THE GHOST CLUB

The Ghost Club

This is one of my favorite topics on the paranormal!

 Being an investigator I consider these men our Founding Fathers. Anyone who is on a paranormal team is doing the same things as these distinguished gentlemen did. We are all in this to study the paranormal, but at the same time trying to preserve the field from charlatans.

The Ghost Club was started in 1855 in Cambridge by a few men from Trinity College. Some of the members through the years you may have heard of, Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Peter Cushing, Harry Price, Siegfried Sassoon, Donald Campbell, Peter Underwood, Maurice Grosse Sir Shane Leslie and Eric Maple.

The only downfall to the 54 years is no woman were allowed.

One of the clubs first investigations was of the Davenport Brothers and their “spirit cabinet” hoax. The Davenport Brothers were magicians and after hearing about the spiritual movement and the Fox sisters they started to report similar experiences. They built the spirit cabinet to be used by mediums during a séance. The cabinet would section the medium off from the crowd to see, sometimes their hands and feet would be bound while they performed their paranormal phenomena. The ghost club challenged the Davenports claim to contact the dead.

The club would meet and partake in investigations of the spiritualism phenomena and talk about ghostly subjects.

They remained active until 1855 when Charles Dickens died. It wasn’t until All Saints Day in 1882 when the club was finally revived by the famous medium Stainton Moses and Alfred Alaric Watts. The club remained exclusive through the years with only 82 members over the 54 years. The club was an organization of convinced believers in which the psychic phenomena was a fact, unlike the Society for Psychical Research was grounded in the scientific belief.

Some of their most notable investigations are The Borley Rectory and The Ancient Ram Inn.

Now The Ghost Club remained a selective and secretive organization of convinced believers that believed the psychic phenomena was an established fact, unlike SPR (Society for Psychical Research) that was founded around the same time as the Ghost Club, who’s beliefs where more grounded in the scientific. So, when the twentieth century brought the laboratory-based research, The Ghost Club’s séance room investigations made them fall out of touch with contemporary psychic research.

Harry Price, famous for his Borley Rectory investigations, joined in 1927 along with psychologist Dr. Nandor Fodor who was infamous as a leading authority on poltergeists, haunting and paranormal phenomena.

But with the attendance falling for The Ghost Club they closed in 1936 after 485 meetings. The records from The Ghost Club were sent to the British Museum under the provisions that they would remained sealed until 1962 for confidentiality reasons.

But in 18 months Harry Price relaunched The Ghost Club as a society dining event where psychic researchers and mediums could deliver after dinner talks. Price also at this time decided to allow women to join the club. Price wanted to specify that the club was not spiritualist church or association but a group of skeptics that gathered to talk about paranormal topics.

After Price’s death in 1948 the actual club was relaunched again. It went through many changes but did expand its study to UFO’s, dowsing, and cryptozoology.

The club continues to meet monthly at the Victory Services Club in London. They still have several investigations a year.

  

THE HINTERKAIFECK MURDERS

On March 31st 1922 on of the most ominous unsolved murders took place in Hinterkaifeck, Germany. 

Hinterkaifeck was the name of a small farm outside of Groebern, between the Bavarian towns of Ingolstadt and Schrobenhausen. This was the family farm of Andreas Gruber (63) and his wife Cazilia (72) and their widowed daughter Viktoria Gabriel (35), who was the official owner of the farm. And her two children Cazilia (7) and Joesf (2) plus the new maid Maria Baumgartner (44).

The family was fairly well-off and well-regarded but not very well liked. Andreas Gruber, in particular, was described as sullen, brutish and a loner. 

What happened leading up to the murders is what has baffled the world for decades. 

The victims, Andreas Gruber, his wife Cazilia, their widowed daughter Viktoria, her two children Cazilia and Josef, and the family maid Maria Baumgartner were murdered with a mattock, which is similar to a pickax, which has a long handle and a stout head. 

