025 - Belcourt Castle Part 2

​The thought of something you can't see touching you in the dark is, well, frightening. But it's something you have. To be prepared for when you're a paranormal investigator. But what we weren't prepared for? Was for people getting touched week after week. I'm Tom Stewart and this is my paranormal story. Before I start Part 2 of Belcourt Castle, I want to promote a charitable event that takes place every year 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, Q&A sessions and dozens of vendors, plus many well known personalities from the paranormal field this year, including Amy Bruni from Kindred spirits Dustin Perry from Ghost Hunters. And Joe Chin from Ghost Hunters International. Just to name a few. There will also be opportunities to go on ghost hunts and learn some history about Rhode Island and all the proceeds go to the friends way. A non profit bereavement program for children. If you're interested in attending it takes place July 13th and 14th at the Assembly Theatre in Harrisville, RI. You can get tickets and more info. And rise up paranormal.com. And now here's Part 2 of Belcourt Castle. It's one thing when you're investigating a haunted location and you have experiences like shadows, EVP's or being touched, but it's another thing when other people come into that same place and have many of the same experiences as you. And that's exactly what started to happen to us while we were investigating Belcourt Castle. Being invited to Belcourt Castle, like I said in part one of the podcast, it was one of the best experiences I've ever had. Rise up, paranormal has always prided themselves on being friendly and professional. And for Mrs. Tinney Belcourt, Castle wasn't just a museum. It was her home. All 60 plus rooms of it. She lived there most of her life. She helped remodel it. She decorated it and for many years was the sole caretaker for it. And we knew that investigating Belcourt Castle was something we needed to take serious and to be thankful for the magnitude of such an opportunity never escaped us. But what we experienced throughout an entire summer was something few, if any, paranormal investigation teams ever get to experience. After investigating Belcourt Castle on our own a few times, we revealed our findings to Mrs. Tinney and over that short span we developed a nice relationship with her. We impressed her enough that she was open to the idea of letting rise up paranormal host. Public investigations at the mansion. Every weekend for an entire summer, paranormal teams, tourists and paranormal enthusiasts would make a small donation to Mrs. Tinney's Foundation, and they'd be allowed to investigate the mansion for a night with our supervision. Each weekend we would set up our cameras and audio equipment just like any other investigation, and we would break up into teams with one or two of us from rise up. Paranormal leading a group of outsiders through and around the mansion. Now, many groups brought their own equipment, like audio recorders, video cameras and K2 meters. But those who? Didn't bring anything with them. Were always welcome to borrow some of our equipment. And we were. Happy to give quick lessons about how the equipment worked and how to use it properly. And we made sure that everyone followed certain guidelines and rules just so that everyone would be safe, and that everything inside Belcourt was respected, including the spirits. Each week we had great people joining us for these public investigations. We ended up making new friends and possibly even turned a few skeptics into believers. Because Belcourt never let us down. Week after week, our visitors would beam with stories about what they experienced. A shadow sighted here. A noise heard there. Someone being touched. But what amazed us the most was how similar everyone's experiences were. To the point where we decided to start documenting each guests experiences by giving them small surveys to fill out after they've visited different areas of the mansion. We wanted to get their description of what happened and what they experienced as fresh as possible, so as soon as they were done in one area, we had them write it down on paper and then we'd send them off to another area. They'd be able to describe their experiences, what they saw, what they felt, what they touched. And after a couple of months of collecting these surveys, we started realizing that many people were having the same experiences in the same places. Our summer of public investigations at Belcourt Castle suddenly became a case study of the paranormal. As more and more people were having experiences, the more likely it was that what was being experienced wasn't a coincidence. It was paranormal. We always made it a point to not discuss past experiences in any of the areas of the mansion before bringing teams in. We made a concerted effort to keep power of suggestion out of the equation. And for the most part, none of our guests even knew each other week to week. They were all pretty much independent witnesses of paranormal activity. Each week we purposely wanted everyone to have an unbiased experience in each area of the mansion so that we could compare week to week what was happening. One of the things we noticed many guests had in common were the evps. They were capturing evps or electronic voice phenomena. It's one of voices picked up on an audio recorder or video recorder, usually in response to a question or situation. It got to a point that summer that when the guests would share their evps with us, we would already know what room they were in when they recorded it. We actually started to recognize the voices and sounds that were being recorded. There were several different recordings of a little girl's voice, always captured on audio in the music room on the 2nd floor, similar to the EVP you heard in part one of the podcast. Then there were always strange bangs or knocks being recorded in the old stables area. Perhaps a residual sound of. Someone working in the stables. Residual hauntings are usually just a sound that's playing itself over and over again through the years. It's not an intelligent spirit or entity, but more like an imprint on time, like a record skipping over and over again. Still paranormal, but different from, say, a spirits EVP. Here's one of those banging evps. Here it is again. Another EVP that seemed to be familiar was always recorded in the master bedroom of a male voice. The master bedroom was once Mr. and Mrs. Tinney's bedroom. For many years it was a beautifully decorated room with A4 post canopy bed, a huge private bathroom and vanity area. It was like a room for royalty. It was eventually turned into a room used by brides to change and get ready during wedding receptions, but it still had most of the original furniture in it. And while investigating in the master bedroom, many teams would catch the voice of a man usually sounding curious about the devices they would be carrying. We played the evps for Mrs. Tinney, but she didn't recognize the voice as her late husband or any other relatives, so we aren't sure who the male voice belongs to. But here's a recording of that voice. You're going to hear some investigators voices in the background, probably from the hallway or the next room, but you'll also hear another voice, a slow, deep voice asking a question. Listen closely. Could you make out what he was asking? To us, it sounds like he's saying turn the weapons off or take the weapons off. We think he may be referring to the different gadgets and tools that we use for paranormal investigation to someone who lived many years ago. The things we're carrying around with us today like K2 meters and video cameras and audio recorders. They might very well look like weapons to him, so it makes sense, kind of that he would be asking to take the weapons off. Here's that EVP again. Another reoccurring experience our guests would have during the public investigations was being touched. Now I've done dozens and dozens of paranormal investigations. And I can tell. You this. It's very rare that you'll ever actually feel like a spirit has touched you. It's happened to me probably two or three times in all of my experiences. And it can make you a little uneasy. All right, for some people, it's downright scary. I mean, the thought of someone or something that you can't see, being able to touch you in the dark. Yeah, that's pretty frightening. But as a paranormal investigator, you have to be ready for anything. And running or panicking in a situation like that is actually more dangerous than any spirit that can touch you. So we always made it clear to all of our guests during the public investigations that no matter what happens, even if something touches you. Just say something and we'll turn on a light. We'll leave the room. Just let us know and we'll address it safely and calmly. And it did happen several times during the summer. Luckily, everyone did remain calm and safe, and in some cases the person would actually think it was someone in the room. Touching them, you know, not a spirit. But what was so interesting about people being touched at Belcourt wasn't just how many times it happened, but that it was always happening in the same room and always to females. It was the music. Room on the 2nd floor, as I described in part one. It was a small room compared to most of. The other rooms. And it wasn't uncommon for people to feel the presence of a little girl or for people to catch EVP's that sounded like a little girl talking or humming. Without a doubt. There was most likely a spirit of a. Little girl trapped. In that room. And apparently she also liked pulling hair. Without ever mentioning it to our guests, we could almost count on at least one woman feeling like their hair got pulled while investigating the music room. We even set up an infrared camera in the room so that husbands and boyfriends wouldn't get in trouble because in a lot of the. Cases the women thought it was their significant other playing a prank on them trying to scare them. But it wasn't mischievous boyfriends and husbands doing the hair pulling it was a spirit. Perhaps the. Little girl. Now when I say hair pulling. It wasn't anything violent or rough. It was just a little tug, as if to say here I am, or look at me. But think about this. Week after week, we would bring in guests to Belcourt Castle. People who never spoke to each other didn't know each other, and we would purposely not tell them anything about hair possibly being pulled in the music room. And week after week, someone's hair would get bold. Someone or something was purposely pulling the hair of women in that music room. Here's one of the recordings of a guest who was with me during an EVP session in the music room one night and her reacting to her hair being.
 
