The Heights investigation

26th March 2017. Reading Time: 6 minutes Paranormal Events, Paranormal Investigation, Paranormal Locations. 1049 page views. 0 comments.

Recap of the first paranormal investigation of The Heights

This weekend just past, my team hosted the first ever public paranormal investigation of The Heights in Geelong on behalf of the National Trust of Victoria. A couple of weeks ago, we did a private investigation in the house to plan the event. Before we go into all of that, let me tell you a little bit about ‘ The Heights’. The Heights was a prefabricated house that was imported from Germany in 1855 for Charles Ibbotson. The house stayed in the family for 3 generations until it was sold to the National Trust of Victoria in an effort to ensure that the property was looked after.

When we did our private investigation, we had some interesting activity within about 1 minute of starting. we were using the kinect and as we walked into the hallway to start our investigation, we mapped a figure the height of a child standing in the doorway of one of the bedrooms. We immediately investigated the bedroom and then heard footsteps going up the hallway when we were all in the bedroom. We all walked out into the hallway where I did a quick EVP burst session. Upon replay we noticed a voice had come through which was not us. It said ‘Get Out’. We went into the main part of the house and went into a room called ‘Marnie’s room’. I could only get about halfway into this room. Anyone that is an investigator will be able to relate with me, but there was something stopping me from getting to the end of the room. It is almost like there is an invisible wall and you can’t walk any further. So I stayed put and didn’t go any further. I felt really ill in this room and dizzy. I ended up leaving the room because I felt like I was going either faint or vomit. We decided to investigate some of the other rooms while the boys continued in this room as they weren’t affected. There wasn’t really anything else to report as we were not getting responses with our equipment. We also had access to the stables attic and underground plus the water tower. These areas are usually closed to the public so this was a real treat. In the attic, there was some wallpaper in one of the rooms where it is thought children lived. There were some drawings and names on the wall which were amazing to find. After a few personal experiences we had a good gauge of the property and knew how we wanted to run our event so we wrapped it up.

One of the strange childlike drawings in the attic

We walked away from our private investigation knowing that we thought there was something there, but we didn’t have the hits on all of the equipment to validate it. One of the things we find with a new location is that sometimes we feel like there are energies there, but because no one has ‘investigated’ there before, all of the equipment can be useless. When you pass away, you don’t automatically know what a K2 is for example so you can’t just walk into a room and say light up the K2 and expect them to know what to do. It may sound a bit silly, but you have to kind of teach them. When we did the public investigation, it was very clear to me that all the fancy equipment we had, was a bit of a waste.

Marnie’s Room

Our guests arrived and after a quick introduction, we were ready to roll. The boys did their vigils in the outside stable and water tower areas. They told me they used the ghost box and had some very interesting messages come through in the underground stable area. They also had some intelligent REM Pod responses in the water tower. I ran the investigation inside the house. I did try to use equipment to communicate and didn’t really have much luck. No devices were lighting up and even the Ovilus was just not spitting out any words at all which normally even just spits out random words had gone completely silent. I had to think quickly on my feet before everyone lost interest. So I thought about some of the simple old school techniques. The easiest most simplest and ‘free’ thing you can do during and investigation. I knocked. I knocked 3 times on the table and I asked if they could knock back. To my surprise we all heard 2 distinct knocks. Now the investigator in me straight away had to ask the guests if anyone knocked anything or if they moved. No one owned up so I have to take their word for it. I then said lets knock once for yes twice for no do you understand? I got one knock. I asked if they could make a noise to let us know they were here. We heard a tap. I also felt like I had been touched on the back and not long after my walkie talk started crackling like someone was on the other end (but they weren’t). It was all a very strange set of events but proved one important point for any investigator. You don’t need expensive equipment to conduct an investigation. This experience is also leading me to reconsider my approach investigating locations that haven’t been investigated before. I think that while we will still provide all of the equipment for everyone to use (because people do want to use all of the equipment they see on tv), I am going to adopt more old school ‘experiments’ into the investigations as well. I feel this will have a higher success rate and it is also a bit of a different approach than just asking a spirit to light up a device.

Recapping the entire night, I also had an interesting spirit box response from ‘Ian’ and the guests saw some figures mapping on the kinect. All in all they were really happy and I was relieved. It for all purposes was actually a really quiet night so the fact that our guests still walked away happy, I am thrilled. As we were a team member down I also had to run the investigation in the house by myself. I do investigations every week so I was up for the task and somehow felt right at home. It is always nice having another investigator with you as in our team we bounce of one another especially when you have a brain fog moment. I didn’t have time to think of any of that. I just put my investigator shirt on and it will sound like a strange comparison but it is like I am possessed. It comes naturally to me and I just go into that mode without thinking about it. I truely believe this is what I am supposed to be doing. When I started out I actually didn’t want to run any sort of public events because it is a massive responsibility. Now I absolutely love it and I feel like it is second nature to me. I am so honoured to be able to be a part of something like this. Being the first group to investigate this location and also hosting the first ever public investigation there is something that can never be taken away from me. Speaking with people that for a lot of them was their first ever investigation, they want to come back for more investigations and they want to visit the property during the day and even learn it’s history. I am not going anywhere but if I left the paranormal tomorrow, I would leave knowing that I have done something pretty special. Not just for myself but for the whole paranormal community and that makes me feel complete :).

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