The History
In the synagogue, there is a basement below, and a set of spiral stairs that lead down to it. There are no hand rails, and the staircase is rather thin and at a somewhat sharp angle. Apparently a really long time ago, a young child either fell down or was pushed down the stairs. The details were unclear.
The site where the synagogue is located used to be where a tuberculosis clinic (called consumption) used to be. There is a story there of Isadore Victor, a young musician that killed the woman he loved. A small summary is as follows:
The Case of the Lovelorn Prodigy (1919)
Back in 1904, Dr. Charles Spivak founded a tuberculosis clinic. It was a sprawling complex of 35 or so buildings that served as a hospital for folks suffering from consumption. One of his “permanent” patients was a young Russian musical prodigy named Isadore Victor. The temperamental artist came close to death on a fairly regular basis. During one of these crises he was nursed back to life by a lovely young nurse named Bessie Marold. Isadore became so smitten with Bessie, he asked her to marry him on a fairly regular basis. However, Bessie had other plans and she repeatedly told him no. Unfortunately, Isadore did not react well to this rejection.
Story from "Notorious Jefferson County" by Carol Turner
The story goes on to say that Bessie Marold had become involved with a Dr at the sanitorium and repeatedly rejected the proposals of marriage from Isadore. He kept threatening to kill her and then himself, but his threats went ignored, being attributed to his being a sick and temperamental artist.
On the night of August 19, 1919 (ominous, no? lol) he caught sight of Bessie and the Dr. He went into town and bought a .32 revolver. The next day, on Aug. 20th, Isadore and Bessie were taking a stroll when Isadore shot Bessie in the face, ending her life.
I had been told a little of the story before we went, and read the story later on at my brothers house.
The Investigation
At the site, we began by investigating a little house outside of the synagogue. Inside there were various old items... an old wicker type wheelchair that had the word Surgery on it, a bed, an old examination table, and a little wooden cabinet. There were also a couple of old chairs on it. The place was covered in dust. We set up an EVP recorder and an EMF reader and started recording with a camcorder and infrared light using night vision.
We start by asking questions like the ones you hear in the ghost shows. Nothing extraordinary happened from what we could see. We took pics of us on the exam table, sitting it the wheelchair and filmed us just being in there, talking normal, asking questions. After a half an hour or so, we decide to go into the synagogue.
The way the synagogue is set up is simple. You walk into the front door and there is a little front area space. To the right is a door that leads to a small bathroom, and to the left is a door that leads to the basement. When you go through that, there is a small spiral staircase where the young boy fell/was pushed and died. The stairs are a bit steep and not very wide, making it a little dangerous to go down. In the basement there isn't much other than a small room and a little closet. There are the old ceiling lights hanging from it. You know, the ones like the movies where it's just a bulb hanging from a cord. Back up stairs, you leave the front entrance area and cross a threshold into the main synagogue area. There are several rows of pews on both sides of this main room and they lead up to a "stage" area. You go up three stairs on either side. On the left side there is a very small hallway that leads to a room in the back. In the back room there isn't much other than some sort of shelving with various items on it.
We cross the threshold, and I swear, right as you cross it, the atmosphere gets heavy. It was so weird experiencing that. My brother John, takes his equipment case and leaves it on the last pew, takes out his equipment and sets up the EVP recorder on the stage. We sit in the pews and start to ask questions again. Not much happens where we are, but we start to hear some noises coming from the basement, so we decide to go down and check it out. Going down the spiral staircase we had to be careful. We take the equipment with us. Set up the EVP on the floor in the middle, the EMF reader on the stairs, and John records with a camcorder and an added Infrared Light. We try to see if we can make any kind of contact with the little boy that died there. Nothing really seems to happen. We are goofballs, so we started making jokes about how fat Mike looks on the camera. At that moment, my brother sees an orb appear on the screen. It shoots up between Mike and I. We take a moment to review the camera and sure enough, it was there. Other than that, nothing else happened. We do start to hear noises upstairs again, so after a half an hour of being in the basement, we go back upstairs.
