As someone who has worked with a few psychic mediums in my producing career, and as one who has had several experiences that I could only describe as paranormal, I’ve always found it curious how little we know about the human spirit and whether or not our consciousness survives the physical world. And as someone who loves vintage homes and the architecture of old, I’ve often wondered what energies or memories are held by a place.

This is a photo of The Manse (our farmhouse), taken some time in the 1880s or 1890s.

I was able to date the photo based on the dress the woman on the front porch is wearing. While the photo is a little spooky, seeing the house for the first time, I didn’t feel anything dark or ominous. I knew a little bit of the history of the 1835 farmhouse, and there wasn’t anything to give me pause. It was a rooming house at one time, and based on census records, I believe the woman on the porch was a widow who made ends meet by renting out rooms and working as a seamstress. Her ghostly appearance suggests she was elderly with a gaunt, almost skeletal, face.

Not long after we moved in, we began a small construction project, opening up a wall that divided a bedroom. One day I was taking progress photos and caught this in the closet space…

Can you see it? I didn’t catch it until I brightened the photo. To me, it looks like the silhouette of a woman in an 1800s dress. When I took this photo, I hadn’t yet taken a deep dive into the home’s history. In fact, I didn’t have the 1800s photo of the house until much later. I wondered, was this the same woman photographed on the porch?

Since then, I’ve had a couple of psychic mediums visit and, while they didn’t pick up on this woman, they did catch some interesting impressions.

In one instance, they picked up on several male spirits who wandered through from time to time. The mediums weren’t told anything about the house’s past, so they had no idea that it was once a home that rented rooms and housed migrant farm workers who most likely worked on the farm that still exists today. Our property backs up to this farm.

There was another fact that could explain wandering male spirits: The farm, settled in 1740, also has some Revolutionary War history.

In 1781, French troops stayed on the land for a few days on their way to the battle of Yorktown. Victory at Yorktown led directly to the peace negotiations that ended the war in 1783 and gave America its independence. These troops also reportedly stopped at this location after the battle. One medium went to the back of our property and picked up on wounded soldiers.

Shortly before the end of slavery, I have read that some folks in this town assisted runaway slaves, and later it was not the most hospitable town to people of color or Catholics for that matter, with the rise of the KKK. In the 1920s, there were over 10,000 members that gathered here. And during the Great Depression, I can imagine there were many transients who passed through, looking for work on the 70+ acre farm.

As with most things paranormal, one could attempt to debunk this information, perhaps suggesting that the mediums did some Googling ahead of time. Yet, their purpose for being here was NOT to do a reading. We were actually doing some filming with them nearby.

Paranormal Activity at The Manse?

During a much needed renovation of the home, there were times when I visited after the workmen were gone, and in the silence, I had a feeling I wasn’t alone. It wasn’t scary or ominous, more like a feeling of being watched by a curious invisible onlooker. Once the renovation was complete, and we moved back in, I did some saging for good measure. Sage has been used for centuries as a way to clear undesirable energy from a home. It signals, ‘we only want good vibes here.’

Over the past two years, things have heated up a bit. I believe the activity is probably linked to the work I was doing, producing the Death Becomes Us podcast. We were recording this from my home office. During this time, my dad passed, and shortly after, I began to notice even more activity I couldn’t explain. Most of it occurred with electronics or lighting.

One time during an interview, the overhead lights in my office went out, and I couldn’t chalk it up to old wiring because we had all new electrical.

Often, the stereo receiver will turn on, and always at a volume of “55.5”. Repeating numbers are believed by some to be a form of spirit communication. I looked up the meaning of 555 and it symbolizes spiritual guidance and learning. It is associated with transition, freedom and independence – all interesting given when this happens, it seems connected to my dad because it happened a few times when I was talking about him. The receiver makes sense because back in the day he was a radio DJ and a ham radio operator. If anyone could figure out how to say hello from beyond via my stereo receiver, it would be my dad.

When I’ve turned on a REM pod, a device that will trigger when its electromagnetic field is interrupted, there will often be lots of activity.

