ECWPI splits into 2 separate groups

Due to geographic circumstances, ECWPI has split into two ghost investigation groups.

Fox Valley Spirit Hunters can be found at http://fvsh.sillybirds.com

Midwest Preternatural Research can be found at www.midwestpreternaturalresearch.com

This blog will no longer be updated. Thanks for reading!

final impressions of JFK Prep -- by Matt (Edited 03/26/06)

I said we still have some stuff left to post from our investigation of JFK Prep, and we’d finish off by posting that. Here it is...

--The history of JFK Prep and the town of St. Nazianz:

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In the months leading up to our investigation, we researched the history of JFK Prep and compiled this packet of information.

Especially if the only "history" you know of JFK Prep is urban legends or from watching "Scariest Places on Earth", you’ll want to read that. "Scariest Places on Earth" was just after ratings. There was no truth to it. No shocker there. When they interviewed Barry, she kept it all factual and logical, then they asked her to say something briefly about the urban legends and of course that’s the only part of her interview they used.

--The death and body of the founder Father Oschwald:

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"Anton Stoll records: 'A number of times, I have observed that [Father Oschwald], with closed eyes, when there was no one else in the room but I alone, would extend his hands in blessing, and then with his hand, signal someone away, and yet I saw no one in the room.'"

Father Oschwald was dying and could have just been delirious, not seeing ghosts.

It is strange that Father Oschwald’s body didn’t decompose for all those years. This is supposed to be a saint thing. Lenin’s body doesn’t decompose either, but his body is preserved by biochemists using chemicals. And it is taken in to a laboratory every 18 months. According to the Russian doctor who not too long ago did a makeover on Lenin’s corpse, "He looked terrible when he died, but what you see now is Lenin’s face, not someone else’s." In Moscow, "mausoleumists" earn most of their money by preserving the bodies of dead mafia bosses. In 1970, the staff secretly embalmed the body of Ho Chi Minh that was on display in Hanoi. I’m not saying there were hoaxers at work on Father Oschwald’s body, as the then-untested chemical process used on Lenin was developed in 1924 and Oschwald died in 1873. And even if somehow somebody could get into the vault and sneak out Oschwald’s body once every year and a half without anybody noticing, the process used on Lenin takes 30 days. But it makes you think if there could be a scientific explanation.

--The "curse" of Father Oschwald:

Popular legend has it that Father Oschwald was evil and he cursed the town of St. Nazianz because the State took the land away in 1896, and that’s how the haunting started. But Father Oschwald died in 1873. The land was taken away twenty years after Oschwald’s death. He couldn’t have cursed it.

It is true that as Father Oschwald lay dying there were poundings heard on the doors and walls all around town -- everywhere except in the room where Father Oschwald lay dying…

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But this, again, was not because he was EVIL. This can be explained by a phenomenon called Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis (RSPK). RSPK is an unconscious form of Psychokinesis. Sometimes when a person is in physical or emotional pain, or just under a lot of stress, they can unconsciously make their own bed shake or make knocking sounds on the walls, because they're rebelling on a subconscious level. If you have a lot of stress or trauma in your life, it can continue and it can follow you from house to house until you solve the emotional problem that's causing it. Another term for this is a "poltergeist" -- poltergeists really don't have anything to do with ghosts, despite what you've seen in movies. The only thing the "Poltergeist" movies got right is it's typically a young girl going through puberty who's causing it, but not always. Father Oschwald was not lashing out on the town, he was just dying and in a lot of pain, and he was psychokinetically pounding on the doors and walls all over town because he wanted the pain to stop. He didn't even know he was doing it.

All that being said, the rest of the town does have a history of devastating fires, and there are stories of some ghost sightings, if there’s any truth to the stories:

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The whole town is not haunted. There is nothing to support that but 100-year-old personal experiences, and in most of the cases there was only one witness so it could have been a hallucination or an outright lie. How do you interview someone who’s been dead for 100 years? Even if the witness was credible and *believed* what they were seeing, there still could be a psychological explanation. Of course, you could argue it the other way too and say you can’t disprove it either, because it happened 100 years ago. But I think if you make a trip to St. Nazianz, all you’ll find is a regular town and regular people, not the frightened townsfolk of Blair, Maryland. EVERYTHING about this place was exaggerated. Also, some of those stories, like the boy riding a deer with a superlarge horn and throwing fireballs everywhere he went, allegedly happened when Oschwald was still alive and still had the land, before the land was supposed to have been cursed.

So then how did JFK Prep become haunted? There are stories of physical and sexual abuse at the school as to the origin of the haunting, however we couldn’t back that up either. We did get one possible EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon – in theory, that’s the recording of ghost voices and sounds that living people can’t normally hear with their ears) where you hear what sounds like beating and moaning in the background, and Kurt who recorded it swears he did not hear this at the time or he would have made mental note of it. Barry was with him too and she’s really good at making note of any sounds that could later be misinterpreted as EVPs:

Beating and Screaming

(It's most noticeable when Kurt is doing his countdown to taking the picture...right between the "1" and the "2", where you can hear a smack and what sounds like a cry. The cracking sounds could very easily be noises in the background or someone shifting their weight, but the weird moans and cries that are there don't appear anywhere else in Kurt’s audio except for this spot, which makes him think they are tied in with the cracking sounds.)

