Supernatural Friday: Winter Haunt (Original Poem)

Enjoy my original ghostly poem and please share the link and not the poem, so that others can read it too. 

Winter Haunt

By

Pamela K. Kinney

Winter’s chill deepens when night hits

A sky full of brilliant stars and a hovering moon

Draws you outside to view nature’s glowing glories

Peace fills you at the sights,

when suddenly something nearby catches your eye,

nearby the old oak tree a few feet away.

Not an owl or some other nightly predator,

No, it has a--no it is a shadow,

darker than the darkness itself.

Then it changes, becomes like mist

Except you know the night is clear,

and there’s no mist or fog anywhere.

“What is this strange thing,” you think,

drawing closer and you reach out,

and you see it too, reaches out

A chill much worse than the winter night offers

envelopes you, digs beneath your skin.

Eyes, a nose, a face appears within the glow!

The cold burrows deeper within you

until it finds your heart,

The steady beat of a drum grows louder, harder,

And you understand it’s fear pounding your heart like a hammer.

The need to bolt, to return to the warmth and solace of your home

Fills you like a meme:

Run. Run! RUN! Or it will get you! Go now!

But your feet remained as if glued to the ground,

The ghost moves and covers you completely.

Blind terror fills you, and yet, still, you cannot move.

When suddenly, the haunt vanishes, and the stillness that

held you, is gone.

Later, inside your house, safe and sound, still shaking,

a blanket wrapped around you for warmth and comfort,

You know that winter nights have more than you bargained for;

That the supernatural haunt them, too.

The Paranormal Investigation at Edgewood Plantation in Charles City, Virginia-Pictures Only, Right Now)

On Friday, December 19, 2014, my husband drove me to Charles City, Virginia, to Edgewood Plantation Bed and Breakfast, for a paranormal investigation.

I had been there twice before, once when I was writing Virginia's Haunted Historic Triangle: Williamsburg, Yorktown, Jamestown, and Other Haunted Locations, and New Year’s Eve 2011 for a paranormal investigation then. Nothing happened to me during the interview, but during the investigation, plenty, including a photo of a ghost dog (maybe two—you decided, since I can not be honest in saying I see two, just the one on the left).

Now for this past Friday's investigation:

                         (Glow or mist on the right side of the dining room
                    photo, not there in others of the room.)

Though it was to be in the 20s later that night, Bill remained in the car to read his new science fiction novel. Two other and I made one team and began on the third floor since that was where I started on New Year’s Eve 2011. Earlier, before the rest arrived and even after, my EMF meter would flash a second light and even a third light in the hallway and in the kitchen especially. I checked to see if not due to an electrical interference, but except for the fire detector, nothing else set it off. Plus the lights did not go on in the same spot the second or third time I tried.

The third floor got two names we could hear from the ghost box (at this time, need to download and listen to all the recording to see what else was said, but not loud enough and due to static could not be heard). At one point, I asked for a tap on the walls to let us know they were with us. A rap resounded on the wall behind me and one of the other two investigators with me heard it too, same time as me.

Others wanted to try the third floor so we left the area and clattered downstairs to the second floor where four bedrooms awaited.  We got an angry man in Victoria’s room, who wanted the “investigators to get out!” I asked, “You do not want us here? Why?” He answered, “I hate it! Yes.” In Lizzie Rowland’s room, he told us to “Go home.”  At one point, in Victoria’s room, an overwhelming sadness overcame me and I began to cry. This was because I asked if he had died in the house (suspecting he was the man who committed suicide (along with a woman earlier-his wife). I called on the little girl spirit who had talked to us too and even giggled, to make me happy. She said, “Yes,” and I was able t stop the crying.

When we went to Lizzie’s room, one partner joined others in another room across the hall, while the remaining one and I joined this woman who had filmed a video of glowing orbs flying through the room. While spirits talked to me through my ghost box, she caught the curtains at the window behind me flapping, as if someone was playing with them. They thought it was Lizzie, but one male entity said the woman spirit was not on the second floor, but elsewhere in the house. I believed it to be the little girl.

                    (Glowing mist between bed's head and dresser.)

The last session of the ghost box and an EVP session happened in the parlor downstairs. We got the little girl ghost and another. They said ten ghosts were inside the house that night. The little girl said, “Three,” but I asked her did she mean how the ghosts were in the house as a male spirit had said ten, or her age, when she passed away was three? I will have to listen to the recording then to see if she said anything.

                              (Photos of the area with a shadow before and 
                     several afterward without any shadow. The ghosts
                     through the ghost box said six were with us--is this
                     all of my ghost box said six were with us--is this all
                     of them and why there might have been so much
                     shadow?)

                                       (Freaky. I swear I see something of a skull 
                            looking in through the window when I
                            enlarged the photo closer.)

