024 - Belcourt Castle Part 1

​I kept feeling like I was seeing shadows out of the corner of my eyes and the hair in my arms and neck were standing up. Suddenly I started feeling nauseous as the bed started shaking. I knew it was time to leave this room. I'm Tom Stewart and this is my paranormal story. Before I start this week's podcast, I just want to promote a charitable event that takes place every year here in Rhode Island. It's called the ocean state Paracon, and it's two days of fun, paranormal related events and people. There's meet and greets and Q&A sessions and dozens of vendors, plus many well known personalities from the paranormal field, including Amy Bruni from Kindred spirits, Dustin Perry from ghost hunters, Joe Chen from Ghost Hunters International just to. Name a few. And there'll be opportunities to go on ghost hunts and learn some history about Rhode Island. Plus all the proceeds go to the Friends Way, a nonprofit bereavement program for children. It's a great cause, and if you're interested in attending it takes place July 13th and 14th at the Assembly theatre in Harrisville, RI and you can get more info and tickets at rise up paranormal.com. Now here's this week's podcast. Of all the places I've been lucky enough to investigate during my time with rise up paranormal, none have ever reassured my beliefs in the paranormal more than Belcourt Castle. Known today as Belcourt of Newport, it's one of the many famous mansions known to tourists in Newport, RI. It was built in the late 1800s for Oliver Belmont, who hired renowned architect Richard Morris Hunt to build him a summer home for him and his many prized horses. Hunt was the same architect responsible for many other mansions in the United States, including some in Newport like the Breakers and Marble House. He also designed the facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Pedestal on which the Statue of Liberty stands. But for Mr. Belmont, Hunt was tasked at building basically. A bachelor pad, just a space suited for him and his horses. The ground floor consisted of an enormous carriage room with large stables connected to a large courtyard with smooth brick pavement. Belmont himself only requested a small bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen for his quarters. But several years later, the bachelor fell in love with his newly divorced neighbor, Alva Vanderbilt. And once married, she took it upon herself to change Belcourt into a beautiful mansion suitable for formal parties and elegant social gatherings. The ground floor's carriage room was transformed into a huge. Banquet hall and extravagant bedrooms and living spaces were built for many family and guests. Mr. Belmont passed away in 1908 and the family eventually sold the mansion in 1940 to George Waterman for only $1000. He intended to turn the mansion into an automobile museum, but he couldn't get the proper zoning permissions and ended up selling it soon after. The mansion would pass through a couple more families and even stood vacant for many years until 1956, when the mansion was sold once again, this time to the Tinney family of Cumberland, RI, for a mere $25,000. The Tinney family quickly moved in and changed the name to Belcourt Castle. And they filled their new home with a vast collection of antiques and artifacts and eventually made part of the mansion a museum and event hall. The last of the Tinney family to live in the mansion was Harley Tinny, who became our tour guide, local historian and good friend. Mrs. Tinney often hosted events at Belcourt Castle. Everything from glamorous parties to historical reenactments and she would give tours of the building's antiques, architecture and the ghosts. Most of the paranormal activity at Belcourt Castle, she believed was attached to the antiques that they had in the building. It's believed that spirits will sometimes haunt objects, not just locations. The spirits will attach themselves to an object, perhaps something that was of great importance to them when they were alive. And these can be anything from paintings to furniture, mirrors, and especially personal items. And there was no shortage of these amazing items. To see at Belcourt. Literally thousands and thousands of rare and interesting pieces from Napoleon's tea set to the crowns of former monarchies. Plus enormous hand carved jade sculptures, a handmade Stagecoach, suits of armor, jewelry, furniture, pottery. There was so much stuff that some of it wasn't even on display because there was simply not enough room. And the mansion itself was a sight to see from the Grand Staircase to the ballrooms to the stained glass windows and fun stuff like secret doors in the library and the underground tunnel. It was a paranormal investigators theme park. Unfortunately, today most of the artifacts and antiques are gone. In 2012, Mrs. Tinney sold Belcourt Castle and most of its contents to the founder and CEO of Jewelry company Alex and Ani Carolyn Rafaelian for 3.6 million. Mallers most of the artifacts have been sold off now or donated or put into storage so that the mansion can be restored to the way it looked when Alva Belmont originally lived there. And As for the ghosts, well, with the removal of the many artifacts, so too went most of the ghosts. Plus, for good measure, Rafaelian reportedly brought in a shaman to cleanse the entire mansion of any remaining spirits that might still be lingering. The day Mrs. Tinney asked rise up paranormal to investigate her home, her mansion. Was the day that changed all of us? It was more than just an investigation. It was the start of a beautiful relationship with her and the mansion. Each time we visited, we treated Belcourt as if it were our home, showing total respect to the history, the artifacts, and the spirits. I think it was this respect that led Mrs. Tinney to not only trust us enough to investigate unsupervised, but also to end up hosting public investigations for an entire summer. It turned out to be a unique opportunity for us to conduct an uninhibited study of the paranormal one that solidified my belief in the park. Belcourt Castle has so much history, so many claims and so many stories from caretakers and visitors, and Mrs. Tinney herself, like the legend of a monk who would appear from time to time in the Grand Hall and in the Chapel seen by many different people. Or the apparition? Of a woman in a formal gown in the ballroom. Or the Italian knight screaming from his suit of armor. And the man who supposedly is buried alive in the foundation of the mansion. With