Case Study: Haunted Illusionist (Part I)

We recently had the opportunity of meeting a wonderful young couple who had been experiencing activity in their home. They had initially contacted us through email and as soon as I read it I knew we had a very interesting case at hand.

[Original Email from Zach Oct 2011]

Hello,
About a year  ago, my mother spoke with Kathi at the RPL about the fact that she was looking up previous owner information on the house she purchased in 2006.  She and her husband (my x-step father) experienced some strange events (noises and odd feelings) while moving in, and the events would come and go.  It was pretty much a joke in the family that the house was haunted, especially for me since I have been a major skeptic for as long as I can remember.  Even though I had experienced unusual paranormal situations, and in the past several years have become very interested in a different paranormal subject, if asked, I would have probably said that I do not believe in ghosts. 

A few years ago, while visiting my mom at the house, along with my family and sister’s family, a strange thing happened.  A ball that was in her office, and belonged to one of the children came flying out of the office, yet no one was in it.  That was the weirdest thing that I had seen occur in the house, but not the weirdest thing for my mom, apparently.  I tried to come up with a “logical” reason as to why it would have happened, and just brushed it off…
A while back, Kathi had asked my mom if she wanted to have the house investigated, and she declined as nothing had happened for quite a while, and she was planning to purchase a condo and move out.  After thinking about it, she offered me the house on a land contract.  Since I didn’t believe there could be anything other rational reasons as to why the house seemed haunted in the past and nothing had happened for a while, we figured it was a great idea. 

My family started to move in this past June, and immediately we started to have strange events occur. 

There were strange banging sounds from time to time that were louder than normal “house noises”.  A couple of them were during the day.  This only went on for the first few weeks.  It suddenly stopped. 

A few weeks ago, this started back up again, but got even weirder…
Our 2 children sleep downstairs, and we are upstairs.  After going to bed, and being there for about 10 minutes, we would hear one or two loud bangs as if someone punched a wall really hard.  It startled us quite a bit, but we tried to shrug it off, and just joked that it was “Bob, the ghost”. 

Well, last Thursday, was the strangest event of all, and made us decide we were going to contact you. 

I work a day/night job, 2nd shift, so my girlfriend, Tina is home with the kids in the evening.  At about 10:30 she heard someone using the front door knocker to knock on the door.  The kids were in bed, asleep.  She had all the curtains down and didn’t even look out the window to see if she could see anyone. 

A half hour later, it happened again, but she also heard the mail slot being flipped up and down for a few seconds.  She called 911, and the police arrived quickly and searched the area. 

I got home at about 2am, and we went to bed at about 2:30. 

Just minutes later, we heard the loudest BANG ever!  It was as if someone tried to kick down the side door of the house.  It actually rattled the house, probably to the point that if someone had kicked any door with that much force, it would have broken it. 

Being that the knocking had occurred earlier, I assumed that someone was trying to break in or scare us for some reason.  We jumped out of bed and I called 911.  Several police arrived in about 3 minutes and searched all around the house.  There was no sign of damage anywhere!  No foot print on either door, or anything.

We have tried to reproduce that sound with both doors, and can’t come close, but those spots are the only 2 possible places I can imagine coming close to a sound like what we heard, although Tina thinks it sounded like the bang came from within our room.
The only other strange things have been that our cat acts a bit weird, which is not totally unusual…  Also, two nights ago, I was in the downstairs bathroom, and as I was walking out, the faucet started to release water for just a moment, then I walked into the kitchen and the kitchen faucet did the same thing, just for a moment, as I looked at it.  They started and stopped.
Please understand that I mean no offense when I say this, but it was very difficult for me to contact someone about this.  I am a magician by trade, and you may or may not be aware that magicians are typically some of the biggest skeptics/cynics about the paranormal.  The main reason is that Houdini tried very hard to reach his mother through spiritual mediums, and found that everyone he saw was a phony.  People who I have looked up to most of my life, like James Randi & Penn and Teller are some of the leading debunkers of the paranormal, following in Houdini’s footsteps, but I have found them to be wrong on at least one paranormal topic, and I am quickly finding them to be wrong about this topic.
I will look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks for your time.

Zack

This case is definitly one of a kind. After conducting our investigation and historical research we found some VERY interesting facts to support the numerous claimes of activity in their home. We will follow up with further information in the coming weeks.