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About twenty years ago when my husband and I first became interested in paranormal investigation we experienced a real test regarding a haunted object. Today stories about haunted objects and the energy that surrounds are popular and there are several TV shows and movies out there that show their significance. The object that caused all the ruckus was literally dragged in by our black cat Jet from what was believed by us to be our next door neighbor’s yard. The house had been built in the early 1900s and was quite stately and well-kept but it had been empty for about four years and the family who had moved out was having a great deal of trouble selling it. In retrospect I figure it was too haunted for anyone to stay.  Jet loved to wander over there daily through a gap in the fence between the two yards and chase chipmunks and squirrels and dig up holes for whatever reason struck his cat fancy.

Jet showed up at our back door one afternoon as usual waiting to be let in. I pushed open the door but he was busy toying with something shiny on the doormat as if he was trying to knock it into the house. The object was small and shiny – a small golden rectangle all covered in dirt. I picked it up and walked to the kitchen sink to wash it off with Jet fast on my heels. He jumped up onto the drain board and sat there watching as I washed it off. A little soap and water revealed it was a tie clip that appeared to be quite old and also appeared to be genuine gold with a fancy engraved monogram of MRJ. Once all the grime was washed off Jet seemed to lose interest in it and wandered off to his food bowl. I dried it off and left in on the window sill above the sink and returned to my household chores forgetting all about it.

The first night we had the object in the house, my husband and I were awoken three times by water running in the kitchen sink. There was nothing wrong with the sink or the faucet that we knew and that was confirmed the next morning by my husband who had checked it out completely right down to the seals. Of course hanging around the sink for two hours of investigation, he noticed the tie clip that I had completely forgotten about. He studied it for quite a while and decided to take it to an antique dealer he knew to have it appraised and to see if it had any value.  A few hours later he came home exclaiming that the clip was indeed made of gold and a bonafide antique.         

The tie clip was placed in a small jewelry box and tucked away in a dresser drawer until we decided what to do with it.

On night two the activity heightened. Again we were awoken but this time by objects on top of the dresser (that held the tie clip) falling off onto the floor. Now while there isn’t necessarily anything paranormal about brushes, combs and one or two toiletries falling off a dresser it did strike us as odd.  While I was picking the items up my husband proceeded to the family room area to address what sounded like a large crash and breaking glass. He came back and announced that the large family photo portrait we had hanging over the fire place had fallen off the wall and broken. Again, not necessarily anything paranormal about a picture falling off a wall except that this one did not land in front of the fireplace on the floor. It had landed across the room in front of a large window. The window faced the neighbor’s backyard.

After review the next morning we decided we had gotten to the point where we couldn’t write some of these things off as natural occurrences so we decided to run a little investigation. We did not have much by the way of equipment back then but we did have a video camera and a couple of recorders. That afternoon I followed Jet out to the neighbor’s back yard to see where he was digging or snooping and I snapped a few photos with my old cheap camera just for good measure. The rest of the day was normal and we went to bed as usual.

During the night around 3:03 AM we thought we heard the front door open and close, then someone walk through the house to the kitchen and exit through the back door. My husband got up to check armed with a baseball bat but found no one there or outside and nothing in the house disturbed. He checked the video camera and saw it was running fine as were the recorders so there was nothing else to do but go back to bed and try and sleep. We would check any findings the next day.

What we found was unnerving but none-the-less exciting. Although it was very hard to see, we could make out what seemed to be a dark figure move through the family room and them vanish. There had been a full moon so that aided in what was filmed because light had filtered in. The recorders were even more thrilling. At around a recorded 3:04 AM we could make out what seemed to be a man’s voice saying, “Help … find it.”

The next morning we brought in a professional investigator who had been mentoring us to review our findings. After checking through everything thoroughly we all went next door to inspect the neighbor’s yard then all went to town to a quick develop photo place and also to a local historian.

The photos did not reveal much except for three consecutive pictures on the frame that showed a strange blob of light near a hole that Jet had dug up. The historian proved to be much more interesting. She told us that the original house had been built by a very wealthy man for his family in the 1920s. To all ‘outside appearances’ they lived happily there until the man had a run-in with a business partner who ruined his reputation and tried to bring financial disaster to the family. The partner had been murdered and the perpetrator was never found – OR city officials were just not talking. The cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head so the local papers ran with a suicide story even though the body was found in an odd place – laying I front of the front door of the partner’s own house. The weapon was never found. The partner’s name (which I have deliberately left out for personal reasons) matched the initials on the clip monogram.

This led us all to the speculation that perhaps the partner had been shot in a different location from where his body was found in an attempt to cover up for the wealthy man who either did the deed or hired someone to do it.

After all this speculation, our mentor suggested we go back to the neighbor’s yard and take another look. We went back to the hole where the glob of light showed up on the developed frames. Jet followed us over and sat there meowing and watching us intently. My husband had brought a hand spade with him and started to poke around in the hole. What he found gave us all a start. He hit something hard about 8 inches down and what he dug up was an old revolver. We left the revolver next to the hole, took more pictures and called the proper authorities who launched an investigation.

Investigators were able to tie the gun to the wealthy family but that was the end of the road … too much time had passed.

In the meantime we took the tie clip to the dead man’s grave in the older section of the local cemetery and buried near the headstone. We said a prayer and left our condolences.

It seemed to do the trick – all activity stopped.