so many stories in over 60 rooms and locations inside the mansion we had. Our work cut out for us. I remember one of the first legends I wanted to investigate was the Gothic throne chairs in the ballroom. They were also known as salt chairs because in medieval times, kings and Lords would sit on chairs with high backs and arms, while everyone else sat on benches. And the seats of the throne chairs would lift up so that the king could store valuables inside like spices and salts. The legend of the two salt chairs at Belcourt Castle was that if you tried to sit in one of the chairs, a spirit would push you off of it. When I first approached one of the salt chairs, I didn't sit down right away. But I slowly sat down on the chair, wondering if I would get pushed off. I sat there for a moment or two waiting. But aside from being uncomfortable. I didn't feel anything unusual about the chair. Nobody pushed me off. But I did notice that when I put my K2 meter next to the chair. It gave off strong electromagnetic readings. And this was true for both chairs and very unusual. One of the things we always do during investigations is we set up infrared cameras, especially in areas where paranormal activity is common. The cameras can see in the dark where our eyes can't and the footage can be recorded onto a central DVR system for reviewing later. And we always. Had IR cameras recording at Belcourt Castle. One of the hot spots was this long hallway that ran along the side of the balcony. Over the ballroom. We set up an IR camera on the other end of the hallway, facing the doorway. And we just let it record for the entire night. The doorway had a rather large and heavy old wooden door attached to it that for all my experiences at Belcourt, was always open. But on this night, once we reviewed the video footage, we noticed the big wooden door slowly closing with no one there. And what was interesting was at the time of the door closing, I was in the servants bedroom with a couple of other investigators doing an EVP session. This room was right to the left. Of the doorway. And on my audio from that room, you can faintly hear the sound of the door creaking, and me saying did I just hear a door close? And then one of the other investigators says. I think someone just closed. The door in the hallway. But as the video footage shows, there was. No one in the hallway. You can check out the video of this door closing by itself in the blog section of my website at my paranormal story.net Another one of the rooms at Belcourt Castle that I always found especially interesting and active was that servants quarters I mentioned. That's next to that door that. Closed by itself. The servants quarters were a couple of small bedrooms way up on the third floor at the top of a shaky circular staircase that was actually pretty scary on its own. These bedrooms were closed to the public and mostly used for storage at this point, but one of the bedrooms still had some original furniture in it. Old twin sized bed. Small wooden bed stand. Tall wooden Bureau and a chair or. Just a simple bedroom that a maid or servant once lived in. Now I don't. Know what it was about this bedroom. But there was never any shortage of activity in there. There were no antiques or artifacts up there, so I'm not sure who would be haunting this room. But just about every audio recording I ever took in there sounded like it had whispering in it, and the room was always warm and stuffy with little to no ventilation. Just a single window with plastic over it and the room always felt as if someone was watching you. I remember one night while investigating there was a big rainstorm outside just heavy downpours all night. So bad that at the end of the night, before leaving the water in the courtyard had gotten so deep it started flooding into the library through the patio doors and we all sprung into action moving furniture and books out of the way and spent the night pushing the water with brooms and mops. Like I said, we treated Belcourt Castle. Like it were our own. But on this particular night. I remember going up to the servants bedroom with a couple of other investigators. Now I don't know if the rain had anything to. Do with it. But until this night, I had never felt uneasy about any of the rooms at Belcourt Castle, especially the servants bedroom. But on this night the room seemed darker than usual. And a bit more humid too. It was like the air was thicker than usual. I sat on the edge of the bed with my audio recorder and like many times before the three of us conducted an EVP session. But after only a few minutes I started feeling strange. A little bit lightheaded. Something just wasn't right. I'm feeling like I was seeing shadows out of the corner of my eyes. And the hair on my arms and neck were standing up. I asked the other guys if they felt weird too and they both agreed. We decided that we didn't feel welcome in this room, so we began to wrap up the EVP session. When suddenly I felt the bed start to shake and vibe. And I started feeling a little nauseous too. Like that feeling you get after being on a spinny carnival ride. I asked one of the other investigators to sit on the bed and sure enough they could feel the vibration too. I knew it was time to leave. So we quickly and quietly apologized for intruding on whoever was in that room and made our way back downstairs sometimes actually all the time. When it comes to paranormal investigation, you should trust your instincts. One of my favorite rooms in Belcourt Castle is the music room located on the 2nd floor. This room was supposedly where many of the children from several families who lived in the house played and learned music. There were several instruments on display, including a couple of pianos, a harp and other instruments. This room always gave me a feeling of happiness like you could almost feel the spirits of children playing in there and there were many claims of people hearing and sometimes seeing children in this room, especially that of a mischievous little girl. One with the reputation of pulling women's hair. That's something we'll delve into on Part 2 of this podcast next week, but during our investigations of the music room, we always felt as if someone else was in there with us that they were being shy. Kind of hiding from us. We conducted several EVP sessions in there or electronic voice phenomena hoping to catch audio of a voice on our recorders. And one night we captured audio of what sounds like a little girl playing in the background. Listen closely.
 