We also got a few EVPs that refer to "burning". Maybe the haunting is because of the great fire in 1871 where all those people died. (See Katie’s entry from the May walkthrough to hear those EVPs.)

The fact is neither we, nor anybody else, knows for a FACT how the haunting originated, if you believe JFK Prep is haunted. I think a lot of it is residual energy, like in those EVPs referring to "burning" and possibly the one I just posted. Residual energy isn’t a spirit at all. It’s a psychic impression or memory that plays itself over and over again like a broken record. There is no intelligence or "life" behind it, it’s not aware of your presence, and you can’t interact with it. One of the zone leaders on the investigation, Jaeson Jrakman, says this about residual hauntings in his book, "The Art of Ghost Hunting": "The Recording Theory is the primary theory to explain this phenomenon. It states that video and audiotapes capture sounds and images on a film of special plastic with an oxidized material attached to it. Certain building materials such as old iron nails, quartz crystals in granite, or slate have chemical properties that are similar to the material found on audio and videotapes. When an event occurs that has sufficient traumatic energy to it, the event could imprint its psychic impression into some of these building materials, and triggered to discharge and replay during the event of a solar flare, geomagnetic storm, electrical storm, or any other ionizing or electrical disturbances."

But then there were also a few occurrences like the thing that happened with Kurt's cell phone, the suitcase opening on Michael, and Mark's EVP that answers a question directly that would suggest something intelligent. Maybe there's a little of both at JFK Prep. Or maybe there's another explanation for some of the things we experienced.

--The nun who hung herself:

There’s a story that a nun hung herself after a student she molested committed suicide in the gym and the nun is supposed to haunt the grounds and the cemetery where she’s buried. There are no nuns buried in that cemetery. It is all priests. Nor did we find any record of a nun committing suicide.

--The student who hung herself:

Buddy group South East Wisconsin Paranormal Research did some digging through the records and DID find that there was indeed a girl who hung herself in one of the buildings, but it didn't happen in the gym and we don't think it had anything to do with a nun. **EDITED 03/26/06: We were contacted by the woman who was roommates with the girl. She was doing a google search on JFK Prep and came across our blog. She gave us some info about the girl and what life was like at Prep back then and why she really did it. As we always suspected, the reason had nothing to do with a nun or a beating. Out of respect for the student and her family I won’t post what building it happened in or what the girl's real reason was.**

--The graves in the cemetery alternately rising and sinking:

Another urban legend is that the graves in the cemetery up on Loretto Hill, where Father Oschwald’s crypt is and where all the priests are buried, alternately rise and sink. They do not. And the cemetery is actually still used, as some of the graves were new.

--The sounds of students laughing in the halls:

You’re supposed to be able to hear students laughing in the halls of the school. Actually, we found the school to be the least active of the buildings. The one time we did hear footsteps above us on one of our subsequent visits, it turned out to be *living people* who were caught trespassing.


--Miscellaneous EVPs:

This was recorded by Kurt in the basement under the church on Night 1 of our investigation, in the room we call the "cafeteria". First you’ll hear Barry asking if she may take a picture, then you hear Kurt, and then at 10 seconds you’ll hear a possible EVP:

Kurt's EVP

And again, DO NOT go to JFK Prep if you do not have permission. You will be arrested and fined $5,000.

--Bibliography:

“33 Years Of Christ In A Religious Community – St. Nazianz”

“St. Nazianz Diamon Jubilee – 1854-1929”

“St. Nazianz Golden Jubilee – 1896-1946”

“St. Nazianz: Celebrating 150 Years: 1854-2004”

Internet article "Lenin Undergoes Extreme Makeover"

Various newspaper articles and vertical files

JFK Prep

ECWPI and Southeast Wisconsin Paranormal Research (SEWPR) have pulled out of JFK Prep. If you want to know why, email me in private at ghost_matt@hotmail.com.

We still have stuff left to post of our report from ECWPI's investigation, and we will finish off by posting that, but it may be awhile because we have 15 pages that need to be scanned, copied to a CD, and then mailed to me so I can upload them.

