Ghost Caught on Film Making Music in Massachusetts Mansion [VIDEO]
Footage of a suspected spirit playing multiple instruments in an historic mansion? Well, that's music to my ears.
This past Saturday night, Spooky Southcoast conducted a paranormal investigation of the Murdock-Whitney House in Winchendon, Mass. I've investigated both that mansion and the one across the street, the Isaac Morse house, on multiple occasions. But this time, we caught some footage that might just hit all the right notes when it comes to converting skeptics into true believers.
The footage was captured using a specialized camera system used for paranormal research. The SLS (Structured Light Sensor) system was originally created by paranormal inventor Bill Chappell, and used a Microsoft Xbox Kinect camera to map ghosts that we can't see with the naked eye.
The basic idea is that the Kinect camera maps human movement in order to utilize motion detection for the Xbox games, and is programmed specifically for human beings (so your dog doesn't interrupt your game by running across the room). Since it recognizes the movement of living human beings, the thought was that it would also do the same for deceased human beings as well.
The original system that Bill built was later used on Ghost Adventures and has appeared on other television shows like Kindred Spirits (starring the SouthCoast's own Amy Bruni) as well. The supposed ghosts appear as stick figures on the mapping screen, as do the living as well.
Bill has continued to develop the SLS technology, but that has led to plenty of other knockoffs being developed. The argument is that those creating the knockoffs aren't using the right cameras, and are instead using consumer-level cameras that can have false positives when it comes to mapping. Bill himself has ditched the Kinects and gone with a different, and less corruptable, camera.
So with that in mind, I really need to see something amazing when it comes to SLS footage for me to take it seriously. And on Saturday night, I saw something that was just that.
While investigating the Murdock-Whitney House Saturday, one of our investigators, Crystal, had one of the "knockoff" SLS systems. While investigating in the room with a piano, she caught a stick figure mapping of a human figure appearing to play a violin, and tap its foot in time.
I jumped on Facebook Live (apologies for holding my phone in portrait mode, I should have known better but was too excited) and started sharing out the footage, and as it continued on, the alleged spirit then switched to what looked like a floor bass or a cello; his "hand" was even working the neck to play the chords as his other "fingers" were plucking the invisible strings. And later, he switched to what looked like a slide trombone.
Luckily for us, one of the other investigators, Roger, knows how to play the piano. So we had Roger tickle the ivories and see if the spirit would react. We were blown away when the stick figure began not only playing along and tapping its foot with Roger's playing, it also matched his temp. Even when Roger started playing single notes, the spirit followed suit.
While I would never show this to someone as "definitive proof" of the existence of ghosts, it's enough to make you wonder. And it's also just one of many amazing experiences we had that night.
Still, though, it's somewhat comforting to think that someone who loved making beautiful music in that room in life is continuing to do so even in death.