In March 2022, my team returned to McInteer Villa to follow-up on some evidence we captured in 2020. Top on our list of questions was who was pacing in the second floor hallway? This was closely followed by who said ‘fuck me’ in front of my camera? Don’t believe me? You can review the experience for yourself here (timestamp 19:43). We were all a little shocked by that particular EVP (electronic voice phenomena).
Anyway, for this visit we booked two nights. Four members of the team were present for the bulk of the first night with the fifth member arriving around 12:30 am on March 5th. With such a small group, we planned to investigate each floor together and conduct several EVP and Estes sessions. I set a camera up in the exact same location in the second floor hallway as I had previously and was determined to find answers. Unfortunately, what I really found was more questions.
Around 4:50pm on the first day, I was checking my camera on the second floor when a REMpod in between the sitting room and the master bedroom went off. I had just confirmed with a co-investigator (Rachel) my intention to sleep in the master bedroom that night. Rachel and I went into the room and tried to determine if someone wanted to communicate with us. I asked directly if it was Ok for me to sleep in that room and thought I may have gotten a positive response. We got several more interesting hits until the team lead, Dane, came up to check on us. The pod remained quiet until 7pm, when the entire team was in the attic.
At 7pm, we were in the attic conducting a brief Estes session. Rachel was wearing the headphones and I was leading the session. Unfortunately, the most profound response we heard was “Sing it” as a teammate started to sing. Coincidence, maybe? What we didn’t know at the time was that the REMpod left in the second floor sitting room was going off throughout our session. We didn’t hear it and I only know it happened because I had a camera sitting on the steps between the attic and the second floor. The pod started to sound around the time we started to ask if we should move to another part of the building. I did sync the two videos and was not able to discern any response pattern to the REMpod hits.
Next, we came downstairs and did an EVP session on the second floor. We experienced several more REMpod hits in that same doorway between the sitting room and the master bedroom but nothing groundbreaking.
After we left the second floor, my camera captured the sound of the team in the dining room and then something odd. In my opinion, it sounds like a female voice filtered through a mechanical device. When I shared it with the team, they heard a variety of things said. This piqued my interest and I had to know, what do other people hear when they listen to this audio? So, I made a 5 minute video with all of the available data and shared it. 158 listens later, I had a collection of words but most people heard one thing in particular, “Mama”. Of course, to this day I do not hear that. You can find that video here. As a side note, the owner of the property does have cameras throughout that she can access via her phone but we inadvertently tripped the breaker earlier in the day that runs the wifi router. So, her cameras did not work until we fixed the problem around noon the next day.
On day two, we conducted two Estes sessions. The first was at 7:45pm in the second floor sitting room. During this session I stated, “we are getting a nervous energy from whoever is in this room and it feels like you might be anxious or upset about something or concerned, can you tell me about that?” The response shortly after is “It’s my house.” There were no other direct reponses.
After some time, we decided to attempt to communicate with whoever was cursing at us in 2020. Most people assume that Charles is the spirit present in the library and we tried to connect with him through an EVP session at 9:15pm. At the same time, Dane and Joe were in the kids room down the hall conducting their own session and our fifth team member, Sue, was downstairs monitoring the DVR cameras. While neither EVP session picked up anything of interest, at 9:30pm, my hallway camera did record some strange sounds. (video here) While I can possibly chalk the first one up to the strong wind altering the sound of the dog barking in the background, the others are harder to decide. Feel free to let me know what you think.
Finally, at 10:25pm, Dane, Rachel, and I conducted our final Estes session in the library. This one was just odd as it seemed like two people may have been coming across and speaking to each other. One kept saying “I can help you”, “I can help”, and “I can talk with you”. So there is a lot to unpack here. If we make the giant leap and assume we are talking to “ghosts” then one could think that one “ghost” is offering to help the other. But we have to keep in mind that 1) we don’t really know what causes paranormal phenomena and 2) we can’t rely on Estes method outcomes as it involves hearing voices over radio signals so the participant could be hearing the radio and we are just interpreting the results. On the other hand, some of the communication does seem odd if you consider how fast the box is sweeping through stations and the length of some sentences. Ultimately, Estes responses are not evidence of the paranormal when taken alone but they do help us with EVP session ideas and occasionally give us a conversation direction. You can find clips of both day two sessions here.
We finished the night in the attic and got several hits on a REMpod. Once again, the hits were not consistent for communication but they were odd enough to keep the team entertained until 1:30 in the morning. Well, most of the team, I was curled up on the downstairs sofa at 12:30 fighting sleep.
In the end, I collected some interesting audio anomalies that have me scratching my head. I am fascinated by how different people can hear different things in these clips which often leads me to want to throw out the evidence as being audio pareidolia. But I still think it’s important data as many people did hear the same thing. (Several team members heard “Mama” when I asked them to text me directly so as not to influence each other.) I’m further curious to find out what people hear in the day 2 EVP clip. I am not committed to any of this being paranormal so feel free to debunk away. Like you, I am interested in learning what causes these anomalies and how best to understand the strange experiences people have at “haunted” locations.
Until next time, Happy Hunting!