This past Friday night, the Diamond State Ghost Investigators joined forces with the guys of My Haunted Manor USA and Interstate Paranormal Research to investigate the Samuel Miller Mansion in Columbia, PA. There were a lot of people and one spunky, spooky cat, so at times it was difficult to capture concrete evidence. Difficult, but not impossible, and paranormal investigators are not known to shy away from a challenge. When you put a lot of trained investigators in one place, you’re bound to learn something new, experience something chilling and create lasting friendships. The meatballs didn’t hurt either 😉
My Haunted Manor USA
The Samuel Miller Mansion is the new home for My Haunted Manor USA. This is an extremely exciting endeavor because it will be a year-long investigation that includes the public. The crew behind this is Daryl Martson, Trey Bader and Jeff Bader, and they are pouring their hearts and souls into My Haunted Manor USA. They have been working on the location to ensure it is safe for the public, while also setting up IR lights and cameras in every rooms to ensure night filming is successful.
But they also want investigations to be authentic, which is the best part about all of this. We can all watch amazing paranormal shows on YouTube or TV and get enthralled by the stories and captured activity. But at the end of the day, we’re watching 45 minutes of sometimes a 72-hour experience. How so we know what was cut up and put together? How can we trust what we’re watching?
With My Haunted Manor USA, the public is leading the experience. Each time a new group enters the property and stays for the night, a new group will validate what trained investigators have been claiming for decades. An once they reach the end of a year, imagine all that will have been collected and explored? It’s just incredible.
The Location
One interesting thing to note about this property is that it is about a 10 to 15-minute walk from the Clyde W Kraft Funeral Home and two cemeteries. When you look at a map of this location, you’ll see many churches, too. When researching the location, I was inundated with obituaries. I couldn’t figure out why, but realizing the location is truly triangular, when looking at a map, with the funeral home and cemeteries made sense. Say what you will, but if the Samuel Miller Mansion is as haunted as we think, it would make sense for the mansion to be at the tippy top of a supernatural hub.
The Samuel Miller Mansion is also very close to the Susquehanna River. Many paranormal investigators have found that supernatural activity seems heightened or increased when near bodies of water. There has even been research stating that thunderstorms can cause an increase in activity.
Looking beyond things I can’t prove, like triangles I draw on maps and proximity to water, I realized my research job would be tricky because the Samuel Miller Mansion has an extremely uncharted history. Usually, I can look through historical archives and old newspapers and at least find mentions of places, even if they are in job listings or advertisements, but not this place.
The History of the Town
I spoke with tour guide, historian, and paranormal enthusiast extraordinaire Megan Hansen-Bisignaro. Megan graciously let me know that the town of Columbia was initially called Wrights Ferry. That knowledge helped me better understand the naming convention of other things around 131 Locust Street, like the present-day Columbia-Wrightsville bridge known as the Wright’s Ferry Bridge and the Wright’s Ferry Mansion. I also stumbled upon another ghost story.
In the 1800s, several ferries ran on the river. According to legend, one ferry was operated by a father and son. One morning, the ferry had an accident, and the son was thrown into the water. An unusually strong current pulled the boy underwater and drowned him. The father later died while searching for his son’s body. Perhaps a story to further research another time.
In 1788, Samuel Wright, the grandson of Wright’s Ferry founder John Wright, laid out 160 lots in what is now the central section of the Borough. Samuel called the town Columbia, naming it after Christopher Columbus. The growing importance of Columbia became evident in 1789 when the town narrowly missed being selected as the nation’s capital. Columbia became an incorporated borough in 1814.
The Wrightsville Bridge, connecting Columbia and Wrightsville, had significant historical importance during the American Civil War. In June 1863, the Confederate Army invaded Pennsylvania. The rebels planned to take the state capital, Harrisburg, but to get there, they would need to cross the Susquehanna River at Wrightsville. To prevent Confederate troops from advancing across the river from Wrightsville, Union forces decided to orchestrate the burning of the bridge.
Knowing that such profound historical moments happened in this area really sets the tone for what one might experience when doing a paranormal investigation in Columbia, Pennsylvania. This place has been through a lot, and they’ve been on the right side of history which greatly impacted the very making of our country. As our fearless leader Gina always says, there is no paranormal without the history.