Strange cell phone incident from 10/8/05 - By Kurt

I'll post more about my thoughts and my experiences with our JFK Prep investigations soon, but I wanted to write about what Katie mentioned in her post about singing Christmas carols while she was investigating the church.
About an hour or so after Katie was in the church singing Christmas carols, Mark and I were camped out on the first floor of the old dorms while Matt, Phil, and Mara were on the 4th floor. Mark and I were sitting silently when this happened...

http://http://home.ripway.com/2005-5/317761/ChristmasPhone.wav


In the clip, Mark and I are sitting quietly when you hear something start to play an electronic version of "We Wish You A Merry Christmas". Mark asks me if that's my cell phone, and I tell him that it isn't. After taking *everything* out of my pockets (recorder, digital camera, walkie talkie, etc...), I finally take out my cell phone, and I realize that the sound actually *IS* coming from my phone.
What makes this so unusual is that "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" is *NOT* anywhere on my cell phone! I know what ringtones I have, and I know what sounds are on my phone, and I can say with 100% certainty that "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" is *not* anywhere on my phone. I know my phone inside and out. And add to this the fact that it happened in the building that we seemed to catch most of our paranormal activity in. Other electronic equipment has been known to act a little strange in this building, too.
What's even more unusal is that the sound is playing at a much lower volume than my ringtones and other sounds do, and the sound seemed to be coming not from the speaker, but more from actually somewhere inside the phone.
When I hit a button on the phone, the song stopped.
I have no explanation for this. My phone isn't very advanced, so there is no way that someone could send me the sound without me knowing.
It could have been a glitch in the system, or some kind of hidden "Easter Egg" on the phone, but why would it play THAT song in October?
Honestly, I didn't put much thought into it at the time, passing it off more or less as a glitch. When we got back to the main building, however, and Katie told me how she had been singing Christmas carols in the church not too long before this happened to me, it really made me wonder.
Was it a glitch, a strange coincidence, or something else?

JFK Prep (Investigation Zero) -- Matt's impressions

On October 23, 2005, JFK Prep was featured on a show called “Scariest Places on Earth”. Some members of ECWPI and two of the Independents who we worked with on the case were interviewed back in August, and that’s why I haven’t been able to disclose anything about Investigation Zero for the last three months. I signed a confidentiality agreement. Before that, it was because the owner didn’t want vandals, but he has since relented and, with help from South East Wisconsin Paranormal Research and us, wants to offer haunted tours to raise funds to repair the buildings.

Only Barry made it on to the show as a "local historian" (and it was very well deserved, she was an awesome interviewee and she obviously did her homework). I’m not mad or disappointed. In fact, I’m relieved. I was getting really nervous about being misrepresented on national TV. I think we were cut because we were unwilling to say the founder Father Oschwald and the place are EVIL. Yes, from our findings we think there may be something going on but we think it's exaggerated and there's nothing evil or dangerous there. The TV station didn't care about our scientific investigation, in fact when I told them a story about an experience I had and then tried to give my debunking, they told me "viewers don't care about that."

The TV station never got a look at any of our best findings either because when we were down for the filming one of the producers on-set said they would have total ownership of anything we send them. Katie then showed the materials release to a lawyer, and he told her that they don’t have ownership of anything and if they said that then to tell them to eat dirt. The producer back in California told us there must have been a miscommunication, so we did still send them SOME of our findings, just not our best ones. And in retrospect, we agree with Barry that people who would bill her as a local historian (she's actually a professional ghost hunter with 15 years of experience and a heavy background in psychology) would have screwed up the presentation of the photos/EVPs royally. Besides, people want to debunk those shows, nothing would have been respectable no matter who presented it.

Now about our investigation, I’m an amateur ghost hunter, so I just did the footwork for the investigation and then invited three seasoned professionals in from around Wisconsin to act as zone leaders and help us out. Jaeson Jrakman (www.jaesonjrakman.com), Barry Dahlberg, and Michael Otten were the zone leaders, to give credit where it’s due. These three did an awesome job, and have since become mentors for ECWPI. I give them my highest recommendation.

As Katie already wrote, there was also a whole second group that we collaborated with the first night. But they disappeared the second night and never got back to us or the owner with their findings. We don't know what happened and we're sorry it didn't work out.

August 5, the first day, the zone leaders, Katie and her husband, and me arrived at 3PM and spent the afternoon just walking through the buildings and thinking about how we were going to set up. On the initial walkthrough back in May, the owner only had time to show us through two of the six buildings and the cemetery.

Kurt, who spent weeks in the library researching the history of the site and the town, also interviewed the owner at this time. I’ll leave the history for him to post about.

In a word, the site is awesome. It’s the size of a small college campus with five spooky buildings (the school, the old dorms, the church, the library, and the printing building) and two fixed-up buildings (the new dorms, and the renaissance building where we had our headquarters). There’s also a cemetery with all priests and a crypt that you can go inside, and underground tunnels that are pitch black. It’s the quintessential scary place.

Now, all that being said, if you go there without authorization, you won’t be ticketed, you’ll be arrested and fined $5,000 for breaking and entering, NOT for trespassing. And there are people who stay the night and just patrol for trespassers now. DON’T GO WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION. If you want to go there, email Jason Beno at jbeno@wi.rr.com and sign up for the tour.

Getting back to our investigation, the plan before arriving was to spend the afternoon taking some base readings with our EMF meters, mapping out the buildings, and doing some control audio recordings with nobody in the buildings. But as you can see, the place is so big, we didn’t get done and had to get going on our investigation. However, we’ve since been back so many times and I’ve run through the buildings with my EMF meter so many times that I’m pretty familiar with the whole place and I have a base reading of everything now, and we’ve done a lot of control stuff since.

