My Paranormal Experiences

[dreamscometrue]

A few years ago, my brother had told me about this haunted house that is outside of New Castle, In. I was intrigued by so he took me out there and showed it to me. It was called Thornhaven Manor and had just recently been the subject of Ghost Adventures featuring Zac Baggins. From that moment on, I had been wanting to take a group in there and investigate the place. The problem was, it was going to cost $400 to get into the place and that was for up to ten people. If you had three people, it was going to cost $400, if you had ten people, it was going to cost $400. However, if you have more than ten people, then it was going to be an additional $40 a person. It thought it was pretty shitty doing it this way but the owner wants a minimum dollar amount. As it turns out, this money is going towards renovations for the place.

But anyways, I began making plans to get out to the place. Everytime I would drive to New Castle to visit my brother and his family, I would take a quick little side trip to drive by Thornhaven. It's only a mile outside of town so getting out there and getting back into town takes me a little over five minutes altogether. No big deal. I wanted to take a group out to the place and had talked to some people about it and it was always the same old thing: "Yeah, I would love to go out there but I don't really wanna spend the money, yada yada yada."

So fastfoward to December 2015, with two lady friends of mine, we ended up forming our own paranormal group; a third for me but the first that actually lasted beyond one meeting.

A little history in my paranormal past: I had tried forming my own group back in 2009 with three other people and they all really wanted to get there and investigate places and help people. We were going to called THINGS (The Hoosiers Investigating New Ghosts Society) had our first meeting at a local Steak N Shake. Unfortunately, that was as far as it went. I had tried to organize meetings but everyone was always too busy with this and that so I just gave up and did my own thing. Everytime I would come out to the Reno for my USBC Nationals bowling tournament, I would always stay at the Gold Hill Hotel, each year staying in a different room except the last two years I stayed in the miner's cabin. I had also stopped at The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado a couple of years ago, a place that still blows my mind.

A short while later, a guy who was going to be a part of my group invited me to join him and a buddy of his to form a new group. We were going to be called IAST (Indiana Apparitions Sightings Team) and had a meeting at the one guy's house. We discussed all kinds of things, what we wanted to achieved and things like that. So we were all set. I was going to the tech lead of the group. About a month later before we could even getting things really going, the one group founder had changed jobs and his schedule ended up being the exact opposite of mine. So whatever weekend I worked, he was off; whatever weekend he worked, I was off. So once that happened, I bowed out of the group knowing that our schedules would never align at this point. Luckily, there were no hard feelings by any of us, we all understood that these things happen when it comes to jobs.

So then...there's this lady at work who I had become friendly with (she's married so don't get the wrong idea) and somehow we got to talking about the paranormal. She had been a part of a very group called Indiana Ghost Trackers. It was a huge group that had its own chapter program for different cities and she was actually the director for a short time for the one in our city. Shortly after she stepped down and someone else took over as director, this particular chapter folded, leaving our city without any kind of representation in the paranormal field. So she and I had talked and then one day in early December of 2015, I get this message on facebook from someone she was friends with, and asked me if I was interested in joining the group and the two ladies were going to start. I told her I could only do it on a part time basis because of everything that was going on in my life at the point: family life, work, bowling, house renovations. But we ended up having our first meeting, the three of us and talked about places we wanted to go, how we wanted to present ourselves, what our goals were, and where did we see the group going. We were going to called TNT Afterlife Investigators and two weeks later, we picked up a fourth member who I refer to as the Master Debunker of the group. A couple months later, the one lady said she wanted to change the name of the group and after a few discussion, I suggested my original THINGS name and we ended up picking it, making me the third co-founder of the group. Our group has really taken off, so far since December, we have done 12 investigations with more lined up. Thornhaven Manor was investigation number 11.

So back to the day of Thornhaven Manor. I had myself and nine other people lined up for the investigation. Everyone but two had paid their respective $40. The date: Saturday June 25th, 2016. It is the day before my 36th birthday. Thornhaven Manor was essentially my birthday present to myself. I don't get presents anymore for my birthday nor for Christmas, I don't really need anything. If I want something, I go get it myself but in this case, it was going to be the first true present of any kind for me probably since my daughter was born.

