goblin
Noble
Back in December 2009 I was part of a small group that visited Whispers Estate in Mitchell, Indiana. The next day I typed up the following account in my journal. I was thinking about it this morning and decided to share it.
So far as I know the house has been the subject of several TV ghost hunter visits since I wrote this. I'm pretty sure Van Renier still owns the place so my impressions of his feelings toward the place could have been off (if I am remembering right he had a cold the night we were there). There are some details, both of our visit and the stories of the house, that I find interesting but for whatever reason left out of my account.
Anyway, I know it's long, sorry, but I think the house is an interesting for-instance of a modern claimed-to-be-haunted place, a destination for ghost hunters with a sort of mythology.
I have wanted to go back and went so far as to make plans to do so but wound up getting the flu and flaked out.
Here goes, unedited from December 6 2009:
Last night I visited "Whispers Estate", a commercial 'real' haunted house in south central Indiana. I found the experience quite interesting so wanted to blab about it a bunch before I forget things.
Whispers Estate is a 3,700 foot Victorian style house located in Mitchell, Indiana. It was built in or around 1899. It's a little run down - needs some roof and foundation work - but is still an attractive building in many respects, and it is located in a neighborhood of many similar houses (some still residences, others now converted to businesses). The house acquired its curious name sometime after 2006. The "Whispers" part refers to the audible disembodied speech visitors claim to have heard; I am not certain where "Estate" came from since it sits on quite a small piece of land.
The name came about when a fellow named Jarret bought the house in 2006. The house had been empty for five years prior to him purchasing it. Before that it might've been a duplex or a single-family residence; the story was a little unclear to me. It also was a boarding house for some long stretch of time. Originally, back at the beginning of the 20th century, it was home to a doctor and his wife and their foster children.
Jarret, I am told, is an artist and writer and kind of a far out guy. He was also something of a handyman. He relocated from New Orleans to Mitchell and moved into Whispers and began renovations, restoring the house and undoing some of the duplex modifications. When in this work he found some marks from a very old fire in the parlor room, he felt like he 'woke something up', and began experiencing some intense haunting activity.
Jarret became convinced he was in close contact with a spirit named Rachael, the ghost of an eight year old girl who had died in the house in 1912. So far as I can tell the evidence for Rachael's existence - not as a real ghost but as a real person - is almost entirely conjectural. No birth record, no death record. One photograph of mysterious origins. But, Jarret both saw and heard this girl, and soon other visitors saw and heard her as well, and Jarret engaged in some automatic writing exercises to communicate with her. He also had someone check the backyard with ground penetrating radar and they uncovered five bodies which supported some elements of his story.
The claim is that Rachael and her twin brother Enus came to live with the doctor and his wife (John and Jessie Gibbons) when their own parents were killed in a carriage accident. The parents were buried in the doctor's backyard. Rachael then accidentally started a fire in the parlor on Christmas Day 1912, was burned and died two days later. Her brother came down with something and died two years later. Her adoptive mother died in the house of pneumonia in I think 1929. The doctor died in 1944. I suppose other patients may've died in the house, or at least experienced severe traumas there. It is known a couple other people died in the house over the years as well - a boy died of 'water on the brain' in 1974, a man drowned in a bathtub. There may've been others.
When Jarret was living in the house and renovating it (and turning it into a 'haunted bed and breakfast', a working haunted house if you will), the house became as the ghost hunters would say extremely active. People heard and recorded spectral voices. People were touched, not always in nice ways. Phantom odors occurred and recurred. Apparitions, including a couple shadowy non-human shapes, were sighted. By all accounts visiting psychics embraced the place and added to Jarret's story for it. I was told there was a 'vortex' that ran from one corner of the parlor through another corner in an attic room (this attic room also psychically divined as the 'heart of the house'). Claims of some kind of the house as some sort of waystation on a ghost highway which ran through the house from a church down the street (there's also a funeral home across the way but I'm not sure it figures in; I'm told the owner hates the idea of Whispers as a haunted business); allegedly around a dozen transient spooks wandering through the building at any times. Couches vibrate, knocks and footsteps are heard and felt, objects tossed around.
Part of the lore of the house is the doctor was a womanizer and took some liberties with his female patients. In modern times female visitors have been touched while in the doctor's old examination and operating rooms, and visitors have heard female voices cry out for help or in protest from those areas.