We decide to try the backroom first. As I walk into the backroom, I immediately smell something that is reminiscent of incense or potpourri. I make a comment on it, and John says he smells it too. To me it smelled of a sort of cinnamon- flowery smell. John says it smells like lavender. Mike is unable to smell anything. We start with the talking and questions again, and nothing out of the ordinary where we were at, but the noises start to come from the main room. So we head out there again.
This is where the fun begins.......
My brother sets the EVP back on the stage. Mike and I sit on opposite sides of the pews. We are asking questions and talking (since that is all you really can do...lol), asking for a sign, who is there, etc. Then after about ten minutes or so, my brother John says he is starting to have problems with the camera. He said that everytime he tries to shoot the cam of us, being far away, it gets blurry, and the shifts its focus by zooming in. He says it's like something is in front of it, and won't let it focus far away. He messes with the camera for awhile. He has no problems when he focuses on something close by, like his hand, or some paperwork that was sitting on the stage, but the minute he returns the camera to face where we are, automatic blurriness and focus problems. After dealing with that for a little bit..he tells us that the battery on the infrared camera is dying out, even though it had an almost full charge at that point. The battery on that dies out within a few minutes. That really sucks because it makes the room dim, adding light to the recording so that everything can be seen. About two minutes after that dies out, the battery on the camera gets drained. Same problem. It just dies out all of a sudden. So there goes one of the important pieces of equiment. Sigh.
My brother stays by the stage while Mike pulls out a flashlight he carries with him. He wraps his hands and all fingers around the handle. This is something he has done in previous investigations of him. He explains to the ghost(s) that all they have to do is push a little press button on the end of it to turn the light on, and asks them if they can do that. Nothing. He asks a question or two and still nothing. So I start to ask questions. The thing about my questions though, is that I hadn't known the full story beforehand. I just knew that Isadore Victor was a violing player prodigy, had tuberculosis and was sent there, and had killed a nurse he loved. So my first question was "Are you innocent?" Baam! The freaking flashlight turns on! It turns on though, in a weird way. It's not as though it was pushed to click the light on. It's as though it is pressed lightly with pressure. The light starts out dim, and then brightens with some flickering, and then dims back down until it is out. Even so...I was much surprised and a bit creeped out. So I ask "Is this Isadore?" The light turns back on for a minute. Apparently that was a yes. I say "It's nice to meet you Isadore. Would you like to be my friend?" Yeah, I am weird like that....lol. Light goes back on. I asked then if the friend that used to visit him, another violin player, is the one who is guilty. Light back on. I ask if he loved the nurse. Nothing. I asked if they were friends. Light back on. Mike and John ask some questions...nothing. I ask if the nurse looks like me, and there was nothing. I ask if I sound like her, and the light comes back on. Nice! I ask if he is by any of us, if he by John? No...Mike? No....Me? Light back on. From there, my brother says he wants to try holding the flashlight. He does, and from then on, the light doesn't come back on. I try holding it, we try placing it on the floor getting the ghost to move it, etc. There was nothing.
From there we decided we are just going to sit in silence for ten-fifteen minutes and see if we can hear anything. There is dead silence around us for a minute or two, and then we start hearing weird noises coming from different directions in the room. There were sounds like clanking on something metal, loud noises kind of like a footstep or knocking. I am not sure what they noises were. We sat there listening for awhile being as silent as we can, until my brother sneezes breaking up the silence. After that we decide it is late and we should get going. We head to the last pew and my brother notices that the casing for the EVP recorder was on the floor. He says that he had left it snuggly tucked inside the metal equipment case. He says he wonders when that happened, since he didn't hear it being dropped there. I told him it could have happened when we were in the basement. Another thing we had done, that we noticed...small as it is....was that John had put a papertowels fully rolled up on the stage. When we checked back later it had unrolled about half a towel's worth. It was in the center of the stage and we hadn't gone near it. There was absolutely no wind moving through that building either. Interesting thing to take note of.
From there we left, and I followed my brother to his house. We stayed up until 6:30am editing photos, video and EVP Recordings. Some interesting stuff came up.
