Saint Charles, Private Residence
Investigators: Dave, Mark, and Vicki
Saint Charles, Missouri is the third oldest town west of the Mississippi with a history dating back even before the arrival of the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804. The city also served as Missouri's first state capital from 1821 to 1826. Several of the neighborhoods, originally surveyed by Nathan Boone, have been designated as Historic Preservation districts in an effort to maintain the historic architecture of the community. Many of these privately owned homes date from the late 1800's and early 1900's.
The owners of one these homes requested a CAPS investigation after they had a series of unexplainable phenomenon. Initially it was only the wife that was having these experiences, but when their oldest began to relate some of his stories they requested my assistance.
On more than one occasion, the wife has heard the sound of heavy footsteps walking on the hardwood floors in the kitchen. These occurred both during the day and night. Needless to say, she could never find an explanation for these sounds.
In the upstairs bedroom, she has awoken in the middle of the night numerous times to see a small dark shadow running around in the hallway outside their bedroom door. When she gets up, she finds no one there and both children sleeping soundly in their beds.
Although the husband had no personal experiences to relate, he confided that on more than one occasion he had "misplaced" certain personal items. He would then find them, weeks later sitting in plain sight on a table or dresser. No one would admit to placing them there.
The experience related by their son occurred one night after he had gone to the bathroom. When he was heading back to his bed, he saw a small dark shadow and heard a voice asking, "Wanna play?"
After gathering their information and touring their historic 1860's home, I decided to attempt a short EVP session in their kitchen, one of the oldest areas of the home. To my great surprise, at the very beginning of the recording I captured what sounded like singing. I attempted a second recording, requesting that they sing again, and this time I got an incredibly clear EVP response. (Listen for yourself below).
Based on these, I asked the owners if they would allow me to bring in other members of the CAPS team so we could do a more thorough overnight investigation. They agreed as long as we not disclose their names or location of their home.
The investigation that night was performed mainly in the upstairs of the home as this is where a majority of their experiences appeared to have occurred. We placed digital recorders around bedrooms and had a video camera pointed towards the doorway where the wife had often seen the shadow figure. In addition, we took a number of still photographs with and without flash throughout the night.
That evening I was positioned in the back of the children's bedroom facing towards the hallway door. To my great surprise, at around 2:30am, I witnessed a tall dark figure walk across the middle of the room. Unfortunately, the video camera and other investigators were not in position to see this.
Inspired by this sighting, we decided to take a series of photographs. Although most of these pictures showed nothing, after photo-enhancement one of these pictures revealed a very strange anomaly. The picture above was taken without a flash from the hallway area back into the bedroom. The flash pictures taken just before and after did not indicate any problems with the camera or any cause for this anomaly. On a subsequent visit we tried unsuccessfully to reproduce the phenomenon. An analysis of the digital recordings and video provided a large number of diverse EVPs, some of which were incredibly clear. I have provided just a few below.
Needless to say, the owners were flabbergasted by the amount of evidence we collected in such a short time, (as were we). Although we were able to ascertain that their home is indeed active, we also suggested to the owners that these entities did not appear to be malevolent. Their experiences and our EVPs seemed to indicate that these spirits were actually quite content with this family.
After providing them with the various options, the owners decided against taking any extreme actions. We have stayed in communication since our investigation and although activity has continued, they seem to have become quite comfortable with their situation and perhaps
Follow-up in 2014:
We recently had the opportunity to meet again with this Saint Charles Family and are pleased to provide an update.
It has now been nearly five years since our last visit and they have confirmed that they continue to live in their historic home.
Since our investigation, they have experienced period bouts of activity, but nothing that they described as frightening or concerning.
They expressed their appreciation to the CAPS teams for their work and especially the research done on their home. Their son, now in High School has not had any significant encounters since our visit and speaks fondly of his young playmate.
We will continue to follow up on this as we can and are always grateful to have opportunities like this.
EVPs
"Singing" captured on first recording.
CAPS recorder by clock...no one around, "hello"?
Captured in an upstairs bedroom. The audio was taken off of a video. Sounds like a child. Maybe says "Harry"?
Response to request...about 3 seconds.
Still trying to understand what this one is saying....
Voice captured in storage closet area..on two different recorders. David and I are trying to get their cat out of the closet, but listen after I say, "You can do it..."