods on a bitterly-cold December night, hearing the crunching of footsteps in the fallen leaves beside me when no one was there to make them. I remember the red orb of light, hovering at about shoulder-height, that tried to conceal itself behind a tree while still getting a glimpse of us. And I remember an electric-blue flash of lightening inside the car, just in front of the rear-view mirror, as a friend and I drove past a Civil War battlefield cemetery. 

College brought more paranormal incidents. The girls on the hall in my dorm decided--for some ridiculous reason--to take an Ouija board to a nearby cemetery one night. When they returned, they brought something back with them that wasn't too nice. The brand-new dormitory had to be cleansed by a Catholic priest that Spring before any of us could rest at night. 

When I became a young adult, life dealt my a couple difficult hands, and I wasn't able to pursue the paranormal quite as much as I wanted to. However, in my late 30s, after a nasty separation from my ex, I decided to do something for myself. I sat down and Googled paranormal teams in my area. The first video that popped up was a YouTube video from Virginia Paranormal Investigations. And after watching the video, I decided that this is the team I wanted to join. I emailed them immediately and was lucky to soon be a part of the team. I haven't missed an investigation since, and am now living with the director, Jeff.

Jeff and I, investigating Fort Mifflin

It's been one hell of a ride, and this blog is about the experiences we have along the way. You never know what we are going to encounter next. So stay tuned...