Case status: Open
Case date: Jan 26, 2019
Location: Hanover, VA
Identity: Public
Site classification: Historic
Report #768 – Initial Post by Brad Bradley
CPRI and Transcend Paranormal co-hosted a Lecture and Ghost Excavation with John Sabol as a benefit for Hanover Tavern on 1/26/19. The lecture occurred in the Coach House behind the Tavern and John conducted multiple scenario excavations in the tavern, Court House and Jail.
Equipment placement is recorded in the logs in the primary data repository. Besides static equipment, there was a portable recorder in each of the buildings with an observer, who was responsible for contacting HQ by radio when anything happened. John wanted observers at each scenario to record in writing what they witnessed and wanted immediate communication from the other observers when something happened so they could correlate and respond regardless of location. His idea was to see if a scenario in one building would affect the others.
Address: 1511, 13181 Hanover Courthouse Rd, Hanover, VA 23069
In the first scenario in the Bride’s room in the tavern, Abby Bradley and Jennifer Bradley joined Mary Becker to see if they could contact a little girl in that room. Footsteps and movement occurred in the long hallway outside the room and, when Mary walked out, the door closed on its own and bumped into Abby, who said it felt like someone was pushing on it.
At the end of the night, David Deal, Executive Director of Hanover Tavern, went to sit in the Bride’s room to see if he could hear anything and he found the door shut. No one had shut the door and it had been left open before.
Report #769 – Personal Experience by Tommy Amos
I attended the Hanover Tavern special event with John Sabol on 1/26/2019. This is my personal experiences report.
I arrived on site about 2:30pm. I meet the team members in the Tavern where they were currently accompanying John to the different locations where he would be acting out scenarios later in the evening. While on this this tour, we were in the old courthouse across the street from the Tavern. Several members, including myself, heard a voice say, “Hmmm” in a fashion similar to a sigh.
I assisted with running the cables to the equipment and securing the room where the DVR was located. We had to do extensive troubleshooting in an effort to eliminate hum from the upper audio channels of the 8-channel audio array. We found that activating the phantom power provided the needed filtering to remove the hum sufficiently to allow the audio to be usable. The microphone didn’t seem to suffer from the applied phantom voltage.
While everyone else went to dinner in the Tavern, I stayed with the equipment at base camp in order to monitor for any anomalies. I did note several large bangs from the lecture hall where the equipment was located. I believe it was due to the building contracting due to the dropping external temperature or staff using the downstairs portion of the building. However, upon inspection, I did not see anyone coming or going from the Tavern during the time the bangs occurred.
I remained at base camp until the completion of the lecture portion of the evening. I then went to the old jail with Transcend Paranormal member Zack. While at the jail, we did not some odd sounds from time to time and couldn’t readily identify them as pertaining to the HVAC system. Zack reported hearing voices a couple of times but I didn’t not readily notice them on the DR05 that I was using the entire evening for live monitoring. While at the jail, Transcend Paranormal member Steven brought a guest to the jail and remained for a period of time with us. The guest he brought us was none other than CPRI member Rhonda. Rhonda toured the jail on her own and noticed an oppressive feeling from the lower jail cell that is furthest from the door. Zack reported having the same feeling when he entered it earlier.
Because of activity happening at the jail and other locations, we were requested to run the hanging scenario on our own. Myself and Rhonda acted like confined prisoners and whistled during the hanging. Steven took Zack as the prison to be hung. Zack was escorted up the stairs with Steven carrying the noose. Zack was walked over to the hanging area on the upper floor. There were several statements made as would be expected during such times. Soon afterwards, Steven heard a voice say, “Hi” in his ear. Zack was next to Steven but sitting on the floor and he hear it too. I was about ten feet from Steven and also heard something said but couldn’t make out what it was. Zack commented that he also couldn’t identify what was said.
I was the observer while the jail scene was conducted by John. The jail was crowded and I started outside of the jail. I went in after several minutes of allowing the group to disperse through the jail. I did not notice any activity that I would consider paranormal during the scenarios. Other members of the attendee group did report activity. I couldn’t substantiate those claims.
I assisted with removing all of the equipment from the site. I did not notice any odd activity during this time. We remained outside of the Tavern around 30 minutes discussing possible future events. We all left the site around 3:20am on 1/27/19.
Report #770 – Member Personal Experiences by Brad Bradley
From Kenny Newsome: The only personal experience was sitting in the back of the courthouse to the left of the door when you entered. It seemed like someone sat down next to me and I felt on my arm like some large person sat down and brushed my arm. I didn’t hear a sound on the DR-05, but it felt crazy.
From Mike Magner: This was CPRI’s first full on-site paranormal research event at Hanover Tavern and was conducted as part of a program that was open to the general public. The public event included a special buffet dinner at the tavern, a lecture by John Sabol – a paranormal archeologist – and a full on-site investigation that included participation by the paying guests.
The investigation followed the experimental design of John Sabol. Mr. Sabol’s technique involves the careful research into the history of a site, and the use of that research to develop scenarios which are acted out with the intention of eliciting a response from historical memories or presences that are part of the history of the site. This technique has been used at other locations and was found to elicit increased activities generally thought to be paranormal in nature (i.e., ghostly voice recordings, ghostly images in photos and video, etc.). CPRI has worked with Mr. Sabol previously at Bacon’s Castle, and in that previous investigation, we witnessed an increase in the types of paranormal events over what is typically captured at Bacon’s Castle (i.e., EVPs, physical contact, and unexplained knocks & bangs). While CPRI routinely captures that type of paranormal activity at Bacon’s Castle, the joint investigation with John Sabol yielded more of these events with higher intensity.
