The Bier Farm

On 30 April 2005 seven members of Show Me Paranormal Investigations worked a farm outside Palmyra, in rural Marion County, Missouri. The report calls it the Bier Farm. The house was built in the 1920s as a show farm for the University of Missouri. An older house had stood across the road. The report says the property also held slave quarters, other outbuildings, and a family grave plot. History was still being researched when the report was written. We arrived at 5:30 pm and started the watch at 6:00. Present: William Houser (investigation coordinator), Kim Lovelace (case manager), Lisa Newland, Tabitha Houser, Jim Knutelski, Vince Tabor (trainee), and Chris Murphy (trainee). The report was dated 23 August 2005 and signed by William Houser. Kim Lovelace reviewed it.

This is a private farm. The road and the house number are not on this page. The public pin is Palmyra, not the door. Two members of the team had lived in the house before. The report does not name them here as residents.

Rumors of activity at the farm, including full-bodied apparitions and unexplained voices, had been around for more than thirty years. That is what we were told. The owner said she had not seen anything unusual in the house, but she was sometimes uncomfortable upstairs alone. A former owner said that, years earlier, he had seen a woman walk across room F and go up the stairs in room G, and that objects had moved. He also passed on stories from other family members. We do not treat those stories as evidence. They are what we were told.

Permission was on file before the watch. We mapped the house, took baseline EMF and infrared readings, ran an active sweep, left recorders for a dormant hour with the team out, then made a final sweep. At the start it was about 62°F, partly cloudy, no rain. The report notes that NASA listed the atmosphere as electromagnetically active that day.

Baseline temperatures inside ran from the middle 50s in the coldest rooms to the middle 70s. No anomalous EMF or temperature was noted during the active phases.

About eight hours of digital audio came off the sweeps and the dormant hour. In the family grave plot, an investigator asked, "How long have you been here?" Nothing was heard at the time. She did report the impression that someone was trying to answer. On review, immediately after the question, a man's voice says, "A long time." That clip is attached on this case. The report says several other anomalies inside the house were also kept as EVPs. Two of them are attached on this case: "We'll always be" and "We lost someone." The report does not quote those lines. The file names do.

Low-light video ran in rooms E and F and in the upstairs hall between rooms I and J. Nothing anomalous.

One hundred thirty-six stills, film and a 4-megapixel digital camera, flash on most of them. Many frames had orbs. We set aside the ones that were dust or flash. Some orb frames we could not discharge as easily. As a rule we do not accept an orb as proof. With other evidence on the case, we kept them as support. Two small copies from the report are on this page: one at a door in room J, and one at the top of a stair. The exterior of the house is not published.

One investigator walked the upstairs briefly, felt an intense dread, and would not go back up. That person had not reacted that way on a case before. Another investigator reported several presences on the property and said she had made contact with one, a person who had been enslaved and had worked the farm. She drew a sketch. The sheet labels that sketch John the Elder. Her impression lines up with the grave-plot answer, in her account. No historical record was found that confirms the name or the person. Her impressions have matched a record before. We do not use impression as primary evidence. The sketch is on this case as her drawing, not as identification.

Conclusions. Considering the impressions of the investigators, the strong nature of the audio recorded, the photographic anomalies captured, and the history of reports from the property, we feel it is reasonable to believe paranormal activity may be occurring here. The responsive nature of one of the audio anomalies is tentative evidence of an intelligent haunting. The case stays open. A second on-site investigation was scheduled. It is not filed here.

This page is that report, shortened onto the sheet. The opinions in it are Show Me Paranormal Investigations' opinions.