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ISIS Investigations

Haunted Minnick Manor

December 1, 2006 | Comment icon 2 comments
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On Halloween morning, October 31st the ISIS team set out to investigate a home in Averill Park, New York, after receiving the kind invitation from the FLY 92.3 Radio station and the owners of the home. Fondly referred to as the Minnick Manor, the owners Glenn Minnick and Adrian Castillo contacted FLY 92.3 and the Morning Rush Show hosted by Jim Clark, Brian Cody and Chrissy Cavotta and invited the crew to host the show live on location. Our team found out that the station was looking for a paranormal team to assist them and we volunteered.

The land that the home is now located on was once owned by Stephen VanRensselaer, who bought the land and later sold it in 1803. The home was built in the year 1805. Further, the current owners are actually the 13th owners of the home and have now owned the home for several years. Neighbors and friends refer to the house as Minnick Manor, or “the scary place with the pond in the front yard.”

The house underwent renovations when it was purchased by the owners and the owners began to note strange sounds from the first night they stayed in the house: sounds including the laughter of children and footsteps.

The house is quite large, consisting of four bedrooms, an office, sitting room, kitchen, several bathrooms, the attic, the basement, dining room, and wash room. Outside the location was a barn, both an old and new barn: part of newer barn was at one time a slaughter house, and in the back of the house there is a pool. A short distance from the fenced off pool is a half-gated pet cemetery, and a circle of trees that has an area where no grass ever grows, according to the current owners of the property.

The owner also reported to the FLY 92.3 crew that for a period lasting approximately three months or more, the stereo would turn on, unaided, at 3 AM every morning and play Mozart. Interestingly, the owners own no CDs or tapes of Mozart and the stereo was not tuned into a classical station at the time. When such happenings would occur the owner’s cat was reported to stand up on its haunches and all of its hair would stand up on end. Finally, the owner was so disturbed by the repeated occurrence that he eventually unplugged the stereo all together.

One of the owner’s cats has responded in an unusual manner to occurrences in the home. The cat named “Spooky” is typically a friendly animal, but since moving into the location the cat has often been seen standing on its haunches, looking into the dining room wide eyed and then darting under the couch or onto the owner’s lap shaking in fear.

The owner also reports hearing people walking and talking in the attic when no one is there and hears doors slamming in the house on occasion. Further, the owner also reported an incident that occurred approximately three years ago when they were having a friend over. His friend, a clairvoyant, viewed the attic and said, “Don’t you see them over there?” The owner responded, “Who, what?” The clairvoyant then told the owner that he saw two people, both in 1800’s style clothing and smiling. He also reported that they were happy that the new owners lived there. After this incident, the owner reports that he rarely enters the attic alone anymore.

The owner of the location recounted another event: during a Christmas party at the home, guests have left almost immediately after arriving because they felt that there was “too much activity in the house.” When the owner requested clarification the disturbed guests said, “Invisible guests roaming around the party.”

The owner reports being a die hard skeptic before he bought their current home. A well educated and successful businessman, he states that he is not rattled or disturbed by things easily, except that now he is occasionally disturbed by his unexpected guests. While the new owners believe that there is definitely a presence in the home, they don’t believe that it has any mal-intent.

There was a rumor that a woman was formerly buried on the location, but the ISIS team has no evidence to confirm or deny such a statement at this time.

Stats:

The Moon: 66 % Waxing Gibbous
Solar X-Rays: Normal
Geomagnetic Field: Quiet

The Formal Interview:

The ISIS team had an opportunity to speak with the owners at length. Both owners are highly educated and level headed. They have never dabbled in the occult and they have never dealt with the occult in any fashion. The location has never been blessed and no clergy has been consulted. There has been no prior media involvement and no other groups have investigated the location before our arrival and the arrival of the FLY 92.3 crew.

The clients reported that some of their friends will not stay at the house, claiming that there is too much activity in the house, and some family members are nervous about the house. The clients recounted the information previously provided to FLY 92.3 (mentioned above).

Part of the home burned down and was renovated: the summer kitchen is rebuilt after having burned. Burn marks are still present in the attic region of the home.

According to the current owners, one of the neighbors reports seeing a woman in the window of Minnick Manor from her home across the street. This eye witness testimony is congruent with one of the photographs later captured by the ISIS team.

The clients report no detection of unusual odors at any time, but they have heard people talking, mumbling, murmuring from other rooms, and what sounded like a baby. Some of our evp captures are congruent with the client’s assertion. The clients report no sleep difficulties, except when the activities occur. No unusual movement of objects has been reported, and no levitations have been witnessed. Cold spots and hot spots, however, have been experienced on occasion. The clients do not feel threatened by the activity in any way. Finally, the clients report that much of the activity occurs in the home between the hours of 1 am and 3 am, and that the activity was intense for the first few weeks, dissipating to a few occurrences a month.