Six months prior to the murders Andreas Gruber maid had told him she could no longer work for him and stay in the house. The maid believed that the house was haunted and wanted nothing to do with it.  She was hearing footsteps coming from the attic and other noises that gave her many sleepless nights. The new maid Maria was only on the farm a few hours before she was murdered, not able to experience what the prior maid had. 

Mr. Gruber weeks later had told a few people in town that his maid had left believing that the house was haunted and how she would hear footsteps in the attic and around the house while everyone was in their rooms asleep. He told them that he had experienced the same thing one night when he was awakened by footsteps in the attic. Andreas woke Cazilia, who ran and grabbed his gun, but after inspecting the attic he found nothing. Something else odd happened on the farm that he told some of the people in town about. He told them about the footprints in the snow he had found. He had found tracks leading from the forest to his house and that there were no other footprints leading away from the house back into the forest. He had also mentioned how a set of house keys had went missing and he had found a newspaper unfamiliar with the farm. None of this was reported to the police. 

What happened on that Friday evening will forever be a mystery. It is said that Andreas, Cazilia, Viktoria and little Cazilia were one by one led into the barn where they were killed. The killer then went into the house and killed little Josef who was sleeping in his cot inside his mother’s room, then the killer went into the maid, Maria Baumgartner’s chamber and killed her. 

All of the corpses had been covered. Viktoria, her daughter and parents had been placed on top of each other in the barn and then covered with a door, which in turn was covered with hay. The maid, Maria, had been covered with her own bed cloth and little Josef was covered with one of his mother’s skirts. Experts say that since the killer tried to cover up the bodies means that the killer may have had a personal connection to the victims. 

Not hearing from the Gruber’s in days and young Cazilia not showing up for class on Monday or Tuesday the locals started to become suspicious. When they found out from the postman that the mail had been piling up the locals launched a search party through the woods and to the farm. After calling their names and not getting responses they started to search the farm itself.  The first place they check was the barn finding the bodies inside. One thing that unnerved the men was when they noticed Cazilia had torn clumps out of her hair. They went to the house next to find the bodies of the maid Maria and little Josef. 

  

The day after the bodies were discovered, April 5^th, an autopsy was performed in the barn by court physician Dr. Johann Baptist Aumuller. 

Autopsy results as described here:

§  Cazilia Gabriel (daughter Viktoria Gruber): lower jaw shattered, cervical injury due to shock, severe head injuries. Skull was smashed with several blows and her neck revealed a wide gaping, transverse wound. On the right of her face was a circular wound. Her face was smeared with blood. In her cramped right hand fingers were hair pieces.

§  Cazilia Gruber (wife of Andreas Gruber): bruising near the right eye, seven blows to her head, one in triangular shape. Signs of strangulation, skull cracked.

§  Viktoria Gabriel (mother of Cazilia and Josef): nine “star-shaped” wounds to the head, strangulation marks on the neck, right side of the face smashed with a blunt object. A small round injury of a pointed tool on the upper skull. Smashed skull.

§  Maria Baumgartner (maid): killed by crosswise blows to the head, face crusted with blood, one head wound was 4cm deep and blood-encrusted probably resulted from a sharp hoe.

§  Josef Gruber (son Viktoria Gruber): killed by a heavy blow in the face, top of the bassinet stroller destroyed.

§  Andreas Gruber (husband Cazilia Gruber): right half of the face smashed, cheek bones protruding, flesh seemed shredded, face caked with blood.

The autopsy found that the younger Cazilia had been alive for several hours after the attack. As she lay dying in the straw, next to the bodies of her grandparents and mother, she had torn out tufts of her hair. 

He had established that the murder weapon was a mattock or pickax. The bodies were then beheaded and the skulls sent to Munich where clairvoyants examined them with no results. 

The skulls were never returned and lost forever. They were most likely destroyed in WWII when the forensic department in Nuremburg had burned to the ground. 

There are many theories of why the family had been murdered. 