So Saturday morning rolls around I had picked up six hours of overtime at work. I worked from 5am to 11am which means I was going to have to wake up at around 2:30am to get ready for work. So I already knew it was going to be an extremely long day and needed to pace myself through the day. When I got out at 11am, I get a text message from one of the two who hadn't paid me their $40 yet saying that they both weren't going to make it. With such short notice to try and round up someone, which I couldn't despite even the help from one of the people who was going to go, nobody could make it. So I was going to end up paying $120 for myself to go to this place and already I wasn't too thrilled about it. I lost $80 on the deal.

I got home, took a shower and ate a good lunch and got all of my equipment packed into the car. My equipment comprises of the following: 15 night vision cameras (one of them being a wide lens), 2 DVR systems each with a monitor, 4 audio recorders, one K2 meter, 6 IR floodlights, about 15 flashlights, two infrared thermometers, and one hardhat headlight. And I ain't done buying equipment either.

It only takes me an hour and half to get to New Castle and stopped at the cemeteries to see my Mom's grave and my paternal grandmother's grave. These were the two most important ladies in my life and I was devastated when I lost them. Grandma died in 1999 shortly after I graduated from high school and my Mom passed away in February of 2008. After visiting the graves, I went over to my brother's house for a couple hours and spent time with him and his family, along with his newborn granddaughter, she was only ten days old. Sweet little thing she was.

So I ended up leaving his house at about 5:50pm to head over to Thornhaven Manor. We were all supposed to meet the owner there at 6pm. I thought I was going to be running late and it turns out I was the first one there. The owner had already been there a couple hours getting the place cleaned up a little bit. About five minutes after I get, two of the other guys showed up, ten minutes later two more showed up. One of their guys who had paid me, wasn't able to make it. The owner came down to greet and let us onto the property, he had it roped off for trespassers. I told him we still had two more people on the way so he left the rope down. About five minutes later, the final two people came and we were seven investigators strong for this place.

Now it was time for the history lesson and tour of the place. Thornhaven Manor had been built in either 1851 or 1853. It was a complete brick house with the walls being about two feet think I think it was, so it was a solid solid house.There were three confirmed deaths in the house, one being that was a two year old child but it's not known how the child died. Another death was that of a man whose entire family had been poisoned by his daughter's boyfriend or husband but he was the only one who died. The other had made a recovery. The last death has two stories, one a guy died of a heart attack in the house, the other was that he had hung himself somewhere in the house. Personally, I think it was probably two different people who had died in those ways but the entire history of the house is still a little sketchy, some of it even lost in the passage of time. Walking through the place was amazing. Every room in this place is huge, downstairs, there's a foyer, a kitchen with a dining room, a huge living room, and a side room that I think could be used an an office. Upstairs, there are two bedroom and two side room that could also be used as bedrooms. Officially, Thornhaven Manor is listed as having only two bedrooms because the other two rooms upstairs can't really be classified as bedrooms. Now, the closets for the two bedroom...tiny, very small. Popeye's girlfriend Olive Oil couldn't fit into these closets they were that small. For a house that in the neighborhood of 6,000 square feet of living space and only less than two square feet of closets, I was astounded by this. There is no way in hell I'd be able to live like that. I'd have to build a closet in the corner of the rooms if I lived there.

