QUANTICO, Va. --
A Quantico employee’s hunting skills got her onto a cable
television show slated to air in October. But Jeanne Rector doesn’t hunt
big game or enemy combatants. In her free time, this office assistant
with the base Safety Division is a ghost hunter. The show is an episode
of the Biography Channel’s “My Ghost Story,” shot Aug. 6 and expected to
air sometime in October.
Rector stumbled on the Fredericksburg Area Paranormal Investigations group, founded by a retired military policeman, about a year ago. She had been searching online for material on ghosts because her boyfriend’s grandmother had died in the house where Rector lives but still made her presence known, Rector said.
“All kinds of stuff happens at the house,” she said. “Things get moved. You see her walking down the hall. My hair’s gotten pulled.”
Her interest in the paranormal, however, goes back further.
“I’ve actually been able to see and hear paranormal stuff since I was a little kid,” she said.
Joann Barron, on the other hand, didn’t believe in the paranormal until after she became director of the Weems-Botts Museum in Dumfries, where the episode of “My Ghost Story” was shot. The building has long been reputed to be haunted, and about a year before Barron met Rector, another team of paranormal investigators brought in a “ghost box,” a device that is supposed to allow spirits to communicate with the living. In her office, a man’s voice came from the device, saying his men were hurt and needed a medic, she recalled.
“I thought it was some kind of gimmick,” said Barron.
The next morning, when she arrived at work, she off-handedly told the “ghost” they could no longer talk because the ghost box wasn’t there.
“All of a sudden, all of my electronic equipment started turning on,” she said. “For several days in a row, when I came in, it would greet me. And that changed my demeanor on ghosts.”
Earlier this year, an independent paranormal investigator working with Rector’s group — now seven members strong — contacted Barron asking if they could conduct an investigation at the museum. She readily accepted.
They showed up on a February night with cameras, a video recorder, electromagnetic field meters and other equipment and stayed until 1:30 a.m. They got video of a closet door opening on its own, audio recordings of spirits responding to questions, and video and still images of an orb descending the stairs.
What Rector saw coming down the stairs that night was Violet Merchant, who lived in the house most of her long life.
The four most prominent ghosts in the house, she said, are Violet, her sister Mary, her father Richard and her mother Annie. Mary Merchant, nicknamed Mamie, suffered from an unspecified mental disorder — some say autism, others say epilepsy — and died at the age of 23.
“Back then, they didn’t let those people out of the house,” Rector said. “So she just kind of stayed in her bedroom all her life until she passed away.”
Her father died the same year, and Violet Merchant, who had moved away, returned to the house
to take care of her mother. She lived there for the rest of her life.
As Rector walked into the parlor during the investigation with a cameraman behind her, it was a young Violet Merchant she saw coming down the stairs, her silk dress rustling audibly. The cameraman, too, heard the dress, and the video captured a pulsating orb hovering down the stairway, she said.
In Mary Merchant’s bedroom, the investigators placed the electromagnetic field meter on her bed
and asked her to manipulate its readings in response to questions.
“Certain questions we would ask, it would go up all the way to red,” Rector said, noting that such a reading would normally only be obtained next to a circuit box. Mary Merchant answered that she liked the independent investigator who had been to the house repeatedly and liked the stuffed horse the team had brought her, but she didn’t respond when asked what day it was.
Barron wasn’t surprised by the results. One of her volunteers often picks up strange voices on a digital recorder, she said. Doors and windows often open on their own. Other signs include “lots of footsteps, lots of touching, lots of whispering in your ear, that type of thing,” Barron said. Like the “’toons” in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” she said, the spirits can hardly resist finishing the “Shave and a Haircut” tap. “They can be active, and they certainly can be hams. They’re not always discreet.”
The Merchants inhabit the Victorian-era portion of the house, she said. But in the original, colonial-era part if the building, constructed in 1749, are “a large variety of entities.”
Rector’s group sent the evidence they had gathered to the “My Ghost Story” producers, who scheduled a time to meet with them at the museum. In one night, they shot footage of the team reenacting its investigation, Rector said. Two museum volunteers and the independent investigator who worked with the group were flown to California to do interviews for the show.
Barron said ghost stories had drawn a lot of interest to the museum, “But the history is pretty awesome, too.” The museum’s mission is to teach about the history of Dumfries, which was once the nation’s third-largest port, larger than New York City, until the port filled with silt.
A blue-star museum, Weems-Botts is open free of charge to active duty military service members and their families. But be warned: when it comes to paranormal activity, Barron said, “As much happens during the day as can happen at night.”
