Brett Nease sits still in the formal dining room of Gettysburg’s Farnsworth House Inn, the central silhouette among a dozen quiet shadows. The only light slices down softly through heavy, antique drapes onto a patterned rug. Shady splotches on the wall are portraits and landscapes, blurred incomprehensible from the dark.
Those around Nease murmur quietly as the lights on their instruments flash and twinkle. Nease addresses the dead.
“Who is here with us tonight?” he asks.
Silence.
“Can you tell me your name?”
Silence.
“Is there something we can do for you?”
One of the hand-held electronic instruments to Nease’s left registers a row of lights, and an excited amateur ghost hunter examines it closely. To her left, another investigator holds a pair of metal divining rods, which allegedly will move in the presence of spiritual activity. The two rods slowly come together and cross.
Minutes later, in the adjoining foyer, Nease, of the York-based Paranormal Activity Research Association, stares unblinking from behind dark-rimmed glasses and explains what just happened.
The instrument that lit up during questioning was an Electromagnetic Field Detector, which electricians and paranormal investigators use to identify electromagnetic fields, he says. Paranormal investigators can use it to reveal unexplained energy spikes, like what occurred moments earlier in the dining room.
By analyzing the digital sound recorders in the room later, Nease says, he can tell what happened and maybe even find hidden answers to the questions asked. Maybe.
“That can be the most boring thing about the job,” he explains. “Watching and listening to hours of nothing in order to find something. It’s not as glamorous as they make it on TV.”
Ghost hunting 101
Two hours earlier, a crowd of about 50 people gathered in a small, candle-lit staging room adjacent to the Farnsworth House for an introductory course on paranormal investigation from Nease and PARA. The group lined either side of two long, black-cloaked tables next to an old wooden organ. There was a coffin under a canopy in the far corner.
Pointer in hand, Nease described the basics of ghosts and ghost hunting, explaining that ghosts are disembodied spiritual energy the living can sometimes detect. The laws of quantum physics prove energy cannot be created or destroyed, he said, and, since human beings are made of energy, the energy must go somewhere when they die. The most common ways this energy manifests are through sounds and smells, he said, with the occasional moving object. And contrary to popular belief, the full-bodied apparition is a rarity. He’s never seen one.
More typical, he said, is the Farnsworth House spirit called “Mary.” She’s been felt often in the house as a comforting presence, even stroking people’s hair to calm them. She’s always accompanied by the sweet smell of roses.
Most investigators agree the spirits they encounter come back and engage humans because of some unfinished business, such as to watch over a loved one or out of fear over a tragic or violent death. Nease said most paranormal encounters occur at night because people’s senses are heightened, and energy pathways are more open.
The art of ghost hunting lies somewhere between science and religion, he said.
“Once you experience these things, you have to change your beliefs in science and a lot of other things, and that’s challenging to a lot of people,” he said.
A former chef, Nease retired from the hospitality industry for health reasons about 10 years ago and has devoted his time since then to paranormal studies. His group conducts free investigations all over the state, and, in a few years, his passion has turned into a full-time job.
While knowledgeable on ghost-hunting tools from voice recorders to infrared cameras and night vision to EMF detectors, Nease said “your best tool is still your senses.” And sometimes the best breaks come when you’re not looking.
Nease had such an encounter previously at the Farnsworth House while not conducting a formal investigation.
He left a camera overnight in the Sarah Black room, a bedroom attached to a bathroom that once was a nursery and is said to be a favorite haunt of a young spirit named “Jeremy.” Nease removed his camera the next morning, in no hurry to check it.
What he later found on that tape shocked him and was eventually shown on the Travel Channel show “Most Haunted Live.”
In the far corner of the room, in view of Nease’s camera, hung a white, formal dress, displayed limply over a headless, full-size dress form. Sometime in the night, with no other sign of movement in the room, both sleeves of the dress slowly began to rise, as if in embrace. They reached out straight ahead, lingered for a moment, and slowly dropped back down where they had been.
There was no draft in the room, and curtains hung motionless several feet away. Nease pointed to this as an exception, the kind of thing that seldom happens. But he said it’s the type of event that gets people hooked and keeps them searching for ghosts.
Lynne Shields, of Cleveland, Ohio, agreed. She’s making her 10th trip to Gettysburg and the Farnsworth House and said “something here just draws you back.” Shields said mumbling and chairs being moved in the basement were heard on her last visit. The next morning the furniture was in disarray, but no had been in the basement overnight.
The house
The Farnsworth House was named for Elon John Farnsworth, who was promoted to Brigadier General just before the Battle of Gettysburg and who died there on July 3rd shortly after Pickett’s Charge.
The Sweeny family lived in the house during the battle, and the attic housed Confederate sharpshooters, one of whom is believed to have killed Jennie Wade. Bullet holes from Union soldiers still riddle the side of the house.
Patti O’Day, whose family bought the house in 1972, always felt a connection to the house and sensed something supernatural the day she moved in. As her interest in the building’s history grew, she began telling ghost stories in the basement to guests of the family bed and breakfast.
“My father bought me my first coffin after that,” she joked, explaining how the Farnsworth House basement slowly transformed into a theater for her stories.
But it’s a theater with no gimmicks and has a history of real, unexplained events to back up the hype, she said.
Nease agreed. And as the group of ghost hunters emerged from the basement into the foyer, there remained one more corner of the house to explore.
The novice investigators followed Nease up three flights of a winding staircase, past a grandfather clock ringing midnight, past the door to the Sara Black room and past old pictures of the long-dead to reach the garret door.
Each member ducked to enter the attic, and the group pressed against jagged brick and mortar walls to fit everyone in. Nease once more began questioning the spirits, particularly “Walter,” a ghost he’s met in the attic before.
Instruments’ red lights flashed against the bare wood floor. Thin metal divining rods clinked together.
“Are you here with us, Walter?” Nease asked.
Silence.
“Can you close the door, like you did last time?”
No movement.
Others chimed in, asking Walter about everything from his favorite food to whether he’d ever been in love. Each question was greeted only with silence and the occasional EMF detector flash.
A cool draft blew up the staircase and creeped in through the cracked door. Above the dusty window behind the group, an icy early morning air breathed through a bullet hole that’s splintered the brick.
The faint smell of roses drifted through the attic.
Leaving pleased
Packing his gear in the foyer of the Farnsworth House at about 1:30 a.m., Nease said he was pleased with the night’s work. It’s hard to pick up much spiritual activity with this many people, he said. He normally operates with a smaller group.
He said he’ll check the voice recorders in the next few days for Electronic Voice Phenomena. Sometimes he can find answers to the night’s questions there by listening to frequencies the human ear can’t detect, he said. That’s how he knows Walter and how he’s learned much of what he knows of the house’s supposed spirits.
“When we cross over we do go somewhere,” Nease said. “I think there are some questions about that (the spirits) just can’t answer, or maybe they aren’t allowed to. But I keep asking them, maybe with a little different wording each time.”
One of these nights, Nease hopes to ask just the right question and get the answer he’s searching for.
Source: The Evening Sun
