Group observes spiritual activity in Octagon House - Circleville, OH - News Article Locations on Waymarking.com

CIRCLEVILLE - The Gregg-Crites Octagon House has been empty for 12 years, but Vanessa Boysel says it’s still a home. Holes are in the ceiling, wallpaper is peeling off the walls and the spiral staircase is too unstable to climb, but its current residents probably don’t mind.

Boysel visits the home and its residents every now and then with her family and a load of equipment - night vision cameras, audio recorders, electromagnetic detectors, and her latest tool, a ghost box.

Boysel runs a group of paranormal investigators called C.L.O.S.E.R., Central Lower Ohio Spiritual Encounter Researchers. They are essentially ghost hunters. They visit haunted sites and attempt to interact with spirits and learn their stories.

On a recent trip to the Octagon House, C.L.O.S.E.R. demonstrated how they connect with the spirits.

The 157-year-old home, which was moved from its original location to a plot of land on Crites Road, doesn’t have any electric or plumbing. The group uses a generator to power their lights and night vision surveillance cameras. They have battery-powered hand-held video cameras, audio recorders, flashlights and ghost-detecting equipment that measures electromagnetic frequencies and a portable AM/FM radio that is believed to create white noise and audio remnants to allow ghosts to speak through it.

It takes awhile to set up all the equipment, but it all pays off when a voice or any activity comes through.

On this night, Boysel and company use the ghost box to ask questions of the spirits. They think they hear their replies.

On other nights, Boysel said she has heard ghosts speak through her equipment and even without it. Just recently, while she was training a new ghost hunter in the Octagon House, she said she and the trainee heard a man say “John.”

She said she has seen an image of a man in the house, but wasn’t sure if the man was “John” or a former resident because she doesn’t have a complete history of the house.

She did, however, notice the smell of a fireplace burning when she visited the house, and when she asked Dorothy Cooper, president of the Roundtown Conservancy, which owns the house, she was told no fires were documented.

Boysel said she was later introduced to a woman who confirmed a fire.

She said the woman showed her a photo of a man who Boysel identified as the image she saw in the house.

“I said ‘that’s the man in the house,’ and she said it was her father,” Boysel said.

Aside from hearing, seeing and smelling spirits in her presence, Boysel said she can also feel them, usually through a drop in temperature, but sometimes they use force.

“The second time [we came to the house] we had a bouncing ball come down the steps, then the temperature changed,” she said. “You could actually feel somebody in there with you.”

In other instances, spirits have become violent.

“We have ran into some violent spirits at different places we were asked to go,” she said. “My husband got hit several times and scratched up.”

But the ghost-hunting group itself is not looking to harm.

“We don’t try to be the ghost hunters on television,” she said. “To me, that’s an insult. Those people have no purpose. All they want to do is screw around with spirits and make a mockery out of being dead.”

She said C.L.O.S.E.R. is trying to prove you can come back to where you were happiest during life after you die.

“We go into these locations without history. We go in [knowing] nothing,” she said. “After we actually feel were done with what we’re doing, we go back to the person [who sent us] and tell them what we found, and then we look for the history to link it.

“What we’re trying to prove is when we die, there’s a heaven and there’s a hell, but can people come back to where they were happy. If we can link people, like John, to the house then that proves that he has a choice, and he’s here because maybe he was happy here.”

Boysel’s first experience with spirits happened when she was just a little girl.

She said when she was around 6 or 7 years old, she heard a man tell her to open her eyes as she was lying awake in her bed.

“When I opened my eyes, there was an image of a man by the door pane and he was rocking back and forth in a chair,” she said. “He had crutches on the side of it and he was an old fella.”

She said she told her mother about the man, and it wasn’t until several days later that her mother showed her a photo of her grandfather.

Boysel recalled identifying him as the man in her room.

“[My mother] said ‘your grandfather died in your bedroom,’” she recalled. “And then I started seeing more. I was able to dream of things before they’d happen. I tried to close it out because sometimes it was really scary.”

She said her husband has called her a medium.

“But I say I’m just screwed up in the head,” she said with a laugh. “Because when you try to tell people ,’I was born with this’ - I had a church tell me one time that I was possessed, but I was like ‘I am not possessed. I am not bad.’”

“If I were bad, I wouldn’t try to do good and do what I do,” she said. “People sometimes don’t understand the abilities of this thing,” she said. “I want to use it for whatever good can come out of it.”

Boysel is inviting ghost hunters to join her paranormal group, C.L.O.S.E.R., for nighttime investigations into spiritual activities in the Octagon House.

She said investigations typically occur from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. or later and can be scheduled any day in October.

The ghost hunts cost $50 per person. Those wanting a DVD of the experience can pay $75 for the total package. All proceeds go to the conservancy’s effort to restore the house.

Those wanting to schedule an investigation with C.L.O.S.E.R. should call Boysel at 740-571-7292 for more information.

Type of publication: Newspaper When was the article reported?: 10/23/2012 Publication: Circleville Herald Article Url: [Web Link] Is Registration Required?: no How widespread was the article reported?: local News Category: Editorial

Visit Instructions:
Give the date of your visit at the news location along with a description of what you learned or experienced.

Recent Visits/Logs:

There are no logs for this waymark yet.