I was sitting in my chair one morning, just relaxing and trying to clear my mind. I had just gotten off the phone with Dave, my good friend and co-founder of Indiana Paranormal Alliance. Dave it seems was itching to go somewhere fun. Someplace that had a history. Someplace haunted.

I started looking through paranormal websites that claim to have knowledge of good places to go. Something that I’ve come to expect from these sites is the sheer amount of information and varying opinions of supposedly haunted places. You can read a short story about one person’s experiences that lead them to claim a place IS haunted. Then right after, that is another piece from a different person who’s gone to the same place and had absolutely nothing happen to them at all. Their opinion is that the site is definitely NOT haunted.

After sifting through what seemed like endless sites and claims, I started focusing on a certain university. I’m not going to name names only because I was asked to keep their identity confidential. That’s actually a much more common request than you might expect. We’ve had numerous clients ask that we don’t release any identifying information. Their reasons vary from not wanting to be embarrassed for thinking they were haunted to avoiding any kind of press attention. We once investigated a popular theater that was supposed to be haunted by one of their former actors or patrons. Once a paranormal group releases the information about their latest hunt on their website, unwelcome visitors from all over swarm the place. The theater has had to deal with people sneaking in to try to have an experience of their own. This then involves calling local law enforcement to drag them away.

So, I hope you’ll understand if I don’t let the frat out of the bag.

After a lot of phone calls, I finally managed to get in touch with someone who actually knew the person I should talk to. They gave me the number to a house mother from one of the university’s many fraternities.

It seems that Anne, (not her real name) has been the house mother at this fraternity for many years. She’s seen lots of boys come and go through this building.

Anne gave me some interesting background history. It seems that they’ve had two people die on the premises. The first was back in 1970. He was a pre-med student and a member of the fraternity. He was up early one morning, making himself some breakfast when he dropped over and died right there in the kitchen. It seems that this unfortunate soul had, ironically, died from a disease that he might have been studying.

At the time, not much was known about Leukemia and his condition went undiagnosed until it was too late.

The second person to die in the building wasn’t a frat boy but a workman who accepted a contract job offer. This particular guy was a party-er who had an addiction to hardcore drugs and alcohol. It was around 1988 or 89 when he was installing carpets at the frat house and his heart suddenly gave out. He died right there on the spot of a massive heart attack at the ripe old age of 28 or so.

After getting permission from the fraternity president, we had to set a date. It just so happened that everyone would be out of the building for spring break. This was perfect! We would have the place all to ourselves and not have to be too concerned about pranksters. I’ve seen Animal House. I know what goes on at frat houses! With the date set and the team put on spectral alert, we waited for the chance to check out …. “The Haunted Fraternity”.

The day finally arrived and we packed up the Ghost Buggy and set out for our next investigation. After a few hours of driving, we found ourselves in the middle of Fraternity and Sorority Row. After a brief argument with our GPS, followed by some off hand comments about its accuracy, we managed to find the right building. These houses were definitely loved to death. I began to have Animal House flashbacks.

After meeting with Anne, we went on a tour of the building. We started upstairs where the guys all had their rooms. Anne checked each door as we walked past. She wanted to make sure that they were all locked and that there weren’t any stragglers. Everything was locked and we moved on to the first floor. Now, maybe I’m getting older and my memory is starting to go but, I don’t ever remember being in a frat house that had a dance floor, a bar, stage lights and an impressive sound system complete with stage. Oh, to be young again.

We checked out the kitchen and the carpeted area where the two guys had respectively died. Anne told us about how some of the boys would hear pots and pans rattle in the kitchen late at night. The two doors that go into the kitchen are both locked after 8 pm. There was no way anyone would have access after it was locked down.

There were also reports of voices and shadow figures seen in some of the bathrooms and halls.

As the rest of the team unpacked the equipment, I did my usual walk around by myself. I’ve found that I can get a much better feel for a place without any noise or interruptions. I went back upstairs and decided to recheck the dorm rooms. I got halfway down the hall; right across from one of the bathrooms where people reported hearing voices. One of the previously locked doors was now opened! I immediately thought “Frat Prank”!

So I opened the door and searched the room thoroughly. There was no one in the room.

I checked the rest of the rooms and they were all locked. I went back down and told everyone about the door and we all went back upstairs to check. Everyone was perplexed. This was the first of many odd happenings that night.

Anne left for the night but not after locking all of the outer doors to the building. To help make sure that we didn’t have any late night hi-jinks,  she even went so far as to change the code on the door to her office. This way we could get in and out if we needed and it would prevent anyone else from gaining entrance.

We set up our cameras and voice recorders, left them running and went out to grab a quick bite.

Two hours later we returned, bellies full and ready for action! It was now dark out and we went lights out.

There were 5 of us that night. Dave and his wife Cassi, Stacey and her husband Chris and me with my favorite camera.

We split up into teams which were Cassi and I (a.k.a. Team Cool), Stacey and Chris (Team Not as Cool) and left Dave (Team Fine, I don’t need a Partner) manning the control center. Cassi and I took the downstairs while Stacey and Chris went upstairs. We started out with the kitchen, making our way through to the storage room and around to the dance hall and stage. All the while we had our voice recorders running. We heard what sounded like a low growl in the one room where they had all the group frat pictures from each year. On one in particular there was a black dog named Champ (not his real name, of course).

