SCHUYLKILL COUNTY, Pa. — JAM Paranormal received a call in mid-August from a homeowner who had moved out of his two-story residence in Schuylkill County, Pa., due to the activity going on in his home.

JAM Paranormal was asked to come in and investigate to (1) find out what is going one and (2) find out how to get rid of what’s going on.

Going into the investigation, JAM Paranormal had several goals, but the biggest goal was making the homeowner and his girlfriend more comfortable with the home so that way they could move back in.

After two investigations, JAM Paranormal has been able to do just that, but this case is still open. Due to the amount of information gathered and the multiple investigations, this report will be broken into a few segments.

History/Case Details
The homeowner, who will be named, “Client 1” for this report to protect his identity, bought a small home in a secluded, wooded area of Schuylkill County. The home is located near an old abandoned farmhouse that was built in 1920. He’s lived in the home for four years and Client 1 completely remodeled the home that sit about a half-mile off the main road. It’s pretty isolated, but Client 1 says he loves it out there. He enjoys the wilderness and this home was perfect for him.

First Experience
He moved into the home with a former girlfriend and the first experience came when he was sleeping downstairs waiting for his grandfather and father to come over to hunt. They were expected to be there at 5 a.m., so when Client 1 awoke to noises from the garage, he thought it was his grandfather and father arriving. The fact that it was still really dark didn’t matter to him because they were expected to arrive at 5 a.m. But then, he looked outside and didn’t see their truck. He turned around to look at the clock and saw it was 3:02 a.m. He walked over to the basement where his dog sleeps in a cage, but heard footsteps dragging. The dog was barking and then the house went crazy. The garage door started opening and slamming close; the sounds of objects being tossed around in the basement echoed and Client 1 ran upstairs to call 9-11. The 9-11 operator heard all the noises going on and informed the responding officers to hurry. The activity stopped before the police arrive and when they did get there, there was no sign of a break-in. There was nothing out of place. Nothing missing.

“I felt so embarrassed,” he said in an interview. “For the longest time, I just thought it was an attempted break-in.”

It Didn’t Stop There
About two months later, things started happening.

Client 1 reported a humming sound that would come out of nowhere. He would turn off the TV and still hear it coming from upstairs. A few days later, he started smelling a strong perfume. He’d try to find the scent, but it was hard to track because it was like it was moving around.

A couple weeks later, they begin to hear whispering sounds as they sleep, followed by seeing shadows move in the dark.

At this point, Client 1 begins to question what is going on in his home. He’s never believed in the paranormal because he had never experienced it before this. Still, nothing was harming him or his girlfriend, so he let it go.

Activity continued to grow in his home with kitchen cabinet doors opening and closing as they try to sleep.

“You’d never see it, but you’d hear it,” he said.

Footsteps persisted and Client 1’s dog would continually bark at nothing and lock eyes with something that wasn’t visible to Client 1.

But then, he and his then-girlfriend broke up and for about three months, the activity died down. She was into Tarot cards, so Client 1 thought that it may have had something to do with it.

Still, activity continued after she left. A bottle cap flew off his coffee table and at his TV while he was watching it. The sound of a music box would echo throughout the house, but Client 1 doesn’t own one.

After a few months, he finds a new girlfriend and he doesn’t tell her about the activity in the house. She will be named “Client 2” in this report to protect her identity.

Both Client 1 and 2 were lying on the couch one night watching TV when a tri-fold pamphlet on the cable table opened up on its own and closed. Both saw it but hesitated to say anything. Client 1 thought Client 2 didn’t see it so he thought he could let it go, but then she turned to him and asked if he saw it.

The next weekend a sink turned on by itself and then the cabinets began opening and closing again. Client 2 is present for these occurrences. She hears the music box and she smells the perfume.

The Old Farmhouse
Client 1 has been in the old abandoned farmhouse. It’s about 100 yards from his home and it’s right along the dirt driveway that leads up to the front of his home. Inside that home, he would see a swirling white mist move around that left a sulfur smell in its wake.

Client 1 took a photo of his brother in this farmhouse and the mist appeared. When you look at this photo you can clearly see the spiral, but also, in the background you can make out a face with a body. Matrixing (the mind’s ability to try to make sense of something, therefore creating an illusion) is possible here, but this is a very intriguing photo to us. Matrixing doesn’t often include a very symmetrical face. Typically, in a classic case of matrixing, you’ll make out the shape of a face, but it won’t be perfect. In this photo, the big eyes are proportional, as is the shape of the cheeks, chin, nose and mouth.

Can we say with 100 percent certainty that this photo is evidence of the paranormal, no. But I must say that it’s very close to 100 percent. It’s a rather amazing piece of evidence.

The old farmhouse is deteriorating and is completely un-inhabitable, so it was only a place that Client 1 would go in to look around. The wood is rotting and probably should be torn down at some point. Nonetheless, due to the photo and the disturbing smell emitting from this mist, JAM Paranormal had to consider this and include it in its investigation.

Still, there was nothing in the old farmhouse that made the Clients feel like they had to leave their own home.