The History of the Samuel Miller Mansion
I read that Samuel Miller built this house in 1804 for his family at 131 Locust Street in Columbia, Pennsylvania. According to Chris Vera, president of the Columbia Historic Preservation Society, the building was bought in 1811 by the Columbia Bank & Bridge Company and used by the company as an office until 1872. It makes me wonder why the family only lived there for seven years. Though I did find where the family moved, their next house wasn’t built until 1815. Known as the Eagle Tavern, it was built first as a house for Samuel Miller and his wife, Anna in 1815, as noted in a date stone centered on the western
gable.
I’ve read that after the bridge company left in 1872, Breneman’s Feed Mill built the carriage and mill building. However, I cannot find any additional information about Breneman’s Feed Mill. Perhaps they went by another name at one point? They don’t appear in any of the historical news databases I use for research. Though I did find a Breneman’s Feed Mill that existed at this time in Virginia.
In the 1920s, the Baker Toy Company occupied residence, where many patented products were designed and manufactured over the following six decades. After that, S & G Printing operated out of the building until 2017, when Art Printing, owned and operated by Chris Raudabaugh, moved there from Lancaster.
Additionally, this location has been home to Rivertown Theatre Productions, LLC, founded and owned by local Columbian Sara Mimnall. They did murder mysteries like “Murder at the Miller Mansion” and various plays in the space, as we all as a Columbia’s Haunted Lantern Tour. In their recent Facebook post, they shared their excitement for My Haunted Manor USA.
Awakenings Energy Healing Reiki Master Chicks also works out of this property. Their Facebook page says that they offer humans and animals Reiki Energy Healing & Chakra Balancing and intuitive spiritual advising.
There have been and continue to be various people moving in and out of this property. Is it possible that some of those people never left and their spirits remain behind? Or could some spirits pass through this area because of the energy it stores?
As always, if anyone has additional history or sources, they’d like to share them so we can better understand the location. We’re already happy to listen and learn 🙂
The Underground Railroad
In addition to constructing bridges, the Bank and Bridge Company also familiarized themselves with the navigation of tunnels, as a participant and safe haven of the Underground Railroad. One of those tunnels emerges from the brick walls of the hand-dug basement below this building.
In the basement of this building, the floor is all dirt, and the walls are brick and mortar. An archway appears to be the entrance to a tunnel leading under the street. Local historians believe that the tunnel is one of a network of tunnels under Columbia once used to hide and transport slaves as part of the Underground Railroad. Columbia stands out as the western endpoint of the Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad, founded in 1834 as the nation’s second operational railroad. Research shows that by 1838, freight cars on this railway were adapted with concealed compartments to transport escaped slaves to Philadelphia and other destinations. During our investigation, we could hear and feel the trains rumbling by from where we stood in the mansion. For me, the presence of the trains was a reminder that bold, courageous people once lived in the borough of Columbia, and they worked to help those escaping slavery.
The Underground Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania will open just down the street from the Samuel Miller Mansion at 331 Locust Street in a couple of years. I’d love to visit it when it is complete!
When I think about investigating a space that once brought people to safety, I wonder what those spirits must think. Are they scared? I imagine when they were hiding and trying to escape through tunnels they probably listened for every little sound and tried to be a quiet as possible. Then we go in and ask for entities to answer us.
It makes me pause and wonder, when we come in with all our equipment, how can we explain our purpose to spirits unfamiliar with what we’re doing and very likely terrified of being found.
Our investigation
I went into the investigation without having any of the information I just shared. I was unfamiliar with the area, so it was nice to walk around seeing what I saw and feeling what I felt without any bias or presumptions..
The sub-team I walked around with included Kyle, Melissa, Andy, Matt, and me. We were paired with two fabulous investigators from Interstate Paranormal: Sierra and Brian.
We started off in the basement.
As the first group in the basement for the night, we didn’t know what to expect. It was cold and extremely dusty. The basement having been hand dug and still sitting atop dirt without anything else placed down as flooring, meant that we were all covered in dirt by the time our 35-40 minutes were up. It was just in the air. I mean, that’s definitely a spot where you need to place equipment down and then sit and stop moving.