We start by asking questions like the ones you hear in the ghost shows. Nothing extraordinary happened from what we could see. We took pics of us on the exam table, sitting it the wheelchair and filmed us just being in there, talking normal, asking questions. After a half an hour or so, we decide to go into the synagogue.
The way the synagogue is set up is simple. You walk into the front door and there is a little front area space. To the right is a door that leads to a small bathroom, and to the left is a door that leads to the basement. When you go through that, there is a small spiral staircase where the young boy fell/was pushed and died. The stairs are a bit steep and not very wide, making it a little dangerous to go down. In the basement there isn't much other than a small room and a little closet. There are the old ceiling lights hanging from it. You know, the ones like the movies where it's just a bulb hanging from a cord. Back up stairs, you leave the front entrance area and cross a threshold into the main synagogue area. There are several rows of pews on both sides of this main room and they lead up to a "stage" area. You go up three stairs on either side. On the left side there is a very small hallway that leads to a room in the back. In the back room there isn't much other than some sort of shelving with various items on it.
We cross the threshold, and I swear, right as you cross it, the atmosphere gets heavy. It was so weird experiencing that. My brother John, takes his equipment case and leaves it on the last pew, takes out his equipment and sets up the EVP recorder on the stage. We sit in the pews and start to ask questions again. Not much happens where we are, but we start to hear some noises coming from the basement, so we decide to go down and check it out. Going down the spiral staircase we had to be careful. We take the equipment with us. Set up the EVP on the floor in the middle, the EMF reader on the stairs, and John records with a camcorder and an added Infrared Light. We try to see if we can make any kind of contact with the little boy that died there. Nothing really seems to happen. We are goofballs, so we started making jokes about how fat Mike looks on the camera. At that moment, my brother sees an orb appear on the screen. It shoots up between Mike and I. We take a moment to review the camera and sure enough, it was there. Other than that, nothing else happened. We do start to hear noises upstairs again, so after a half an hour of being in the basement, we go back upstairs.
We decide to try the backroom first. As I walk into the backroom, I immediately smell something that is reminiscent of incense or potpourri. I make a comment on it, and John says he smells it too. To me it smelled of a sort of cinnamon- flowery smell. John says it smells like lavender. Mike is unable to smell anything. We start with the talking and questions again, and nothing out of the ordinary where we were at, but the noises start to come from the main room. So we head out there again.
This is where the fun begins.......
My brother sets the EVP back on the stage. Mike and I sit on opposite sides of the pews. We are asking questions and talking (since that is all you really can do...lol), asking for a sign, who is there, etc. Then after about ten minutes or so, my brother John says he is starting to have problems with the camera. He said that everytime he tries to shoot the cam of us, being far away, it gets blurry, and the shifts its focus by zooming in. He says it's like something is in front of it, and won't let it focus far away. He messes with the camera for awhile. He has no problems when he focuses on something close by, like his hand, or some paperwork that was sitting on the stage, but the minute he returns the camera to face where we are, automatic blurriness and focus problems. After dealing with that for a little bit..he tells us that the battery on the infrared camera is dying out, even though it had an almost full charge at that point. The battery on that dies out within a few minutes. That really sucks because it makes the room dim, adding light to the recording so that everything can be seen. About two minutes after that dies out, the battery on the camera gets drained. Same problem. It just dies out all of a sudden. So there goes one of the important pieces of equiment. Sigh.
You can barely see an outline of me in the darkness. This is after the Infrared Light lost it's energy and when the camera was blurry from being unable to focus.
