Posted on 04/19/2006 8:09:34 PM PDT by CurlyBill
BY MICHAEL BURKE
Journal Times
RACINE — It’s just possible that someday a guest of Hughes House Bed & Breakfast could glimpse something otherworldly or hear inexplicable bumps in the night.
Several people say they have seen and/or heard apparitions and other strange phenomena at 1500 S. Main St. Dan Dashner, co-owner of the house with Mike Reynolds, is one of them.
“Mike and I both have seen things and heard things,” Dashner said. He realizes that, in some people’s eyes, uttering that makes him crazy or a liar. But he stands by his statement.
Those who do believe in the supernatural take note of the fact that a previous resident of the house, Helen Kearney, died there in a fire in 1945. Another former resident, a man, died there after a long illness.
Dashner has several stories about odd occurrences during his three years in the house.
One of them starts with the night he awoke to a crash at 3:15 a.m. The glass of water he keeps on a side table each night was on the floor, shattered. Dashner had never knocked it off before but figured that’s what had happened.
The next night, the glass fell off again and broke. Dashner said he had been sleeping on his side, facing the other way, at the time. Again, the clock said 3:15 a.m.
The third night, against his better judgment, Dashner placed a glass of water on the side table. But he put it on the other side of the lamp from him, seemingly well out of reach.
When he was startled awake that night, the glass had been smashed onto the floor, with some shards of glass ending up 12 feet away. The time was precisely 3:15 a.m. Then Dashner stopped his glass of water routine.
About a year ago, he said, he was loading the dishwasher early in the morning and caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned and saw a white, misty, formless shape moving toward the bathroom.
What Reynolds saw from inside the bathroom was a man; then he was gone.
People have also heard footsteps coming from the west wing when no one could possibly have been there, Dashner continued. He called them “definite footsteps — deliberate, very real.”
Rob Tomes, a carpenter, said he had his own strange experience in the house’s west wing about two years ago, as he worked on the second-floor landing.
“I saw some kind of movement down the hallway,” Tomes said. He thought he saw in the hallway someone who then went into the small rear bedroom.
“I thought somebody had got in,” Tomes said. “I walked down there, saying, ‘Hello, hello.’ It was upright, like a person. I thought maybe I caught a shadow of someone going into the room.”
When he entered the room, it was empty, although there is no other way out of there.
“After I heard that a lady died in the house, I thought it might be something supernatural,” Tomes said. “I’m not positive, but I know I saw something.”
Those accounts, and more, sound much like what Joyce Wilde of Racine saw while she rented part of the circa 1899 house.
About the man who died there, she said matter-of-factly, “It was his ghost that we kept seeing in the kitchen. ... It looked like him, and had the outline of his head and face, and was the same height.”
Wilde said whenever changes were being made to the house, the sightings and strange sounds would increase. “These spirits, whenever there was any kind of upset, we would see them a lot.” “You could just get a sense of their curiosity ... about what’s being changed.”
Wilde added, “I think if people were aware of the history of that house, and they open themselves up to it, I’m sure they can see (spirits).”
Dashner said he doesn’t plan to mention the strange occurrences on the Hughes House Web site. “But if people ask or comment or see something, my plan is to keep a journal.”
No prior owners. New neighborhood. My address STILL doesn't exist in databases, and I have been here for 1.5 years. Don't even know how to start looking for a non-address, plot-of-land kind of thing.
Go to the court house, or local archives. You might want to go ask some oldtimers who live in the neighboring areas.
I don't know if it's scientific, but I think the word might be "ectoplasm"?
Good profile there!
Actually, although I post these threads... I'm really a skeptic. I do keep an open mind and have heard some pretty convincing stuff. After my father died, my mother, who is as down-to-earth as it gets, had an experience that I cannot get over. When something happens in your family to someone you know isn't nuts ... or hallucinating... or lying... then things change. The only recommendation I would make to you is to try to somehow document it scientifically. Forget the mediums. They are frauds who are only in it for the money.
YIPPPEEEEEEEE!!!! A CurlyBill ping *My favorite* Thanks!
Ping.
You mean you didn't watch Ghost Hunters on the Sci-Fi Channel tonight?
I did too. Although I like the show, I have some big problems with it. First off, they seem to break everything down at 2:0am or so. Why in the hell do they not leave the equipment up all night? Second, they go about much of it the wrong way. Steve and Brian are walking around the library with audio and suddenly one of them hears footsteps... well, there are two of them walking and talking while this is going on!! On the show, the centerpiece is the "reality show" part of it, which I think gets in the way of their science. You had an argument between Brian and one of the girls tonight that was allowed to go on for who knows how long... They need to ditch the "reality show" part of it and stick to the science. They also need to tell Jason that it might be a damn good idea to leave the equipment overnight in ALL of their investigations. They've already done this once... I think on an episode maybe two weeks ago.
I just happened to have the May issue of Popular Science, and in their FYI feature, there is a short article that may be of interest:
"Low-frequency electromagnetic fields affect the right hemisphere of the brain in a way that makes people believe they're sensing an otherworldly presence. When a specific region of the right hemisphere that controls notions of "other" is stimulated by EMFs, subjects often report feeling strongly that they are not alone - that there's something in the room with them. Using a device he (Jason Braithwaite) developed with sensors that measure the strength of these EMFs, Braithwaite detected unusual elecromagnetic activity below the 50-hertz range in and around the castle (Muncaster Castle, with "ghost" encounters by visitors numbering in the hundreds, going back several centuries)."
Made me a believer.
Odd stuff; Discovery (or one of those kinds of channels) had a show on this exact thing; these people would hear these bumps in the night and all; but it turned out to have more to do with these electromagnetic fields.
Not really sure what to think, but at least I don't think we're nuts anymore.
Full body apparition?
Newscaster Gabriel Heatter might have begun this story by announcing, "Good evening, everyone, there's good boos tonight..."
I sometimes wake up with a sore left hand and a headboard that has been punched. I wonder if my house is also haunted?
No full body apparitions. That season was a hard time for the family, I think he was reassuring us. Appearing to us might have freaked us out. He made sure we knew he was there--the same way with all of us, but at different times.
Could make an interesting tool for PsyOps in certain Persian countries, especially in combination with beamed "voices" that seem to originate inside their heads. "I am the twelfth imam, and Amadinejad is a lying infidel" would be sort of cool.
Shortly after my father died, several in my family experienced unexplainable events. I'm a believer.
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