The rest of the group arrived later, and we started the investigation at 8:00PM.

NIGHT 1, ROTATION 1 (8PM-12AM):

We split up into three groups. Jaeson was the zone leader for Group 1. There were five people in that group including Jaeson and me, and there was an EMT in case anybody got hurt. Barry was the zone leader for Group 2 and there were six people in that group including her. She had one EMT in her group, just in case. Michael was zone leader for Group 3 and there were six people in his group including himself. Michael has medical training and he’s a "sensitive". I'm leery about sensitives because how do you know someone's really psychic? I prefer an all-scientific group. But if we do bring a sensitive on an investigation, we have somebody with equipment go with them.

Then we also had someone stay in headquarters all night and monitor Michael’s live video feed on a labtop. The three groups communicated by walkie-talkie and were assigned to separate buildings.



Group 1:

Jaeson’s group investigated the school building first. We did a sweep of the building, then set up a video camera and Trifield Natural EMF Meter in the only hallway where the owner left a power strip for us. (The buildings have no electricity.) We put motion detectors around the camera so that nobody could tamper with it, then we left the building and sat outside. (You can’t walk around with the Trifield Natural Meter because it's so sensitive it can pick up the nerve impulses in your body when you move. But it’s also one of the best EMF meters you can get for that same reason.) Since there was one group in each building that first night (but not in the printing building which the owner didn’t let us in to until the second night, and not in the two fixed-up buildings, which we didn’t investigate), we had to just sit and wait for the end of the rotation because we had no place else to go. Jaeson admitted to me that there were just too many people (the owner also kept going back and forth between the groups to see how we were doing) and this wasn’t his normal ghost hunting method. The second night and follow-up investigation were more high quality experiences where we had smaller and fewer groups, and we had impressed the owner enough with our professionalism the first night that he let us have the place all to ourselves to do with what we wanted in our subsequent visits.

Group 1 didn’t come up with anything in the school. I actually had more fun sitting outside and listening to Jaeson talk about his first cases. Jaeson wrote a book on ghost hunting which I’ve read, which is why it was so cool to be on a ghost hunt with him.

The other two groups, meanwhile, were having better luck...

Group 2:

Barry’s group, meanwhile, was investigating the cemetery, church, library, and basements underneath (that was all one zone...it was a lot smaller than it sounds). Barry or somebody who was in Barry’s group will have to post a blow-by-blow, because obviously I wasn’t there and can’t speak for their group. But Barry told me in between rotations that it was pretty dead and uneventful.

Then later upon reviewing their audio, they came up with my favorite possible EVP. What you are about to listen to was recorded by Mark. First, you’ll hear the owner Jerry Slavik ask, “What should we do with the place?” Then, you’ll hear Barry repeat “What should he do with the place?” The others present were Kurt and Rhonda, and two other investigators from the other group. None of them recall hearing what comes next:

EVP

Mark had his digital voice recorder in hand and we have a log of where everybody else was at the time. It doesn’t sound like a CB radio, and I don’t think it’s interference from a CB radio because it gives an intelligent answer to a specific question. If someone had said this just as a prank, we think someone would have heard it and said “that was so-and-so?” or someone would have made a mental note of it. If it was just someone clearing their throat, it’s pretty creepy-sounding and we think someone would have had to ask “what was that?!” Also, someone would have stated, “That was so-and-so clearing his throat?”

But I will say that yes it *could* have just been somebody clearing their throat and nobody remembered to comment.

Another possibility is thought projection. Someone could have been thinking that answer subconsciously and then their brain’s own electromagnetic field could have manipulated the voice recorder. What do you think it was?

Group 3:

Michael’s group, meanwhile, was investigating the old dorms. Michael said he felt drawn to a room on the fourth floor that became known to us as “the suitcase room”. There are a pair of old suitcases lying on the floor in this room that someone must have discarded. One of the suitcases was all the way open. Due to weathering of the item, it couldn’t be completely shut tight. Michael kicked it closed with his left foot. When he came back, it was re-opened, all the way, and back to its original position. Michael said he assumed someone else opened it, so he kicked it closed again, and turned around. He was standing outside, in front of the stairs, and when he turned around it was open again. He said that’s when he seriously started to question it. The first time, someone could have been playing with him. But the second time no one went past him. Michael forcibly closed the suitcase, so you may think it was just returning to its natural state of being partially open but opened all the way. Possibly -- but it was only open a couple of inches in the first place and it was also pretty decrepit. In our return visit, we were unsuccessful when we tried to get it to open like that again. After it opened the second time, Michael took his pocket knife and cut away the liner a bit and he checked it well over for any electrical device, and found nothing.

But we didn’t get it on video, and upon further inspection Michael says they didn’t note any temperature oddities or get any EMF readings. So we can’t present it as evidence to anyone. However we can use this kind of personal experience to help US make our final decision about an investigation.