The research design for Hanover Tavern on Jan 26th had a new design idea – three different historical sites that tied together historically were investigated simultaneously. While the main focus of the investigation was Hanover Tavern, the team also posted observers at the nearby courthouse and jail. Historically, people who had business before the Court often frequented the Tavern across the street. And the Court and Jail were historically linked for obvious reasons. John Sabol had a theory that a scenario acted out in the Tavern would not only increase paranormal activity at the Tavern but would also increase paranormal activity at the other two sites, due to their historical connection.
In keeping with Mr. Sabol’s requests, the CPRI team did not deploy as much environmental data collection technology as has been used previously. The team did use 2 Geiger counters, 4 Humidity-Temperature Sensors, and one tablet with a multi-sensor array. Additionally, 5 small digital clocks were deployed throughout the Tavern, with one additional clock kept at the HQ building. All electronic devices that were deployed were hidden in the environment with all blinking lights either turned off or covered with tape so that they would be inconspicuous. The team also deployed 16 high-definition surveillance cameras, including 12 that were in the building, plus 4 outside. Additionally, there were 8 wired microphones connected to an audio mixing device which could be controlled and monitored in real time by a laptop computer. The video cameras and the microphones were live monitored at the Headquarters building, which was in a separate building owned by the Tavern and used for meetings and conferences.
During the investigation phase, several paying guests and paranormal researches went into the Tavern with John Sabol and participated in or observed various scenarios in multiple locations in the building. Other groups were deployed to the Court and the Jail and reported their observations back to headquarters using walkie-talkies that were wired with earpieces and microphones. A few people remained at HQ to monitor video and audio from the building and to record events that were relayed by the deployed teams.
During the investigation, multiple individuals reported hearing voices, knocks and other sounds that did not seem to be coming from the members of the group, and were thus annotated for additional investigation. Some of the events that I personally witnessed included hearing knocks coming from a nearby room, a loud groan or whine in the room that was heard by several others in the room, and a strange music that came from the microphones deployed in the Tavern. I will explain the events briefly below:
At 11:25 PM, I was in the Parlor room with a large group. The group had just acted out a scenario about a diphtheria outbreak. John Sabol called a halt to the scenario and asked for the group to pause for a bit. Someone said they heard two knocks from the small stairwell that was behind me. I did not hear the initial two knocks, but John asked me to knock twice on the wall in reply. I was about to go knock on the wall when I heard two knocks occur before I could get there. I knocked twice in reply. And then I knocked again – this time 3 knocks. There were no additional knocks after that. (UPDATE – upon audio review, I am able to DEBUNK this event. The original two knocks reported by the group member were a footstep and cough. The two knocks that I heard were actually my own footsteps – they sounded like low level knocks over the headphones connected to the DRO5 in live monitoring mode, but upon further audio analysis I have concluded that I heard my own footsteps and mistook them for knocks.)
A couple minutes after the knocking incident, a loud voice said “Whoa!” Several people heard it, and it was audible to the people at HQ. We asked the people in the room if anyone had made that sound, but nobody admitted to it. (Upon audio analysis, I was able to isolate the “Whoa!” and I clipped. I cannot be absolutely certain that nobody in the group made that sound.)
At 1:09 am, I was back in HQ. We had a few people in the Tavern and they were in the Bride’s Room. At HQ we could hear music coming through the speakers that were monitoring the microphones in the Tavern. We called the group on the walkie-talkie to ask them if they heard the music. They did not hear it. As soon as we asked them about the music, the music stopped suddenly. Then after we told the group that the music had stopped, the music started again. We called the group to tell them that the music started again, but then the music stopped a second time and did not come back. The music came through the speakers very clear and loud and sounded a bit like jazz piano. It was unusually in the volume and clarity because none of the other audio from the house had been that good. We’ll need to check the audio files to see if the music actually came from the house (because it could have been a cell phone at headquarters).
Report #771 – Audio Analysis – Behringer by Brad Bradley
Behringer Microphone Array
03-190126_2349.wav (st – 11:49pm, end – 2:04am) Mic 3, Washington Room
1:19:38 (1:09am) – music over 2 minutes. Not detected by Mic 1 or 2 which were nearby. Debunked as radio interference due to bad cable.
04-190126_2133.wav (st-9:33pm, end-11:49pm) Mic 4, 2nd Hallway
45:26 (10:18pm) – Footsteps heard by team.
04-190126_2349.wav (st-11:49pm, end-2:04am) Mic 4, 2nd Hallway
57:13 (12:46am) – Knocks heard by team.
1:00:12 (12:49am) – Squeek and door knocks heard by team.
Report #772 – Datalogger Analysis by Brad Bradley
No anomalies were detected in temperature, humidity, radiation, vibration, light or magnetic field in the tavern. No dataloggers were placed in the courthouse or jail.
Report #773 – Audio Analysis – Tablet – Bride’s Room by Brad Bradley
rec_20190129-2059_1.wav (Start 6:11pm, end 10:11pm)
1:35:34 (7:46pm) – movement sounds. No one on 2nd floor.
4:07:39 (10:18pm) – child’s voice. Abby was in the room, but was not speaking at this time and spectra do not match her voice.
Report #774 – Audio Analysis – Olympus – Downstairs Dining Room by Brad Bradley
VN620119.wma (start 9:22pm, end1:59am)
3:19:20 (12:41am) – movement