Newark, Ohio, homeowners call the Ghost Hunters Ohio Search Team after experiencing an ongoing haunting. The haunting occurred in their home that was built in 1898. The haunting included sounds, visual anomalies and a “ghost truck” that seems to “come home” once in a while.
Newark is a city in Licking County, Ohio. It’s about 33 miles east of Columbus with about 2,000 people of the 46,279 people that Ohio has to offer. Robert Silverberg’s novel, “Born With the Dead” is set partly in Newark, and references the Great Circle and Octagon Mounds. Parts of “The Tales of Alvin Maker” a series of novels by Orson Scott Card, mentions those places. Isaac Asimov also references the Newark Earthworks in a short story. Quite a bit of stories involving the same town.
The investigation date is August 29, 2008. The team members are Brenda Shupe, Darla Daugherty, Bev Nance, Christian Stewart, and Chris Barnes.
What the client reported from the past – Brenda Shupe reporting:
Back Stairs: Three people sleeping in different parts of the house awoke to the sound of someone running up and down the back stairs. Upon checking they found no one.
Bedroom: A friend that was sleeping in that room, woke up to a man standing over him. After blinking a few times, the man was gone. Homeowner always had an uneasy feeling in this room.
Living Room: Homeowner has caught a glimpse of a black shadow figure in this room.
Outside: Homeowner said a ghost truck goes up the driveway and around to the back of the house. The head lights and tail lights can sometimes be seen. But when they go back to check there is no truck there. The driveway is the only gravel driveway in the area. Homeowner says there is no mistaking the sound of a vehicle on the gravel driveway. Recently friends staying over night heard the truck. Several minutes later they heard the back door open and close and footsteps. There was no one there. This scared them so bad they didn’t want to stay in the house for another minute and they left. Homeowner says the car appears several times a year, going back to when he was a child. He also assured the team that no one was ever drinking or using drugs when this car was seen.
Attic: Uneasy feelings.
History: The history of the house presented no clues to what may be happening in this home. The team did find some documents of a six member flight crew and two Newark residents were killed, when a B-52 crashed into a apartment building very close to the home in 1942.
Observation: Video and wireless cameras were positioned in view of the driveway, back stairs, living room and second floor stairs.
“We decided to spend some time in the attic. We didn’t have a video camera up there as nothing has really happened up there other than uneasy feelings and we felt we had the video cameras in the most active parts of the house. Boy were we wrong. The attic consists of two finished rooms with a set of doors separating the rooms. The doors make a lot of noise when you open them. We were in the second room and had the doors closed. A light was left on in the first room. We had been discussing the temperature monitor when it sounded like someone was opening the doors. The door shook like someone was trying to jerk it open. We could see through the cracks the light from the room beyond and we could see no one was at the door.”
“At first we thought it was someone from downstairs coming to join us but then realized we did not hear the attic door open and we had not heard any foot steps on the wooden stairs. When we opened the door there was no one there. A video camera on the second floor landing verified that no one opened the attic door or came up the stairs. Later a vanity light just outside the doors in the other room came on by itself.”
“This happened just after we had heard a light tap and Chris had asked for a better sign. Again video verified that no one came up the stairs. The client said the light is never used. The light has a switch that turns. Thinking that maybe the switch had been left in a halfway position we tried to recreate the event but could not.”
“One EVP was recorded in the attic and another one that we are not sure of at this time. The first one was picked up when we were just sitting quietly. It sounds to us like “come in here.”
“Another EVP was picked up in the living room. The question was asked “are you here alone or is there someone with you” As the last word “you” is spoken we hear the name John. Earlier in the night the client and I heard what sounded like three loud thumps on the wall from the living room area. Everyone else was outside taking a break at the time.”
“A video camera that was positioned to see the back steps went badly out of focus several times through out the night. There was no visible change in the lighting or any movement to have caused this. Nothing of interest was found on any of the other video cameras or audio recorders.”
“Although we did not find an immediate cause for the light turning on and the doors rattling we are not ready to call these events paranormal until we can do a few follow up investigations and look further into natural causes.”
This was what Brenda Shupe of G.H.O.S.T. (Ghost Hunter Ohio Search Team) reported, on the findings at the Newark, Ohio home.
Check out this link. It has the EVP recordings that were mentioned in the article and an audio recording of a door slamming by itself.
Click here to link to recorded sounds