The Grim Society

Archive for the ‘Investigation Summaries’ Category

Before I get started with this entertaining story, I want to let everyone know that our forums are currently disabled due to an error in the PHP Code that powers them.  We’ll have them back up and running as soon as possible. Now, on to the story of the crying woman…

The other night we were at our current extended-investigation location, taking pictures of the outside of the home when I was surprised to hear someone (female) say something that sounded like “Help Me” from the McCarty house next door. Let me set the scene….this is the McCarty House, built in 1905 and currently slated for demolition:

Here is a clip from the local paper giving the history of the building:

“The name Dan McCarty may not mean much to most people, but it should. Although he was tragically cut down in his prime, McCarty’s the only person from this area to be elected governor of Florida. Inaugurated in 1952, McCarty suffered a heart attack the same year and died in office in 1953 at the age of 41.

When his father, Dan Sr., built the house in 1905 at 303 S. Indian River Drive as a wedding present for his bride, Elizabeth, the family wanted to know why he was building so far outside town. Nowadays, the city has spread to surround the house. It’s an imposing, two-story wood frame white house with steep gables and a tin-shingled roof, that sits on a ridge of land high above the Indian River in a marvelous location that catches the breezes off the water.”

My husband, who was standing next to me at the time, did not hear a thing, which was interesting, but the oddest thing was that the sound came from the top of a tree in the back yard of the home. The tree is near a 2nd floor window, which is boarded up. We searched the area for about 20 minutes, but couldn’t find anything that would account for the noise. We finished up the pictures of the outside of the house we’re investigating and headed home.

The next morning a friend messaged me to tell me she had just had the chance to read our recently posted research. She also commented that she wished she were at work (as a 911 dispatcher), as they get a lot of calls from the area. I inquired about the calls and here is what she said:

we get “ladies of the evening” calling up that there are screams coming from that area but they never say its from that house you’re researching. they are about the house next door.

I of course ask if it is the McCarty house. She responds:

AAAHHHH yes that sounds right. they call to report a woman asking for help. they always say someone is calling from UP…..and we always get calls, can’t remember what time of the night or what nights are the “norm” but i do remember getting calls, and they are always drunk chicks and ‘ladies of the night’, always female now that i think about it and they always say it sounds like a female voice yelling for help. of course when the cops get out there the person calling it in is long gone and theres never anyone screaming

There is one officer that you cant PAY to go to that location- she REFUSES to respond to either house, flat out, unless someone is getting shot at she aint going

Now we’re really interested. The house has no history of paranormal activity that we can find, other than these people reporting the woman screaming. Well, last night we went back to our investigation house but also spent a bit of time investigating the McCarty house. While we were there, we couldn’t find anything that would account for the ’screaming woman’.

Then we came home and started reviewing our evidence. Here is what we found:

Note the two feral cats in the bottom left of the image. You can’t see them when you’re there in person, but we’d be willing to bet $100 that one was in the tree the other night. In case you haven’t heard a feral cat cry, they can sound just like a woman.

This afternoon I met a friend and her young son downtown for lunch. We enjoyed our meal along the water front as we caught up on the goings on in our lives. During the conversation, we began discussing the Old Fort Park. Curious, she asked if I would take her over there, as it is only a few minutes from where we were. We packed up and headed to the park.

I walked with her, taking her around the front of the mound, then up to the top. After that, we walked back down the mound and went around the southern end, coming out at the western center of the park. During this walk she told me she felt as if she were being watched (I did as well) and at one point even felt nauseated.

We then headed over to the area of the odd planting in the middle of the palms; this is the same location at which I’d had the odd feeling the last time we’d been there at night. I held the baby as she walked between two trees and headed towards the mound. As she passed between the trees, she appeared to stumble. There were no roots, no protruding branches. Coming over to stand next to me, she explained that she’d felt as if the ground suddenly ’sank’, had a sense of vertigo and felt as if she’d been pushed. At this point, her young son looked at the trees and began waving, saying “Hi”.

