House of Eleven Gables: Part 1

Ithaca may not be as notorious as Gettysburg for its hauntings, but there are some places that I know of that might capture the interests of the curious few. I'm sure that there exists many houses that people believe are haunted, but what about more public and well known places? The first place that comes to mind is the Babcock mansion, formerly a residence, before that the restaurant known as Turback's, and countless other things. This house is well over 200 years old, and rests atop a small hill, looming over route 13 towards Elmira. If you live in Ithaca, I'm sure you've passed this house plenty of times, maybe even trespassed on the property. It was nicknamed " The House of Eleven Gables" for its striking architecture, but the name evokes thoughts of Salem's infamous House of Seven Gables. Whether or not the house has any history with witches is undetermined. I originally discovered this name after being in the back of the house before the owners bulldozed what was there. Behind a small grove of pines behind the house was the ruins of the old farm's slaughterhouse, and the foundation of the burnt down barn. The forest itself was littered with rusted playground equipment and overrun by lilac bushes. One day as I made my way through the mess, pushing aside the lovely flowers, I discovered a huge wooden sign, with peeling green paint that read "House of Eleven Gables".  Being young and having no familiarity with Salem, I simply assumed it had to do with the gables on the house, and quickly put it out of my mind. But now that I can see the connections between the two places, I begin to wonder if they have any connects through history as well.
I'll be adding to this story regularly, so be sure to check back for updates.

A Trip to the Graveyard

 My partner and I ended up taking a trip to the large graveyard up by College-town, in which we wandered and started to film. I've decided that we will be filming most of our endeavors and arrange all of the footage into a documentary of the sort detailing our experiences. Recently, we have had much inspiration from watching the X-Files, and have deeded to try and solve things through scientific means. Who is Mulder and who is Scully has yet to be determined.

While noting particularly exciting happened at the cemetery( maybe because it was broad daylight) we did find a fallen flag pole in the Veteran's section, as seen above. As you can see the pole fell and landed directly in front of the headstones, narrowly missing them. If one were to calculate directly where this flagpole would have landed, it should have hit the headstones, most likely breaking them. My background as an engineer has been helping me through these sort of situations, and to notice what others might see as purely coincidental. As a skeptic it is my first thought that the winds were strong and not included into my calculations, and that could have caused the pole to fall in such a way. Nonetheless, it is very intriguing to imagine that there were paranormal forces influencing it.

To the right is a headstone with nothing except my name on it. These were very common in poor folk who could not afford headstones with their full name and date of death on it. Due to the weathering, I would say that this dates to around the Civil War era or so, as this practice fell out of style later. I must say though, seeing my own name like that did intrigue me.

Upcoming Plans

This coming weekend my team and I will be doing a graveyard investigation, we'll probably bring a DSLR camera and video recorder to try and capture evidence, and maybe an EMF detector plus whatever else we can get our hands on. As this is our first outing, we're going to keep it simple and see what happens and try and format the rest of our outings based on what happens at this one. I'll have a detailed report out of our experience and many new pictures to post within the next few days.
                                                                                             

Who inspires me?

Inspirational figures come rarely for me. Most often I feel a sort of disdain for people, especially the ones in the media, but every so often one comes along that seems to inspire me. Take for example Natalia Vodianova, Russian supermodel. Natalia was born into a hard life, and found her big break within her looks, but she was not content with simply being well-off, she wanted to help others like her as well, so she started a huge charity in Russia for orphaned children and continues to be one of Russia's most prominent Philanthropists. As a model this in particular stands out to me. I mean, this industry is cutthroat, its aimed towards the betterment of oneself, and to see someone within the industry acting selflessly inspires me to do the same.
But that has nothing to do with ghosts.
Now that I think about it, this project has nothing to do with the betterment of others, its more about my own curiosity, and need for adventure. Maybe I should have chosen a more selfless path, but I guess it will be nice after all this time to just focus on something "fun", if you can define ghost hunting as fun. We'll see how this plays out.

An introduction of the sort

When my friends Laura and Melody first pitched me the idea of creating a paranormal investigation service, I thought yeah sure, that sounds fun, but we know nothing about this. Which is true. And even if we did, by some miracle, manage to start one, there is only a small minority of people that believe in ghosts enough to hire us, and we're not even professionals.  If you were to ask me my scientific opinion, when we die we get buried in dirt, and thats the end. Its all blackness from there on out, and you decompose until not even your memory remains. Thinking in such a way is often called "pessimism". Yet, the naive side of me always had a this incredible longing to believe that something greater happens, that part of us still exists after we're long gone. You have to remember, matter is never created or destroyed, so we could still leave physical imprints on Earth long after we're dead. I guess this is more optimistic. It gives one more of a sense of purpose to think that there is something greater going on around them, you don't feel so mortal after all. It was this way of thinking, along with some of my firsthand experiences with the paranormal, that decided to make me go for it.

Although I've been more logical and straightforward as a teenager, as a child I was infatuated with ghosts. This obsession started at the age of 8 or so, when I saw the show "Ghost Hunters" on tv. From there I explored the depths of the internet, looking for videos, evidence, of life on the other side. Even during recess I would hang out in the library scouring the shelves for books on ghosts. Granted, this wasn't a normal obsession for a little girl to have. Most of my friends we're interested in Club Penguin and jump rope, but I earned the reputation as "the weird ghost girl" that brought a ouija board to school. I didn't mind though, as a very small and fragile child I enjoyed the intimidation that my hobby invoked in others.

As I got older, and became more self-aware(sorta), I tried harder and harder to keep my interest in the other side under wraps. I would pretend to be disinterested in the subject, as to not tarnish my reputation. As a teenager everything matters, and everything could possibly be the end of the world. Though as of recent, this has begun to die down. I realized that I simply do not give a fuck about others opinions anymore, and that I am going to pursue what I enjoy. So to anyone reading this, thinking that I'm crazy for starting a paranormal investigation service, I don't care, have your laugh or whatever. When my good friend came up to me, asking me to join her in exploring the paranormal, I gladly accepted, hoping that my years of knowledge on the subject could help us. Not to mention, the thrill of encountering a ghost is comparable to nothing else. So no matter what you believe, I invite you to join me in the investigation of the possibilities of life after death.