Credible Paranormal Investigations
Private Residence
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Investigation Site Tour Part One
Investigation Site Tour Part two
Investigation Site Tour Part Three The house is located in Jefferson, Texas approximately one hundred and eighty miles due-east of Dallas.
It was built in 1850 and still serves as a weekend retreat for the current owners which is listed as a historical landmark
within the state of Texas.
 On the grounds of this residence rests one of the few remaining standing slave quarters in the state
of Texas and has been visited by various universities for the purposes of performing archeological digs in and around the
shack for evidence of its history. Upon inspection by Credible Paranormal, we found remnants of old news papers that dated
to the nineteen twenties.
  Credible Paranormal investigated the home twice during the month of August of 2008. The claims of
paranormal activity come from the current owners and no history of paranormal activity associated with the prior owners is
documented, to the best of our knowledge. Upon arrival, we were met by the
care-taker and given access to the house for the night. She had no prior knowledge of why we were there but after
explaining our intentions she shared a few stories about doors opening and closing on their own and footsteps being heard
on the second floor while she was the only person in the home.
 On a recent occasion, the owners of a bed and breakfast across the street from the
house reported seeing a man dressed in clothing reminiscent of an old-time doctor paying a house call. He was witnessed
walking up the path to the house where he seemingly vanished into thin-air on this porch.
 The west bedroom is the location where, recently, an apparition was reported being seen
by a young girl who had retired to this room for the night. She woke her mother and reported seeing a man standing in
the doorway of the room. The mother escorted the young girl to the room and asked her where the man was. She pointed
to the doorway and claimed that he was still standing there at that very moment. The mother later experienced the sensation
of someone touching her feet as she slept in this bed.
 In this master bedroom, a handy-man was doing some maintenance on the house and witnessed a bedside table spontaneously move a few inches across the floor. We would later discover a cane standing beside the fire place had been moved approximately two inches during the night as evident by photographs taken before and during the investigation.  Neighbors recently reported seeing a black male sitting inside this screened in back porch. The owners believe this to be the ghost of a slave who resided in the shack that sits only fifteen feet away from this porch. The neighbors also reported seeing a young girl peering out of one of the windows on the second level of the porch. Historical record shows that a young girl died in the home of disease. . 
The first investigation was conducted by Ardis Stembridge and Jimmy Moore. They set up the command center in the main hallway officially known as the Dog Trot. They stationed infrared cameras in the Dog Trot, the Master Bedroom, the West Bedroom, and the Slave Shack and recorded audio samples through-out. At about eight o'clock, Jimmy and Ardis were investigating the East Bedroom and recording audio samples when Ardis turned towards the fireplace and noted that he thought he saw a cane, that was standing next to the fireplace, move approximately a quarter of an inch across the wall. He assumed this to be a trick of the eye, but the pair referred back to a collection of photographs they had taken upon entry to the house to find that the cane had,indeed, changed positions at some point during the investigation. Below are a pair of photographs that show the position of the horse-head cane both before the investigation commenced and after the incident in question. Note the change in the cane's position. 
Ardis noted that he had inspected the sword that stood next to it, earlier in the night, but was careful to replace it in a manner that it would not come in contact with the cane due simply to the fact that the sword had belonged to a Confederate General and he did not want to knick it, but decided the action contaminated the potential evidence. The pair found it a bit coincidental that the one object our investigator could have mistakenly thought he saw move had indeed changed position that night, naturally or unnaturally. Either way, they repositioned the sword and positioned an infrared surveillance camera to record it for the remainder of the night. We later found out that a small table in that same room had reportedly moved in the presence of a handy man, and that a young girl died in this particular room of disease.  Just before sundown, Jimmy and Ardis spent some time in the slave quarters and attempted to ellicit and document some sort of manifestation. While doing so, Ardis noticed some fragments of newspapers that were nailed to the walls as if they had once been used as wallpaper. The pair began inspecting these fragments, at which time they picked up some sort of audio anomaly that sounds like speech, but is not discernable and was unheard by the investigators at the time of the collection. They later performed a Selective Frequency Filtering test that suggests the voices to be consistent with human speech. Click the link below to hear this anomaly.
.  At ten o'clock, Jimmy and Ardis walked the dark bedrooms of the home with
recorders in hand. They entered the Master Bedroom where the young girl had passed away long ago. Upon entry to the
room, Ardis heard what distinctly sounded to him as an olde-time telephone ring somewhere at the opposite end of the home.
