011 - Paine House Part 1

​When you get the call to investigate a haunted location, one of your main goals is to try and communicate with any spirits that might need help. On rare occasions, the spirits will try to communicate with you. But can spirits communicate with each other? When one of them is a little girl and she's afraid of a dark presence, it makes your job as a paranormal investigator a little bit more stressful. I'm Tom Stewart and this is my paranormal story. Before I start this episode, I just want to thank you for listening. Remember, if you've bought T-shirts or coffee mugs from my website myparanormalstory.com, be sure to send me a selfie with your swag so I can post it on Facebook or Instagram. And don't forget everything you buy on the website helps keep this podcast running. So thank you so much for your support. During my time as a paranormal investigator with Rise up Paranormal, I had the extreme pleasure of being able to investigate some of the most historical locations in Rhode Island and throughout New England. And one of the most interesting. Was the Payne House Museum in Coventry, RI? When the Historical Society reached out to rise up, paranormal to do an investigation, we were both excited and intro. Several people on their staff were reporting paranormal experiences in the old house. Everything from footsteps and voices to shadows and full on apparitions. They explain that quite often volunteers and guests would report seeing or hearing a little girl walking in the halls. But she wasn't alone. For several years now. Rise up Paranormal has developed a relationship with both the Historical Society and the volunteers at Paine House Museum, as well as with the spirits will reside there. We've been fortunate enough to be able to investigate the historic building dozens and dozens of times. In fact, rise up paranormal still hosts public investigations and events there throughout the summer. And never once has the old building let us down. I can honestly say that every time I visit paint house, something will leave me scratching my head. The Paine House, which is now a museum, has had many different identities and physical forms over the years. It's believed to have been built in the late 1600s by Samuel Bennett, a local sawmill. Owner and over the years it changed hands and at times was used as an inn, a Tavern and a family. It was in the 1800s that the Payne family inherited the building. Which by now had been expanded and remodeled. And in 1953, the home was given to the western Rhode Island Civic Historical Society, who to this day maintain and care for the home. When you visit Paine House, you'll find that most of the rooms look as if they would have centuries ago. Living rooms, dining rooms and bedrooms still have furniture. Many of the items, antiques or even original to the house itself. The ceilings low and the doorways are small, making it seem like a life sized dollhouse to those who stand 6 foot or taller. The house is 3 stories tall with a basement sub level made of stone which is the area we would usually set up our command base during investigations. The basement also had several rooms and a lot of history. It's believed that the basement was used as a Tavern for many years, and then as a Speakeasy during the prohibition of the 1900s. We usually spent most of our time investigating the two main floors of the House, but during one night I decided to wander off to one of the small rooms in the basement. The room had stone walls and a stone floor and an old heavy wooden door which led into the main part of the basement. Inside the room was another old door that led to the outside of the house. And a small wooden staircase that led up to a trap door in the floor of the kitchen above. I imagined this room to be where they stored and accessed the liquor when it was a Speakeasy. I placed my audio recorder on one of the old wooden barrels that still adorned the room and conducted an EVP session. The room was dark and very quiet, and as I asked questions, I found myself whispering for some reason, maybe because of the echo. I asked many questions as I tried to envision in my head what the Speakeasy might have looked like. After about 20 minutes or so, I wrapped up my solo investigation. Not sure if I'd made any contact. Days later, when I reviewed the audio, there was one question that I asked that sparked a response. And EVP electronic voice phenomena during investigations. We'll ask questions while recording with a digital audio recorder, hoping that we'll get a response. I had asked. Did you sell whiskey in here Scotch? And in the background you can hear. A male voice, say. Here's the actual audio clip from that EVP session. Do you have whiskey in here? It's not uncommon to hear many different voices in paint house when you're reviewing evps. But one of the most common voices is of a little girl that we believe to be named Sarah. She has a sweet and innocent voice that you're going to hear later in this episode. Quite often we would find Sarah trying to communicate with us. On many different investigations days and months apart, we would get responses from Sarah. What worried us most about the paint house was that along with Sarah, several people felt that there was a dark presence living there as well. And we would sometimes record evps of what sounded like an angry old man. For some reason it was believed that this dark presence spent most of its time on the third floor, an attic area not open to the public and one most of the staff dreads going to. So one night myself and another investigator decided to head up there to see what we could experience first hand. We got to the top of the stairs and it felt like we were a mile away from everyone else in the house. There was a small hallway at the top of the stairs that connected to two small rooms. The smallest room had lots of stuff stored in it boxes. Old furniture filled to the point that there was no room for us. But the other room was mostly empty aside from a few old chairs and a few boxes. And off of that room was a small opening to a crawl space that we were warned not to go into. Mainly because there was no flooring inside and there was a risk of falling through or getting hurt. We heeded the warnings and stayed out, but for some reason that was where my attention kept turning. I grabbed one of the chairs and sat right in front of the opening with my audio recorder and justice started staring into the dark crawl space. I felt very uneasy up there. I'm not sure if it was because of the height along with the low ceilings or. If it was just my instincts. I sat in that chair staring into the dark, asking questions, hoping to get some EVP response on the recorder. Suddenly we heard a small creaking sound. As if something was moving. I shine the flashlight into the crawl space but nothing was there. Suddenly we heard a sound. Sort of a growl. Or more like an angry grunt. The other investigator had had enough and headed down the stairs, expecting me to be right behind him. But I was frozen in that chair, mesmerized by the sound. So I continue to ask questions listening for more sounds and shining my flashlight into the darkness. Suddenly I heard. A loud bang on the floor to my right. I looked over to see an old hatchet just lying there a few feet away from me on the floor. It had an old rusty blade and sturdy looking handle. I could tell it was old. I have no idea why an axe would be in the attic of an old house. Maybe it had been leaning up. Against the wall and. Fell over or. Maybe not. I took it as a sign that I wasn't welcome and made my way back down the stairs. Most of our time at Paine House was spent trying to communicate with Sarah. After a while. Most of us had developed a Big Brother big sister mentality towards her, if not a parental 1. We would always be trying to make her feel comfortable by putting out things like dolls or toys. We call them trigger objects. It's believed that sometimes placing items that are familiar to an entity can spark a response from. So one day we set up a ball in the hallway on the second floor. The hallway had several rooms connected to it, one of them being a small classroom where children were at one time home schooled. Inside were a few kids desks. A shelf with old books, a small teachers desk, and even a belt. We set the ball down in the hallway but it was tough finding that one sweet part of the floor that wasn't slanted so that the ball wouldn't roll, but once we did, we stood in the next room away from the hallway. And asked if she'd like to play with the ball. And occasionally the ball would slowly move. But it was hard to rule out a breeze or the natural movement of the house causing it to roll. Except for one time. And the ball slowly started rolling down the hallway and this time. Suddenly changed direction to the left and rolled right into the schoolroom. Sarah liked talking a lot. We have several recordings of her saying things to us like stay with me and don't go and other times calling out to her mommy or. Just the sounds of a little girl singing to herself one time during an EVP session, one of our female investigators decided to try saying the alphabet with sour. The hope was that she probably knew her Abcs and few kids can resist saying them when asked. When the investigator asked Sarah what letter comes after C. We later learned during audio review that Sarah had quickly and correctly answered us.
 