The police first suspected the motive to be robbery, leading the police to interrogated several suspects from the surrounding villages, as well as traveling craftsmen and vagrants. The robbery theory was, however, abandoned when a large amount of money was found in the house.

Another theory is that a man named Schlittenbauer was Josef’s father, but almost everyone in the village knew that Josef’s father was his real grandfather. But when he was questioned by the police, Schlittenbauer informed them that he knew that Andreas and his daughter were having and incestuous relationship and that Josef was a product of it.

 The death of Karl Gabriel, Viktoria's husband who had been reported killed in the French trenches in World War I, was called into question. The body of Karl had never been found. Even though most of his fellow soldiers swore that they had seen him and their stories were believed by police.

There are those who believe that the only explanation is a paranormal one. The former maid had quit because she was certain that the farm was haunted. She had been so frightened that she had quit. She had told Andreas and Cazilia about the strange sounds coming from the attic months before Andreas found the footprints leading to his house. This was months before Andreas had found the unfamiliar newspaper in his home, and months before he himself hearing the strange footsteps coming from attic nights before being murdered.

There are so many unanswered questions to this mystery. Could it have been paranormal or just a voyeur with a vendetta living in the home or near the farm just waiting? How could four people be lead to their death one by one and not put up a fight? How could they not have woken up the maid and little Josef? What even baffles the mind more is the killer or killers, even stayed on the farm over the weekend after the murders and fed the livestock, cooked, and ate food. The Gruber neighbors had reported even seeing smoke coming from the chimney. No money or valuables were taken. They even cared for the family dog.

The following year after the murders, locals had the farmstead destroyed. 

The murder weapon, the mattock, was found during demolition, despite the fact that the farm had been searched extensively and even by K9 units. 

A very productive summer for White Noise

Finally! It's been about a year since the White Noise Paranormal website has been operational but we've finally brought it back online! We had a very productive summer investigating and filming for the new season of our show. It's good to get back in the swing

The new long-sleeves are in!

The new long-sleeves are in! Click here to order your official White Noise Paranormal long-sleeve shirt! 

Guided Ghost Investigations: The First Event

 Luke Busselle Guided Ghost Investigations 

We started setting up all of our equipment around 11:30 pm. During the setup we overcame numerous problems with the cables but we had it all set up and ready to go by 12:30 am, Not too shabby. After investigating a while we all ended up sitting near the stage and we started to hear some strange noises. Our guest investigator for the night brought a fluke camera to use. She caught a heat signature on one of the chairs that looked as if someone was sitting in the chair. On the back of the chair was a man's name. Later on that night we were rolling up and saw name on the front of the projector rooms door which ended up to be the same name that was on the chair. 

After a while we made our way into the basement. There we set up the ghost box and started asking questions. It wasn't long at all until we started getting answers. After playing with the ghost box for time we decided to head back upstairs to investigate some noises that we were hearing. We made our way around the theater investigating what we could. The paranormal activity that we experienced that night was amazing. All in all it was a great investigation. Everybody had some sort of an experience that night and we all learned a bit about overcoming some of the most notorious DVR problems during setup.

Sleeping Beauty

 Post-Morteum Photography or Death Photography. This type of photography peaked in popularity in the early 19^th century. It was a way for a family to have a keepsake of a loved one that had passed, especially with infants and children due to the high mortality rate in the Victorian Era. With the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839 families that could not afford to sit for a painting portrait could far more afford a photography session.  When carte de vista was invented, which allowed multiple prints; families were able to send relatives photos of ones that had passed. There eventually became a shift in how Death Photography was viewed, death became viewed as a social discomfort and taking photos of the deceased became vulgar and taboo. 

