Since I have always been interested in the paranormal, my kids are also quite curious about spooky things like ghosts, cryptids, and things that go bump in the night.
Finnegan, my middle child, has been going to Fort Delaware with me and the DSGI team for three years now. He helps in the pavilion selling raffle tickets. He also joins me or another team member during some of the tours and gets to learn more about the history of the Fort and what we do as paranormal guides. Amelia, my youngest, is probably the most interested, but being young, there aren’t many places she can investigate with me. So when I found out about Interstate Paranormal Research (IPR) hosting a ParaKids Academy, I knew I needed to sign her up.
I bought a ticket for Amelia on July 1; the event happened on November 9, and she had to be very patient. The drive up to Columbia, PA was part of the fun because she had only heard me tell her about all the beautiful landscapes and treacherous backroads, haha. She took pictures of the open fields, commented on the horses and cows and repeatedly told me how gorgeous the scenery was as we drove the nearly two hours northwest to the Samuel Miller Mansion.
Interstate Paranormal Research
I’d like to thank my friends at Interstate Paranormal Research because they put a lot of care and thought into planning this event. Cindy had everyone feeling excited and comfortable after handing out special shirts to each of the kids as they signed in. She noticed Amelia’s ghost bag and learned that Amelia came prepared with some of her own equipment. Sierra discussed the many, many pieces of paranormal equipment already set up throughout the building, and Megan went through the history of the Samuel Miller Mansion; the kids were able to learn quite a bit about investigating before they even left the parlor. They asked a lot of great questions, and Amelia said that she had indeed investigated before in our living room. We all start somewhere 😉
The Print Shop
There were ten kids, and IPR divided them into two groups. A parent stayed with their child for the entire night, which was exciting for me. I think I might have been just as excited as Amelia. Okay, maybe not just as, but pretty close. Amelia’s first stop was the print shop. Laser grids, rem pods, motion sensors, recorders, cameras, an Ovilus, and an EDI were already set up in the space. Additionally, a very special guest was waiting, the one and only Trey Bader from My Haunted Manor, USA. (Amelia is a huge fan.) Trey is a member of Diamond State Ghost Investigators; our team is really where he started his paranormal journey.
Trey welcomed the kids and told them a little bit about one piece of equipment that projects a red, grid-pattern laser to identify visual disturbances. It also has a screen that identifies distance, direction and temperature fluctuations. If something warm is in front of it, you will see red dots on the screen; if something cold is in front of it, you will see blue dots. Pretty cool.
Megan asked the kids if anyone was brave enough to sit in a specific chair in the room. I remember being asked this when I first investigated the Manor last February. Just as I had volunteered first, so did Amelia. Very proud Mama moment for me. So she sat in the chair, and she held some equipment, including a Mel Meter. My 12-year-old girl vocalized when she started to feel very cold and when something or someone pulled on strands of her hair. Wow! The equipment she held showed both the temperature dropping and the EMF spike. So, she learned that these tools can help to more scientifically verify what she knew she was feeling.
The Magic Window Room
To get to the third floor of the Samuel Miller Mansion, you climb a spiral staircase. At the top, there is a landing and a room to the left and right. We went into the room to the left, the “magic window” room. This room looks like an attic with a vaulted ceiling with support beams. On one wall is a window, and when you climb through the window, you end up in an empty, open space that at one time had been used to lower feed down into carriages outside the building. Brenneman’s Feed Mill built the carriage and mill portion of this building in the late 1800s.
Amelia and I went into this dark space; she put her equipment down and quietly listened and observed. Several times, she heard footsteps and thuds in this space. We both sensed something or someone was behind us and we felt cool breezes near the window opening. Mind you, this window is towards the center of the building; it does not look outside, it looks into the attic space. So feeling the cool breeze was very interesting.
When we stood in the actual attic space, Amelia decided to take a cute little gift out of her ghost bag and place it near her cat balls as a trigger object. She thought child spirits might like this, and she was right. Shortly after stepping away from the object and her cat balls, there was an interaction. The cat balls lit up! Megan and the kids decided to see if they could get more activity and played a knocking game. Megan knocked on the floor in a pattern. The pattern was “Shave and a Haircut” and the associated response “two bits.” At least five different times after knocking, there was a direct response. The kids were SO excited. They said, “if you knock for us again, we’ll have Tony bring you cookies.” Well, Tony, you had better leave several cookies in the magic window room.
The Kid’s Room
The last stop of the night was the kid’s room. I’ve experienced a lot of activity in this space during past investigations, so I was curious to see what would happen with kids trying to interact with ghost kids. Let me just say it was wild! In this space, the ten kids sat around the room in a circle. The parents stayed outside, looking in from the blue room.
The kids asked questions about who was there with them. At one point, the Ovilus said Robert, which the equipment had also said in the print shop. The follow-up question was, “Is your last name Baker?” To which the dead bell sounded. The dead bell is a classic reception bell. It was sitting on the floor, away from everyone else. Robert Baker was the owner of the Baker Toy Company. In the 1920s, the Baker Toy Company took up residence in this building. Could the kids have been interacting with Robert Baker? Was he excited to have kids in a space where he once worked making toys?
Other interactions in this space were the EDI+ showing barometric pressure hits and the Busy Bee doll turning on and playing music twice on its own. The EDI+ uses a BME280 sensor from Bosch to measure humidity and pressure. The skies were perfectly clear, the space in the room was super dry, what could have been interacting with the box to indicate pressure changes? I’m not going to pretend to know what all of this means, and I won’t say it guarantees something paranormal. What I will say is that there was a ton of activity throughout the night, and I could not explain much of it as something “normal.”
She Graduated
After spending five hours learning and participating in a paranormal investigation, each of the ten kids graduated from the ParaKids Academy. IPR provided them with a certificate and a little goody bag. It was pretty awesome. Amelia did an awesome job. She was serious and quiet and experimented more and more with her equipment when she felt comfortable. I appreciate that she was thoughtful and objective in each room. I know how hard that can be because, of course, you want everything to be a ghost, right? But she really impressed me with her reasoning and her ability to decipher why certain things were happening or not happening.
Amelia, what would you say to other kids who might be interested in this type of event?
“If you want to participate in ParaKids Academy, you have to be open-minded. If you do see or feel something, that’s the greatest thing ever, but if you don’t have an experience, that’s okay too; you just try again another time.” – Amelia
Amelia also had an opportunity to be interviewed on camera by Jeff Bader. Jeff is a member and the video guy for Diamond State Ghost Investigators. He is also part of My Haunted Manor, USA with his brother Trey. Once Jeff calmed her down about the idea of being on camera, she talked a little bit about her experience in the print shop and what got her interested in the paranormal. She mentioned how excited she is to hear from her brother and me after our Paranormal Adventure Tours at Fort Delaware.
So, next year, when the Diamond State Ghost Investigators head back out to Fort Delaware, I have a funny feeling that Finnegan won’t be the only young person helping out in the pavilion. And I’m so excited!
Stay spooky, my friends!