Investigation Report: Family Farm Haunts 3 Generations
Situation:
A 2-story, family-owned farmhouse on 165 acres has had a continuous history of hauntings for over 100 years and 3 generations of witnesses. It has had steady witness accounts of paranormal events from the 1930s until the present day from the family members, care takers of the property, and family friends. Only 2 people in the family have ever felt comfortable staying in the house overnight: the current owner, and the owner’s grandfather.
The house has sat unlived in for the past decade; the grandfather passed in 2004, and the grandmother continued to live here until her death in 2015; with the current owner moving back into the property in 2025.
Background
The house was built in the 1880s, and has been renovated several times over its lifetime. Original stone foundation, with partial cinderblock reinforcements added in the 1940’s and again in the 1980s. House is a 2-story farm house with living areas and master bedroom in the first floor, and four additional bedrooms upstairs. Great-grandparents moved into the home in the early 1900s. No information was able to be obtained about the original builder of the house. No reports of paranormal activity were reported by Great-grandparents; but a farm family in the Great Depression era had more concerning things than footsteps and slamming doors. Grandmother and siblings (reported to family members over the years until her death) had all experienced paranormal events in the house from the time they were children. All the siblings reported that they felt uneasy upstairs.
Grandmother’s husband had by all accounts loved the property. He even wrote about his desire to live there in his letters during his time in WWII in the Navy. On returning, he purchased the property, and he and Grandmother moved their new family into the home. Grandfather is only one of two people to have never felt discomfort in the house. The couple had 2 children. Both still alive (early 70s). Both express severe dislike and anxiety about being in the house, with multiple accounts of disturbing events spanning from childhood to present day. Most accounts involve footsteps, doors opening and slamming, voices coming from upstairs. Most accounts center on the upstairs as a focal point of activity, but also the kitchen.
After Grandfather’s passing in 2004, Grandmother lived alone on the property. She continued to report disturbing events to her children, who tried to make light of the events so as to not give her reason for concern. Upstairs lights would turn on and off, despite the Grandmother not being able to walk up the stairs. This happened so frequently, the upstairs lights had to be disconnected. This was also done to the overhead bar lights over the kitchen island. The electrician reported there was no short or reason for the light to be turning on. Another account is during her late 80s, while lying in bed, the covers were completely yanked off the bed and thrown on the floor, while Grandmother was awake. Her children said they told her this was Grandfather’s ghost playing jokes on her in an attempt to keep her from unease.
Through this time, and up until present even after Grandmother’s death, a group of Grandfather’s friends would visit in the fall during deer hunting season. Accounts from the surviving member of this group state that all three of them always felt uncomfortable in the house, and when they would visit, they would sleep on the floor in the downstairs addition of the house, rather than sleep in an upstairs bedroom. He reported they would hear heavy foot steps up stairs, doors upstairs opening and slamming at night, and hear footsteps and items being moved in the kitchen at night. One specific event, he said they went into the living room and smelled fresh cigars (Grandfather liked to smoke cigars).
There were family deaths reported on the property; Grandmother died in the home, as well as Great-grandmother. But accounts of paranormal events predate both deaths. No traumatic events or abuse present in the household from all witness accounts. And, as the current resident says, despite the family liking to say this is the ghost of grandfather, the many events pre-date his death.
The current Owner is the granddaughter of the family. She moved into the property in 2025 with her husband. She works from home remotely and is in the house through the day. At this point the house had been unoccupied for approximately 10 years, with only the seasonal group of Grandfather’s friends coming during hunting season. The house was being maintained by the family trust. Owner and her husband say they began witnessing events almost immediately after moving into the house in September of 2025. The husband stated that in their past visits to the property, his wife had told him about the house’s history and that it was haunted. He stated this didn’t really bother him if true since nobody had ever been bothered by what was happening, and assumed it was a family ghost. The Owner is the second person, aside from Grandfather, to have never felt uneasy in the house.