So after getting the history of the place, we were pretty much given free reign of the place. The guys helped me get all my equipment out of the car and started setting up. I ended up using eight night vision cameras, two IR floodlights, and all four audio recorders spread out through the entire house, included to newly opened up basement. Before, it had been closed off for safety reasons but they were able to get it to the point where people could safely walk through there. The basement spans the entire house and if done right, with the right renovations, it could essentially act as a third floor for the house, adding an additional 2,000 square feet. Part of this basement is a garage. Two car I think. Folks, the inside of the house is so old, so ugly, paint peeling off everywhere, things falling apart everything, hundreds of cracks in the walls. It was beautiful! Most people would walk into this house and see an ugly old house that needs to be torn down. I see a house that is full of history, full of memories, and house that in its ugliness, shows so much beauty. If I had the money, I would buy this place and renovate it myself to live in. The owner himself was going to do just that. He bought it about four or five years with that intention but over time, he decided that he wanted to turn it into sorta like a museum, a show house. I think the guy is in his late 30's and he even said that he hopes to have the house completely done at some point in his lifetime.

Now, for the experiences in the house. There weren't much. Some of the guys went down into the basement and even though it was cold down there, they were feeling much colder cold spots in some areas. They were also getting some hits on their meters. At one point, three of us were sitting in the secondary bedroom, the child's bedroom and trying to find some activity in there. We all sat down, one of the guys sat down on the windowsill at the front of the house where he could look down the hallway into the master bedroom and swore that he saw someone moving in there. So we decided to move into that room, I went downstairs to get a walkie talkie so that I could communicate with the two guys watching the monitors and when I got there, they told me that they heard footsteps in the room directly above, which was the master bedroom. They heard the footsteps right before we got up to go into that room. I thought this was cool. But the sad thing is, I didn't have a camera nor an audio recorder in that room based off of the recommendations of the owners as to where the most activities were taking place. So I lost out on that. I went all over the place, I was loving it and I was also having a good time with my friends, we were just having a ball.

However, I had been up since about 2:30 in the morning and I knew it was going to be an extremely long day and night for so I decided to take a nap in my car. I ended up taking to half hour naps throughout the night so that I could make it through. I had no idea how long we were going to be there. We got to the place at 6pm and had the place to ourselves until noon the next day, my birthday. When I went for my naps, I set the alarm on my alarm on my phone to make sure I didn't oversleep. The alarm is that of a rooster, a very loud rooster. I left my hearing aids in my ears and laid my phone on my chest. When the alarm went off, I jumped like I was shot. I keep forgetting how loud it really is because normally my hearing aids off out of my ears when I sleep, obviously. So, a cute little anecdote for you all to laugh at me about. Anyways, one guy wound up sleeping for over two hours in his car and two people left early, i think around 12:30am or so. At about 2:00am, we started talking about calling it a night and we all agreed that it was time. I know I was ready. So we started packing everything up and I had to pull out my laptop to back everything that was recorded on the DVR on to the laptop. If I don't do this and I turn off the DVR without backing it up, I could potentially lose everything and I don't wanna do that. So while I was backing everything up, the guys were helping tear everything down. Once we got everthing packed up into the car, we had a checklist from the owner of what to do before we left. Once we did that, it was a little after 3am and we all split for home. I went straight into town to the nearest gas station to fill the car up with gas, I knew I didn't have enough to make the hour and a half trip home. Plus I needed to use the bathroom, even though there was electricity in at Thornhaven Manor, there was no plumbing. I also bought two Twix candies, two Slim Jims, two bottles of Sprite, and two bottled of Ice Mountain water. They were having a sale.

So now I leave New Castle and head for home. Keep in mind, despite having two half hour naps, I was still very, very tired. When I got about 40 miles away from home, my eyelids got very heavy so I started doing stuff to myself to stay awake, slapping my face, playing music very loud, singing, whatever I could do to stay awake. About 20 miles from home, I'm starting to see double vision and had to blink my eyes many, many , MANY (!!!) times to get normal vision back. But luckily, I made it home safe and sound at a little after 5:00am. I unpacked the car and put everything on my couch in the living room, I checked my computer real quick, got changed, and went to bed, which was about 5:45am. I woke up at around 12:30pm.

After gathering my bearings to get ready for my birthday, it had become clear to me that I had knocked off another goal from my bucket list, and that was to investigate the famous, or infamous if you will, Thornhaven Manor located just outside to the west of New Castle, Indiana...a city I once called home when I was 11 and 12 years old.