My Own Experiences.

I’ve been asked a few times now, if I have ever had any paranormal experiences before joining GMPS. And yes, I certainly have had some strange things happen to me before. I think about 90% of people who get into this field do so because they have had those experiences that they can’t explain. It’s rare that a person says they haven’t had any experiences at all and just the notion of the paranormal fascinates them enough to get into this stuff, but it does happen! Most people are on a “have to see to believe” basis. Even I’m that way. I’ve had my experiences yes, but when I walk into a place where we are investigating, or any place that anyone says is haunted, I don’t just take the stories I’m told and assume it MUST be haunted. Not that I don’t believe them by any means, just that for me to truly have the belief that it’s haunted, I have to experience it myself.
                The earliest experiences I can remember having are from when I was about 14 years old. We lived in an old 3 bedroom house in Niagara Falls. It had three levels, including a livable basement that could be split into 2 more bedroom type living areas. Not some creepy dirt floor type basement. I knew something was strange about the house right from the first day we moved in. I was carrying a box down to the basement alone and halfway down the stairs I noticed beside me some smoke trailing upwards, kind of like the smoke you’d see coming from a sitting cigarette. So I peered over the railing to see if someone had left a lit cigarette on the table beside the stairs, but there was nothing. And as soon as I had look, the smoke had stopped. I kinda shook that off and dismissed it for a while. I at times felt a creepy feeling in different parts of the house, but I was 14, so I figured I was just being paranoid. Until one night, I was coming up the stairs to the third floor. & my mothers bedroom was visible from the middle of the stairway. Once I reached the middle of the stairs, my glance automatically turned to my mothers room. I got quite the shock when I saw a little girl standing there! It didn’t take me more than a second to turn myself around and run back down the stairs. After that I had questioned a few times whether I had really seen what I thought I saw or if it was just my imagination. But that wasn’t the last I would see of the little girl.

Another night a few months down the road, we had lost our power during a bad storm. My mother wasn’t home and it was just a few of my friends and myself hanging out in the basement. Now my basement door to the upstairs stuck at the top of the door so to open it you had to hit the very top to get it unstuck, or if you’re 14 and not tall enough you kinda bump it at the bottom with your hip until the top pushed its way out. So, that’s what I was doing in the almost pitch black house, with the exception of some light coming in from outside and some candles lit throughout the house. As I’m trying to open he door, every time I bump myself into it, it opens about a foot on the bottom half. After 3 or 4 tries all of a sudden I bump it and in that foot that it opens there’s a face looking at me! It obviously startled me so I took a minute to get myself together and slowly pushed that section open again, but the face was gone. But I was sure that time I had seen it, and I was SURE there was no one else home. A few months later we moved out of the house, but I never forgot what I had experienced there.
               
                Another strange experience I had before was about 7 or 8 years ago. It was Christmas Eve, and my sister and I were staying at my dads. My mother had called and wanted us to go visit for a little bit that day. So we got ready to go get her a coffee and then to see her. It was weird though, once I had taken the time to get all ready and out the door and such, I was pretty much at the car getting in when all of a sudden I just didn’t want to go. And if you had’ve asked me why, I wouldn’t have been able to give you a reason, I just didn’t want to go all of a sudden. It almost didn’t even feel like myself talking when I was telling my stepmother I didn’t want to go. It’s not like I had a bad feeling or anything like that. Just no desire to go. So I went back in the house. About 45 minutes later, the phone rang and it was my mom. I figured she was calling to find out why I hadn’t gone to see her for the holiday. But when I answered, it wasn’t what I expected at all. When I heard the words “Lindsay, there’s been an accident.” My whole body went numb. She said from what she knew everyone was okay for the most part, but my sister was on the way to the hospital with a head injury. They were coming over an overpass when a car coming off the highway went through the stop sign and t-boned them. My stepmother had a minor neck injury, and my brother who was in his car seat only had bumps and bruises, but my sister who was in the backseat had been flung into my brothers car seat with her face. They were mostly taking her to the hospital to make sure there were no broken bones or teeth. Thankfully there wasn’t, but she spent Christmas that year pretty bruised up and swollen and sore, one of her eyes was completely swollen shut. She did make a complete recovery. Once all that craziness was over, that’s when it sank in.. I was supposed to be in the car. To this day, I still don’t know what it was that kept me from going. Intuition? Guardian Angel? Coincidence? Who knows..
                I’ll leave you with this for now, I have had other experiences but I will tell those stories another day ;) I will be posting our Albert County findings next post!!

