From: jesster@in.net (Lloyd D. Jessee)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: There’s Ecto in them there walls!
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 1994 19:15:39 LOCAL
Okay, real experience ghost stories…..
My two best stories come from when I was in college at Vincennes, Indiana ( small town in Vigo County, near Evansville and Paoli, for those of you interested). A quick walk across some bridge (whose name I can’t remember ) would take you into Illinois. Well, I was the local authority on ghosts and stuff (mostly because everyone else knew nothing) and one of my friends wanted me to go to this house known as “haunted” in his hometown just inside Illinois. Well, I asked him what was so special about this house, and I got the traditional urban legend ghostly hitchhiker and wailing woman stories as well as the house “Just being creepy”. (Not much to hang a paranormal hat on. is it?) But since he seemed sincerely interested in learning about paranormal research, three friends of mine and I went to said haunted house.
Now, I don’t know how to explain it, but I’ve always had a sixth-like sense that told me if there was anything there or not, and when we very first saw the house, it didn’t go off. It was a single story house with two wings off a central core. The grass wasn’t particulary overgrown, and the house itself looked like it was in fairly good condition. (Even though I know better, I still always expect a haunted house to look dilapidated, skeletal and eerie.) We went in around sundown ( all the better not to get caught trespassing my dear) and situated ourselves in the living room. I went from room to room and explored, not much there. There were a few pieces of furniture, and the classic abandoned house graffiti, and one painting on the wall. It appered to be an oil, and the subject was an aprrox 19th century portraiture of a female. (Estimation based on clothing on subject, as well as crack deterioration of the paint) Thermometers were placed in about one in every other room, and our start temp was 87 degrees F. All windows were still in good repair, and no noticeable drafts were detected with a candle test.
We were there probably until two or three, and I was getting bored because the only real interesting thing that had happened so far was that my friends had scared themselves witless telling ghost stories. Around 3:30 am or so, I went through and checked my themometers again, and in the farthest room it was 86 degrees F, and as I moved closer to the center of the house, the colder it got. The living room was 56 degrees when I got back. At this point the friend who had brought me here began baling about the wailing woman story before, and pointed frantically at the wall. In trying to calm him down, I dismissed what he was saying until one of the other people brought it to my attention. On the wall was that painting, and from top to bottom, a blood-like substance was running in rivulets. It never fell to the wall or the floor, though, it was like it ran from the top, and into a deep reservoir at the bottom. I took probably thirty pictures of the phenomena, then took an herb oil bottle and collected a specimen. I took the painting down, turned it over, and popped the canvas and backing out of the frame. There were no devices in the frame or backing and when I laid the canvas down, it was clean and dry. The wall where it had hung was slighly paler, but not much, and I could dig several centimeters into the drywall with a penknife and hit no hidden holes, etc.
Against my better judgement, everyone had decided that this was not a place they were wanting to be, and they wouldn’t let me carry the paintng back in their car, so all I had to show for it were some pictures that came back too fuzzy, too exposed or too dark to be of any use, as well as my specimen bottle. I took it back to my dorm, sealed the top off with wax, and froze it.
My sixth sense haunt ping never went off until the temperature dropped, which was kind of unusual. I’ve been in a haunted but dormant house before, and the sense still pings, but this one was like it was hiding. My guess is that the picture was haunted, although that does not explain why other rooms exhibited the chill factor. As a note, I still have that bottle. I unfroze it two years later to give it to a medical student who could verify if it was blood and what kind. He came back saying it was not typable ( he couldn’t find a specific type) and he said it was consistent with human menstrual blood. Pretty sick. I searched background, and couldn’t find anything odd about the site, and the painting was gone when I went back recently.
All of this happed in August 1991, and the blood in the bottle is still liquid. This is the most solid, and the most lusive case I ever worked on. Proof, but really of nothing.
Saundra Jessee