I guess the house did have something of a reputation as a haunted house (as old houses sometimes do) prior to Jarret's discoveries, but nothing was documented. Some former residents have stated they saw an apparition, or their children were afraid of the place. Others state they didn't experience anything. But as I say Jarret both seemingly woke the place up big-time, and set about turning it into a storied, promoted, for-profit haunted house. I heard many times from people who knew Jarret that they loved him but he was crazy, he was a far-out artist man, and that he was maybe kind of a bullshitter and you maybe shouldn't believe everything he said. But then, the same people would talk about inexplicable things that they or their spouses experienced in the house during Jarret's residence and renovations. It was also noted that some of Jarret's furthest-out stories had been corroborated by other witnesses.
And these stories were really weird spooky stuff. Sort of comical on one hand but disturbing on another. An example is the 911 calls. Not long after Jarret had a phone line installed, some 911 calls were made from it, where the operator heard a little girl screaming. The current owner, Van, was dubious about the story but checked in with the police and they confirmed it. I guess Jarret could've faked it? And visitors took to leaving toys and dolls for the little ghost girl. One of the dolls vanished. Then a few weeks later a visitor asked Rachael to let them see her and the missing doll was tossed into the room seemingly from nowhere, now burnt (and still warm and smelling of being burned). Witnesses support this story. And balls and jacks were tossed into rooms or bounced down stairs, and I've heard recordings of the little girl's voice singing or speaking among astonished guests.
Now granted, these could have all been tricks. I kept thinking about Victorian era spiritualists and mediums and how they would supposedly fool people. That could've been happening here. But I also kept thinking of the Western understanding of the Tibetan concept of a Tulpa. As I understand it, it's something of an invented ghost, a 'thoughtform', a spirit that can be seen, can walk and talk, but that springs from someone's head.
They say the activity was very high when Jarret was there, and that it all kind of centered around Jarret. Then one day he - he says - he walked into the parlor and saw a huge shadow in one corner. As he watched he realized he was seeing a Christmas tree. And then he saw Rachael, and she was screaming, and kept screaming, and he decided he'd had enough, and he moved out and sold the place to Van, an amiable ghost hunter type who wanted to keep the place running. Jarret eventually decided to move back in but I guess he and Van had a falling out over roof repairs and that was that.
Van let us spend the night in the house for free, and is a very nice man, but he is not Jarret. Many times one of the other visitors, a woman whose husband had aided Jarret with renovations, noted the haunting phenomena had both become less active, and actually changed in character, under Van's proprietorship. Now people hear growls instead of singing; they say things seem more 'aggressive'. Van, bless him, is clearly frightened of the place and I think wishes he had never bought it. He lives in Fishers, IN, so has to drive something like 3 hours to be at Whispers. He will no longer be there at night if he is the only person there, and says when he's here during the day he wears an iPod most of the time so he doesn't hear the voices. He said he found he just couldn't sleep well there - too many noises during the night, and even if some weren't supernatural in origin, he got jumpy. When he first moved in, when he first walked in and turned on a light in what he thought would be his new home, three bulbs flared and burned out at once. He notes it could've been coincidental but it spooked him and he hasn't felt welcome or right there since.
You got the idea Jarret should be there, not Van, and I feel bad for Van as I say that. He wanted to continue what Jarret started, but Jarret was the wizard. Van has tried. He's slept in the completely cool attic bedroom Jarret created (and which I must admit I fell in love with), the one the psychics call the heart of the house, the one with the supposed 'vortex' in the corner. He kept having terrible nightmares and 'lucid waking' experiences and gave up. Down the hall is Jarret's 'seance room', with it's large mirror. I sat there cross-legged on the floor with four others last night, straining to hear any response while Jarret's friend Amanda invited whatever else was there to talk to us, touch us, to do anything. Knock. Just knock.
One guy in our group thought he glimpsed an apparition early in the evening, and I'm told a bed shook a little (I was not in the room at the time). Otherwise, nothing happened. I know it's not worth anything to say this but, I could believe the place was haunted. Or at least that it could easily play hell with your imagination if you were alone there at night. I'd go to the place again with the right people... the recordings I've heard, combined with being in the place and hearing people's "I know you think I'm crazy but..." stories were just tantalizing enough to make me think maybe, maybe. And wouldn't it blow your mind to hear one of those disembodied voices? But I am not Jarret, either.
Jarret texted Amanda a number of times throughout the night. He's in Bloomington now I believe, and the claim is some level of haunting activity has followed him. As we sat in Rachael's room in the dark begging something to move a toy, talk to us, touch someone, Jarret's door opened and when he went to close it he heard a child laugh. Or so he says. We just sat there in the cold and kept talking to the dark room, hearing only our guts gurgle in the silence. Later a text from Jarret, "Pulvis et umbra summus". We are dust and shadow. And then silence from the wizard, and silence from the house, and the long drive home.
So far as I know the house has been the subject of several TV ghost hunter visits since I wrote this. I'm pretty sure Van Renier still owns the place so my impressions of his feelings toward the place could have been off (if I am remembering right he had a cold the night we were there). There are some details, both of our visit and the stories of the house, that I find interesting but for whatever reason left out of my account.
Anyway, I know it's long, sorry, but I think the house is an interesting for-instance of a modern claimed-to-be-haunted place, a destination for ghost hunters with a sort of mythology.
I have wanted to go back and went so far as to make plans to do so but wound up getting the flu and flaked out.
Here goes, unedited from December 6 2009:
Last night I visited "Whispers Estate", a commercial 'real' haunted house in south central Indiana. I found the experience quite interesting so wanted to blab about it a bunch before I forget things.
Whispers Estate is a 3,700 foot Victorian style house located in Mitchell, Indiana. It was built in or around 1899. It's a little run down - needs some roof and foundation work - but is still an attractive building in many respects, and it is located in a neighborhood of many similar houses (some still residences, others now converted to businesses). The house acquired its curious name sometime after 2006. The "Whispers" part refers to the audible disembodied speech visitors claim to have heard; I am not certain where "Estate" came from since it sits on quite a small piece of land.
The name came about when a fellow named Jarret bought the house in 2006. The house had been empty for five years prior to him purchasing it. Before that it might've been a duplex or a single-family residence; the story was a little unclear to me. It also was a boarding house for some long stretch of time. Originally, back at the beginning of the 20th century, it was home to a doctor and his wife and their foster children.
Jarret, I am told, is an artist and writer and kind of a far out guy. He was also something of a handyman. He relocated from New Orleans to Mitchell and moved into Whispers and began renovations, restoring the house and undoing some of the duplex modifications. When in this work he found some marks from a very old fire in the parlor room, he felt like he 'woke something up', and began experiencing some intense haunting activity.
Jarret became convinced he was in close contact with a spirit named Rachael, the ghost of an eight year old girl who had died in the house in 1912. So far as I can tell the evidence for Rachael's existence - not as a real ghost but as a real person - is almost entirely conjectural. No birth record, no death record. One photograph of mysterious origins. But, Jarret both saw and heard this girl, and soon other visitors saw and heard her as well, and Jarret engaged in some automatic writing exercises to communicate with her. He also had someone check the backyard with ground penetrating radar and they uncovered five bodies which supported some elements of his story.
The claim is that Rachael and her twin brother Enus came to live with the doctor and his wife (John and Jessie Gibbons) when their own parents were killed in a carriage accident. The parents were buried in the doctor's backyard. Rachael then accidentally started a fire in the parlor on Christmas Day 1912, was burned and died two days later. Her brother came down with something and died two years later. Her adoptive mother died in the house of pneumonia in I think 1929. The doctor died in 1944. I suppose other patients may've died in the house, or at least experienced severe traumas there. It is known a couple other people died in the house over the years as well - a boy died of 'water on the brain' in 1974, a man drowned in a bathtub. There may've been others.
When Jarret was living in the house and renovating it (and turning it into a 'haunted bed and breakfast', a working haunted house if you will), the house became as the ghost hunters would say extremely active. People heard and recorded spectral voices. People were touched, not always in nice ways. Phantom odors occurred and recurred. Apparitions, including a couple shadowy non-human shapes, were sighted. By all accounts visiting psychics embraced the place and added to Jarret's story for it. I was told there was a 'vortex' that ran from one corner of the parlor through another corner in an attic room (this attic room also psychically divined as the 'heart of the house'). Claims of some kind of the house as some sort of waystation on a ghost highway which ran through the house from a church down the street (there's also a funeral home across the way but I'm not sure it figures in; I'm told the owner hates the idea of Whispers as a haunted business); allegedly around a dozen transient spooks wandering through the building at any times. Couches vibrate, knocks and footsteps are heard and felt, objects tossed around.
Part of the lore of the house is the doctor was a womanizer and took some liberties with his female patients. In modern times female visitors have been touched while in the doctor's old examination and operating rooms, and visitors have heard female voices cry out for help or in protest from those areas.
I guess the house did have something of a reputation as a haunted house (as old houses sometimes do) prior to Jarret's discoveries, but nothing was documented. Some former residents have stated they saw an apparition, or their children were afraid of the place. Others state they didn't experience anything. But as I say Jarret both seemingly woke the place up big-time, and set about turning it into a storied, promoted, for-profit haunted house. I heard many times from people who knew Jarret that they loved him but he was crazy, he was a far-out artist man, and that he was maybe kind of a bullshitter and you maybe shouldn't believe everything he said. But then, the same people would talk about inexplicable things that they or their spouses experienced in the house during Jarret's residence and renovations. It was also noted that some of Jarret's furthest-out stories had been corroborated by other witnesses.
And these stories were really weird spooky stuff. Sort of comical on one hand but disturbing on another. An example is the 911 calls. Not long after Jarret had a phone line installed, some 911 calls were made from it, where the operator heard a little girl screaming. The current owner, Van, was dubious about the story but checked in with the police and they confirmed it. I guess Jarret could've faked it? And visitors took to leaving toys and dolls for the little ghost girl. One of the dolls vanished. Then a few weeks later a visitor asked Rachael to let them see her and the missing doll was tossed into the room seemingly from nowhere, now burnt (and still warm and smelling of being burned). Witnesses support this story. And balls and jacks were tossed into rooms or bounced down stairs, and I've heard recordings of the little girl's voice singing or speaking among astonished guests.
Now granted, these could have all been tricks. I kept thinking about Victorian era spiritualists and mediums and how they would supposedly fool people. That could've been happening here. But I also kept thinking of the Western understanding of the Tibetan concept of a Tulpa. As I understand it, it's something of an invented ghost, a 'thoughtform', a spirit that can be seen, can walk and talk, but that springs from someone's head.
They say the activity was very high when Jarret was there, and that it all kind of centered around Jarret. Then one day he - he says - he walked into the parlor and saw a huge shadow in one corner. As he watched he realized he was seeing a Christmas tree. And then he saw Rachael, and she was screaming, and kept screaming, and he decided he'd had enough, and he moved out and sold the place to Van, an amiable ghost hunter type who wanted to keep the place running. Jarret eventually decided to move back in but I guess he and Van had a falling out over roof repairs and that was that.
Van let us spend the night in the house for free, and is a very nice man, but he is not Jarret. Many times one of the other visitors, a woman whose husband had aided Jarret with renovations, noted the haunting phenomena had both become less active, and actually changed in character, under Van's proprietorship. Now people hear growls instead of singing; they say things seem more 'aggressive'. Van, bless him, is clearly frightened of the place and I think wishes he had never bought it. He lives in Fishers, IN, so has to drive something like 3 hours to be at Whispers. He will no longer be there at night if he is the only person there, and says when he's here during the day he wears an iPod most of the time so he doesn't hear the voices. He said he found he just couldn't sleep well there - too many noises during the night, and even if some weren't supernatural in origin, he got jumpy. When he first moved in, when he first walked in and turned on a light in what he thought would be his new home, three bulbs flared and burned out at once. He notes it could've been coincidental but it spooked him and he hasn't felt welcome or right there since.
You got the idea Jarret should be there, not Van, and I feel bad for Van as I say that. He wanted to continue what Jarret started, but Jarret was the wizard. Van has tried. He's slept in the completely cool attic bedroom Jarret created (and which I must admit I fell in love with), the one the psychics call the heart of the house, the one with the supposed 'vortex' in the corner. He kept having terrible nightmares and 'lucid waking' experiences and gave up. Down the hall is Jarret's 'seance room', with it's large mirror. I sat there cross-legged on the floor with four others last night, straining to hear any response while Jarret's friend Amanda invited whatever else was there to talk to us, touch us, to do anything. Knock. Just knock.
One guy in our group thought he glimpsed an apparition early in the evening, and I'm told a bed shook a little (I was not in the room at the time). Otherwise, nothing happened. I know it's not worth anything to say this but, I could believe the place was haunted. Or at least that it could easily play hell with your imagination if you were alone there at night. I'd go to the place again with the right people... the recordings I've heard, combined with being in the place and hearing people's "I know you think I'm crazy but..." stories were just tantalizing enough to make me think maybe, maybe. And wouldn't it blow your mind to hear one of those disembodied voices? But I am not Jarret, either.
Jarret texted Amanda a number of times throughout the night. He's in Bloomington now I believe, and the claim is some level of haunting activity has followed him. As we sat in Rachael's room in the dark begging something to move a toy, talk to us, touch someone, Jarret's door opened and when he went to close it he heard a child laugh. Or so he says. We just sat there in the cold and kept talking to the dark room, hearing only our guts gurgle in the silence. Later a text from Jarret, "Pulvis et umbra summus". We are dust and shadow. And then silence from the wizard, and silence from the house, and the long drive home.