We finished up our visit, with her declaring that the Old Fort Park gave her the creeps even in the daylight and headed our own ways. Shortly afterwards, she sent me this message:

“When i got in the car and got onto Indian River Drive, I continued to feel like I was being watched; almost like something hitched a ride. I didn’t feel scared or freaked or anything, but my little guy kept saying HI HI HI and waving. As I turned at Midway Road, I felt like my arm was burning. At the same time, my ears popped and the baby started screaming- like something had scared the heck out of him; he was bright red in the face. I looked down and saw I’d been scratched on my arm. As soon as I felt the scratch, the feeling of being watched was gone, but I felt really scared. When we got home, I tried to put the little guy down for a nap, but he won’t go to sleep- he’s still obviously upset.”

I can’t confirm or deny the incident that took place in the car, but I can tell you that while we were at the park she did not come into contact with anything that would have caused the injuries pictured in the images below.  The first two images were taken only moments after the scratches appeared; the others were taken a little over an hour and a half later.

We went back to the Old Fort Park on Friday, Sept. 28th, in a final attempt to reach the mound.  There were no other people at the park on this night, so we were able to explore not only the area of the Old Fort and behind the mound, but also the area of the steps and the top of the mound.

We began by walking around the Old Fort area; there was one section where there was an ‘odd’ feeling of being watched.  If you look at the Scouting photographs, you will be able to locate the spot, as it is near the large ‘planting’ area.

After this, we went over and explored the mound. We climbed to the top and were somewhat disappointed to find that there was not even an odd feeling in that location.  However, as we were coming off the mound, I felt again that I was being watched.  I commented to Jim that I didn’t want to be the last off the mound; he laughed and said he didn’t want to have to go first.  About that time I stopped short; it felt as if someone had just brushed by me. As I stood there trying to figure out if there was a tree or some other innocuous reason for the feeling, it happened a second time, only this was much lower to the ground, almost like a small dog or animal.  The second incident even caused my pant leg to move.  After reviewing the audio of the incident, we were somewhat interested to hear that I had just announced we would be leaving the mound prior to this occurring.  We also were surprised to hear that there were two out of place wind gusts at that time.  After the incident, I asked a question and in response there is another wind gust.

While this information is highly subjective, we felt it was interesting enough to share.  Below you will find the audio of the incident; note that at one point you will hear a loud bang as I move the audio recorder in order to take a picture.

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When we finished exploring the mound, we went around to the back of it yet again.  As we rounded the south west side of the mound, both Jim and I felt an overwhelming sense of being watched.  The EMF meter remained steady, with no odd spikes.   I should point out at this time that during all of our investigations at the park, the EMF meter remained fairly steady, ranging between .0 and .4.

The feeling of being watched was so powerful that Jim even began taking photographs over his shoulder, just to see if he could catch anything behind him.

During the investigation, we again caught several oddities on the digital camera. There was no rain, no fog or mist during the time we were there; nor had it rained during the day. The grass and trees were dry, and – as per our protocol- the equipment had all been cleaned prior to beginning the investigation.  We are unable to reasonably explain the oddities we captured with the theory that it is dust or moisture in the air. While none of these are as impressive as the anomaly found during the previous trip, we thought we’d post them here for you to review. We’ve also included an image of the oak tree, which we just felt was a great capture and wanted to share.

As a final note, I wanted to mention that Searcher and I went back to the fort and did a quick walk-through of the entire park with the EMF meter.  The wind was howling (25 mph average) and there was absolutely no sense of anything odd at any of the locations.  However, the EMF meter repeatedly spiked to 1.8 & 1.9, with no obvious source for the spiking.  We are completely baffled as to what would have caused this.

Summary:

At this point, we feel that further exploration of the Old Fort Park would yield similar results to our three expeditions. Until we are capable of returning with a larger team of investigators and additional equipment, we are forced to call this investigation inconclusive.

We were hoping to find a scientific explanation for the uneasy feelings along the backside of the mound. Well, that didn’t work out the way we planned; we actually left with more questions than we started out with. Let me explain.

We arrived as the sun was setting and started to walk towards the west side of the burial mound. I was getting a base EMF reading of 0.0 to 0.3. We immediately checked the electrical box and found EMF readings as high as 35.0 within 12 inches of the box, but at five feet away, the EMF returned to the base reading.

