Rick Howard of Ghosts and History of Southeastern Tennessee Inc. speaks to a crowd Monday night at the Marsh House in LaFayette.

Ghost hunters on Monday said LaFayette’s historic Marsh House does indeed have paranormal activity.

“We can’t say that it is haunted, but we can definitely say — and back it up with conclusive data — that there is paranormal activity here,” Rick Howard told a group of about 40 people gathered at the house Monday night.

Howard is lead investigator with Ghosts and History of Southeastern Tennessee Inc., a non-profit group that conducts investigations into the paranormal.

In late September a team of 11 people from the organization used infrared cameras, audio and other equipment to look for paranormal activity at the mansion, which was built in 1836.

The house was occupied by Union troops during the Civil War. Horses were ridden through the walls.

The investigators took 357 pictures and could not find any evidence of paranormal activity in the photos, Howard said. But the crew did find paranormal activity in the 16 hours of audio recordings.

Howard played audio that revealed anomalies, including voices that were too low in frequency to be the voices of living humans, he said.

Seven digital audio recorders were used in various places in the house. The anomalies were recorded upstairs, mainly in the nursery.

A few of the voices that were picked up seemed to be saying “see,” “help me,” “hurry,” and “leave this house.”

The crew performed an electro-magnetic field (EMF) detector test, which checks for electricity in the air. The theory is that ghosts gather as much electricity out of the air as they can to manifest themselves in the form of an orb or a full-body apparition.

Two EMFs were checked and detected, Howard said.

The crew also performed electronic voice phenomenon (EVP) studies to try to solicit a response from a disembodied voice.

To gather the EVPs, the crew would ask “Is there anybody here?” to garner a response.

After conducting the investigation and studying the recordings, six EVPs were discovered.

“The reason why we (the living) don’t hear it … is because of what the human voice is capable of projecting out, as far as frequency and decimals, and what the human ear is able to detect or pick up,” Howard said. “We cannot hear anything below zero decimals.

“If you have perfect hearing, you’ll hear from a range of 20 hertz to about 20,000 hertz. But most people don’t have perfect hearing, so that is narrowed down to about 400 or 500 up to 2,500 hertz, which is actually pretty low,” Howard said. “We typically hear around 20 decimals, 30 decimals, 10 decimals. But we can hear higher. If it gets to 120 decimals, that is where it is real painful to us.”

The investigators study the frequency levels to see if it falls out of the range of what humans are capable of speaking to see if it is human, and the decimals are studied because humans cannot hear below zero decimals.

Howard said that humans speak around the frequency of between about 450-475 to a little over 4,000 hertz.

“Anything outside of that that we pick up on our audio recorder, we know it is not a human voice,” Howard said. “So we look for that data and find what we think might be an EVP, and if it doesn’t pass this test, then first we will see if we can place the voice with a person. If we can’t, then we’ll look at this, and if it doesn’t pass this test, then it is not an EVP. If it passes this test, then we classify it as an EVP, which is a voice that cannot be accounted for and is outside of human range.”

Howard said that when team members gather audio recordings, they do not provoke the possible apparitions, but rather ask them simple questions like “Is there anybody here?,” “What’s your name?” and “Why are you here?”

Howard said that the main places in the mansion that experiences were encountered were the attic and nursery.

According to Howard, the crew discovered a temperature change in certain rooms, where the temperature changed from 71 degrees to 91 degrees and another room where it changed from a 73-degree average to 84 degrees.

“We could not find a reason for that temperature change,” Howard said.

Howard said two investigators saw what appeared to be a blue light move horizontally across the attic and heard several knocks. The source of the knocks could not be identified.

One of the investigator’s arm all of a sudden became very cold during the investigation. “That is typical when an apparition is in here,” Howard said.

Howard said one investigator saw activity on the back porch, near the bathroom, when a door opened without apparent cause.

“Paranormal activity is present here at the Marsh House,” Howard concluded.

Video: Ghosts and History of Southeastern Tennessee

Full source:Walker County