And I say see, and you say?
 
During our many investigations and communications with Sarah, it was the ones that sounded frightened that concerned us most. Some of the recordings we've collected sound like Sarah is saying things like he scares me and help me. From what we can determine, Sarah is aware of at least one other entity in the home, and she doesn't like him. Perhaps it's the same dark presence that others have felt. Maybe the one I felt in the attic. But what's most interesting about the whole thing? Is the idea that spirits might consciously be aware of each other? There's no way of knowing if they knew each other when they were alive, but our spirits able to interact with each other in some other realm that we're not familiar with. Are they capable of creating emotions like fear or angst among each other? Can they become friends? Or enemies we spend so much time trying to figure out if spirits are aware of us that we've never stopped to consider if they're aware of each other. One of the most interesting evps I've ever heard perhaps helps answer some of those questions. It was a context that I've never heard before in any EVP from any group of investigators, not even on the paranormal TV shows. We believe we captured a recording of a spirit Sarah, talking to other spirits. In the house. We were doing a walk through of the paint house as we usually do when there are any guests or investigators new to the building with all the lights on and very little equipment set up, we like to take a quick tour of the House so people can sort of get an idea of the layout and what the rooms look like before we go dark. And as always, Julie, one of Rise's finest investigators, was walking with the group recording the entire trip on her handheld video. Julie always has the camera running because you never know what you're going to miss. And while the group of us were walking up the stairs on the audio from the video camera in the background off in the distance, you can hear Sarah's voice informing someone. Of their spirits, we presume. That we were coming. If you listen closely behind all of our talking and banging around. You can hear the little girl's voice saying they're coming, they're coming. Now the question remains. Who was Sarah talking to? And were they happy about us being there? If you'd like to hear all the audio clips from this week's episode, and maybe a bonus one, head over to the latest blog section on the website at my paranormal story.net Next week on Paint House Part 2, I'll tell you about what happened when I brought a skeptic friend into the paint house, plus a rocking chair that rocked with no one in it. And if I can get Ken Dcosta, the founder of Rise up Paranormal to join me, I'll have him talk about the apparition of a little girl he saw and possibly captured on video during an investigation. My paranormal story is written, produced and narrated by me. Tom Stewart. Music from this episode, courtesy of [email protected]. If you enjoy my stories and would like to support the podcast, you can go to buymeacoffee.com/my paranormal or just click on the donate button on my website at my paranormal story.com I also have T-shirts and coffee mugs for sale. Unfortunately, podcasts cost money and your support helps me keep this podcast running. Thank you for your support. Please don't forget to subscribe so you'll know when I've added new episodes and feel free to follow me on Facebook and Instagram. Just search for my paranormal story. If you have a podcast and you'd like to have me as a guest, or if you would like to ask me a question or tell me your paranormal story, you can e-mail me at [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Tom Stewart and this is my paranormal story.