Next we decided to follow the trail behind the mound. As we passed through the trees in the image below an uneasy feeling began to grow. We came to a spot where the hair on my arms started to tingle and the hair on my neck stood on end. Luna mentioned she was also having the same feeling, without any prompting from me.

The EMF meter stayed at the base reading as Luna snapped a few pictures, including this one:

Obviously, there is a bug in the picture, but we are not sure exactly what the blue light could be. Just to clarify, this picture was taken facing the back of the burial mound, which is 15 feet high or so with no lights. For now, we’re going to refer to this as an anomaly.

Here is a close up:

Next we continued to move south behind the mound and we noticed a raised area of earth that runs from the mound under the fence to the rail yard. I don’t know if this is part of the mound or just dirt from the construction of the railroad. There is no way to be sure since the railroad has been in that location for nearly 100 years.

As we moved along the south side and headed back east, the uneasy feeling seemed to fade. We decided to take a look at the steps going up to the top of the mound. As we approached the steps, the feeling returned and was even stronger. We stopped to do a little EVP work but, like before, audio at this location is going to be difficult at best. Between trains, radios from the rail yard and people talking it will be nearly impossible to get uncontaminated audio.

Luna was about six to eight feet in front of me as we went up the steps of the mound when she suddenly stopped and turned around. She looked at me, had a strange expression on her face and said that someone or something had just touched her on the shoulder. Later, she described it as having been two taps. A quick examination of the area turned up no likely suspects for the tap- no low hanging tree branches, and I was too far away. Here is the audio clip from this point in the investigation.

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About this time a couple of cars showed up and we decided to call it a night and head home to review what we had caught. We ended up with one photo anomaly, one personal experience and we managed to disprove our theory that the uneasy feeling in certain areas was caused by high EMF coming from the rail yard.

It occurred to us that we are ghost hunting at a place that- to the best of our knowledge- has no history of paranormal activity, but we believe that between the Ais burial mound and the Fort, the possibility exists. Remarkably little information is readily available about the fort, its activities or the men that served there from 1838-1842. For this reason, I sent a request to the Library of Congress for diagrams and layouts of the fort, military rolls, service records and death records for Fort Pierce. At one point twelve to fourteen hundred soldiers were stationed here. There is no record of where the dead were buried-and we find it hard to believe that in four years, not a single soldier died of disease, old age, accident, animal encounter or Indian engagement.

The Library of Congress has redirected me to the National Archives, so we will keep you posted.

Last night we went on a preliminary investigation at the Old Fort. We knew weather would be an issue due to thunderstorms in the area, but we felt like it would be a good night to get a feel for what we would be up against. We arrived at the location and were disappointed to see that there were other people already there, apparently on the top of the mound. Since the Fort is sometimes known as a ‘lovers lane’, we felt it wise to give them a wide berth.

We decided to attempt a few photos, video and sound recordings. We headed to the area of interest from our scouting expedition, the north west corner of the lot. There was a strong smell of decay in this area, although there were no remains that were visible. We proceeded from there around the back of the mound. At this location we both experienced a sense of unease; however, this is near the East Coast Railway hookup station, so we will need to check the area for high EMF readings.

As we came around the front of the mound, we continued to take pictures and record audio and video. The video showed nothing interesting and the audio (a sample of which is posted below) was virtually useless due to the excessive noise coming from the Railway station.

[display_podcast]

Wrapping up for the night, we headed home and reviewed the images we’d captured. We were interested by two anomalies in the images, which can be seen in the gallery below. The first was an odd red light that appeared at random locations through out the park. There was no actual light in the area that would have caused this, but after deliberating over the images, we realized that it was caused by lightning in an offshore storm.

The second anomaly came in the form of two nearly blank images. These were the last two photographs of the night and were taken as we headed back to the car. Both were direct shots of the burial mound. What makes them so interesting is that, while you can see light points in them, there is nothing in the images. Despite the fact that every other image taken has at least something in it (tree, leaves, ground), these two are empty.

While we find it interesting, there is nothing here that is of any real use. We will be going back to the Fort at another time, hopefully in better weather and without company.