The clients supplied our team with some historical documentation of the location. The house was built in 1805 for William Gorsline and was on a 164 acre tract of land: land that was purchased by Stephen VanRensselaer in 1803. The Wordens, the 12th owners of the home, bought the home in 1977, which then came with 81 acres of land. The owners have the original deed to the property framed in their home, with the signature of Stephen VanRensselaer on it. The property was originally sold for “sixteen and one half bushels of good clean merchantable wheat,” payable yearly, as it is stated in the 200 year-old Indenture the owners now possess.

The Investigation

The FLY 92.3 team and several individuals interested in the paranormal stayed overnight at the location. Since the overnight stay was primarily for fun and not for serious investigation, the team did not stay overnight at the location. A team of six ISIS investigators set out to arrive on location in the early morning hours and arrived at 5:30 AM on October 31, 2006 to begin conducting a serious investigation. Dayna Winters and Patricia Gardner, the Cofounders and CoDirectors of the ISIS team were accompanied by Justyn Stately, team case manager and clairsentient; Angela Kaufmann, team paranormal sketch artist; Mark Winters, team lead technician; and Sathish Victorio lead team investigator. While Patricia and Dayna had some knowledge of the case, the rest of the team went into the investigation cold to avoid any preconceived notions before they examined the location.

After Patricia and Dayna conducted the initial walk-through of the location, Justyn, Angela, and Sathish (Seth) went from room to room seeing what kind of energy vibrations and images they could pick up, if any. While the latter mentioned members of the crew conducted their part of the investigation, Patricia, Dayna and Mark went through all of the rooms in the home and took 800 photographs, electromagnetic field readings, and temperature readings. Finally, in between gathering evidence, Patricia spoke with the FLY 92.3 team to address questions and Dayna and Patricia later spoke with a reporter from WXXA FOX 23, Kathryn Hauser, for the Halloween special they were conducting.

The initial walk through revealed some significant sensitive findings. While the basement was considerably cool, and expected to be so, the well insulated attic was extremely cold. Two of the bedrooms located on the second floor of the home felt oppressive. Since heat rises, the attic should have been a bit warmer than the rest of the house. What’s even more remarkable is that the owner notes not having any kind of extreme changes in his heating bills, even with the attic as cold as it was.

The team then checked out the rest of the house, as well as the basement. In the basement, “Patricia” got the flash of a man’s face, which correlated with what one of the overnight guests experienced the evening prior. The team immediately determined that any orbs that appeared in photos in the attic or basement of the location would have to be dismissed because the basement floor was partly dirt, and the basement had a significant amount of insulation in it. Further, the majority of the attic floor had insulation on top of it and the insulation could cause a lot of dust and orbs to appear.
Brian Cody, a member of the FLY 92.3 team woke up feeling ill and his illness seemed to progress during the time he was at the location. Later that evening, he was reported to have a fever of 104 degrees. Interestingly, when psychic sketch artist Angela Kaufmann entered the room that Brian Cody stayed in she felt dizzy and disoriented, and sensed “sickness.” The room was initially 48 degrees and it dropped to 43 degrees Fahrenheit without explanation.

The second bedroom the team entered revealed a slight temperature fluctuation from 40 degrees to 42 degrees. The windows in the rooms were not open and were adequately sealed, allowing no drafts to pass through them.

As of November 9, 2006, Brian Cody has fully recovered.

Dayna and Patricia instructed Seth and Angela to go upstairs to the take evps samples in the attic. Shortly after entering the attic, Angela Kaufmann noted that she felt dizzy and that she felt that she might fall, the temperature of the attic was 37.4 degrees, it dropped to 35.6, and then 33.8 degrees Fahrenheit and then Seth, not Angela, fell backwards down the stairs. He was startled, but remained uninjured. Seth later noted his experience:

“Angela was feeling dizzy and she wanted to go downstairs. I headed back downstairs and the next thing I know, I’m falling. Angela had just started noting a temper fluctuation before I fell. She was using a thermometer that gives Celsius readings and the readings were 3 -2-1 (degrees), in that order.”

In the sitting room of the location, Patricia was doing EMF readings. The audible readings were so loud that they could be heard by others in the room, despite the fact that Patricia was wearing headphones to listen to the audible waves. Patricia began to feel dizzy and felt the need to leave the room. She stepped outside in an effort to “ground out” the excessive energies she was feeling. She then reported that she felt female energies attached to her.