One of the creepier experiences has to do with the space outside my kitchen window. Twice over the past two years, an almost perfectly round circle of dead grass will appear.

I’ve had two landscape experts in to figure out why this was occurring. They had no explanation, except one who joked “maybe it’s a small craft from the mothership.”

This area is near where the original well of the house was located and there is also a hand made cistern, a large stone walled underground artificial reservoir created to catch rainwater. We discovered it when we were clearing out weeds on the property and the cistern cover revealed itself.

Removing the cover, we saw a cavernous space below. From what we could gather, this goes down at least 8-10 feet and is very wide. And I wondered, could this have been a hiding place? Did anything nefarious happen that might be stashed beneath the surface? It’s on my bucket list to do a thorough look around with a camera and lighting. But I’ll be honest, this gives me the creeps.

Aside from the creepy cistern, I believe those who lived here before 1900 had their struggles. Just building a house back in 1835 was a huge undertaking. Our home has large wide wood planks cut with a manual saw. The stone foundation was made with stone found on the property itself. Seeing the old nails and the hand cut beams exudes an energy from those who labored and lived here.

We have another unexplained issue connected to our sweet mini goldendoodle Ellie. She will occasionally stand and bark at a corner or at one of the HVAC vents on the floor. They say that animals can sense spirit energy. After checking the vents and basement to make sure she wasn’t just smelling a mouse, I can’t find an explanation for why she’ll suddenly sound the alarm.

Unless one has had some sort of paranormal experience, it’s understandable they’d be skeptical.

I’m not sure I’d have gone so far down the paranormal rabbit hole if it weren’t for the many experiences I’ve had that were so powerful, it was undeniable that an intelligent, conscious energy was communicating in some way.

The most extraordinary experience I’ve had to date with my dad actually occurred shortly after his passing when I was at my parents’ home. I was clearing out two old iPads for recycling. One of them was my dad’s, which he had not used since he took ill and was in and out of the hospital and rehab facilities. My mom was pretty certain she had cleared everything out, but it appeared there were still a few emails in his mail account.

There were five sent emails, all to my mother. Each one had no text, only one attached photo per email. My dad passed on April 23, and these emails were dated May 15. If no one had touched the iPad for 7 months, just how was this possible?! Sent after his death? Where it gets even weirder…my dad didn’t know how to attach a photo to email. He only knew how to forward emails sent to him. Add to that, there was nothing in his photo album nor were there any photos stored in iCloud. So a) where did those photos come from? and b) how in the H were those emails sent three weeks after his passing?

My mom and I just stared at each other. Next, we checked her emails. If these were indeed sent, they must be sitting in her inbox. I looked. No emails there. Then I checked her Archive folder and there they were. What?! Was she sure she hadn’t sent these? She was the only other one who had Dad’s passwords. The answer was a firm no. At that exact moment her grandmother clock began to chime. This clock had not chimed in several years because my dad accidentally wound it too tight and could never figure out how to fix it. It chimed 12 times.

We looked at the photos attached to the emails. Almost all of them were from my wedding. Again, even more mysterious because my dad never had these photos. I looked at the metadata of the email, and it was clear it was sent from his IP address 3 weeks after his passing.

I looked at my mom and said, “Well, two things are clear: Dad finally figured out how to send an original email and he’s finally fixed the clock.” We both laughed and cried. In that moment, his energy was palpable. It felt like this amazing gift.

Most people don’t like to think about otherworldly things. We grew up on horror films about mean devilish spirits, evil beings from beyond. We’ve been taught not to mess with it, like don’t buy that Ouija board. Others see parapsychology as pseudoscience. Yet, great inventors and scientists like Edison and Tesla believed it was possible to communicate with the dead. In Edison’s case, a diary entry revealed he was working on a “spirit phone,” trying to best his arch rival, Tesla. And the whole world of quantum physics has opened up a lot of possibilities when it comes to reality, time and matter. So I remain open-minded and curious.

My rule is always look for the practical explanation because most times the occurrence is not paranormal.

As for the farmhouse? The Manse no longer looks like a creepy haunted house. The energy flows nicely, and if a spirit or two is passing through, I don’t mind as long as they are polite.