Capital Area Paranormal Society

 It was a full moon and on the eve of Easter and CAPS decided to take another opportunity to investigate the historic 1870’s building that was originally built as an orphanage by the Episcopal Church, now known as The Phoenix Center.  Last year, on June 13th, we performed our first investigation of this site and it proved to be most fruitful as we sifted through our evidence.  Dave and Trish have spent numerous hours at the center between helping with fundraisers, hosting other investigators and utilizing the building as a training ground for the students of the Lanphier Paranormal Club.

After setting up video cameras on the main floor and in the basement, we all sat in one of the basement rooms that contain a comfortable seating area.  With our recorders running, we did an EVP session.  We all heard what can only be described as humming. Trish felt her legs grow cold and I witnessed movement of one of the flags that was hanging near us.

Later that evening we decided to go our separate ways.  Trish went upstairs to sit in the dining room area, while Dave remained in the basement sitting room.  I moved on to the creepy shower area located down the hall of the basement.  We have heard many stories from prior residents of the building surrounding the shower and I had hoped to experience a bit of that.

I stood in the pitch black room, feeling unnerved by the eerie quietness when suddenly I felt something brushing against my leg. I quickly turned on my flashlight to discover that it was one of the resident cats that decided to follow me in and was just being very sociable.

I spent a few more minutes with my feline friend, before Dave joined us.  We decided to make our way up to the Main floor where we met with Trish.  She recounted to us that while sitting in the dining room she heard a deep, gruff male voice speaking next to her and it was not Dave!

We concluded that this would be an excellent time to do a Spirit Box session, so Dave went to the staging room to get the SB7 and the Ovilus, along with our furry friend Boo Buddy…a teddy bear equipped with an EMF detector used as a trigger object.  While Dave was in the room collecting those items, he also heard a deep male voice next to him and developed a case of the cold chills.

While our spirit box session was in full swing in the dining room, so was Boo Buddy.  He kept lighting up which surprised us because this is one of those pieces of equipment that simply hasn’t been as sensitive as much of our other equipment.  At that point I felt a brush on my leg similar to the one I felt in the shower area. I extended my hand down, ready to pet my familiar, but to my surprise he was not there.  I glanced around and saw that the cat was actually sprawled out on a nearby chair.

After shutting off the Spirit Box, Dave ran the Ovilus on phonetic mode.  We certainly heard some strange things emanating from it such as “Phonetic mode is so dang hard.”  Boo Buddy continued to light up during this time as well.

 Dave left us to go sit in the front area of the building.  Trish and I wondered if perhaps he had been followed because we noticed the stark absence of Boo Buddy functioning.  The two of us heard the distinct sound of the motion detector going off and the sound of heavy footsteps.  We thought it was perhaps Dave returning, but it wasn’t…

Shortly after, Trish and I heard a sound like church bells that rang 3 times and then the motion detector went off again.  Dave heard the chiming quite loudly in the front of the building, but did not hear the motion detector at any time.  The chimes went off a couple more times, and we really aren’t sure the cause.  It has not been something Dave and Trish had experienced in their many visits to the building.

We ventured up to the attic for the final part of the investigation.  Dave and Trish kept hearing footsteps while I was on the other side of the room where my K2 meter kept picking up activity.  I was attempting to take pictures, but my camera just didn’t want to seem to work properly.  As I was looking through the viewfinder I saw a peculiar stream of what appeared to be multicolored lights, like those of a rainbow.  The picture turned out to be quite odd.

We decided to wrap up the investigation early since Easter was now upon us.  As I look back, perhaps we should have focused our paranormal search not on ghosts, but on the hunt for the legendary cottontail leporidae.