The Payne-Gentry House

On 20 August 2005 six members of Show Me Paranormal Investigations worked the Payne-Gentry House at 4211 Fee Fee Road, Bridgeton, Missouri. We arrived at 6:00 pm and started the watch at 6:20. Present: William Houser (investigation coordinator), Kim Lovelace (case manager), Lisa Newland, Tabitha Houser, Jim Knutelski, and Chris Murphy. The report was dated 1 October 2005 and signed by William Houser. Kim Lovelace reviewed it.

The house was built in 1870 by Mary Elizabeth Payne and Elbridge Payne as a summer home. Elbridge died in 1874. Their son William "Willie" Payne practiced medicine from the basement office and died in 1897. Mary Lee Payne-Gentry and William Gentry lived in the house afterward. A daughter died at birth in 1901, and Mary died soon after from complications of that birth. The City of Bridgeton bought the house in 1968, restored it with the family, and opened it as a museum in 1974. It is run by the Bridgeton Historic Commission and the Bridgeton Historical Society.

Guides had reported apparitions in the house and on the grounds, including one in the attic, which had been a servant's room, and a woman in white crossing the grounds. A local psychic had said she spoke with a number of spirits there, and, three or four months before we came, with a child. We do not treat that as evidence. It is what we were told.

Permission forms were signed before the watch. We mapped the house, took baseline EMF and infrared readings, ran an active sweep, left recorders running for a dormant hour with the team out, then made a final sweep. Exterior weather at the start was clear, about 85°F, no rain.

Baseline temperatures inside ran from the high 60s in the cellar to the upper 70s in the rooms. No anomalous EMF or temperature was captured during the watch. A steady field of up to 8 milligauss sat around the house. We put that on the security system and the exterior lighting.

About eight hours of digital audio came off the active sweeps and the dormant hour. From that we kept three voices we could plainly understand, of people who were not in the house. The cellar voice and the upstairs "Help me" are attached on this case. The child's answer, "Ten," was on the CD with the original report and is not on the case yet.

The first was in the cellar, a few minutes after the first active sweep started, while we were trying for EVP. A man's voice, not answering a question we had asked: "You'll be mine…always will."

Upstairs, in rooms E and F, two more. A man's voice: "Help me." And, right after an investigator asked "How old are you?", a child's voice: "Ten." A direct answer to a direct question is, for us, one of the stronger things a recorder can catch. It may indicate a surviving intelligence. That is our opinion, not a finding anyone else has to share.

Low-light video ran in rooms E and H and in the doctor's office. Four hours. Nothing of interest on any of it.

One hundred thirty-six stills, film and a 4-megapixel digital camera, flash on most of them. Many frames had orbs. Dust was visible, and the air conditioning was blowing it. We threw out the ones that were dust or flash reflection. One frame from room E, over the spinning wheel, had a large orb 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 it as support only. The file in this report is a small copy of that still. It is not a high-resolution original.

One investigator reported the sense of a middle-aged man she believed was called Francis, watching the house, and of a young woman named Laura, tied to the piano in room H rather than to the house: a pianist and a music teacher, and the piano had been hers. That investigator's impressions have matched a record before. We have not found a document for Francis or Laura. We do not use extra-sensory impression as primary evidence.

Conclusions. Considering the strong nature of the audio recorded, the photographic evidence, and the number of witness accounts of activity at this house, we feel it is reasonable to believe paranormal activity may be occurring here. Based on the audio, we feel this location is potentially the host of an intelligent haunting, or what is also called a surviving spirit. The case stays open. No follow-up was scheduled.

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