Capital Area Paranormal Society

People often ask me if I have ever been on a paranormal investigation so frightening that it made me want to run out of the location... My first inclination is to say “No”, but upon reflection there was an incident just prior to my joining CAPS.

It was a chilly Friday in October 2010 when my family and I took a trip to Alton Illinois. We were planning on meeting up with Dave, Trish and Zack that Saturday to take the Alton Ghost tour. We stayed that night on the first floor of a fairly new hotel, room 104

Saturday I saw David and company pull up to the hotel; I met them at the front desk while they checked in. They had room 213. I jested about their room number coupled with the fact that it was a full moon, told them it should be a very entertaining time. As it turned out, the joke was on me!

Before the tour, we went up to their room and I listened to them talk about the Springfield ghost tour they were on the night before. At that point Trish pulled out a new set of dowsing rods she had just bought. She said that they didn’t work for her but asked if I wanted to try them.

“Sure“, I responded. The minute I got my hands on them, they immediately started moving. I ask questions, they would cross for yes. I ask them to spin in circles, go faster, stop; they did everything I ask. We were thinking how weird the situation was and wanted to stick around longer, however the time had come for us to leave for the Ghost Tour. I decided to bring the rods with me and during a portion of the tour I could swear they started to vibrate. It became so intense that in the end I had to hand them off to Trish. The tour was interesting, but mostly uneventful except for an intense cold rush I felt in the basement of the Unitarian church.

It was after midnight when we made it back to the hotel, all of us returning to room 213, to use the rods again. Zack asked multiple questions, such as math problems, and the rods always crossed with the correct answers. David decided to turn on his digital recorder hoping for EVP’s. He had headphones so that I could listen “live”. He also pulled out his brand new K2 meter and placed it on the bed near to where I was seated. To my shock, the K2 meter started flashing and at the exact same time I heard a clear response through the recorder. Although I was cognizant of the fact that something there were making the rods move, to actually hear a male voice responding spooked me solid! I daresay my knees started to tremble with fear!

About 2:30am I decided I should go back to my room. I told the spirits not to follow but apparently at least one of them decided not to listen. About 3:30am as I was lying on the bed, I felt something hit the back of my head; I was sure it was a pillow. I raised my head to look at my surroundings, and then I looked over at my husband, deep in slumber. I couldn’t figure out who was trying to start a pillow fight! There were two extra pillows at the foot of the bed, I started to suspect that one of the spirits had followed me and must have been the perpetrator. I was a little bit alarmed! Although I have seen several apparitions during my lifetime, this was the first time I have been hit by one.

As I was trying to digest the pillow incident, I felt the extra pillow somehow was now lying on the blanket on my feet. I sensed it was shaking as if it was about to lift up and hit me again. I couldn’t stand the anticipation of the pillow flying at me so I threw my legs out from beneath the blanket and on top of the pillow. As I lay there, I began feeling a frigid coldness beset me, so I once again tucked myself under the blanket, but to my dismay, the blanket started quivering all over again.

To add to my anguish, my daughter suddenly sat straight up in bed for a few seconds and without saying a word collapsed like a ragdoll. Just afterwards, my son started giggling in his sleep. I couldn’t help but wonder fearfully back to “The Exorcist” and was becoming apprehensive for my children. I was to the point where I wanted to take my family out of there when my husband briefly woke up. I informed him that we were not alone, but his reaction was to tell me that I simply needed to sleep. Obviously I could not, nor would not! I was never so grateful in my life when I saw the break of dawn!

Mid-morning, my husband loaded up the van for our departure. He approached me with an odd look on his face and related to me several conversations he had overhead in the breakfast area. More than one person was complaining how their cell phone batteries had strangely drained during the night, one man insisting to have fully charged it just before bed. Another man claimed he “missed” several messages because his phone didn’t start working until that morning…I think it was at this point that my highly skeptical husband began to think, that indeed, something had been amiss!

Now that time has passed, and I am much more experienced, I feel that I am ready to return and face whatever it was we had encountered. So many questions remain. Did we inadvertently open a portal? Was it a malevolent force or just a spirit anxious to communicate? I may never know the truth, but if anyone were to tell me that Alton is the most haunted town in the U.S.A., I would smile and say “Yes, yes it is!”