Creation of the Chair Experiment

In one of the earlier posts, I talked about the little boy of Richardson Hall (whom we now call Joshua). Though I guess investigators aren't supposed to have favorites, I've got to say he's my favorite ghost. Not just because I have a soft spot for little kids, but because he's our most interactive spirit by far.


Back when we were setting up for the Ghost Tours, fellow investigator Becca and I would spend a lot of our afternoons  alone in the theatre building doing walk/run throughs and setup for the tours.  During one run through, I saw that one of the seats in the front row was down, and realizing that would be a hazard for me (our tours were in the pitch black theatre and I was walking backwards) I put it up. Becca and I went downstairs and came back up a few moments later.


The same seat I'd just put up was down again.


Being completely honest, it didn't really phase me. Like I said before, the theatre is the oldest part of the campus, and I figured the seats were loose and it just fell down on its own accord. I put it back up, and then moved it back and forth a bit to see how loose it was. Contrary to my assumption, the seat wasn't loose- it stuck a bit when I pushed it down, and it never fell on its own while we watched it.


Still in the middle of a run through, Becca and I were working on the stage. I thought I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye, and when I looked over, the same seat was down again.


It is notorious for ghost children to play with others in the room, and like I said in the post about Joshua, I believe that he doesn't know he's dead. He's tried to interact with us before, and Becca and I wondered if he was trying to play with us.


So we decided to play back. We went into the audience and pushed up all the seats that were down, including the seat in the front row. Becca, being our main ghost communicator, told Josh that we wanted to play. She asked him to push down the seats like she was doing (she demonstrated).


We walked around the seats, keeping an eye out. Becca called out to me because the seat that had continuously been pushed down was down again; so were a couple of other seats. So we played back- Becca pushed one down, I pushed one down, and then we told him it was his turn. This game went on for about ten minutes; several more seats were pushed down  (regrettably we never saw with our own eyes the seat being pushed down).


Then things got more interesting; while playing our game, Becca felt a slight tap on her arm. Since I was on the other side of the room, we had a pretty good feeling who it was. Thus, our game of tag started. And for those of you who haven't played tag with a little ghost boy, let me tell you it's not as easy as it sounds. But Joshua tagged both of us, and we continued to play.


It had gotten pretty late, and Becca and I had to head home. After saying goodbye to Joshua, we went to leave out of the back door that we'd come in from. The second we stepped through the first doorframe, over my left shoulder I heard "get out". I thought it was Becca and turned back to ask her what that was about; Becca was on the right of me, looking over at me with the same stunned expression. We were out of the door in less than two seconds.

Investigation of Richardson Hall 2/27/2012 Part 1

The Chair Experiment

After being absent from investigating for so long, Becca and I headed back over to Richardson Hall. Yes, I know we do a lot of investigations on the Theatre, but really, we can't explore anywhere else, so for now our choices are limited. And besides, it's a pretty active place, so why not investigate it to the fullest?

The two of us came up with an experiment to perform: the chair experiment. Like we said before the little boy (who we discovered is really named Joshua, so that's what we call him now) likes to interact with us a lot, so he's our best spirit to study. 

For our experiment, we went through the entire first level of the theatre and put up any seat that was down. Now, in the theatre, there are some seats that, when pushed down will stay down. But for the most part, the chairs spring back up unless there is weight in them. 

So once all the seats were up, we went through to take pictures as evidence that all the seats were back up. After that, we had planned to go through and check if any somehow went back down. However, before I could even take the first round of pictures, we found that one seat had gone back down. 

Every time we are in the theatre, that is the seat that's always down. We've dubbed it "Joshua's Seat" because without fail, no matter how many times we put it back up, it always comes back down, and we believe that it's Joshua's way of telling us that he's here. 

So for the experiment, I put the seat back up and took pictures as best as I could to document the seats all being pushed up:

Right Side
(Note Joshua's Seat, 2nd Row on the left)

Larger view of right side
(Joshua's Seat bottom right)

Center section right side

Left section back half
(Note: First row on the left, the two seats near the heater
are half down again after we put them all the way up)

Center Section Left side

After taking these pictures, we went back through maybe a minute later to check seats. This is what we saw:

Center section

Left section front half

Left Section

The one that really gets me though is comparing a picture that I have in the beginning of the blog to something I just discovered going through them. The two pictures below were taken 2-3 seconds apart. I've labeled the rows to make comparing them easier. In row four of the first picture, 4th seat in, the seat is up. In the two seconds it took me to step half a foot to the right and snap another picture, the same seat is down. Neither Becca nor I touched it in the few seconds between pictures. 

Seat is up like we had it

3 seconds later, the seat is down

Running short on time, Becca and I put up the seats once more to run the experiment again. We walked past one of the doors on the side of the stage and the two of us froze at the same exact time; from right in front of us, we heard a growl. Now, though a growl isn't something that's unnatural, when you hear a growl three feet in front of you and you're pretty positive a dog didn't follow you inside, it's a little shocking. 

Since the theatre was pitch-black, I snapped a quick picture just to make sure there wasn't a dog. In our defense, seeing the picture on my small camera screen was a lot more startling than it really was. 

When you enlarge the picture, you can see that the mass
behind the chair is just paint on the board. However, on
a tiny camera screen, it looked like a mass of shadow
crouching in front of us.

I can't even explain how shocking that was to see on my camera screen. And we definitely high tailed it out of there. But, because I knew we wouldn't be good investigators if we didn't go back, we went in a few minutes later and found out exactly what that black mass was:

I've honestly never been more startled by a piece of wood.

So, once we found out that the mass was only paint and wood, we decided to head back to do the last round of chair checks. I assumed Becca had followed me to the chair, going in front of the stage. There were footsteps behind me, and I could feel a presence there, so I didn't question it. So when I turned around and saw that Becca was across the theatre and had gone up the far aisle, and I was alone, that's when I questioned what was behind me. 

All in all, Joshua's chair was down once again, and after about an hour in the theatre, and since we were late for dinner, we ended our investigation for the afternoon. I've gotta say, I think our short little experiment satisfied us, and that won't be the end of our adventures. 

Our Hiatus has ended

The temporary break that the Paranormal Discovery Club took has come to an end!

Why take a break? Well, simply put, it was taken as a safety precaution. As anyone who has dealt with the paranormal should know, it is never a good idea to anger entities or spirits, and we believe we were beginning to do just that.

Like we said, our group got to do a tour of Richardson Hall over Halloween. For the tours, we amped it up a bit and made the legends come to life. However, in doing so, we began to anger the spirits in the theatre (which I'll post about in a little bit), and for our safety, we took a break.

However, now that the second semester has started, we're looking to start up our investigations again, and we're planning on doing something with some prospective members. And, if we play our cards right, we could finally get clearance to do the overnight in Richardson, which we've been wanting since September. So, faithful readers, stay tuned, and hopefully we'll have something to blog about soon.