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After the first rotation ended, we met back in headquarters for an hour break, and I took a head count to make sure we still had everybody.

While I was eating, Michael excitedly talked about how it went in the old dorms.

Barry’s group was assigned to the old dorms next, and she was intrigued by Michael’s story and asked me if it would be okay to have her group and Jaeson’s group investigate the dorms together so we could have cameras on all floors. I was skeptical but intrigued also, and we were supposed to investigate the church/library/basement next but Barry was saying it was dead, so I said yes.

NIGHT 1, ROTATION 2 (1AM-4AM):

So Jaeson’s group and Barry’s group went up to the old dorms together, and Michael’s group went to the school building.

But it was dead now, and there were way too many people now in the old dorms, so Jaeson just left his camera and some of his equipment so they could have it, and we left to go investigate the church.

Once again, I’ll leave somebody in Barry’s group to post about how it went. But Barry again later told me it was dead. So that made me skeptical, but this is where we would get some strange photos on Night 2, and another possible EVP I like, and in subsequent visits we've had equipment go screwy in this building, so in retrospect I think maybe there was something there and there were just too many people and we scared it away.

Meanwhile, the church/library/basement were also dead. We did a sweep, and just took some pictures and recorded for EVPs. Then we went up to the cemetery, but it was really peaceful there.

On our way back from the cemetery, that’s when we saw Michael’s group up on the roof of the school with their flashlights. They radioed us to come and help, and we did. They had been taking pictures from the roof, and these huge red mists were showing up in some of their pictures. On a later visit we debunked these as the result of heated air rising up from a very large bonfire 100 feet away. You can now view them in our "False Positives" section.

We went back to the church, but by this time my camera’s memory card was full and so was my voice recorder, so I just walked along. I couldn’t do anything. We all ended up back in the renaissance building because we were going to call it a night early. But first the owner showed Jaeson, Barry, and me the boiler room behind the renaissance building. Then he took Jaeson, Barry, Michael, and me into an underground tunnel that led into the basement under the library, and Michael recorded this possible EVP. Michael says, “Helloooo?” Then at 5 seconds you hear two words that we can’t identify as any of us, and we wouldn’t be likely to say. Everything after those two words is us talking. I don’t want to tell you what I hear before you listen to it because then that’s what you’re going to hear. Take a listen to it and then email me what you think it’s saying:

http://home.ripway.com/2005-10/472522/unhappy.wav


I would like to go back and investigate that tunnel – we really only poked our heads in.

We called it a night early at about 4AM and drove home or back to our hotel rooms. For me, my first night at JFK Prep was pretty uneventful and disappointing. (It wasn’t until we reviewed our evidence that I heard Mark’s possible EVP that I posted earlier.) I went home thinking “it’s not haunted, that was very peaceful” and “if this place isn’t haunted, what is? Am I wasting my time and money being a ghost hunter?” I wasn’t ecstatic about spending a whole second night in a row.

But I’m glad I did.

NIGHT 2:

We met back at 7PM. The owner opened up the printing building and underground tunnel for us (which just leads from the garage into the printing building), and we did a walkthrough. He also opened up this little yellow barn for us next to the renaissance building, if we wanted to go in there.

We started our investigation again at 8PM, with a much smaller group. Two in ECWPI didn’t come back because of work or knowing they couldn’t sleep during the day, but they both let me know a month in advance that they were only planning on staying one night. And two more in ECWPI had kids at home and also were just really tired and didn’t think they could handle another full night (which is understandable), and so they drove down to tell me this in person and then Barry just walked them through the buildings they hadn’t got to see yet, then they went home.

So the second night we only had seven people – the three zone leaders, and Katie, Keith, Jody, and me.

With the fewer people, there was no rotation schedule. You just worked with who you wanted and investigated what you wanted, and I kept track of where everybody was on walkie-talkie.

Barry, Katie, Keith, and Jody started in the church, and Michael, Jaeson, and I headed straight for the old dorms. Michael showed Jaeson and me around the old dorms and he showed us the “suitcase room”. Also on the fourth floor across the hall from the “suitcase room” is the alleged Satan Room where, according to urban legend, the founder of St. Nazianz, Father Oschwald, or just a regular priest had an encounter with Satan and then the room was boarded up to protect the students and faculty. The Satan Room is a dud, no surprise. It’s not boarded up, and we never experienced a thing in there. It’s just a room. Father Oschwald could not have had an encounter with Satan or anything in that room because the school was built 100 years after Father Oschwald’s time. IF there’s even any truth to the story, it had to have been just a regular priest, and he could have just seen a regular ghost or residual energy and then it got blown out of proportion.

We set up a video camera and voice recorder in the “suitcase room”, and we put motion detectors at the stairs on the third and fourth floors. I left my voice recorder in a closet on the fourth floor.

