Private Business - St. Peters, MO - 1/26/2008

Location: A private business located in the old section of St. Peters. The business is located just a stone's throw from the historic All Saints Church which was founded in 1823. This building was a grocery store before it became what it is today.

Several employees have reported a range of activity. The most common reports are of knocking and the sounds of footsteps on the sales floor side of the building. Some people have complained of a general feeling up unease and like someone is watching them. Several doors have been reported to slam on their own as well. Additionally, employees working around the dock area late at night have heard repeated pounding on the rear dock door, only to immediately look outside to see no one who could have caused the noises. The motion activated doors will open themselves sometimes and they have even had the motion sensors on the alarms triggered falsely.

Conditions: The investigation took place between 8:15PM and 12:00AM. Inside temperatures were recorded in the range of 64-68 degrees. The night got progressively cooler as we shut off the heating units to reduce ambient sound. Relative humidity was recorded indoors to be between 21 and 24 percent. Barometric pressure was 29.60 inHg. Solar x-ray levels were normal and the geomagnetic field was quiet. The moon was in a waning gibbous phase, 77 percent of full.

Equipment Used: Canon 10D DSLR with a 380EX Flash, Sony V1 with a Sony HVL-IRM Infrared Extender, Two Cellsensor EMF Detectors, Two Olympus VN-4100PC digital audio recorders, Radio Shack Thermometer/Hygrometer, Mastercool 52224 IR Thermometer, Brunton ADC Ridge Barometer, Lensatic Compass.

The Set-Up: Two audio recorders were run concurrently. One recorder was always in the front of the store, either with the investigators when they were in that area or sitting by itself. The second recorder was placed in the rear warehouse area where the banging sounds had been reported. This recorder was used to monitor the area while there weren't any investigators present and while investigators were present. Active EVP sessions were performed in both the front area of the store and the warehouse area. Photography was constant during the course of the investigation.

Personal Experiences: Everyone present experienced the knocking and footstep phenomena. The knocking was sparse near the beginning of the investigation picking up in intensity as we drew closer to midnight. We experienced sounds that appeared to resemble objects moving or being manipulated nearby. In addition, the knocking or footstep activity was mainly concentrated along one of the walls, near the front of the store. We did hear plenty of knocking that came from other areas as well, including the warehouse area. During an active EVP session in the warehouse area, a sign was requested by any present spirits and a very loud knock was heard on a wooden shelf approximately ten feet from the investigators.

An experiment was performed where we invited a spirit to use the knocking to communicate with us. Surprisingly, something seemed to want to communicate with us. The following is a partial transcript of the questions we asked and the answers we received (edited to remove some of the idle discussion that was taking place during this exercise):

The response key was one knock for yes and two knocks for no.

Do you mind people being here? [TWO KNOCKS - No]

Do you enjoy the company of other people here? [NO RESPONSE]

Did you used to work in this building? [NO RESPONSE]

Did you used to live on the property here? [NO RESPONSE]

Do you have a tie to the church nearby? [NO RESPONSE]

Are you the spirit of a man? [NO RESPONSE]

Are you the spirit of a woman? [SEVERAL KNOCKS - Meaning unclear]

Have you been here more than 50 years? [NO RESPONSE]

Have you been here more than 30 years? [NO RESPONSE]

Have you been here more than 10 years? [ONE KNOCK - Yes]

Do you have any message you would like to communicate with us? [NO RESPONSE]

Do you like the people who work here in this store? [NO RESPONSE]

Do you intentionally frighten the people who are working here? [ONE KNOCK - Yes]

Did something happen on that side (where the noises are coming from) of the building? [ONE KNOCK - Yes]

[A KNOCK IS HEARD AGAINST ONE OF THE FRONT WINDOWS]

Can you make another sound for us? [NO RESPONSE]

Are you the only spirit present in this building? [NO RESPONSE]

One investigator also had a very unusual experience while photographing in the warehouse area. There is a set of swinging double doors that lead out onto the sales floor from the warehouse area. These doors each have a window in them. The present investigator clearly witnessed a black shadow approximately five-and-a-half feet tall move across the windows on the sales floor side. The shadow was dense enough as to completely block out the light behind it. It moved very quickly, completely disappearing in under a second.

Meter Readings: EMF readings did not reveal any out of the ordinary readings. Base readings were consistently at zero unless moved near an obvious source (microwave, refrigerator). We did not detect any anomalous EMF spikes during the course of the evening either. Temperature readings remained constant. Barometric pressure never significantly fluctuated. We never picked up any anomalous movement out from our compass.

Results and Analysis: Photographic evidence yielded three photos of note. One pair of photos is questionable, while the third is a little harder to explain. Audio analysis is partially complete. The audio from the recorder present in the front of the store yielded four possible EVPs.

Audio Anomaly One:

This audio clip was recorded in the front sales floor area of the store. One investigator saw a shadow move in the rear warehouse area and asked the other investigators to come back to help him try and explain what he saw. The audio recorder this came off was left unattended while no one was in this section of the store.

Audio Anomaly Two:

This clip was recorded shortly after doing an active EVP session near the rear area of the sales floor. One of the investigators present got up to go use the restroom, so at the time this was recorded, there was only one person in the vicinity of the recorder - who doesn't sound like the voice that was captured. This voice appears to sound like it's saying "Get out".

Audio Anomaly Three:

Later on in the investigation, the knocking sounds started to pick up quite a bit and seemed to respond to our requests. While we were sitting in the back of the sales floor, we picked up this word that sounds like a female's voice saying "Help."

Audio Anomaly Four:

This was recorded during the same session as the previous clip. This one happens to be a direct response to a question asked. An investigator asked, "Did something happen to you in this building?" to which the response sounds like the word "killed".

Photographic Anomaly One:

This image was photographed with the infrared camera. It appears to show an anomalous light at the end of an pathway. This light is present against a flat black surface. Additionally, no flash was used for this photo, just the camera with an infrared extender mounted to it.

This enlargement shows the object in better detail. The black surface that it is present in front of is flat black tile.

In this shot you can see highlighted the area where the light is in the previous shot. Here, where the camera is substantially closer, there is still no reflection.

Photographic Anomalies Two And Three:

The following two shots were taken near the beginning of the investigation, one right after the other with two different cameras: one a normal digital SLR camera and the other an infrared digital camera. The shots were taken from different angles, but appear to have picked up on the same light anomaly.

The problem with these photos is we don't have a good image of the far side of the store to compare to. There very well could be a mirror or some other shiny surface that we are reflecting off of, we just don't know. So, for now, we'll call these photos unexplainable, but not necessarily paranormal.

Close-ups of the object in question.