Three-Night Investigation of a Mid-19th Century Building
Location: Niagara region, ON
Date: February 14, 15 and 17, 2010
In the early weeks of 2010, the Paranormal Research Initiative (PRI) was informed of apparent paranormal activity taking place in a small, privately owned business in the Niagara region. We were provided with the opportunity to conduct an in-depth investigation of the property over the course of three nights in February. The details and findings of this investigation are presented in this summary report. However, out of respect for the privacy of the establishment's owner and employees, we are withholding specific information pertaining to its location and identity.
The property that was the subject of this PRI investigation is a two-storey brick building constructed in the mid-19th century. Its main floor consists of a retail store, while the second storey consists of residential apartments, which were unoccupied at the time of the investigation. Before it contained a store, a restaurant operated out of the main floor.
Recently, employees of the store have reported both visual and audible phenomena. Reports include numerous sights of movement and shadowy figures out of the corners of witnesses' eyes. In addition, one employee reported that she heard her name being called from the rear portion of the store, which is currently unused. An informant also relayed accounts of shadowy figures being seen by visitors to the restaurant that formerly occupied the location.
The property has three main sections that were selected for investigation: a front and rear section of the store’s main floor, and a basement. In an effort to conduct as thorough an investigation as possible, and to narrow in on potential sources of the reported activity, we elected to devote an entire night’s worth of investigation to each section. Additionally, we took advantage of the opportunity to investigate a small location with controlled access by leaving monitoring equipment running overnight for approximately 12 hours on each day of the investigation. Such a strategy was taken in the hopes of capturing evidence of paranormal activity under a controlled setting while minimizing the potential for human contamination.
We utilized two new investigation tools in the PRI arsenal for this investigation: a motion-activated infrared digital "trap camera" complete with an infrared flash, and a Zoom H2 digital audio recorder. The trap camera was left monitoring each location overnight throughout the investigation, while the Zoom H2—due to a limitation in media storage capacity—was only left recording while PRI was actively investigating. Two additional voice recorders were utilized during the investigation and were left running in their voice activation modes overnight*.
Sadly, no evidence of paranormal activity was captured on any of the monitoring equipment utilized during the investigation. Likewise, no activity was witnessed first-hand by the investigators. However, on several occasions—particularly during daylight visits to the property—we did experience fleeting images of movement, especially in the front section of the store. It did not take long to determine that these images were produced by a complexity of shadows and reflections created by movement outside the store, reflecting off the metallic surfaces of clothing racks and other objects.
PRI was unable to firmly debunk the witness account of a name being called from the back section of the store. However, without having experienced any anomalous voices or sounds during our investigation, we simply cannot discount the possibility of natural sources, such as sound seeping in from outside or audio pareidolia.
In summary, we cannot conclude that this location is haunted at this time. In fact, the results of our investigation suggest the contrary. Based on what we witnessed, the visual anomalies can be explained by shadows and reflections produced by movement outside the property’s main floor windows. Likewise, the audible phenomenon reported may well have been produced by sound entering the location from outside, and/or by audio pareidolia.
*NOTE: Normally, PRI does not recommend the use of voice activated settings on digital voice recorders for two significant reasons. First, such settings tend to be inherently flawed due to their low sensitivity and delayed activation, which run the risk of failing to capture EVP. Secondly, they do not provide audio leading up to and immediately following the capture of an EVP, thus providing no contextual information with which to analyse the anomaly. However, we made an exception to the rule in this case; achieving a happy medium between limited digital storage space coupled with a three night investigation, and the need to provide audio context to any potential images captured with the camera.