Then we went down to the third floor and just sat quietly in the hallway and waited for something to happen. Around the same time that Michael had the experience with the suitcase the first night, the motion detectors started going off all over the place. We got up and walked toward the stairs to see if we could see what was setting them off. Bats? There were bats in that building. The other thing to keep in mind is motion detectors are REAL sensitive and a breeze will set them off so they’re not the most reliable. Jaeson was walking with his Trifield Standard EMF Meter (the one you CAN walk around with) when his needle went crazy. Then I saw a door open right after that. A door opening can be recreated very easily, if it’s not shut tight, and it wasn’t. The wood expanding can cause it to swing open. It may still be worth noting that it happened right after the EMF spike, but it doesn’t prove anything. But because the motion detectors were going off, we radioed the others to come.

A little while after that, things got dead again. Jaeson and Barry left for the printing building. Katie, Keith, and Jody left for the cemetery. Michael and me stayed in the dorms for a little while longer and then left to go back to base for a short break. Then we went to investigate the little yellow barn that the owner had opened up for us. The owner said he had heard stories of cult activity in that barn from long before, and was curious if we would find anything in there.

Michael and me set up motion detectors at the entrances, then explored it by ourselves while taking some pictures and asking questions for EVP. There was nothing in there, and in the subsequent times I’ve been back I never came up with anything in that barn or even got a creepy feeling. Michael and me then left to meet Jaeson and Barry in the printing building.

We stayed together and stopped to do EVP circles in all the big rooms and took lots of pictures.

Next we moved back into the school and walked around the tunnels where I believe Michael thought he’d seen a shadow the night before (stopping in all the big rooms to do EVP circles and taking pictures and readings with the EMF meter), then through the locker rooms, then through the cafeteria directly under the gym, and then up into the gym.

After we left the gym we decided to walk the perimeter of the grounds because there were also stories of ghost sightings in the surrounding woods. We didn’t experience anything, and in fact we only got as far as the cemetery.

It was now about 2:30 in the morning, my voice recorder was full again, and we’d spent about 15 hours total investigating so far. We’d also been up till 4 in the morning the night before. We were all getting tired, and were ready to go home early. Everybody was back in the renaissance building again and starting to pack up.

Michael and I wanted to go up to the old dorms one last time before going home. We went alone, and when we entered we went straight up the stairs to the fourth floor.

Here Michael recorded another possible EVP. You’ll hear him say, “School is officially dismissed for you, thank you.” Then in the background you hear a strange noise that we don't remember hearing at the time, and over that you hear me say, “It’s really pissed at you.” I said that because the air felt heavy, though we could have just been scaring ourselves. The two knocks you hear at the end are just Michael. Again, I know what I think I hear, but I don’t want to tell you before you listen to it because then that’s what you’re going to hear. Take a listen and then email me what you think it’s saying, if you hear anything at all:

http://home.ripway.com/2005-10/472522/goaway.wav

We went back out to the parking lot where everybody was getting ready to go home and go to sleep, and I think it was Barry who got us all to stick it through to the end of the night. Kudos to Barry. We came so close to missing what happened next!

We all went back up to the fourth floor together as one big group. The owner came with us too. We set up shop in the “suitcase room”. Keith set up his video camera, and we sat in an EVP circle and turned off all our lights. (This is so you’re not distracted.) We asked, if there’s a presence in this room, could it please show us a sign of its presence and then we’ll leave and we won’t bother it again. Michael soon after started to feel cold and announced that an entity had just entered the room, like it had gone away for a little while but was back now because it had heard people up here. So Barry snapped a picture:



(That’s Michael in the picture.)

Then she took another picture just to verify, looked at the view screen, and said “holy cow!” Before you look at the next couple pictures, you need to know that we’ve been in this room many times, we know it extremely well, and there are NO reflective surfaces in this room. On our follow up investigation we returned to this room and tried taking pictures from every angle to recreate it and had no success:



Then another picture:



And one more:



(In that last one, the obtrusion that looks like a hat is actually part of the wall.)

We showed these pictures to two professional photographers. One of them said it could also be Barry’s finger in front of the camera, but Barry tried to recreate it with her finger and, well, compare for yourself:

Barry kept trying to re-create a white image and form like the one seen in the shots with Michael, but after many shots of her fingers and of the side of the chair, she still can't find anything she can use to dismiss those shots - the closest she can get is holding her finger a good three or four inches out in front of the camera lens, which is very tricky and awkward to do and not a natural position to snap pictures in, but even then the base and sometimes the tip of her finger glows a pink/red and not a solid white.

Jaeson tried to manipulate the image to see if he could make the ridges in her fingertip show up but he was unsuccessful.

And after Barry looked at the second picture, don’t you think she would have checked her fingers to make sure SHE wasn’t doing anything before taking two more?

Is this some kind of energy surrounding Michael? Possibly. Is it a dead person? That’s a whole other debate.

Barry showed us these pictures in the view finder right away after they were taken. Then she wanted to get back to headquarters right away and put these on her computer before she pushed a wrong button and erased them or something. So we left the suitcase room and made our way out.