It turns out that this dog was the “house dog”. He died right here on the premises late one night a couple of years back. In true fraternity fashion, they called Anne around 2 in the morning to tell her that Champ had been hit by a car and didn’t look too good. She told them to take him to the vet. But they were all drunk out of their minds and they disregarded her advice. Champ it seems, went to the great beyond. The caring and completely blasted frat boys decided that he needed a proper burial.

They took his body and armed with a couple shovels, set out through the woods in back to find a proper burial spot. After a few minutes they came upon a perfect spot. Soft dirt, no rocks and best of all somewhere that no one would bother his grave. As a parting gesture, they found a decent sized boulder and placed it directly over top of his resting place.

Anne came in the next morning to find the campus police waiting for her. It seems that some fool had buried a dog in the middle of the university’s volleyball court and they were pretty sure it was one of her boys!

You gotta love it.

One of the more interesting occurrences that we encountered was an odd EMF field. As you ascend the stairs to the second floor, there are pictures of past brothers who have distinguished themselves for various reasons. Some turned out to be active politically while others made a name for themselves in the world of sports. There was one picture in particular that caught our attention. It was the school picture of our deceased frat brother from 1970. As we passed the EMF detector around his picture, the sensor suddenly went off! The closer to his picture we got the higher the reading was. There was approximately a 3-4 ft. area around his picture that had a very high EMF field. We checked later and found that there were NO electrical wires of any kind behind that particular wall or within 100ft of that spot.

As the night progressed we would switch up the teams, each taking their turn at command central. Once again, after a few more switch ups, I found myself paired up with Cassi again. We went back into the kitchen to do another EVP session. As we sat and asked questions, the walkie-talkie went off and it was Stacey. She and Chris were both upstairs on the other side of the building, and they wanted to know if we were playing music in the kitchen? We told her no, that we hadn’t and started to look around for possible causes. The only thing that we found was an old boom box in the corner of the kitchen. We turned it on and then asked if they could hear it playing upstairs? Stacey and Chris both said “No”. The music they had heard sounded like it was coming from an old music box.

We were listening to the old Lynyrd Skynyrd tune, “Freebird”.

What we found later on the voice recorders, really gave us pause. Stacey and Chris both heard what sounded like a music box being played. We turned on a boom box and heard southern rock. When I listened to the recordings of Cassi and I turning on the boom box, in the background was the distinct sound of a … music box!

Neither Cassi nor I heard anything like a music box while we were in the kitchen. We still can’t explain where the music box tune came from!

Later, Dave and I had one of the most incredible experiences that a ghost hunter can have. We were in what was now the fraternity “party room”. It was upstairs between the dorm rooms. This room it seems, used to be the former dorm room of the deceased frat brother. Ever since his untimely demise, no one has had the gumption to move into his former room. They have since turned it into the TV, stereo, game room and alcohol storage room. I have never in my life seen sooooo many bottles of vodka stuffed into a closet before!

We had the camera set up against the far wall pointing out into the hallway. Dave and I were sitting in front of the camera and set the voice recorder directly in front of the cameras line of sight. The purpose of this was so that it would be obvious that no one walked up to the recorder and then talked into it. It’s one of our tricks to help authenticate EVP’s.

We started to ask questions, hoping to get any kind of response. I looked at Dave and asked him what the persons name was that had died putting in the carpets. Dave paused then gave me an answer.

Later on, after we had packed up and left, I was going through the recordings.

I was listening to my asking Dave the question and then his response. Suddenly, about 3-4 seconds after he told me the guys name, another voice repeated the exact same last name! When I went through and matched up the video recording with the audio recording, there was no one else in the room and both of us were at least 5 feet from the recorder. Was this one of the spirits telling us his name? It seemed that we got the proof we needed to classify this as possible intelligent haunting.

We stayed up till probably 4 in the morning when exhaustion took over and we each found a comfortable couch and passed out for the night. The cameras and voice recorders were left running, just in case.

The next morning we packed up and met Anne and her terrific husband for breakfast at a local restaurant.

It took a little while for us to go through all the data but what we ended up with made it all worth it.

We had gotten quite a few good EVP’s and most importantly, we had a good time!

Please note that some of the EVP’s are faint. I’ve been doing this for many years and have had lots of practice. I’ve spent many hours sitting and listening to recordings. Because of that, I’ve gotten somewhat more adept at hearing things that “shouldn’t be there”. So trust me when I say there’s something there. You just have to listen for it. What may help, is a little program called “Wave-Pad”. All but the most recent versions of Wave-Pad can usually be downloaded for free off of the internet. If you loop the clip and then listen to it carefully, I’ve found that the combination of the sound as well as having something visual to look at can help to identify where the voice is and then aid in hearing it.

As an added bit of help, I’ve labeled each clip with what we think the voice is saying.

So, have a good listen and most importantly, Enjoy!

Till next time ….

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