The Last Night
All the little occurrences didn’t scare the Clients out of their house. It was just one wild night that led them to pack their bags and leave.

On this night, they both felt uneasy going to bed. Client 1 explained how he could feel tension in the air as the cabinets are slamming once again while they try to sleep. They both hear a loud moan that startles them as they try to fall asleep. Client 2 begins to ask for the light to be turned on as they sleep, and she’s asking, Client 1 hears footsteps scrape across the carpet up to his bed. There’s nothing there. He gets up to turn the light on — which requires going downstairs as the whole upstairs is the master bedroom. There isn’t a door to the room, just the stairs leading to the open bedroom.

He turns the light on, returns to bed and she falls asleep. Client 1 flips over, facing outward, away from Client 2, to fall asleep. After 15 minutes of fading in and out, he feels a constant tapping on his shoulder. He turns over to see her asleep, but she was lying on her side. This was his testimonial report given to JAM Paranormal on Aug. 19, 2011.

“I saw the scariest thing. She was lying on her side with her eyes wide open, mouth open. She was screaming and her arms were at her side. I didn’t know if she was seizing. I put my arm underneath her shoulder. … Her both was stiff.”

He tried his best to wake her and then she stopped “seizing.”

“She just smiles,” he says. “It wasn’t her smile. It was like an evil smile. And then boom, she snapped out of it. I’m freaked out; she’s freaked out.”

The Clients tried to explain it away as a case of sleep paralysis, but they were sure that it was something paranormal.

Two and half months later, after doing research on local paranormal research groups, Client 1 contacted JAM Paranormal and we came in to conduct a pair of investigations in the fall.

Findings

(Breaking tradition, we’re going to put our findings first, followed by a detailed analysis of the two investigations.)

There is no doubt that the Clients in this case are dealing with paranormal activity. We caught enough compelling evidence to support this, including audio and video. The personal experiences were numerous, as well.

However, none of the experiences or any of the voices caught on audio suggest that there is a negative energy in the home. The old farmhouse may have something negative in it, but we feel that the home does not have any malevolent spirits.

We feel the scariest experience that forced them to move out can be explained through sleep paralysis. We do believe that there was a lot of paranormal activity that night, but we believe the stress associated with that caused Client 2 to have a wild experience of sleep paralysis.

One of the reasons why they thought it wasn’t sleep paralysis was because of what Client 1 witnessed of Client 2, but after conducting some research, we found that partners of victims of sleep paralysis have reported odd noises or screams, odd facial expressions and a motionless body.

This all goes in line with what the Clients described. The research also found that sleep paralysis tends to occur when a person is stressed out. Prior to falling asleep, both Clients were dealing with a lot of paranormal activity and Client 2 was particularly scared on this evening before going to sleep. This may explain why this happened.

We gave the Clients a few options to make things a little more comfortable when going to bed to prevent any more bouts with sleep paralysis. The key is to cut down on the stress, and the best way to do that is to prevent non-paranormal occurrences from being perceived as paranormal.

First, I told the Clients to get a plug-in night light for the bedroom. Being in the middle of the woods, there is no light that comes in at night so the room is pitch dark and your eyes tend to play tricks on you. You may be seeing shadows move, or your mind may just be trying to make sense of the darkness. To prevent this, we suggested installing a nightlight. This way, the mind can’t create shadow figures.

Secondly, it is an older home that does have mice in the basement and possibly in the walls. We did hear a few while investigating. While trying to sleep, they’d hear noises and immediately think it was paranormal. My suggestion was for the Clients to get a box fan. They don’t necessarily have to have the fan pointing at them, but the key was to have it on. It’s humming sound will drown out small noises that may or may not be paranormal. This hum will allow them to go to sleep easier.

Thirdly, and this was primarily for Client 2 because she was more worried than Client 1 — and, of course, because it was her who experienced sleep paralysis — we suggested that she try to calm herself before sleep by, perhaps, reading a book. A nice, non-scary book can help a person get to sleep faster because it stimulates the mind and gets the mind ready for a dream cycle.

These three steps should make sleeping much easier for the two.

Being able to explain the scariest experience as something that was not negative — a possession, as they once feared — and at the same time being able to provide steps toward preventing that from happening again, we were able to convince the Clients that it was OK to move back in. We are happy to report that they are currently working to move back into the home.

This will allow us to continue to investigate with them as they live in the home. We can begin to document any occurrences through them as they live there, something we were unable to do when we were initially contacted because they had already moved out. 

We were able to debunk a few other claims, but for the most part, we were able to capture evidence that supported many of the Clients’ claims.

We also will continue to investigate a new mystery that arose in the second investigation, where several experiences and EVPs pointed us toward the field behind the Clients’ home.

Link to Investigation 1

Link to Investigation 2

Investigation Details

Breaking from our normal tradition of posting the history, followed by the investigation details and then the findings, we have just the history and findings on this page. The investigations are detailed on separate pages because there's a lot of information to absorb here.

Quick Links to Investigations:

Investigation 1

Investigation 2 (Will Post Soon)