When we got to the second story landing, Michael said he heard a dog growl but nobody else did. We went to investigate, and we entered into a little chapel with a balcony over it where you can look down from the third floor where we had come. Michael said there was something watching us from the balcony. We snapped some pictures and asked some questions, but got nothing.

After returning to the renaissance building and putting the pictures on Barry’s labtop and showing them to the owner, we of course went back to the “suitcase room” again. The activity was getting hotter and hotter every time went back, and this time we were expecting a full body apparition. We stayed until dawn, but nothing more happened. Michael said he sensed it was annoyed and we were taking over its space, so it had gone downstairs.

We left the building, shook hands with everyone, and there ended our first investigation of JFK Prep.

The owner was impressed enough by our professionalism that he has us and another group, South East Wisconsin Paranormal Research, in charge of the effort to raise funds to repair the buildings. Right now that just includes giving tours and a “buy-a-brick” deal where you can get your name or group’s name on a brick that will be permanently part of the new building. But in the future we want to offer authorized ghost hunts and classes on ghost hunting.

Some of us have since spent over 50 hours at JFK Prep, and we came back for a follow up investigation on October 8, but I’m going to give somebody else a chance to speak.

And we’ll probably go back many more times yet. Us and SEWPR are building a relationship with the owner, and this is going to be an ongoing investigation. ECWPI and SEWPR have talked about even collaborating for the next investigation. I agree with what Katie posted in another entry; South East Wisconsin Paranormal Research is the first group so far that we’ve gotten along with and we really really like. We’ve since become charter members of their group, and they’ve recently applied to join the TAPS family.

In conclusion, there aren’t ghosts in white sheets rattling chains at JFK Prep, but based on Mark’s EVP that answers a question directly and the pictures Barry took, I think there is *something* at JFK Prep. Mark's EVP *could* have been somebody clearing their throat, or another possible explanation besides a ghost could be thought projection. Barry's pictures *could* have been something like a finger in front of the camera, or another explanation could again be will manifestation.

JFK Prep is also exaggerated (most of the time we were there nothing happened), and a lot of the stories are nonsense, like the town being cursed and Father Oschwald being evil. I don’t believe the place is evil and that there’s anything dangerous there. Most of the time it just felt peaceful. I think there’s a lot of imagination and psychology involved. I think if you go in to a big spooky place like this shivering with fear and anticipating being attacked by an evil spirit, in your *head* you’re going to get an attachment and be followed home. The couple of people *that I’ve met* who claim they were followed around by something while here were all people who were quivering with fear before they even set foot on the grounds. I think it’s in your head. Go in with a level head, and nothing can hurt you.

Scariest Places on Earth (Katie's opinion ONLY)

Well the air date has come and gone, so now we can mention JFK Prep's somewhat-starring role on the 10/23 episode of "Scariest Places on Earth". For those of you unfamiliar with this high-brow program, it consists of putting the world's dumbest people in spooky settings such as Dracula's castle for an overnight stay with what is probably production assistants doing things in the dark to scare them silly. Then we as viewers get to stare at them up their nostril-cam (and hope they keep their noses clean) as they cry, scream, jump, yell, pray and generally make fools of themselves over pretty much nothing.

Ok, that being said, the segment featuring JFK Prep was shortchanged as Prep actually DOES have an interesting history and really DOES have "something" going on there. So why spend just seven short minutes at Prep and yet spend almost fifteen minutes having production assistants in black clothing chase teenagers around an empty amusement park? Was the girl locked screaming inside the old concession stand with HUGE GLASSLESS WINDOWS SHE COULD JUST CRAWL THROUGH really all that scary?

But kudos go to our investigative buddy Barry who was well-versed in JFK Prep lore and definitely had us on the edge of our seats. She was our featured interviewee and was well-spoken and obviously the producers realized that. A lot of this lore was not known to me, as I didn't do the research on this one. Did those nuns do THAT? They dumped WHAT babies in the pond? We also know Tracy V. who was interviewed and whom we KNOW has been there, but who in heck were those people on the street in Milwaukee? I assume that they were friends of some of our fellow investigators from SEWPR, maybe?
And why did the producers keep insinuating that St. Nazianz was somehow a suburb of Milwaukee?

Also, Jason and Erica from Southeastern Wisconsin Paranormal Research (SEWPR), who followed Father Dan around while he did the exorcising, hung in there with their candles. Jason looked a little uncertain and Erica looked relieved, but you guys are real troupers! :)

And as always, Linda Godfrey and Richard Hendricks showed that they know their stuff about Wisconsin lore. If you get a chance to see either of them at an Unexplained Conference, go do it. They are fun and you'll learn a lot.

Anyway, that's all I'll say about that. Technically this is an INVESTIGATION blog so I think we should try to keep it that way. But I did have to mention this program, as some of us participated in it. Also, I just want to remind readers that YOU SHOULD NOT GO THERE WITHOUT PERMISSION. If you are caught on the grounds without a written pass (and that may not help anyway), you will be charged with BREAKING AND ENTERING, fined $5000.00 and serve jail time. However, if you really want to visit the place, contact Jason Beno(as I mentioned a couple of entries ago) and get on a list to be included in a paranormal tour of the place when the next one is scheduled.

