The Fairbanks House is the oldest timber-framed house in north America. Built between 1637 & 1641, the house has stood tall through the bloody birth of America and its halcyon days. It’s seen history be made, and people perish through the centuries. Still standing, the house now acts as a museum for the historically curious. With claims of paranormal activity now, The Fairbanks House also acts as the nation’s oldest haunted home.

Claims of children laughing and disembodied footsteps are reported by the museum’s staff and a famous group of “ghost hunters”. TAPS, or The Atlantic Paranormal Society, was called to investigate this historic landmark and they came out with evidence that supports the claims of the employees.

The DailyMail posted an article about the investigation and quoted TAPS as saying:

“… spirits like to mess with electronics…”

Here’s where the critique part of my rambling comes to play. Most paranormal groups don’t do the proper investigation and data analysis that is required to collect data in a scientific manner. Let’s face it, Ghost Hunters as well as Paranormal State like to run around the dark with flashlights and scare each other. OMG you guys! did you see that shadow? It was spooky!

So it’s no surprise that they would describe the paranormal as spirits who “like to mess with electronics”. I’m being serious here. Mess with electronics? Really? I could have come up with something better, and I’m not ghost hunter. I would have said:

The popular theory is that an unknown energy usually drains electric power from modern equipment. What this energy is, I don’t know. But that’s why we do what we do…for answers.

But instead, the information being disseminated is incorrect and ignorant. What does TAPS think, that after I die I float around my house sucking energy from cellphones because I’m bored and like to mess with electronics?

Full source: DailyMail UK

It’s the oldest timber frame house in America, lived in for generations by the same family and lovingly kept just as it was in its early Colonial days.
But what the Fairbanks House lacks in modern facilities it seems to make for with … strange spirits.
The house in Dedham, Massachusetts, was built between 1637 and 1641 by English settlers Jonathan and Grace Fairbanks.
Today the house is a museum, but it could very well one of the most haunted houses in America.

Justin Schlesinger, one of the museum directors whose ancestors built the property, said: ‘There’s always been weird things happening in the house, from the doorbell going off a million times to flashlights never working.’
He added that there are sometimes footsteps heard on the stairs when no one is there. Also, a newly-installed alarm system went off every night for several weeks with the alarm company unable to offer an explanation.
If there are such things as ghosts, he said, ‘this would be the logical place for them to be.’
For decades now, throngs of visitors from all over the world, from school children to distinguished architects, have toured the house, entranced by its authenticity.

Over the centuries, there must have been some deaths in the house, museum business manager Lee Ann Hodson said.
There’s even been a shocking murder. In 1801, one of the Fairbanks sons, Jason, was convicted in the killing of his girlfriend, Elizabeth Fales, in a nearby pasture. She had apparently spurned his marriage proposal.
He was hanged from the gallows on Dedham Common in one of the most sensational murder cases of the time.
On a whim last year, Mr Schlesinger, 25, asked a ghost-hunting group, The Atlantic Paranormal Society, or TAPS, to come in and see what they might find.

He spent a a night in the house with the TAPS investigators.
‘We heard footsteps in the beginning,’ he said. ‘Up where the children used to sleep.’
The TAPS group made audio recordings all night in an effort to detect anything out of the ordinary.
They told him after reviewing the tapes that they did record some sounds.
‘They thought it was kids, because they got some laughter on the recordings.’
Schlesinger admitted that he didn’t get much sleep that night while the group camped out on sleeping bags in the house’s tiny parlor, especially when his cell phone went off in the middle of the night and began playing organ music.
‘I don’t know if scared is the right word,’ he said.’Maybe startled or confused.’
The ghost hunters told him not to worry, that if there were spirits in the house, they were likely his own family and wouldn’t harm him, thebostonchannel.com reports.

He said the TAPS team told him spirits like to ‘mess with electronics,’ which might explain why tourists’ cameras often stop working as well.
‘There is so much history living in this house,’ he said.
The TAPS group returned last weekend for a second round of testing armed with their electro-magnetic field detectors and audio recorders.

Team leader Traci Boiselle, 38, described the outing as ‘awesome.’
‘This time, the house had a very different feeling,’ she said. ‘We had lots of knocking and moving sounds.’
‘My take is that definitely there is some paranormal activity in the house,’ she added.
But Lesley Haine, one of the house’s tour guides who was raised in Dedham, said that while it’s hard to keep flashlights working there, she’s never personally noticed anything too odd.
‘If there are spirits out there, they are good spirits,’ she said.
‘There’s nothing bad. They’re happy spirits.’