On October 14, 2020, some friends and I signed up for a special ghost hunting event at Zak Bagan’s Haunted Museum. The Museum is a vast collection of antique and rare objects that are reported to be haunted, many of them relics from some of the haunted places that Zak Bagan’s investigated through his T.V. series, Ghost Adventures.
The ghost hunting event started with a long list of rules and threatening lawsuits if any of the participants touched or decided to steal anything from the museum. Waivers were signed for participant safety and well-being. This meant that if anyone fell down a flight of stairs, or pushed by unseen hands, the Museum would not be liable and subject to lawsuits. I brought a few digital recorders, and we were given a handful of gadgets, such as an EMF reader, a Spirit Box radio sweeper, and a couple of flashlights, and set loose in the museum to explore at will along with a couple of other groups who would be in different parts of the house.
Honestly, I did not expect to capture any evidence or experience any activity from a tourist attraction based on a T.V. show. After all, it's entertainment, so I often question how much of these different television shows are true or just fabrication. Not suggesting this show is fabricated, but you do have to consider the possibility. That said, a few years ago, I visited this same Museum just a few days before Christmas with a friend just for fun and let my guard down. I didn’t expect anything at all, ended up blacking out near the end of the tour, and was haunted for several months from what I believe the energy that was picked up from this very place. But, this is a tale for another time.
With this trip, I didn’t expect much in the way of physical or audio evidence. The ghost hunt started just before midnight and lasted until two in the morning. I expected the staff to jump out at us in silly clown costumes, but none of this happened at all. The Museum was pitch black with the lights out, there were no staff interaction, and we were told that we would start in any room of our choice in one part of the house, while a different group explored the other part of the house to avoid interference. It was an actual ghost hunt.
The most active rooms for us proved to be the notorious basement, Peggy’s room, and the Kevorkian room. I will explain what those are later. Near the end of the night, we went into one last room, The Devil’s Rocking Chair. The chair is famous in paranormal history as being where David Glatzel sat during an exorcism, who was said to be possessed by a demon. Ed and Lorraine Warren performed the exorcism, and the story says the demon left Glatzel and possessed another person: Arne Cheyenne Johnson. Johnson later killed his landlord. Now the story that follows this chair is that a beast is seen sitting in it, its presence causes uncontrollable crying and despair, and others claim to be physically pushed while around it.
There was a REM Pod set up under this rocking chair, and as we entered the room, it went off and back on. A REM Pod uses a mini telescopic antenna to radiate an independent magnetic field around the instrument. This EMF field can be easily influenced by materials and objects that conduct electricity. The belief is that spirits can manipulate this field by their presence. I am skeptical about this Pod, however, as too many other electronic interferences could set it off, such as slight temperature fluctuations. But when we asked the “Spirit” to turn it off, the Pod would go off. We asked it to turn on, and the Pod went on.
Other strange occurrences happened that night that I will not discuss here, but below are some of the audio evidence that we were able to record while investigating the Museum with a slight description. One of the most active rooms was Peggy’s room. This spirit was talking to us even before we went up to the second floor of her room. Peggy is reportedly a haunted doll that causes those who are around her to experience serious illnesses such as chest pains, nausea, and even death. The second most active room was the Kevorkian room. Jack Kevorkian, a well known controversial pathologist assisted over one hundred terminally ill patients in physician-assisted suicide in the van that now resides in the Kevorkian room at the Museum.
The last place that was very active was in the forbidden basement. It is reported that Zak didn't allow anyone in the basement for awhile due to the activity that occurs there. Supposedly, a human sacrifice was made during a satanic ritual that occurred in the basement when the house was abandoned and left to squatters. There does appear to have some paranormal activity associated in the basement regardless of if the activity is a result of present day experimentation and seances, or if it occurred through some historic past event mentioned above.
These are just a few of the audio EVP recordings from that night.
When asked if anyone was in the room with us, a male's voice responds with "Kevorkian."
Just after this response in the Kevorkian room, we hear a female voice say "Peggy is calling." Note: we were on the first floor of the Museum while Peggy's room is somewhere on the second floor. I am not sure where Peggy's room is in relation to the Kevorkian room, but if you know, please let me know.
Another direct response from the Kevorkian room, from a male voice that sounds like the same one that answered with Kevorkian, mentioned above. The response "uh huh" came right after asking if anyone was there.
We had several experiences in the basement, including drastic temperature fluctuations, unexplained drafts and odd dripping sounds, as if water was dripping from somewhere. At one point we turned out the lights. I walked toward the back of the room at this point unaware of the pentagram on the floor. I caught two EVPs on a digital recorder. The first is a voice that says something, followed by a deeper guttural voice saying the same thing. I believe it says "don't walk," but if you hear something different, please let me know. When we turned on the flashlights, I found myself standing in the very center of the pentagram. Were these spirits trying to keep me from walking out of the pentagram?
There was a lot of whispering and different voices that happened in Peggy's room. Walking through the hallway of this floor we even heard the sound of a dog bark, which we did pick up on audio. There is one EVP that we got on a digital recorder that we did not hear at the time in person. Peggy was asked if she liked her rosary beads and the response was, "I hate...those." I found this response to be incredibly funny, despite the fact that the same voice later calls me bait, a bitch and tells me up yours. That Peggy is a very hateful spirit that just doesn't like me, probably because I know she's not a human spirit. Anyways, I don't like her either so the feelings are mutual.
In the room next door to Peggy, there is a severed head that is said to have belonged to a witch who was prosecuted and beheaded by his peers in Sweden. In this room, one of my friends starts acting weird and had to be taken out of the room. She becomes sullen at one point and asks the spirit to tell us his story. His response was a simple "no."
These are just a few of our EVPs from this trip. Other audio clips include a child singing, a dog barking, and numerous whisperings that seemed to follow us around the Museum. It was an interesting experience. I do recommend doing a flashlight tour, it left a rather different impression than a normal guided tour of the objects and opportunity for interaction with "spirits", though I am not sure these are human spirits. I feel like they aren't, but you can decide for yourself. Visit The Haunted Museum's website for more information about the tours.