Pulled something. Just touched my hair.
 
OK, don't be afraid.
 
Oh my gosh. She turned on him. Just like the light.
 
You can probably hear in her voice how startled she was and that it was an experience she'll likely never forget. And just one of many, during our impromptu case study of Belcourt Castle that convinced me that spirits. And if there are any paranormal TV show producers out there listening, how about this? How about a ghost hunting show that focuses on one haunted location for an entire season with different guests and different investigators coming in week after week, and then comparing all of their experiences at the end of? The season. A haunted case study TV show, just like we did at Belcourt Castle. If you like the idea, shoot me an e-mail. I'd love to be on TV. Or at least just give me a producers credit. To learn more about Belcourt Castle, you can go to belcourt.com. You can also find Mrs. Tinney'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. I want to quickly thank a few people for making donations to my podcast. I recently put up a donate button on my website myparanormalstory.net because I want to keep the show ad free. So a big thanks to Amy Lynn Lorendo, Melinda Peppler, and Tamara Rubbo for your recent donations. It helps a lot. Thank you very much. My paranormal story is written, produced and narrated by me, Tom Stewart music from this episode courtesy of Kevin MacLeod and incompetech.com. My paranormal story is based on real life events experienced by me. I put out new stories every Wednesday. At least I try, 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 a 5 star rating would really mean a lot to me. And you can also e-mail me at [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Tom Stewart and this is my paranormal story.