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Spirit Seekers: A night of seances at the Peacock Inn (second in a three-part series)
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Investigation and contact
"Yeah this is interesting,” Psychic Echo Bodine says as she and psychic student Chris Herzog approach the steps of the Peacock Inn Bed & Breakfast. “I can already feel people watching us.” Herzog nervously chimes in “The hair on my arms is standing up.” “Me too,” her mentor replies. It feels like a good place to walk through and do a séance; oh yeah, there’s definitely activity in that house. And there’s a woman, a female spirit watching out that window,” she says, pointing at the porch. “Oh God, I just got chills everywhere; she’s watching out the window and she’s actually quite pleased that people are coming to her home.”
“Mmmm hmm, interesting, interesting” Bodine suddenly says. I just heard that summertime makes her sad, but just because of all the memories of out here. She really liked entertaining and this is hard for her, she can’t visibly greet people. She particularly loves flowers and so she’s grateful anytime there’s fresh flowers.” But, Echo continues, “she doesn’t like fake flowers; she does not like fake flowers, she said to please tell someone that, okay?”
As they enter the inn, Echo shudders and giggles like a teenager on a haunted Halloween hayride.
“Wow, oh my, oh my, whoa, this woman, I wish you could feel her, she’s like everywhere, she’s just like all aflutter. It’s like she doesn’t know what to do with us first; she wants to show us things, she wants to show us everything,” Bodine exclaims.
And that woman, Echo tells me, is Matilda Klein, the deceased wife of financier Charles Klein. Echo senses a somber despair, and claims the woman is frustrated that she is no longer among the living and time is passing her by.
“She’s not happy, she’s just not happy.”
Soon enough, the two psychics are off to investigate the upper floors of mansion. A check of the guest room named for the Klein’s reveals no spirit activity, but in a nearby sitting room Echo detects the energy of a playful young spirit.
“Alright, there’s somebody that sits on that (couch) right there a lot; the person is not in this room at this moment, but I can hear them laughing so there’s some place in the house, but their energy is in this room pretty solid, they really like this room a lot,” Echo relates. I would guess that a long time ago this was someone’s bedroom, and it’s a young girl, and she seems like she was an immature 14-year old.”
Outside in the hallway, things take a more serious turn and Echo picks up on a different spirit.
“You can feel that there’s a lot of movement, a lot of energy back and forth in here but it’s seems like whoever it is trying to elude us, so I think we need to go back up.”
Echo motions to the third floor and they’re off again, to an area of the inn where they confront unexpected and troubling psychic activity, inside one of the more luxurious guest rooms. As soon as both cross the threshold Chris’s hands begin heating up, indicating to him that a ghost or spirit is in need of healing. “There’s definitely something going on here,” he claims.
Echo also senses something wrong. “The room is really sick with different energy, different people. You know it’s interesting, the sense I get is that a lot of people; whooo…it’s taking my energy.”
The psychic pats her chest and tries to catch her breath after experiencing her energy mysteriously drain from her body. She then keys in on the dominant spirit in the room. “People who have stayed here in this room have had to be affected by it, uh, the energy. There’s an energy right here of kind of a desperation; a woman, desperation, love, unrequited love, uh sobbing, feels that she’s been cheated, uh very very sad, she’s very, very sad.”
And then Bodine uncovers the source of the energy manifestation as she opens the door to a small parlor adjoining the bedroom.
“Okay, do you know if there was ever a funeral in this room,” she asks me. “Do you know if they ever displayed a body in this room because that’s what I saw as soon as I opened the door was a body displayed in a casket.”
Innkeeper Joyce Bohn thinks she knows whose spirit Echo has seen; a young woman named Annette who stayed at the inn as a companion to Matilda Klein, and died of cancer in her 20s. In the early years of the mansion, the guest room was originally part of a large ballroom. Could it be the area was used as a funeral parlor for the wake of “Annette”? Joyce Bohn says there’s no record of such an event and that it wouldn’t be logical to carry a casket up several flights of stairs around tight corners to the third floor. Even so, Echo is convinced she’s seen the vision of a deceased young woman.
“She doesn’t understand there’s life after death, she doesn’t understand there’s any place to go and so she just stays here, but, closing up that room is almost like closing up that casket again; she just stays there.”