Getting back to our followup investigation (well after the production crew left), this time, we didn't have near as many people. We broke up into groups of 3-4 and split up over the campus to try to recreate some of what we had experienced. Hubby Keith, buddy Jody and I worked together for awhile, trying to recreate the footage of the knocking in the old library building. While we were actually there, not much happened--I got one knock right behind me but that was about it. So we decided to leave the camera alone for awhile and go down to the church and see if we could get any EVPs there.

I had brought a CD player along to introduce music in the church and see if that would get a reaction, but it refused to work (I admit, it was already temperamental before we left home). So instead, I thought I would just sing in the church to see what happens.

Anyway, the first thing I sang was "Ave Maria" by Schubert. Hey, I sang it for my niece's wedding years ago and I still remember it! Anyway, after I finish singing it,
this is what is heard. What is it saying? I'm not quite sure and there are people debating it.

To complicate things further, what follows is a reversed version. I don't recommend speech reversal as a valid form of investigation, but it is sometimes very interesting! Here is a slowed-down, reversed version. I also did filter it a bit to make it clearer.

I don't know what you hear, but in the reversed version, I hear "simply want to say to the Lord." Now taking into account that I was singing a hymn and we were in an old desanctified church, this is intriguing.

A few moments later, I decided to try a Christmas carol (having run out of memorized hymns) and another interesting thing happened. Part way through it, you can hear what appears to be some sort of stringed instrument being plucked a couple of times. Listen for yourself. Sorry if you don't like my singing, but listen closely after I say "did you like that?" Do you hear a response in the echo? I'm not sure if I do.

Later on, we went over to the 4th floor in the old dorms, where the most activity seems to happen. I don't know if it was just because there was only three of us (usually we go up there with at least six) or if I was just a nervous nelly. But the atmosphere up there seemed even more dense and depressing than normal. It was also absolutely pitch black and with the dust that is always floating around up there, it really seemed to close in around me. Keith and Jody decided to walk a few feet down the hall while I sat on the top step resting my back. While I was sitting there, this voice was recorded.

So maybe they were close to me as I feared.

Anyway, regarding the Christmas carol, something kind of odd happened to our investigator Kurt later on, but I'll let him post about it.

BTW, when we went through the video caught by the camcorder when it was left alone in the library, you guessed it, the knockings and poundings were going on throughout the video. I guess whatever is doing it is shy when the living are around.

As always, everything above is my opinion only and worth about what you pay for it.

katie

Tourists, Ghosts and Me (Katie again)

Well things are changing at old JFK Prep.

Fundraisers to help repair the church (pictured in the blog's main page) are underway. This is a direct result of other ghost investigators such as us becoming involved with the facility, specifically from Southeastern Wisconsin Paranormal Research (SEWPR). These are great folks with whom ECWPI is building a good relationship (for a change, based on our past experiences with working with other groups). They have a similar philosophy to ours, which makes it easier to understand each other.

One of the fundraisers is a ghosthunting class and a tour being offered on the third Saturday of each month (see my previous entry for contact info). The first class didn't work out, but the tour was much more successful and I got to assist in taking some new folks around the buildings. This particular group of people included a family who had experienced paranormal phenomena in their daily lives for years. It's easy to 'poo poo' accounts like these, but photos I got in certain areas where they were that night were very interesting.

Normally I don't pay much attention to orbs, but these orbs seemed to be following us around! They had a very distinctive size and shape. Also, they really did tend to hang around this family as they went. I even got a photo of a huge orb right on the face of one of these folks! I am trying to find out what he was sensing at that time but it will take a few days to get back in touch with these folks. I have checked the camera for a dirty lens, as the orbs seemed to appear in the same area on each photo, even though we moved around. The lens looked fine, but I cleaned it and we are going back next week to do some more investigating. Unfortunately these folks can't come with us, as it is just ECWPI going back, but I'm going to see if I can't reproduce some of these things.

Unfortunately, I was experimenting with a new microphone for audio recording and despite all the orb photos, I forgot to TURN IT ON. So I got nothing on audio. Hubby was videorecording though so I hope to be able to review his video this weekend. Maybe he got something.

Oh well, another chapter closes and next week, another opens on JFK Prep for us as we return to do some debunking. These are different times for the old place. Instead of falling down into decrepit nothingness, it appears to have some life left in it. If we can get the church into use again, maybe the buildings around it will begin to rise from the ashes too. The grounds are still beautiful and peaceful, with athletic fields still in use-able condition behind the buildings. It would be a shame to see this interesting and unique piece of Wisconsin history crumble into nothingness with only another fricking Walmart to take its place. Of course, I assume the spirits inhabiting JFKP would just move on into sporting goods or housewares. Let's hope Ash Williams isn't working there if that happens.