The trip wire went off a lot, but almost in a glitchy way. Only once did it really seem to react communicatively as if something was responding to us, asking, can you come out here? A REM post set in a back nook area went off regularly, even though no one was there. The electricity had been turned off, but with the infrastructure so close to the street, it’s possible there was some EMF interference in at least the corner closest to the alley.
The water above the basement runs frequently whether someone is flushing a toilet or not. It often collects and releases water as if something isn’t sealed right somewhere in the plumbing. But let’s face it, the building is 220 years old. I say all this because it impacts what we can consider paranormal evidence when we review our video or audio recordings. Plus, it will help future investigators know where they should strategically place equipment for less contamination.
At one point, Andy was looking up while standing close to the far wall in the basement, parallel to the street outside. He could see into the room above us as there wasn’t any insulation between the floors. He saw a shadow pass over as if someone was leaving the room. Thanks to Sierra’s walkie-talkie direct line to the command center, we knew no one was above us, and we didn’t hear footsteps. But the event that stands out the most to me is when we heard the sound of something heavy dragging across the ceiling above us. When Melissa and I were near the back nook area in the corner of the basement catty-corner from the tunnel, it sounded like a heavy piece of machinery was being dragged across concrete.
The second floor of rooms.
Melissa and I camped out with Sierra and Brian in a room representing a child’s room. As our investigation continued, I watched the temperature drop five degrees on our equipment within a 20-minute span of time. At one point, I had to walk around into other rooms because my feet were so freaking cold.
In the child’s room, Sierra set up “Twinkle Twinkle, ” a REM pod lantern that plays nursery rhyme songs like “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” Super excited about this gadget friends, it was awesome. The music played four times, without any of us touching the lantern. Looking for a fifth interaction, we asked, “Can you please play the music again?” We all heard a distinct yet eerie, breathy voice say, “Noooooo.” I really hope someone picked that up on audio or camera because it was audible to all five of us without equipment.
Melissa asked many questions to learn more about the spirit interacting with us. We believe the spirit was a young boy. He very much enjoyed turning the flashlights on and off to answer questions. Often times the flashlights would turn on as if in direct response to Melissa. She would ask, “If a child is here with us, can you turn on the torch?” Right away the flashlight turned on and it happened that way each time.
Interestingly enough, Melissa’s husband Kyle also had a direct response experience while one floor above us in the attic area. He felt as though a spirit touched his right arm. He asked if it could touch him again and he felt the same type of touch on the same arm.
The printing rooms are alive.
The functional printing area is perhaps where we had the most consistent activity. Some of it we debunked as Spooky, the very real, live and breathing kitty cat, but most of it we can only hope we captured on camera. We saw shadow figures and heard plenty of noises, only some of which were Jeff dropping something. (We love you, Jeff!) The REM pods and EMF detectors blipped with noise and lights. We could ask for a spirit to interact and engage without the equipment; sure enough, it would light up or make noise.
I wonder if the spirits linger in that area because they know it is where people are during the day. Maybe they once worked in that space. Maybe they don’t realize they are no longer living, so they go through their routine and work hard as if they are on the clock getting the job done. I always wonder if the spirits we talk to understand that they are gone. Depending on their state of being, it makes sense that they don’t always know what to do or how to respond.
The amount of energy it takes
It takes A LOT of energy for any spirit to interact with our equipment and respond to our questions. Whatever is staying behind at the Samuel Miller Mansion or perhaps floating through between the river and the cemeteries, there was a lot of energy. I do not doubt that other groups who stay and investigate will also experience something while they are there. I’d like to think that this year-long investigation for My Haunted Manor USA will help to authenticate what we felt, heard and saw.
If you are interested in spending time at the Samuel Miller Mansion, please visit their website to learn more about booking a night. Daryl, Trey and Jeff are ready to help capture your experiences, whether as paranormal evidence or something they can debunk. Their grand opening investigation is coming up this month on Friday, March 22. You don’t want to miss it!