Photos: Several interesting photos revealed activity at the location. Photos reveal the face of a male and the face of a female, appearing in the room where Brian Cody slept. Numerous orbs appeared in several pictures, and an unexplainable photo in the basement reveals a strange strip of light in motion (caught with infrared) with no known mundane origin. There was also a picture of a strange face that appears in several pictures of the master bedroom mirror, but does not appear in later pictures. View photos here.

EMF readings: We have recently added a speaker and amplifier to our collection of investigation tools. The tool converts emf waves into audible waves so that they can be heard. While the emf detector failed to work while in the location, the amplifier produced positive findings of unexplained origin. Patricia was in both the sitting room and the kitchen and detected emf waves that were not attributed to natural causes. Virginia, a member of FLY 92.3 crew, felt the energy that was being detected, reporting that it made her hand and arm tingle. The audible waves were loud enough to be heard by others that were in the room at the time, including reporter Kathryn Hauser from WXXA FOX 23.

A high emf reading was detected in the sitting room. An evp is later captured in the same area that says, “I am sitting right here.” Patricia felt “something unseen” trip her as she was trying to leave the room to break the connection she was feeling to something that was producing a high amount of energy.

Temperature Fluctuations:

As mentioned earlier, in one of the bedrooms there was a noted temperature drop. The room was initially 48 degrees and it dropped to 43 degrees Fahrenheit without explanation. The second bedroom the team entered there was a slight temperature fluctuation from 40 degrees to 42 degrees. This is the room in which Brian Cody spent the prior evening.

A cold spot was detected in one of the upstairs bedrooms. In a room where the base temperature was 52 degrees Fahrenheit, a cold spot of 39.5 degrees was detected right over the center of the bed. The comforter of the bed was cool to the touch and then the cold spot disappeared. Later that morning, in the same bedroom a slight hot spot appears, jumping from 59 to 66 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the room that Jim Clark reportedly spent the night. Later, in the same room, while conducting the evp session, another temperature fluctuation was noted: an increase in temperature from 53.6 degrees to 66.2 degrees was noted by Angela Kaufmann in one of the bedrooms.

EMF Readings: The emf detector that gives numerical readings malfunctioned while in the location only to later begin working perfectly when not inside the house. The emf detector that converts emf to audible waves picked up tremendous activity inside the location, particularly in the sitting room, near the book case in the upstairs office, in one of the smaller bedrooms over the bed where a cold spot was detected.

EVPs: Reveal the voices of men, women, and children, ranging to class A to C. Due to the fact that there were so many people on the location at the time, the evp findings are limited to time periods when relative quiet was experienced. Ambient noise is to be expected when so many people participate in an event. Listen to the EVPs.

After Patricia and Dayna conducted the initial walk through, Angela Kaufmann, Justyn Staley and Seth Victorio were permitted to walk through the location to see what they could pick up in terms of sensitive experiences. None of the three investigators were given any information on the case prior to their arrival. Further, none of the investigators are allowed to speak about their findings with each other until their task was completed.

Patricia felt dizzy while in the sitting room. An evp is later captured in this region of a male whispering, “I’m sitting right here.”

Psychic Sketches: Interestingly, when in the basement of the location picked up an impression of a man and sketched him. This was the same spot that Patricia received the “flash” or vision of a man’s face and that another guest reported seeing a man’s face the evening before. Angela also felt female energies at the location and created a quick sketch of what she sensed. Angela’s sketches are included with the photographs of the investigation.

Clairsentient Experiences: Justyn Staley was allowed to examine all the rooms of the location. He entered the location with no prior knowledge of the case. Upon entering the basement, Justyn noted the feeling of a presence; his ample notes indicate the presence of a male energy form in the basement—“the presence of an old man” and the name of “Marshall.”

Justyn later notes an unusual feeling about two pictures on the staircase. Interestingly, one of the pictures on the staircase appears to resemble one of our photographic captures.

Video: Video proved unremarkable.

Conclusion: Location Haunted.

The discovery of several evps, significant photos, significant temperature fluctuations, investigator experiences, and reported experiences from other eye witnesses has led to the conclusion that the Minnick Manor is indeed, haunted. No cleansing was performed as the current owners do not feel threatened by the ongoing activity.

Special Thanks:

The ISIS team would like to give our special thanks to the owners of the Minnick Manor for giving us the opportunity to investigate their beautiful home. We would also like to give our thanks to Brian Cody, Jim Clark, and Chrissy Cavotta, Virginia and all of the other members of the FLY 92.3 crew. Finally, special thanks go out to the crew of WXXA and Kathryn Hauser. The ISIS team enjoyed the experience immensely.

http://www.isisinvestigations.com Comments (2)


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Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #1 Posted by vlanos 19 years ago
i hope they add fun.
Comment icon #2 Posted by Jsilvestro 19 years ago
i hope they add fun. Really interesting.


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