I feel like there's somebody that's sitting right behind me. I swear to God, really.
 
Here it is again, a little louder.
 
I feel like there's somebody sitting right behind me. I swear to God really.
 
Next week on Part 2 of my story about Belcourt Castle, I'll tell you about the accidental case study we ended up conducting when Mrs. Tinney allowed us to host public investigations every weekend for an entire summer. Different groups of people would join us every weekend, and we would document all of their experiences. And there were many experiences and many EP's to share, and I'll have many of those for you next week. On Part 2 of Belcourt Castle. To learn more about. Belcourt Castle you can go to belcourt.com. You can also find Mrs. Tinnea's book The Ghosts of Belcourt Castle on Amazon.com, and of course you can hear more EVP's from this investigation and many others at rise up paranormal.com. My paranormal story is written, produced and narrated by me. Tom Stu. Music from this episode, courtesy of [email protected]. I recently added a donate button to my website myparanormalstory.net. Because podcasts cost money and I want to keep mine ad free, I'm hoping that you'll consider donating even just a little bit would help, thanks. My paranormal story is based on real life events experienced by me. I put out new stories every Wednesday, or at least I tried to. So please subscribe or follow me for updates on Facebook or Instagram. Just search for my paranormal story. Please feel free to leave feedback or comments about any of my stories, and of course I would love a 5 star rating too. You can also e-mail me at [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Tom Stewart and this is my paranormal story.