Rough Timeline of Current Events:
September 2025:
After moving in, both witnesses say they would be in the living room watching tv and would watch the bedroom door (master bedroom attaches to living room) open and close repeatedly. They checked for a draft from heat vent or window, and there was none. They both say they found it amusing. The door opening and closing would agitate one of their dogs, who would sit and watch the door. They both stated they just assumed the ghost was having fun teasing the dog. During the same time period, husband says from the first nights in the house, he would hear footsteps “like a man wearing boots,” upstairs directly over their bedroom. He said he wasn’t bothered by this since he was told about the ghost, neither of the dogs reacted to the sound so he wasn’t concerned about an intruder. The bedroom door activity lasted for about a month, then ceased.
Also, to note during this time, the couple was dealing with mice that had been living in the house. Both people heard noises in the kitchen, items being moved, tapping in the walls, and the dogs alert and growling at the corner of the kitchen - both assumed it was mice. An exterminator was hired and the mice were no longer a problem by the end of September.
October 2025:
During this time period, the owners had been involved in a civil suit against a group of people who had been trespassing on the property. Unknown to the family trust during the time of the house being unoccupied, this group had been renting hunting spots across the property, harvesting timber, and building structures on the property. This lead to some heated exchanges, notifying the police and game wardens of the trespassing, and finally one of the trespassers saying to the owner, “The boys will take care of you.” So when the owners returned home one day to the patio furniture flipped over on the porch, the dogs hysterically, they made the assumption that some individuals from this group had attempted to break into the house. They purchased a security system, changed the locks, and did not consider the patio furniture or dogs reaction part of the paranormal event constellation until much later.
Other events remained the same, doors would open and close in front of them repeatedly. The owners made certain to latch all doors, mostly for the dogs to prevent them from going into the upstairs or downstairs basement, since neither dog was comfortable with stairs and they didn’t want them getting hurt. But the upstairs and downstairs door would be open randomly.
November 2025:
Around this time, the couple state that every time the husband would go outside, to put out the trash or get something from the garage, the door would lock behind him. The front door does not lock automatically, it has a latch that needs to be turned after it is closed to engage the lock. Husband said this happened for a while, and he assumed it was his wife locking the door. Wife assumed the husband was locking it himself. They both say this has happened to them dozens of times now, they have to ensure one person is inside to let them back in or have their keys with them even if they go outside for a moment.
While getting in the car to go grocery shopping, the garage door opened in front of both of them. The garage door is electric, but there is no working garage door opener.
After coming back from out of town visiting family, the couple found the back door to the house wide open. The dogs were frantically barking and agitated when they returned back to the house, but had not gone outside through the open door.
After coming back from running errands, came home to find the dogs highly agitated, and all the kitchen cabinet doors and drawers fully open.
During this month, both dogs became increasingly watchful. They have 2 dogs, a scent hound and a sheep dog. The scent hound would stare at the back wall of the kitchen, or towards the adjoining section of ceiling, with her “hunting tail up” growling and barking. This happens throughout the day and night, with no audible or visible cause of the dogs agitation. The other dogs is a guardian breed sheep dog. Her behavior is typically to put herself between the owners and any doorway, and keep watch. The husband stated that the main reason he was not concerned with the footsteps he heard at night was the dogs did not react to it, and he trusted their reactions for danger. Both dogs slept in the bedroom at night with the owners. During this time period, the sheep dog began watching through the night in the entryway between the living room facing the kitchen. She took to sleeping during the day, and guarding the entry to the living room all night until the owners got up. This was the start of the owner’s concern for the paranormal events in the house. The dogs were waking the owners up, frequently, sometimes multiple times a night, alerting them to something in the kitchen. Husband said that he never could find anything inside out outside that might have set the dogs off, he would walk around the house at night when the dogs woke them up to look for animal tracks, and check the upstairs and downstairs. They tried sleeping in their bedroom with the dogs inside and the door shut, but that made the dogs panic more and they were unable to sleep.
