ORANGE — Unwanted guests are hard enough to deal with when one can see them.
When one is dealing with unseen guests, it makes life more difficult.
Jane and Joe Smyth bought a house in West Orange with no knowledge of the ‘tenants’ already living there.
“We saw such potential with the house,” Jane said. “We did not know about the murder that happened in the house.”
Jane has since discovered through researching the history of the house there are several deaths that occurred in the house over the years, including a suicide, a murder and the death of two babies due to polio.
The couple gutted the house for a complete renovation.
“Things would happen,” Jane said. “But no one would talk about it.”
It started with minor thing that could be explained away, such as setting down one’s keys and not being able to find them again, hearing knocks on the walls, or feeling something pulling on their legs.
It was the things that could not be easily explained away that had the couple concerned.
“Jan was turning on the stereo and I saw the glass top of our glass table explode,” Joe said. “It exploded upwards in the air.”
The couple witnessed pictures being thrown across the room, clothes being thrown out of the closets, and have flashights turn on after they had detremined the batteries were dead.
A friend stopped by one day and as he was speaking with Jane at the front door, clothes started flying out of the master bedroom while no one was in the room.
Jane said the man turned as white as a ghost.
The friend suggested the family contact Paranormal Research Consultants to determine what was happening at the house.
PRC is a non-profit team that will use scientific methods such as audio and video devices to determine if paranormal activty is happening at a location.
“We do a lot of debunking,” said Buddy Courts, a member of the team. “We want to help the clients, comfort them.”
The team has been to the house for evaluation three times now.
Examining the audio and visual tapes from the experience, the team was able to determine there is definate paranormal activity at the location.
“We will ask a burst of questions and wait a few seconds to allow time for a response,” Courts said. “Here we were getting answers in the middle of our sentences.”
In one instance, a member of the group’s name was heard while the man was alone in the room.
Further testing is need to determine the exact classification of activity at the residence.
“Resdual hauntings are not ghosts,” Michael Delafosse, team member, said. “They are not intelligent and just walk the same path.”
PRC also said that entities are visual, while haunted means objects are thrown around and paranormal means something is going on.
While the family has witnessed possesions, including their dog, being thrown across the room, the consultants have not witnessed such activity at this time.
Friends of the couple have witnessed activity and now refuse to return to the house.
The results of the investigations have helped the Smyths.
“They made us feel like we are not going crazy,” said Jane.
