The Ghost Hunt

After a few years of providing security services at The Whittier, things were escalating. At first, we had issues with officers not feeling comfortable with being in such a large building alone with limited lighting. There were a lot of strange noises, especially at night. Most could all be explained. Overgrown landscaping that scraped across windows when the wind blew and the wind itself as it blew in from the Detroit River after sunset. The wind whistled around the corners and through ventilation shafts of the empty buildings. As renovations began, so did the unexplainable activity.

Almost everyone that covered a shift there had a story now. We weren’t concerned assuming it was active imaginations. When our long-term officers, especially those that were non-believers of the paranormal became believers, we figured we had an issue. At that point we decided to conduct our own amateur ghost hunt. Of course, we didn’t have any professional equipment or training, just our cell phones and a digital camera. Me and Darrin went to investigate on a night that Clinton was on post. He was our “go to guy” and definitely a non-believer. He recently experienced a technical anomaly. Click here for his story.

We decided to reenact what the officers were doing when they had their experiences. We went on a patrol round. We took random pictures as we walked and had the voice recorder of one of our cell phones turned on. We asked a few questions occasionally. We even whistled in the service halls trying to get a response. If something felt “off” in a certain area, we made sure to take extra pictures. Nothing unusual was happening. We stopped in the kitchen and Clinton was telling us about his experience. We checked our equipment to make sure our batteries were holding up and working. Everything was fine. We finished our tour and decided to go to a local all-night restaurant.

There were only a few people in the restaurant, so we didn’t have a problem finding a booth that offered some privacy. We laid the phone in the middle of the table and hit play on the voice recording. Darrin started working on a report and I started looking through the pictures on the camera. All of a sudden, we heard the loud crashing of pots and pans and dishes breaking. We both looked to the kitchen expecting a chaotic scene. Nothing unusual was happening. There was only a skeleton crew overnight and we could clearly see them all. No one was reacting to anything. Our waitress had heard the noise as well and noticed us looking around bewildered. She came over to ask if everything was ok and we asked her the same thing. She said the noise was coming from our table, nothing happened in the kitchen or prep area. We couldn’t believe it. We backed up the recording and there it was again. Then we heard us talking to Clinton. We were in the kitchen of The Whittier when that was recorded. Those were clearly and unmistakenly kitchen noises. The kitchen along with all of the storage and prep rooms of The Whittier were empty. Only cinderblock walls and tiled floors remained. There wasn’t even a sink left in there. There were capped off pipes protruding from the walls where sinks and appliances once were. There hadn’t been a pot, dish or spoon in that building in years, but that is exactly what we were hearing. Did we capture an EVP or did we walk into a residual haunt, or a time slip.

That recording definitely caught our attention. We were taking this more seriously now. We finished listening to the recording and did not detect anything else. We turned our attention to the camera. Now we were getting nervous. We saw things that we would have never imagined. Unfortunately, they could only be seen as the camera was coming into focus so we couldn’t print anything. The first picture was taken of the elevator interior. It was the most elaborate elevator in the building. It is rumored that a male ghost exits that elevator regularly. The upper half of the back wall of the elevator is a mirror. We could clearly see Darrin’s reflection in the mirror taking the picture. We could also see a couple almost posing for the camera while standing in the elevator. They were transparent, we could see Darrin through them. They also had a dull color hue. We could tell what color their hair and clothing were. They were very well dressed. The man wore a suit and stood with his arm around the woman. She was a brunet with shoulder length hair brushed back from her face. She wore a black sleeveless evening dress with a simple neckless. It was obvious by their smile that they were happy. We will never know if we had caught them in a replay of a happy moment or if they were happy to be seen.

The next photo anomaly we found still haunts me to this day. It is the scariest thing I think I’ve ever seen. When you walked through the lobby where the elevator was, you could either enter the Gentlemen’s Dining Room or the Main Dining Room. You had to step down two steps to enter the Main Dining Room. Adjacent to the stairs was a hallway that ran behind the elevator. It connected administrative offices that were interconnected in the middle of the building. There were no windows in that area, so it was extremely dark. I never felt comfortable walking past that hall. I would never look that way and avoided that area. It was like looking into a void, very disturbing. When the picture was attempting to focus, I watched the blackness shift in an awkward way. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing but, it wasn’t looking good. In the blackness of the hallway there was actually a large blob that was actually even blacker. I have never seen anything so completely black that it was blacker than a black background. It was the form of a man. A large man that filled the doorway. It was wearing a cloak, but you could see a face and hands that were almost glowing. They were a grayish mist, but the face had no features just two black holes where eyes should be. The arms were long and partially outstretched. It just radiated negativity. I have never felt so afraid to be in that building.

We never saw anything with our eyes or heard anything with our ears. What we saw was enough to shake us to our cores. We started believing our officers and were more sympathetic to theirs concerns. We agreed to never tell the officers about the large black entity we nick named “Senor Creepy”. That was more information than we agreed they needed to hear. The was the first and only time we ever attempted a ghost hunt. Sometimes it better to just let things be.