As Echo has discovered, there’s plenty of spirit activity throughout the inn, but will it manifest itself during our events downstairs?
An eventful evening unfolds
Echo and Chris take up their positions in a large parlor off the kitchen. They’ll observe the séances by way of several remote camera monitors the producers of a paranormal reality TV program have set up for them. The signals are being sent from three cameras set up in the dining room to capture and record spirit manifestations. The séance participants are seated and white pillar candles are passed around the table in a ritual called “charging,” with each individual passing silent, peaceful thoughts and energy to one another through the purity of the burning flame. A slender stick of sandalwood incense burns on wooden hutch in the background as the group joins hands and begins chanting.
“Spirits of the house, we ask that you commune with us and move among us.”
The simple refrain is repeated several times until the medium, Maureen Allen, suddenly interrupts the proceedings with a startling admonition: “Stop it, this is nonsense!” Allen is in a trancelike state and the voice coming from her, although clearly her own, is speaking in a flat monotone. “Leave us alone; take this elsewhere!”
Maureen Allen has channeled the first of what will be many spirits, this one that of a man, possibly military, who apparently is not pleased that a group of living beings is summoning the dead, including himself. But not all of the ethereal entities are upset with the proceedings. Within minutes, Allen has channeled a spirit who passes along a message to Joyce Bohn about her upkeep of the inn.
“Tell her pleased with what she has done with it,” the medium intones.
“Is it Charley,” Bohn asks.
“Charley, caretaker,” Allen replies.
But other spirits aren’t waiting to be called to the dining room. .At the same time Maureen is channeling the mansion’s old caretaker, Chris Herzog is in the kitchen parlor, his hands hovering over a rocking chair, fully engaged in a healing.
“Ever since I walked in here my hands heated up and I just knew someone here needed healing,” he says, telling me he believes the spirit is that of a young woman, possibly the cancer victim, Annette. He shudders as he completes the healing and indicates the hair on his arms standing on end.
Echo and Chris resume watching events unfold in the séance.
“Wow, wow, this spirit right here, back and forth,” she says, pointing out an area to the left of Allen’s body. “Spirits all over,” she continues. “A male spirit, on her left side, she’s getting a female spirit over here but there’s a male spirit on the left side waiting to talk; he wants to talk to someone here.”
Maureen Allen has discovered who that male is, channeling the spirit of the architect who designed the 100-year old mansion, Arthur C. Klausen.
“He’s showing me pacing, pacing the halls. He says he knocks on walls sometimes and wakes your guests up.”
Meanwhile, Echo is counting the number of spirits she is seeing. There’s more than 20 in there now and they’re saying ‘look at me, look at me.’” And when the medium asks for other spirits besides the caretaker and architect to manifest themselves to prove they are moving amongst the participants, once again one of them complies with the request, in view of the two psychic observers as they respond to the sudden click of a light.
“Did you see that light go out? That light went out, Echo says, indicating a small table lamp outside the kitchen door.
“I heard a click and it was like somebody shut the light off; it wasn’t like a light bulb burnt out, I heard the click and all of a sudden it was gone,” Chris adds in affirmation.
Chris gets up to inspect the light to see if it’s connected to a timer, sees that it isn’t, and flicks the light switch illuminating the light shade once again. “That’s what I heard when the light went off, so it wasn’t a timer,” he says.
Echo finds a bit of humor in the mysterious event. “Well it’s interesting ‘cause she had just said, she had asked for proof and they weren’t doing anything, and then the light goes off here. I would say they’re trying to give her proof but it’s in the wrong room,” she chuckles.
Back inside the séance the number of spirits is growing, and growing impatient.
“You can see that there’s people, this lady in particular; she’s got spirits around her trying to say talk to us, talk to us, talk to us,” Echo notes.
And then, something truly startling happens.
“Oh! I just saw a spirit go right through her,” Bodine gasps. “God, I just saw a spirit go right through her. Wow, she just said something about she’s in my face; no kidding.”
And several cameras capture the eerie event. A small, greenish orb suddenly appears around Maureen’s face and then floats off to her right, out of view, and then seconds later floats back in to hover around her head. It will be the first of several orb events during the evening, and a prelude to other ghostly phenomena to come; groaning and moaning voices from beyond the grave.
…to be continued.
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