He remembered seeing an antique telephone hanging on the kitchen wall and knew the phone service to the house had recently
been disconnected. He asked Jimmy if he had heard the ring and they engaged in a brief discussion about it before their
attention turned to the infrared camera in the slave shack that had toppled over. While discussing the camera issue,
the recorders were still rolling and picked up what sounds like a brief combination of keys being played on a piano.
There is a piano in the home, but a camera had been pointing towards the camera all night and confirm that it wasn't the
source of the audio anomaly. Click the file below to hear that anomaly.
 Credible Paranormal returned to the house two weeks later. Our Case Manager Stephanie joined us along with a new team member named Brad Wilson who drove four hours to be there so that he could get in his first investigation. We spent eleven hours investigating the home, employing twice as much audio equipment as we had during the first investigation and managed to record 44 hours of collective video. Upon Stephanie's arrival, Ardis led her to the slave quarters and was giving her a brief run-down on the apparent voice recorded during the previous investigation. She immediately noted that something was pulling on her hair and asked if there were cob webs above her. Ardis waved his hands over hear head confirming that there were none. The sensation of her hair being pulled continued for a brief time. A few minutes later, a strand of hair from her head came floating down to the floor a couple of feet away. Later on that night, she returned to the shack to experience the same sensation of something touching or pulling her hair. Brad and Jimmy later spent half an hour recording audio samples in the slave shack. Upon returning, they did some on site analysis of the audio and found a segment of audio that contained the sounds of music being played on a piano and the sound of murmering in the background as if there was also an audience to the music. These were unheard by the human ear at the time of the recording. There was also a possible response to a question Brad had posed at that same time about an apparition that had been seen on the porch. He asks " is it you that has been seen sitting on the porch.... Is it one of your friends"? During that questioning, the piano can be heard. After the question comes the possible response of "yes it is". Please listen to the clip below. Ardis had placed a recorder in the slave shack and left it alone for an hour to remove the factor of the investigators voices contaminating the potential audio of piano music. Upon later review, he found an approximately twenty second long clip of a faint mellow tune being played. Please listen to the clip below several times so that you can hone in on the tune behind the ambient noise and hum of the air on the housing of the recorder. There were also two other anomalies recorded during our investigation which are linked below. The first clip was collected while Jimmy and Ardis were sitting in the Dog-Trot during the first investigation. Jimmy demanded that any potential entities make some kind of tapping sound to let us know of their presence. We didn't hear anything at the time, but upon playback of the audio, we picked up the distinct sound of something scratching on wood. The second anomaly was recorded in the west bedroom by Stephanie while she was snapping off pictures of the bedroom. Ardis asked that if someone was there, were they the person who had been seen by a young girl, watching her as she tried to sleep. Once again, unheard to us, we picked up a possible response. It simply said "yes". Click To Hear Scratching Anomaly Summary This location turned out to be more interesting than we had initially thought it would. We captured obvious sounds of music playing that went unheard by the ears of the investigators. The house did serve as a Tavern at one point in its history, which could have had some sort of musical entertainment for its patrons, but that is highly speculative at this point. We have to keep in mind that Jefferson, Texas is a historic town that is proud of its history and monopolizes from the allure of things past and music plays a big part in that past. There could very well be Taverns and Jazz clubs that play musical entertainment for its patrons in the area, and those sounds could easily travel long distances when the conditions are right. That being said, we will be returning to the location in the very near future for the benefit of the owner who would like the opportunity to experience and assist in the collection of these audio anomalies so that she can formulate her own opinions and theories about them. During that time, we will scour the town to see if we can provide a rational explanation for these sounds. However, even if we did find a source of music in the town, it wouldn't explain why we also recorded the sounds of piano keys obviously originating from inside the home. We will also change our tactics a bit and simultaneously record for these anomalous sounds both in and around the home, as well as the outskirts of the property to see if we can determine which direction they are originating. If we pick up audio from the house while not picking up audio on the outskirts of the property, then the house is likely the source of the music which is an intriguing prospect as it would point to the possibility of residual audio phenomena that has, to this date, never been backed up by verifiable evidence. If we can narrow the origination of the audio to this house on this third investigation, then we can likely repeat that success for a fourth. Provided the owner allows us to do so, we will take the pro-active step to bring in a small contingient of representatives from the orgnized skeptical community to witness and assist in the collection of this phenomena, and see where it takes us. However, the home is currently up for sale. Time is short. |
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