Albert County Investigation

Before the investigation:
            We’re hitting Albert County tonight, to investigate the Albert County Museum on a formal basis. I’m really hoping this one proves to have some solid evidence. Unfortunately Global News is unable to do the segment they had planned for us this trip, but nonetheless still exciting. It’s two in the afternoon and I’m already sleepy, so an energy drink is definitely necessary, haha. It’s kind of a rainy and gloomy day, but it adds to the atmosphere (:


Day After Investigation:
            Well last night as interesting to say the absolute least! We headed out around 6:30, because the Albert County Museum is a little ways outside town. Me & the girls on the drive did the usual sharing of our paranormal stories & had a few good laughs. I’m so lucky to work with such a down to earth team where we are professional when need be, and can laugh and chit chat per usual as well when we’re not investigating. When we arrived it was still raining, and it did all night off & on, and we even got to have a nice thunderstorm later on in the night to add to the atmosphere (:
            Donald, the manager, was there waiting for us and had the appropriate buildings unlocked for us. While Nick and Charm set up their equipment, we all walked through the buildings (We had access to the Courthouse and the Gaol) and got a god feel of the place, & to see if any feelings came up, & our medium gave us her thoughts. There are three cells in the Gaol, the first one is a debtor’s cell, back in the day if you owed money to the government and couldn’t pay it, you did jail time to pay it off. The middle cell is “Death row” or “Solitary confinement” and the last cell is where regular criminals were. We spent a couple hours getting comfortable & talking about some of the history with Donald. And it took me a while to get used to all the mannequins hanging out around the museum, every now and again I’d come around a corner and be startled thinking someone was standing there, haha. The whole place had something called a “funhouse effect” Which means the floors were slightly off balance, which gave you an off balance and sometimes even a dizzy feeling. But I was certain the air in the farthest cell, where most who committed regular crimes stayed, was heavy. Like not so much that you couldn’t breathe, but the air was definitely heavier and denser. We were also informed that the stairs leading to the upstairs has 13 steps, for those who are superstitious. We took the time for those who couldn’t attend our history tour to be able to check out the artifacts upstairs. Nick said he kept getting a weird feeling in the same spot upstairs, even when he’d left that spot and came back again.
                                                We then went lights out.
            Myself, and two other girls on the team went to the courthouse first while the other team started off in the gaol. We first set up in the deliberation room, and had an EVP session. After only hearing a few small bumps and creaks, which could be from the fact that it was windy out and the building is over 100 years old, we moved out to the main area. We tried provoking a little bit, since back then women weren’t allowed downstairs in the main area to watch a trial, they had to be upstairs. So we sat downstairs and kinda played with the fact we were women sitting in a forbidden area. When we didn’t have anything amazing happen, (not sure what could have picked up on the audio yet though.) we moved upstairs for a bit. Other than one girls flashlight kinda flickering a few times, we didn’t really have any activity in the Courthouse, so after about an hour or so, we left to take a break. When we did, we met up with the other group who was coincidentally also taking a break. While we hadn’t had any activity, they had plenty! We were told they had some activity with a flashlight, where it would turn on and off almost to command; and they had used a pendulum which had given them some results. Also a girl in the group, Rebecca, had seen a bed shake in one of the other rooms away from the cells. So, my group proceeded into the gaol as well. There are 3 cells in there, so while the rest of the group was in the debtor’s cell, a team mate and I tried the one that was considered “death row” or “solitary confinement”. We didn’t have any recorders with us, so we were mostly going for personal experiences at this point. We sat there for a bit and talked out loud to whatever we thought could be there. The other group told us that at the same time, they were getting more results in the debtor’s cell with the pendulum. We then moved to the cell where Tom Collin’s spent some of his time before being moved to the solitary confinement cell. We each laid on one of the two cots that were in there, and just waited to see if we could hear anything. I was pretty tired, so I’ll admit I started to doze off, when all of a sudden I felt like a flick on my leg, hard enough that it made me jump! Almost like “Wake up!” So, that wasn’t a big deal, but I took the hint and sat up. Our medium came and joined us, and had the pendulum with her to show us. So she sat with us, and held the pendulum as still as she could. She said out loud “Spirit if you are here with us, can you make your presence known by making the pendulum spin.” Well sure enough, within a few seconds, the pendulum began to spin! And it spun hard enough that we knew it wasn’t her moving it because she would have to be moving her hand in such an obvious way to make it move like that. Then the other tried it, and had the same results. Well me being the skeptic that I am, I had to try it myself, even though I had just witnessed it for the other two. I took the pendulum and even braced my elbow on my knee to make sure for myself I wasn’t shaking it or anything. So, again the medium said, “Spirit if you are still here with us, can you make the pendulum spin.” And once again, the pendulum started to spin, and I could even feel the pull of it spinning in the end of the chain I had between my fingers. Me of course still trying to believe this was happening said out loud “If that’s REALLY you, make it stop.” And to my amazement, it slowed itself to a complete stop! That gave me chills! After that, it was time to wind things down as it was getting late. Nick did some last minute work upstairs while we all chatted downstairs. Right as we were beginning to get ready to go, the thunder and lightning started big time. There were bits of it all night but now it was bright and LOUD. Thunderstorms are said to make the air better for ghosts to manifest themselves because of the energy in the air. So it kinda sucked that it didn’t start up really bad till it was late and we were all getting ready to go. On the drive home me and a couple of the girls had a good chat about our experiences (:
            I can’t thank Donald enough for his generosity and patience, cause the whole time we were doing our investigation he kinda just hung out, which I would assume would be quite boring! And he had to be there quite late at night when the museum wasn’t even open. And also for allowing us to talk about our time there and our experiences (: We are now going over all the evidence and I will post the findings once we get through it all. Thanks to everyone for reading (: