By Noah Diedrich, Community News Service
Editor’s note: This article is provided by Community News Service, which provides local reporting from the University of Vermont. For this story, Diedrich, along with photographer Catherine Morrissey, braved the dark depths of Wilson Castle to follow ghost hunters.
If the assembly of tents outside Wilson Castle on a mid-October night was any indicator, the old brick mansion’s reputation for being haunted is not without merit.
Perhaps it’s the chill that permeates every room, the antique music box that is said to play on its own accord occasionally, or the ornate Gothic statues that would make even Shirley Jackson quiver.
Since its completion in 1885, Wilson Castle has changed hands several times. It was eventually purchased by Herbert Lee Wilson, a former radio engineer and the castle’s last permanent resident, who died in 2010.
Since then, the castle’s Addams Family–esque halls have been vacant. Or have they?
Rumors swirl of ghostly residents haunting the castle halls — the jury is still out — but the castle is still alive with visitors, paranormal or otherwise.
Hundreds of enthusiasts come every year in search of supernatural experiences, said Andy Probst, the castle’s tour guide, social media manager, and odd-job man. The castle boasts visits from the likes of Jason Hawes, one of the star investigators from the television show “Ghost Hunters,” Probst said.
On the night of Oct. 18, one of the many groups that poke around the estate each week gathered their ghost-hunting gear and set off to look for evidence of the paranormal.
Tour members viewed a wicker casket in Wilson Castle by torchlight at twilight.
Unsurprisingly, one of the most active floors for investigations is the attic, Probst said. While the rest of the castle has undergone significant renovations in recent years, the attic was left unfinished to give it an eerie feel.
The attic rooms are staged for photography and investigations, including props like a child’s bed, a baby carriage, a wheelchair, and a real body basket—a wicker precursor to body bags.
But Probst said the rooms aren’t all for show. Visitors typically experience some paranormal encounter in one of the attic’s many rooms, he said.
“[The spirits] always let you know they’re here in some way,” Probst said. “Not one group that’s left has said it was a very quiet night.”
Probst said the spookiest item in the attic is a small table in the corner of the attic’s ballroom. The table is littered with notes and children’s toys left by guests — bouncy balls, Matchbox cars, rubber ducks — in hopes of pleasing Elliot, the alleged spirit of one of the original castle owners’ sons.
“They think that he comes back here as a 6- or 7-year-old child,” Probst said. “He did not die at that age. He was in his 50s when he passed, and he didn’t pass in this house. One of the theories is that he’s here at that age because those were the best years of his life.”
As he continued the tour through the attic, Probst issued an ominous warning to the group.
“Watch for shadow figures up here,” he said. “They tend to peek through the door entrances.”
Ed Bresette, a member of Portal Spirits Rising, a paranormal investigative team that makes videos of its spectral inquiries, attended the investigation that night with the rest of his team to scout out the location for a future video.
Bresette, a Plattsburgh, New York resident, said the cool temperatures inside the castle were optimal for spirits.
“If it’s hot, the spirits just don’t like that,” he said. “They just like more of the cold. They get more energy from that.”
While a reporter was interviewing Bresette in the castle’s kitchen, a nearby device began to twitter and chirp — a signal that a spirit was nearby.
The gadget was a REM pod — an acronym for “radiating electromagneticity,” a term that defies even Google’s comprehension. According to Bresette, the pod operates like a theremin, emitting lights and noises in the direction it senses changes in an electromagnetic field.
Bresette also demonstrated a piece of equipment he recently purchased called a grounding pad. He said it gathers energy from the earth into the user’s body. He said spirits can harness that energy to communicate better with the human world.
You place your bare feet on the rubber mat, which plugs into a wall outlet. “You just take your shoes off, socks off, and just sit there,” Bressette explained. “I do about 15 to 20 minutes.”
One floor below the attic is the bedroom of Sarah Johnson, one of the castle’s original owners. Nothing about its distinct pink walls, ornate mirror, and unassuming closet elicit any signs of deviousness, but Probst said otherwise.
Probst said the pink bedroom has had the most reports of hauntings since the 1970s, and many guests have reportedly taken photos there in which the figure of a woman, believed to be Sarah herself, can be seen lurking in the background.
Probst said Wilson Castle’s portal between the spirit world and the human world is within the bedroom closet. He first learned of the ghostly amenity from some visitors who told him the portal functions as a revolving door between dimensions.
“When they told me that, I think I laughed for a half an hour. I said, ‘This is insane, what am I doing here?’”
Now, however, Probst considers himself a believer.
“It’s the consistency of what these groups tell us,” he said. “We’ve had guests come during the daytime for our historical tours where we’re not talking ghosts, and they’ll pull us aside and say, ‘What the hell is going on in that closet?’”
Probst said guests report feeling uneasy when near or inside the closet and that paranormal investigators’ electromagnetic field equipment goes haywire when placed inside.
“You couldn’t pay me to spend the night in this room,” Probst said.
But groups often do — and can pay upwards of $135 a pop for the chance.
A company called Are You Afraid of the Dark? Paranormal Events hosts group investigations and camp-outs at paranormal sites, including Wilson Castle.
One of the company’s founders, Olivia Taylor, said it started with private events hosted by her and three friends. “[My friend] said, ‘Why don’t we make this a business?’ And so we did,” Taylor said.
The company, which celebrated its one-year anniversary last month, provides equipment for beginners. Recently, tools seen in shows like “Ghost Hunters” were strewn across a table in the castle’s art gallery: spirit boxes, a Ouija board, electromagnetic frequency meters, and the like.
Taylor said participants are encouraged to explore the castle on their own and investigate where they see fit. Sometimes, they investigate until 4 a.m.
Take the company-hosted excursion on that mid-October night.
Gathered in a circle, a few brave souls stood in silence while “GhostTube VOX,” a smartphone app that claims to emit the voices of spirits picked up over AM radio waves by the phone’s sensors, played garbled bits of speech.
The investigators, seven in number, asked questions of what they believed to be a spirit in the room with them.
“Who are we talking to?” “Is it Sarah?” “Somebody else passing through?”
It wasn’t clear whether they got the answers they were looking for. But based on the excitement that night, they seemed to get their money’s worth.