December 10, 2025- Meet and Greet:
The owners had become concerned enough about the dogs’ reaction that they wanted an investigation. The team arrived at the house approximately 9:30am for a meeting with the owners. The owners had put the dogs in the master bedroom with the door closed (they bark a lot at strangers). This was a face to face meet and greet meeting where the team discusses what we look for, how we investigate, and allow the owners to ask us any questions about the process. While we were talking, missionaries knocked on the door, making their Christmas rounds. The husband answered the door, the wife went to check on the dogs who started barking furiously again with the knock on the door, before coming back out to talk to the missionaries. While the team was at the table waiting, a very audible knock of 4-knock was heard from the other side of the house.
Turtle: My thought was this was another missionary that had, for some reason, gone around to the back door and knocked on that door as well.
I asked the Owner if she heard the knocking, thinking she would want to go answer the other door. She replied that the dogs knocked because they wanted to get out. The Owner went outside on the porch to talk to the missionaries with her husband. A second loud knocking of the same rhythm of four was heard, this time clearly located at the master bedroom door. When the missionaries had left and the owners came back into the kitchen, the team asked them again about the knocking. Both owners and both team members present had heard the knocking clearly. The both owners realizing that their dogs would not be able to make the knocking sound we heard. The dogs were let out of the room in a very high state of agitation, which could be due to the strange people in the house. There were no signs of out of place items in the bedroom.
December 2025, Christmas Break:
Aside from the dogs agitation, the owners were concerned for their kids safety when they come home for the holidays. During Christmas break, both children were in the house. Husband was in the kitchen, heating soup in the microwave (everyone in the house had a cold), the Owner was sitting at her desk in the dining room, and both children were in the living room. According to their account, three things happened simultaneously: the bowl of soup in the microwave made a loud pop, a large kitchen knife fell from its magnetic strip holder on the cabinet above the kitchen counter crashing into a glass cutting board, and a soup spoon flew across the kitchen and hit the husband in the back.
Husband said he didn’t know what happened. He was afraid the bowl in the microwave exploded, though on inspection there was no mess, bowl intact, then he loudly called if the kids in the living room were alright, since as he said it sounded like something exploded.
The Owner, from the dining room, said she heard the pop and a crash, and turned in time to see the spoon flying through the air from the opposite side of the kitchen from where the knife fell, and hit the husband in the back.
The couple said they attempted to recreate this event multiple times thinking maybe was a chance occurrence of the microwave soup popping hard enough to shake the knife loose of the holder, and hitting the spoon in a way to throw it across the room. But were unable to recreate any portion of it, and as the Owner stated - the spoon wasn’t on the sink where the knife fell, it was on the counter behind the husband and came from that side. Motion capture cameras were off at this time since so many people were awake and moving around the house.
Investigation:
Because this is a home that is currently being lived in, the investigation has to respect the fact that people live here. Motion capture cameras were turned on when the owners left the house or went to bed. Audio recorders continuously run, but with people in the house, voices and footsteps will be heard. These types of investigations are often more prolonged than an abandoned building where the team can set up overnight with cameras and recorders everywhere. Team made several visits to the house, and set up motion capture cameras in areas of suspected activity, continuous run audio recorders, with EMF and temperature continuous collection recorders.
EMF was standard baseline for an old home with only basic electrical appliances of 0.1 to 0.3 mG, and baseline RF was low with baseline being 0.01 to 0.08 V/m. Notable, there is no cell phone service in the house, though outside in the driveway, and all around the house returns full 5G service. House is wood constructed with partial shingle / metal roof. RF around the house returns to baseline normal of 0.1 to 1.0 V/m after a distance of 30 feet away from the home.
The owners were asked to note the date and time of any events they encountered once our equipment was set up. This was we could review data collection from those specific times and see if it correlated to any anomalies on our devices.
Results:
Data collection continued for 3 weeks. The amount of activity in this house is amazing. Audio events occur multiple times through the day, almost every day: loud sharp exclamatory gasps, footsteps, repeated banging and screeching noises. Some noises are unique, and only occur one day, and cannot be reproduced through mundane house noise.
