A Haunting in Tennessee
by Elizabeth
Lunceford
In 2006, my sister Bonnie
passed away suddenly and I began researching the paranormal to
help find answers to my questions about the afterlife. It's
been a journey that has raised even more questions than I've
found answers for. Leading me to believe that the afterlife is
a lot more complicated than we've ever suspected it was. In
2009, my mother passed away after a short battle with
pneumonia and dementia. Leaving my father alone in the house
where she died as his mental faculties also began failing him.
I spent 4 years making the hour long commute to his home in
Madison to visit and care for him, but eventually had to hire
a live-in service to assist him as the strain of driving so
far so often became too much. In March of 2013, he died in my
arms on the back stairs of his home as I tried to get him to a
doctor.
As the executrix of his
estate, I began making weekly visits to the home after his
death to check on it and help clear some of the belongings out
of it so that the house could be eventually sold as his will
required. It was during these visits there that I began to
experience various paranormal events that seemed to be growing
with strength and frequency, even following me home to my
house an hour away.
The day my father passed,
the live-in caregiver informed me that she believed there was
something going on in the home but had been afraid of saying
anything about it for fear of losing her job. She told me that
at night, she had heard the sound of a woman weeping and
screaming out from the living room area on several occasions.
The living room had been converted into a bedroom for my
mother in the last weeks of her life. The live-in caregiver
did not know this. There was a video night-vision baby monitor
in my father's bedroom so that she could keep an eye on him at
night. She told me she had seen my father reach out with his
arm like he was hugging an invisible person in bed with him on
more than one occasion just prior to his death. Was my mother
still there in the house? Or was she hearing a residual
haunting? Did my father see her before he died? Or was it just
a hallucination from his dementia?
It was a week after my
father's death, the first time I tried to contact my parents
in the house, I used a REM-Pod. I explained how to use it and
asked them to make it go off for me. I filmed the session and
ran a digital voice recorder at the same time to see if there
were any EVPs. For 15 minutes there was no response. Just as I
was about to give up, the REM pod blipped.
At first I thought maybe
something like the heat turning on might have made it do so. I
went back to talking to them and after a few more minutes I
sneezed, the REM-Pod blipped again at the same time. I then
thought, maybe my sneezing could have caused it, so I tried
faking a sneeze or coughing on it, nothing happened. I went
back to asking them more questions and encouraging them to
talk to me. Then the REM-POD began to go off again, once,
twice, three times and then to slowly build up to a continuous
frantic beeping. I asked them repeatedly to stop so that I
knew when they are trying to answer. It stopped. I asked if I
was speaking to my dad. No reply. I asked if it was my mom,
the REM-Pod beeped. I asked if dad was there with her, the
REM-Pod beeped again. I carried on this conversation with my
mother for over 5 minutes with the REM-Pod acting as a conduit
for her. It was an amazing experience which I will NEVER
forget.
After my father's ashes
were laid to rest it got quiet in the house. Subsequent visits
where I'd do a short 15 or 20 min session to communicate with
them yielded no interaction. I thought after a while that
maybe they had crossed over. For several months, I didn't try
again to speak to them there at the house. Then one night I
had to be there after dark to coordinate the sale of my
father's car and it's transport. The house took on a whole
different feeling at night and though it was 85 degrees in the
house (I was not running the AC) it suddenly felt extremely
cold around me and all the hair on my body stood on end, like
a huge static field just engulfed me. It was more than a
little unnerving. I didn't feel like this was either of my
parents. It was someone or something else. Nervous, I got out
my phone (I didn't have any of my equipment with me then) and
turned on a "ghost radar" app which I'd had
interesting results with on previous occasions over the years
at various locations. I asked "Who is here?", it
replied "SAM". I asked "Sam, why are you
here?" He replied "DANGER". I asked "Sam,
What am I in danger from?" He replied
"Themselves". At this point, I'm thinking, OMG,
what's here and what can it or they do? The house was vacant
now, had a bunch of ghost-squatters moved in? I was glad to
get out of there as soon as I'd concluded my business and
definitely didn't want to be there after dark by myself again.