My brother stays by the stage while Mike pulls out a flashlight he carries with him. He wraps his hands and all fingers around the handle. This is something he has done in previous investigations of him. He explains to the ghost(s) that all they have to do is push a little press button on the end of it to turn the light on, and asks them if they can do that. Nothing. He asks a question or two and still nothing. So I start to ask questions. The thing about my questions though, is that I hadn't known the full story beforehand. I just knew that Isadore Victor was a violing player prodigy, had tuberculosis and was sent there, and had killed a nurse he loved. So my first question was "Are you innocent?" Baam! The freaking flashlight turns on! It turns on though, in a weird way. It's not as though it was pushed to click the light on. It's as though it is pressed lightly with pressure. The light starts out dim, and then brightens with some flickering, and then dims back down until it is out. Even so...I was much surprised and a bit creeped out. So I ask "Is this Isadore?" The light turns back on for a minute. Apparently that was a yes. I say "It's nice to meet you Isadore. Would you like to be my friend?" Yeah, I am weird like that....lol. Light goes back on. I asked then if the friend that used to visit him, another violin player, is the one who is guilty. Light back on. I ask if he loved the nurse. Nothing. I asked if they were friends. Light back on. Mike and John ask some questions...nothing. I ask if the nurse looks like me, and there was nothing. I ask if I sound like her, and the light comes back on. Nice! I ask if he is by any of us, if he by John? No...Mike? No....Me? Light back on. From there, my brother says he wants to try holding the flashlight. He does, and from then on, the light doesn't come back on. I try holding it, we try placing it on the floor getting the ghost to move it, etc. There was nothing.
From there we decided we are just going to sit in silence for ten-fifteen minutes and see if we can hear anything. There is dead silence around us for a minute or two, and then we start hearing weird noises coming from different directions in the room. There were sounds like clanking on something metal, loud noises kind of like a footstep or knocking. I am not sure what they noises were. We sat there listening for awhile being as silent as we can, until my brother sneezes breaking up the silence. After that we decide it is late and we should get going. We head to the last pew and my brother notices that the casing for the EVP recorder was on the floor. He says that he had left it snuggly tucked inside the metal equipment case. He says he wonders when that happened, since he didn't hear it being dropped there. I told him it could have happened when we were in the basement. Another thing we had done, that we noticed...small as it is....was that John had put a papertowels fully rolled up on the stage. When we checked back later it had unrolled about half a towel's worth. It was in the center of the stage and we hadn't gone near it. There was absolutely no wind moving through that building either. Interesting thing to take note of.
From there we left, and I followed my brother to his house. We stayed up until 6:30am editing photos, video and EVP Recordings. Some interesting stuff came up.
The Results
The first thing we go through is the video. Not very much was discovered except for quite a few orbs appearing and shooting around. In the little house outside mostly. First we notice that the orbs seem to be avoiding the EMF reader. One even stops midtrack and does goes back in an arc. What my brother notices though in some of these parts where orbs show is what interests me. In one minute, I am looking straight at him and into the camera. Then for the moment the orb shows, I turn my head and look at the orb. Once it disappears, I look right back at the camera. I thought it was a coincidence at first. But then it happens a second time, and then a third. For some reason, I would keep turning to where the orbs would materialize, and once it would disappear, I would return to what I was previously looking at. On the EVP, there was a voice. When I had been climbing up onto the examination table, there is a male voice that sounds like it is saying "You Whore" Fabulous. I can't believed I got dissed from someone in the spirit world.
This are shots from the time that I had been looking at the camera and then start to follow an orb without realizing it. My vid clip of this got corrupted when I saved it (sigh), so I can't get better pics. This will do for now...lol.
In the basement there was somekind of unknown EVP that we are still trying to decipher. There were a couple of unknowns from the main hall. During the flashlight incident, there were a few EVP's. During that time, the room had went from really hot to cool all of a sudden, and we were messing around, thanking Isadore for making it cool inside. During that conversation, you can faintly hear him laughing in the background. There was an EVP saying "I am Isadore". Also, when I said "It's nice to meet you Isadore", there was a reply that we recorded saying "Nice to meet you. I promise." Heh...that kind weirded me out. ^_^
So, in the end, it was an awesome first investigation. I got to see,smell, feel, hear, experience and some really creepy things. At the end of the night, I was even invited to join the team, which was surprising since Mike had said told my brother previously that they weren't going to add any more members. Lucky me. :D
I am trying to figure out a way to embed some of the audio clips for you to hear. If you know of a way to do it, then let me know! Until next time..... ^_^
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