Meanwhile, Rector is staying busy. She said her group has a waiting list of four more homes to investigate, and last week they checked out the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, W.V. The Fredericksburg Area Paranormal Investigators’ services are also free of charge.
Editor's note: Reprinted from the Quantico Sentry.
Rector stumbled on the Fredericksburg Area Paranormal Investigations group, founded by a retired military policeman, about a year ago. She had been searching online for material on ghosts because her boyfriend’s grandmother had died in the house where Rector lives but still made her presence known, Rector said.
“All kinds of stuff happens at the house,” she said. “Things get moved. You see her walking down the hall. My hair’s gotten pulled.”
Her interest in the paranormal, however, goes back further.
“I’ve actually been able to see and hear paranormal stuff since I was a little kid,” she said.
Joann Barron, on the other hand, didn’t believe in the paranormal until after she became director of the Weems-Botts Museum in Dumfries, where the episode of “My Ghost Story” was shot. The building has long been reputed to be haunted, and about a year before Barron met Rector, another team of paranormal investigators brought in a “ghost box,” a device that is supposed to allow spirits to communicate with the living. In her office, a man’s voice came from the device, saying his men were hurt and needed a medic, she recalled.
“I thought it was some kind of gimmick,” said Barron.
The next morning, when she arrived at work, she off-handedly told the “ghost” they could no longer talk because the ghost box wasn’t there.
“All of a sudden, all of my electronic equipment started turning on,” she said. “For several days in a row, when I came in, it would greet me. And that changed my demeanor on ghosts.”
Earlier this year, an independent paranormal investigator working with Rector’s group — now seven members strong — contacted Barron asking if they could conduct an investigation at the museum. She readily accepted.
They showed up on a February night with cameras, a video recorder, electromagnetic field meters and other equipment and stayed until 1:30 a.m. They got video of a closet door opening on its own, audio recordings of spirits responding to questions, and video and still images of an orb descending the stairs.
What Rector saw coming down the stairs that night was Violet Merchant, who lived in the house most of her long life.
The four most prominent ghosts in the house, she said, are Violet, her sister Mary, her father Richard and her mother Annie. Mary Merchant, nicknamed Mamie, suffered from an unspecified mental disorder — some say autism, others say epilepsy — and died at the age of 23.
“Back then, they didn’t let those people out of the house,” Rector said. “So she just kind of stayed in her bedroom all her life until she passed away.”
Her father died the same year, and Violet Merchant, who had moved away, returned to the house
to take care of her mother. She lived there for the rest of her life.
As Rector walked into the parlor during the investigation with a cameraman behind her, it was a young Violet Merchant she saw coming down the stairs, her silk dress rustling audibly. The cameraman, too, heard the dress, and the video captured a pulsating orb hovering down the stairway, she said.
In Mary Merchant’s bedroom, the investigators placed the electromagnetic field meter on her bed
and asked her to manipulate its readings in response to questions.
“Certain questions we would ask, it would go up all the way to red,” Rector said, noting that such a reading would normally only be obtained next to a circuit box. Mary Merchant answered that she liked the independent investigator who had been to the house repeatedly and liked the stuffed horse the team had brought her, but she didn’t respond when asked what day it was.
Barron wasn’t surprised by the results. One of her volunteers often picks up strange voices on a digital recorder, she said. Doors and windows often open on their own. Other signs include “lots of footsteps, lots of touching, lots of whispering in your ear, that type of thing,” Barron said. Like the “’toons” in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” she said, the spirits can hardly resist finishing the “Shave and a Haircut” tap. “They can be active, and they certainly can be hams. They’re not always discreet.”
The Merchants inhabit the Victorian-era portion of the house, she said. But in the original, colonial-era part if the building, constructed in 1749, are “a large variety of entities.”
Rector’s group sent the evidence they had gathered to the “My Ghost Story” producers, who scheduled a time to meet with them at the museum. In one night, they shot footage of the team reenacting its investigation, Rector said. Two museum volunteers and the independent investigator who worked with the group were flown to California to do interviews for the show.
Barron said ghost stories had drawn a lot of interest to the museum, “But the history is pretty awesome, too.” The museum’s mission is to teach about the history of Dumfries, which was once the nation’s third-largest port, larger than New York City, until the port filled with silt.
A blue-star museum, Weems-Botts is open free of charge to active duty military service members and their families. But be warned: when it comes to paranormal activity, Barron said, “As much happens during the day as can happen at night.”
Meanwhile, Rector is staying busy. She said her group has a waiting list of four more homes to investigate, and last week they checked out the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, W.V. The Fredericksburg Area Paranormal Investigators’ services are also free of charge.
Editor's note: Reprinted from the Quantico Sentry.
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