About a month after this, I
was in the garage working to discard 40 years worth of junk
and sift through things looking for stuff that might sell or
be worth keeping for nostalgia. After I finished filling the
trash can, I took it up the driveway to the street. All the
way there, this butterfly followed me, swooping around me and
tracking me all the way to the street. Once there, it
continued to circle me until I wondered if it wasn't being
controlled by my dad. I greeted him and told him I was sorry I
had to throw out his things and that I understood it bothered
him. I went back to the garage and as I was finishing up, the
garage light turned on by it self. That following weekend, I
was caught out one night in a terrible thunderstorm on a local
highway late at night. I took shelter under an overpass while
the rain and lightning crashed all around me. Cars pulled in
behind me and out of nowhere, this butterfly just lands on my
driver-side window right next to my face and I looked at it.
It was identical to the one that had followed me before.
I just stared at it trying
to understand why it was there at night in a torrential
downpour on my car window. Was my dad there trying to protect
me? It crawled up over the top of the car until I couldn't see
it anymore and I suspected it was sitting directly above me.
At the time, a car in the right lane of the highway pulls to a
stop IN THE TRAFFIC LANE about even with my rear tire. I am
watching in my side view mirror in disbelief as they just
remain there in the traffic lane. There are crazy people still
trying to drive in this rain at full speed and I'm thinking,
"OMG, I'm going to die!" It would be a miracle if
someone didn't slam into the back of that car and they both
come careening into me. I'm terrified for about 5 minutes as
cars fly by at 60 miles an hour in the left lane and others
slow down and wait to go around the idiot in the right lane
who is stopped dead. After a while, the person in the
right lane pulls away and the danger is past. I wonder how
much of my safety was due to my father watching over me and
how much was just dumb luck?
The next weekend, I take my
husband and kids up to the house for him to go through my
father's tools to see if he wants any of them before the
estate sale. The kids go into the house and sit down in the
living room to play on their tablets. My husband and I began
to sort through the tools. I pull over the trashcan and as I
do so, I pass my father's old wooden toolbox and wonder if I
should keep it or try to sell it. I'd emptied it out already
except for one drawer. It was closed up and it’s top was
down. After we'd been going through things for about 30 mins,
I needed to make a run over to the trashcan to dump the trash
we'd accumulated in the sorting. I walked by the wood toolbox
on my way to the can and all the time I could hear my husband
tinkering in the toolbin nearby as he sorted things. When I
finished dumping the trash, I turned back around to bring the
empty box back to him and as I approached I stopped dead in my
tracks and just went slack jawed.
There in front of me was
the wooden toolbox with the top lifted up and the ONE drawer
with items in it pulled so far out that it was ready to fall
on the floor. I looked over to the other side of the garage at
my husband who was apparently oblivious to everything and
asked "um, hon did you do this?" he looks over at me
and then to where I'm pointing at the toolbox and says
"what?" I said "Did you open this and pull out
this drawer"? He shakes his head and says "You must
have done it". I am like "NO WAY!" OMG!! I KNOW
that I didn't do that. I can't believe my eyes really, I’m
just stunned. At this same time, there is a huge thunderstorm
building up and the sky is nearly ready to fall out on us.
It's getting really dark in the garage now so I say to my
husband, I am going to turn on the light for us and go over to
the steps to look for a switch. I see one on the garage door
controller that is labeled "light" and raise my hand
to press it. Before I can touch it though, the light turns on
all by itself. I just freeze and look over to my husband who
is not paying any attention at all and say "um, hon - I
didn't turn that light on, it came on by itself." He
looks at me and says, "right. it must be a short in the
wiring or something".
I'm thinking back now to
the week before when it had happened? Was it a short in the
wiring or was it my dad? I look back over to the old toolbox
and I'm thinking it's a little more than a coincidence.
I return to helping my
husband and the storm breaks outside pretty badly. After 20
minutes or so it's moved on and gotten quiet again. My kids
come running out of the house into the garage shouting
"Mom, Mom.. We heard someone scream! And then we heard
what sounded like a cat meowing". I look at them and
remembered what the caregiver had told me about hearing a
woman crying and screaming in the living room. I wonder if the
thunderstorm had charged the air enough that a spirit could
have been trying to interact? Had the storm released residual
energy from that room somehow? Had the kids being there for
the first time since my father passed away triggered
something? Or was it just the removal of the tools he was so
attached to? Whatever was it was, something paranormal seemed
to be happening. After I calmed the kids and tried to
explain things away for them, we finished up our sorting and
packed up the truck. In addition to the tools we also took
some of my father's square dancing equipment and records. I
left two crates of tools and the old wooden toolbox (the
haunted one) there for the night.