                                          (Photo darker in the hallway, not in others I
                             shot of it from Lizzie's room.)

                                   (I did not see any shadow of half ring there
                                    with my own eyes, as evident in the
                        photo to left)

                                (Even though flash went off, this room remained dark. They

                                 say darkness like this is considered due to spirits.)

                              (Doorway from Parlor to Hallway Went Dark Even With Flash.)

                                       (Orb above piano on the wall.)

My husband and I were on our way home by 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, December 20^th.

Rest of the photos-outside Between 1-1:30 a.m. All mist you will see, I held my breath so not to jar the photograph taken. Yeah, something odd I do.

                                   

                               (Orb in Pool and Mist above the bathing house.)

                                       (Light mist.)

                                 (What is the ghostly mist trying to do here?)

(Another person and I were taking photos of one field and I turned around 

and took this one. It seemed as if they were close to me.)

                                   (Mist appears to be leaving the top windows to left.)

                                (Mist, plus going close to one window, I suspect a face?)   

                                                     (Mist.)

                                           (Looks like mist becoming a figure?)

                                   (More mist caught.)                

                                     (Orbs in the photo above and the one beneath.)

                                     (No light lit from the ground in real time, yet this thin line

                                      of light from ground to second-floor window is there in the

                                     photo. I never saw any light. By this time all the lights in the

                                     parking lot were off and very dark. Had to get Bill to come

                                     from the car with a flashlight to guide my way to the car.)

   

                    (Mist covering the whole side of the house. None in

                the second photo was taken with a second of this one.)

I took three videos, but I couldn't them upload at this time, as Blogger wouldn't do it from my hard drive. *sigh*

Happy New Year: I Was Paranormal Investigating for New Year's Eve!

(Photos and video are copyrighted by Pamela K. Kinney, so please do not copy them offsite to yours without permission. Do share this link though to your friends)

While most people were going to parties at friends' and relatives' homes or to bars and cocktail lounges to celebrate the new year in, I drove to Edgewood Bed and Breakfast in Charles City, Virginia on New Year's Eve 2011. There would be a paranormal investigation at the place that night. While millions watched the ball drop at Times Square on television, I and the others would take a break to toast each other with champagne or sparkling cider, before using a last half hour afterward to investigate, before taking off at 1:00 p.m. for our homes or rooms rented out to those who would stay the night.

I'd been to the bed and breakfast in September 2009 to interview Dot Boulware about their place and its haunting, particularly about Lizzie Rowland who had lived in the house in the 1800s, for Virginia's Haunted Historic Triangle: Williamsburg, Yorktown, Jamestown, and Other Haunted Locations. At that time, using my digital recorder to record our interview and maybe to capture some EVPs, plus taking pictures with my camera, I never got anything. Last night, was different (at least the pictures, as I still must upload the recordings and listen to them). I did video too, and least showed on them at one point, the constant lights flashing on my EMF meter, which happened at all the places we visited except in the Tavern downstairs.

Edgewood had once been part of Berkeley Plantation. Benjamin Harrison had gone to King Carter of Plantation and asked if he could purchase some land for a mill. He ended up buying 22,000 acres. In 1725, he built the grist mill. It was so successful, that he built Berkeley Plantation in 1726. During the Revolutionary War, Benedict Arnold visited here, too.  The Harrison slaves lived in their cabins on the land and worked the mill.

But in 1840, maybe due to a need for money, 1,800 acres and the mill were sold to a Yankee, Spencer Rowland, from New Jersey. Spencer built his house on the land. He moved into it with his wife and daughter, Elizabeth (this was Lizzie). 

When everyone had arrived who was coming, Dot took all on tour of the place, telling what happened to her (the same thing she’d told me back at the interview, that is now in the chapter in my book). Team members of Ghost Eyes who set this whole cool event up had heard the stories before, so they sat out in the parlor.     

Since I had heard it before and I wanted to do some investigating on my own, I wandered into the dining room, the room off that, and then upstairs to the second and third floors. I turned on my digital recorder and took pictures, plus did a couple of videos in the dining room. I also took my EMF meter which did nothing, though I thought the third floor felt freezing, even though the heater was working, and I had the sensation I wasn’t alone. The third floor bothered me, unlike the rest of the house. I had been up there in 2009 when Dot showed me around, but unlike then, it was hard staying up there by myself. At one point, my throat tightened, and I could hear the pulse there sounded loud to my ears, boom, boom, boom. 

Suddenly, the cold left and I grew warm again and my throat released. It felt like whatever had been with me wasn’t there anymore. I got off the small sofa and headed back downstairs. One of the pictures I took at the doorway before entering the floor was very dark, though the flash had went off. I've been told when that happens that it's a sign of a presence. 