Motion capture cameras recorded a spirit-orb making an elliptical loop around the dining room before going up into the ceiling. Motion capture cameras were set up at a height to not be triggered by the dogs. Despite this, another interesting bit of footage is one of the scent hound standing in the dining room at night, looking around the room intently. Something other than the dog triggered the camera.
Several videos appeared on the recording of the motion capture cameras being triggered without apparent cause. In some cases, multiple cameras were set up from different angles in the same room. When activated, the camera activates an IR light as it records. Videos with no apparent cause for activation show a view of the room, then another IR light from a different camera activates on the video.
Temperature data shows several downward spikes of more than 10-degrees through the house (living room, master bedroom, kitchen), then returns to baseline temperature after a time period of few minutes to an hour. These deviations are notable because the area does not stay below baseline (as you would see with heat loss from a window or draft), does not drop with outdoor temperature drops. The upstairs has no attached heating system, and stayed in the 50-degree range throughout data collection.
The Verdict:
It is hard to disprove paranormal activity in this case. The audible phenomenon alone is so blatant and consistent. The difficulty here is what type of entity it is. It is not a residual haunting - the actions are not regularly repeated. They can be very erratic, with a single occurrence of one type of activity, before a different type of activity takes its place.
Other things to note - the entity likes to open things. In fact, most of the activity seems to center around opening or closing things, from doors, to drawers, to cookie jars. This type of repetitive or obsessive behavior can be seen from a lot of non-human spiritual entities.
There are no items in the house that would have been present from the start of recorded occurrences. The entity seems to be attached to the house itself, with the areas with most activity being the east facing upstairs bedroom, kitchen (directly below that bedroom) and living room. No activity in the back extension built in the early 2000s or in the basement.
Intelligent human spirits were ruled out in two ways. First- the activity predates any deaths from the family in the home. Second -the Delaware Nation’s Council House was contacted to enquire of any possible old settlement or burial sites near the location, but no records of any settlement or religious activity on the property exists.
It is not demonic. Despite the unease people have felt in the house, whatever is here is not a demonic entity. This is important mainly for the safety of the residents, but also because exorcisms only work on demonic entities.
We ended up doing folklore research trying to narrow it down. It is not a nature spirit. It is clearly tied to the house, yet there is zero activity in the basement, where if it was some type of land spirit the assumption would be that activity would be in the stone basement.
It is not tied to a person like poltergeist activity. It has been active for 100 years and with multiple different people, and no single person present each time. There are no legends from the native tribes of any spirits or legends that remotely resemble the activity witnessed here.
The running theory is that it is some type of house or hearth spirit that attached to the home during the occupancy of the original family in the 1800s when the house was built. Not all folklore accounts of hearth spirits record them as being helpful. Specifically, accounts of German and Scottish (of which the family is) have stories of hearth spirits that act out for want of attention. Footsteps, calling out, knocking, slamming doors…all fall into the pattern of behavior for these types of entities.
Warding the House:
All the room doors have been warded with a salt line. We use a setup similar to the type of strip placed under a door to prevent drafts - an adhesive line is placed along the line of the threshold, with a salt-line approximately three-quarters of an inch wide and a quarter inch thick sealed with clear epoxy-resin to prevent the salt from being dispersed by airflow or movement. This prevents the salt line from being broken by movement or drafts. Specifically, the windows have not been warded. The idea is not to trap the entity in the house, but encourage it to leave. Additional wards have been placed in each bedroom, above each bedroom doorway, and the main doorways of the home.
We are in regular contact with the owners. If the occurrences continue or get worse, we will be back. But at the moment, other than the very understandable reaction of the owners to blame every missing item or noise on “the ghost” things seem to have calmed, if not completely stopped. Activity is still on going, sounds where the source can not be located, but nothing has been moved, opened, or locked since warding the rooms.