The following week, I
returned to the house to load up the things we hadn't gotten
the last trip due to lack of room. As I got out of the car, a
butterfly remarkably like the previous two, greeted me and
began to fly around the car and myself. I laughed and told my
father "hi dad, good to see you too". I opened the
garage up and popped the back of my trunk open and began to
load the crates and the old tool box inside. When I looked up
to close the trunk lid I stopped in surprise to find the SAME
butterfly sitting on the lip of the trunk lid watching me. I
smile at it and say "I love you too dad" and it
flies off. I close the lid of the trunk and the garage light
goes off. I smiled and thanked him for the help before closing
the door to the garage.
The following week, my kids
were out of camp and school hadn't started again for the fall
so I had to bring them along with me for my weekly trip to my
dad's house. It had been about 10 days since they had been
there and heard the cat sound. This time, I figured I'd be
prepared to catch it on audio if it happened a second time.
The kids took their tablets into the living room as before and
I set up two audio recorders on the table near them and turned
them on. Being July, it was still very hot and I did not have
the air conditioning running. Since I was also taking photos,
I did not want to stir up a lot of dust by turning on ceiling
fans. I was on my way into my father’s bedroom to pack up
some things when I remember looking up at the ceiling fan in
the dining room thinking “I wish I could turn that on, but I
don’t want to disturb the dust”. I was in my father’s
room for about 10 minutes and when I came back into the living
room, the ceiling fan was going full blast. There is no wall
switch for this fan and the pull string is only inches from
the blades. Not even I could reach this. I asked my kids if
they’d drug over a chair or something and turned it on, but
they said no. I’d have heard them doing this if so.
Then I went out into the
garage and began cleaning things out as usual for me.
After about an hour, they both come running out of the house
yelling "Mom, Mom... something breathed in my ear and the
rocking chair in grandma's room was moving.. then we heard the
cat thing meow again, three times!" I'm thinking,
Oooookay. I tell them, not to be afraid. We'll check the
recorders later to see if they caught the sounds..
Later at
home I reviewed the digital audio recording of the time the
kids were in the living room. During the recording I
discovered not only the cat-like phenomena but an additional
31 EVPS through-out the recording. Some of them were extremely
clear, others were Class B and difficult to discern without
sound manipulation to amplify, slow or otherwise clean the
anomaly. At no time have I seen any cats at or around my
father’s house. The anomalies recorded did have a cat-like
sound to them, but sounded more like someone pretending to be
a cat than an actual real cat. The phenomena also sounded like
they emanated from within the room or adjoining rooms, not
muffled like an outside sound would be. There were also no
open windows. Since bringing the tools back to my house from
my father’s place, I have also experienced the sound of a
wrench hitting a concrete floor, disembodied footsteps,
brushing against my legs from no discernable source, shadows
in my periphery, and
many other inexplicable things. There may indeed be some form
of object attachment going on here.
After the
estate sale had emptied out the house and it was completely
devoid of all furniture and items, I cut my trips up there
back to once every other week. I would make a trip up there
for about an hour to check on the place, make sure it hadn’t
been vandalized, that the yard had been mowed etc.. While
there I would attempt communication with the spirits by
running a digital voice recorder, a REM Pod, a SpiritBox and
video. I did four small investigations with a group of friends
and researchers over the next year while trying to find a
buyer for the house. I documented over 200 class A EVPs, over
50 videos of visual anomalies, REM-Pod interaction and over a
dozen spirit orbs. I eventually found a buyer for the house,
did a house cleansing and blessing the day before the house
closing.
On the
day of the house blessing I prayed for all the spirits there
and said my goodbyes. I got an amazing photo of a spirit orb
with the full image of my father’s face in it. Best spirit
orb I have ever seen. He spoke into my recorder telling me he
wanted to be allowed to remain in the house. Many other
spirits were recorded that day saying either they were going
home with me or weren’t able to leave. I don’t know if the
new owners are still having any activity there, but hopefully
everyone is happy there, both the living and the dead.
Copyright © 2014
Music City Ghosts Paranormal Research |
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