I planned on using this week's blog entry to talk about a vintage shop I found that I really liked, Have Mercy Vintage, in the Gaslight District of Clifton, a neighborhood just outside of Cincinnati. We stopped in there when we went to see Corey Smith last month, and I really enjoyed the place.
However... instead I want to share with you a different experience I had in the Clifton Gaslight District this past weekend. I don't have any photos or videos to prove what happened, but I wanted to get my thoughts down and share the experience with others who might want to investigate for themselves.
Last weekend we decided to go on a ghost tour, something we've never done here in our hometown. It turns out there are lots of them, especially at this time of year. The one we chose was through a group called American Legacy tours, called the "Clifton is Haunted" tour.
The tour itself is a walking tour, about two miles long, lasting around two hours. And we loved it. The tour guide was interesting and fun. She was well versed in the history of the neighborhood and it was clear how much she loved the area. She was also quite knowledgeable about all of the supposed paranormal experiences people had in the local homes and businesses.
I should probably let you know that my husband is a solid skeptic and non-believer in all things supernatural. He loves horror movies and stories of hauntings, but has no belief in the afterlife, ghosts, or anything of that nature. He never has, for as long as I've known him.
I, on the other hand, have been a firm believer for as long as I can remember. I've experienced the unexplainable on more than one occasion, and I definitely believe in the existence of ghosts, spirits, and the afterlife.
So anyway, on this tour, each pair of people who attended were given an EMF reader, and encouraged to download this app that is supposed to read whether spirits are nearby and possibly receive messages from them. We love participating and having fun, so of course we both downloaded the app.
As far as messages from the app go, I didn't feel like I was having any luck with it. Nor did my husband, not that he expected to get any kind of intelligent response. Until we reached a carriage house behind the local German school, and he received not one, but two messages that in essence warned to be careful on the grounds and implied that the caretaker who had been found hanged in the carriage house had not met his end by his own hand.
It rattled my husband a bit to get two messages that both referenced the story we had just been discussing, but he chalked it up to the app utilizing things it heard going on through the phone speakers and then incorporating them into "messages from the dead."
Truth be told, I could see his point about an app used on your phone to do this kind of thing, and although I'm a believer, I'm also a realist. I want real evidence that can't be countered with a reasonable explanation, and his explanation was truthfully more than reasonable, so I didn't give much credence to it.
After that, we walked up a long hill to one of the largest houses in the neighborhood, where we got the opportunity to go inside the first floor apartment and the basement, and look around. The home, known as the Stenton House, is widely regarded as one of the most haunted homes in the area.
I won't bore you with all the historic details of the house, other than to say that there have been a number of deaths associated with the home, and one of the spirits known to be associated with the home is that of a little girl who often knocks things off of a sideboard in the large formal dining room.
The place was dark, and everyone was spreading out to look around different rooms. My husband and I were headed through the kitchen toward the basement, when for some reason, I stopped where I was. I could hear everyone talking about how beautiful the woodwork of the old home was. My husband turned to look behind us, and could see two of the other men in our tour group in the other doorways of that dining room across from him.
All of them could plainly see a lamp slide and fall off of the sideboard. No one was close enough to touch it. It wasn't close enough to the edge to simply have fallen. No one tripped over the cord and pulled it down. Our tour guide was on the other end of the apartment and couldn't have caused it to fall. There were no strings or wires attached to it.
We all gathered back in that room to talk about what had just happened. Using dowsing rods, which I've never seen work before in person, a woman on the tour and our guide were able to communicate with the spirit. And that EMF reader I had been carrying all night, that had been silent for two hours, began going off like crazy.
All three of the men who witnessed what had happened were visibly shaken, my husband included. They couldn't get out of the place fast enough. I'm not saying that the event proves beyond a doubt that ghosts are real, or that we definitely communicated with the other side that night, but I have had a few days to consider other possibilities as to what happened, and I don't see any explanation other than we were in the presence of a spirit that night.
My husband is still having a tough time trying to sort out how what happened fits with his view of the world. As for me, I feel like it's just another event that confirms what I've always believed: our souls continue after our physical bodies die, and sometimes, they choose to remain here on earth.
Anyway, this was the best ghost tour I've ever done, and I recommend it to anyone else who enjoys those kinds of things. I think we might try the cemetery tour next. American Legacy Tours. Definitely check them out.
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