The earlier Death Photos were of a loved one propped up in a casket, later it became more of an art form and the subject would be posed in various positions with their loved ones to look lifelike, or the subject looking as if they were in a deep sleep. Many of the photos of children were taken with their mothers or placed in a crib or bed with a favorite toy. Siblings were often photographed together. To get the effect that the subject was lifelike they would paint pupils on the photographic print, or propping the subjects eyes open.  In some photos a rosy tint was added to the cheeks. Sometimes the only way a person can tell the living from the dead in these photos are that the images of the living are sometimes blurred because of how long a photography session would last, this can be seen in many photo collections.

There are museums and private collectors that display these throughout the world. One of the most famous collections is called “Sleeping Beauty” which is housed at the Burns Archives in the United States http://www.burnsarchive.com/ another collection is from the Thantos Archive in Seattle Washington. http://thanatos.net/

What caused the shift of the dead being shown as something vulgar and not to be seen or talked about? The media shows us death every day. Being in the paranormal field and investigating the possibilities of life after death puts our type of research to some people as just that. On a few occasions I have had prospective clients say that they did not want people in their locations to research the possibility of ghost because they felt it was disrespectful. For example do you feel that investigating a location that a murder had occurred disrespectful? Would it be disrespectful to the surviving family members? Is it that they just want to forget?

-Raven

Trespassing and the Paranormal Investigator

I know that as a paranormal investigator it can be difficult to get into locations. I spend hours and hours on the internet and sometimes at the local library doing research on Historical locations in Washington State. There is a lot involved being a case manager for a team.  It can be also very hard to make those calls to business owners. You have to know the history of their location and figure out the right way to “pitch” an investigation to them. Every place is different so every call is not the same and its own challenge. I have learned over the years that you cannot take no personally. But I have also learned to ask why. When you ask why some of the answers may amaze you.  But because you might find it difficult to call or talk to a client in person and get the proper permission doesn’t mean you should trespass on their land late at night. This only makes us in the paranormal field look like we are willing to break the law. 

The one no this week that made me more angry than amazed was when a potential client said the historical committee said no of a filming and investigation  because of people in our field trespassing on their land. The location has a church with a cemetery next to it, so you can only imagine the temptation. She had told me that the local authorities spend too much of their time having to go and kick people off the land late at night for trespassing.  And on two occasions the property has even been vandalized. She never accused people in our field as being the culprits but the committee was just afraid that if more attention to their location was given that more people would trespass. I then spent the next twenty minutes trying to assure her that not everyone in the paranormal field trespasses, that most of us try and get the proper permission.  Luckily I was able to convince her to go and speak to the historical committee one more time and assure them that our team would be willing to sign release forms and respect their property. 

I will admit that when we first started out we went to cemeteries late at night.  Going to a cemetery or abandoned building late at night is a quick fix for your investigation itch. But after having to hide in bushes from police cars patrolling the area made me realize that what we were doing was breaking the law. Most cemeteries have signs posted that there is to be no trespassing after dark. Abandoned buildings are owned by someone, and trespassing on their land without permission is illegal. You might get lucky and find a place that is owned by the City or Parks Department and you are able to call them up and ask if you can be there after dusk and explain to them what you are doing. 

When White Noise did the anniversary investigation of the Everett Massacre I called the local authorities and asked if we could be at that location. The officer in charge saw no problem with it since it was city property, plus I explained to him exactly what we were doing. He was even nice enough to tell the officers on patrol that night that we would be there. You would be amazed how people react to what you are asking and a conversation about the paranormal and their experiences with it starts. More people than you think are interested in this field than you know. 

I have seen many teams post photos of cemeteries and abandoned buildings on their webpage or Facebook page and I always wonder if they have gotten the proper permission. My guess would be no. So once again PLEASE if you are going to go to a cemetery or abandoned building or property do the research and find out who owns the land or is in charge of it and get the proper permission. And please for your own safety and your teams make sure that you have gone to this location during the day and scout it out. Not all places are free of squatters or even worse. You should be aware of your surroundings especially in abandoned buildings that could be very unstable. 

Be safe and be legal! Let’s not give the paranormal community a bad name.

-Raven