Report by Jerry Talbert (continued):
On Saturday morning, my daughters, Jennifer and Deb, brought my 16 year-old son Brian down to spend a night in the Sallie House. Jennifer is the third member of the Kansas Paranormal Group and her role is in research and doing interviews with occupants of houses that we are investigating. She has gathered a lot of documentation on the house as well as former owners.
Another member, Claudia Bosshammer-Bilimek, is a librarian at the Atchison Public Library. She has helped immensely with finding documents that we were looking for involving the Sallie House. Claudia was hoping to stop by later that Saturday night if she was able.
It seemed like a very short time later that our two psychics, Danny and LuAnn, arrived with their 12 year-old daughter Beth. Beth had said she was having visitations from a woman whom she believed was Johanna Barnes. She was very excited about visiting the house and was hoping to meet Johanna on familiar grounds.
We certainly were having a full house now, and Renae and me were having doubts about being able to record any EVPs with so many people around. While we were talking downstairs, Beth was wandering about the house. That was the time that another event took place.
I had my camcorder in the nursery pointed out into the hall. Against the wall in the hallway I had placed a mirror. It was recording since the psychics had arrived and it captured Beth walking about the empty bedrooms. As she went downstairs, my Sony camcorder went into DEMO mode all by itself. We have found from earlier recordings that a very interested ghost has liked to play with the camcorders and this was another piece of proof that the ghost was around for our visit that day.
In the late afternoon the Pickmans arrived for our outdoor grilling. The Pickmans have been with us a couple of times already and Tony seemed less apprehensive now about returning to the house where he had been attacked several times. We had explained to him that we believed that a mentally unstable person by the name of Johanna Barnes was in fact the person that was scratching him. We also explained that we did not believe that this was demonic but a human ghost that was trying to contact him. This relieved the anxiety that Tony had felt for so many years about the house and now was able to join us.
The dinner turned out fine and everyone was sitting around still learning about each other. Michael was anxious about trying his experiment; so I and Tony went upstairs with him to get things set up. He wanted to know if you made the local atmosphere different, would that enhance the EVPs. I had great doubts about this but was willing to let him do the experiment. It seemed to Renae and myself that the reason we were getting so many EVPs were due largely to the amount of visits that we had done to the house. By growing familiar to us, the ghosts seemed less guarded and perhaps even happy about our visits. This is something, we surmised, that cannot be done by a two hour visit. To get the results you need to make connection with the entities and to calm their anxieties. So I helped Michael set up the room and move the helium tank into it.
The idea was to fill the room with some helium thereby changing the composition of the atmosphere. With the atmosphere lighter, he contended, EVPs should be easier for the ghostly inhabitants. Needless to say, I believe the experiment proved to be fruitless.
We only did this experiment for an hour and then we dismantled everything. It was after this experiment that the next event happened.