Dot had finished with the tour and most of us split up into no more than five people each. I joined up with Carol, head of Richmond Paranormal Society, and another member who’d just joined, Luke. We decided to do the third floor first, but another group had beat us to it, so we settled for the second floor, since it appeared no one else was doing it. We didn't do Lizzie's room, as Carol's husband, Stewart, was inside there. The first room we investigated was the one to the left of Lizzie's. Suitcases of some planning to stay the night there later were on the floor. We turned off the lights, including the tree in the room, and closed the door. I set out and turned on my EMF meter beside my recorder and my LED flashlight, which had acted weird, flickering, on the bed. I had never seen it act like that before. Later, at one point in our investigation, Luke thought the batteries might be dying. But after the last time the flashlight did this, it never did later and even today, I got nothing answering me. Funny thing, I never unscrewed the part you’re supposed to, so how did the spirit (or was it more than one?), had done this.

 

Using the EMF meter, my ghost box, and Carol's Ovilus, we tried to communicate with it. We also did this in the bedroom across the hallway, where I also used my dowsing rods. In our communication, the spirit mentioned it stood behind Carol, and Luke thought he saw the curtains at the window move. Though he still wasn't sure if he really did see it for sure or not.

 

We finally climbed the stairs to the third floor where my EMF meter's lights began flashing all the way to red in the same sequence. It did this for ten times, then stopped, changing to another variation on the sequence, when Luke said it had to be something else in the house causing it, like maybe a computer. Was it trying to use some form of communicating with us, or playing around?

When someone came in on us and told us it was time to switch, even only we'd been there no more than fifteen minutes, we decided to head out to the mill. The night was clear, and the air felt freezing cold, with a multitude of brilliant stars and a crescent moon scattered across the night sky. Charles City has no towering city buildings or light and it would be the perfect place to stargaze or watch for UFOs.

We walked up the steps and entered the mill. My meter on, the lights began to flash crazily again, although Carol's (different from mine) didn't move its needle at all. The entity appeared to communicate through mine. We got it to answer us when we asked if it came from the Civil War era, which it flashed, meaning yes. It flashed once when Carol asked if it liked me. I told it could not follow me home as my husband would not like it. It dropped all lights, but the initial one that comes on when you turn the piece of equipment on, and it didn't come on for about maybe ten minutes. Had I upset the entity? Luke went upstairs to the second and third floor of the mill. He came back down to join us again. I noticed a shadow moving on the box above his head and took a picture. In the photo, I got an orb above the box, close to the right edge.

We left the mill, still taking pictures of the surrounding area outside. We walked until we came to a spot where a path was broken up and I snapped a couple of pictures, which I got mist in both. Now understand, there was no mist that night. Remember, it was a clear night where one could see the stars and the moon. I didn't see any mist with my naked eye, and neither did Carol or Luke. Later, it was Dot who pointed out as I showed her the pictures on my viewfinder, that the second one held two dogs. I peered at it, as did Carol and other investigators, who all agreed that indeed the mist was dogs. Though later, my laptop screen, I am not sure there are two canines, but I can say definitely I see one. What you think? Very cool that I got something like that. The photo after that only contained orbs. The first photo before the dogs held mist too—someone pointed out that it looked like figures. All Carol got was orbs in her pictures and yet. we used our camera shots at the same time.

We went back to the house, where we investigated the room between the dining room and the front hallway before we did the dining room. At one point, my EMF meter flashing, I asked if possibly the spirit with us was a child, that it could even be a girl? It flashed the lights on. When I asked again if it was a boy, to see if it would flash the lights again, it didn’t. Later, the wife of the head of Ghost Eyes told me when they had stayed overnight before she had left her recorder on all night. On her recorder, around 4:30 a.m. a little girl's voice could be heard, and they even hear her footsteps as she went downstairs! So now it appears that more than Lizzie haunts the bed and breakfast. Who is this little girl? It would be interesting to find out.

Afterward, my partners and I joined another paranormal group downstairs in the tavern to do a EVP session where we saw shadows moving and heard some noises. Were these intelligent spirits or residuals as one member of the other team asked? 

Close to midnight, everyone gathered in the tavern to share either a flute of champagne or sparkling cider to toast 2012 in. I took cider as I would be driving home. Once home, I would share a glass of champagne with my husband and son then. We all got in one more investigation before we all had to leave at 1:00 a.m.

(kitchen blurred and I did not move the camera--paranormal?)

I wondered if Carol got anything else as she and her husband had stayed the night? It will be interesting to learn what she did or did not get. Check out some more of my pictures and to learn more of what happened that night (including any EVPs) by coming to my  Marscon panel,  "Ghosts and Legends of Southeastern Virginia" on January 13th at 10:00 p.m., in Room 103.

It was a super way to ring in the new year. After all, hauntings happen all year long! Happy 2012.