Getting Answers: paranormal investigation in Agawam

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WGGB/WSHM) - With Halloween just days away, it’s time once again for our annual ghost hunt with Agawam Paranormal. After nine years of creeping through museums, restaurants, even a VFWs, this year we’re doing something different. Instead of searching a building open to the public, we’ll be looking for spirits inside someone’s house.

It was a familiar scene on a late October evening as members of Agawam Paranormal huddled together in founder Rob Goff’s kitchen to over their ghost hunting plans.

“So what we’re going to do tonight, we’re going out to case 12003, which is here in Agawam, a residential case,” Goff explained.

On that particular fall evening, that means something we’ve never been a part of. We’ll be investigating a private residence.

“Well, tonight for the very first time in nine years, I’m bringing you to a residential. This is somebody’s home we’re going to be in. For me, and I commented on this before with my people, when we were talking is that when we’re dealing with a museum or a restaurant or a historical site, anything like that, there’s no real personal attachment or issue between the client and the location, so when we bring you to a residential, this is their home,” Goff added.

Because of that, Goff said there’s an undeniable personal connection to not just the location, but whatever or whoever may be haunting it. In fact, tonight’s client has a suspicion of who it might be.

“It’s not somebody who’s negative in any way shape or form. It’s family member and he’s very playful and he has a great sense of humor and I think, I’m hoping, that we can get him to show that tonight,” Goff noted.

The team then carried out and loaded up their equipment, which is a multitude of cameras and cords, monitors and motion detectors. Once packed, we rolled out and headed across town for our destination: a house you may have driven past and never looked twice at. There would be no reason to because it looks like a regular old house, but you’ll have to take our word for that because we’re intentionally concealing it for privacy reasons. The homeowner, Carol, has lived there for the last 53 years. Most of them have been peaceful, until recently.

“It startled me so bad, I screamed out loud. I thought somebody was in the house with me and there was nothing there,” Carol explained.

At least, there was nothing there that she could explain and that’s where Agawam Paranormal came in. After this hunt, hopefully, we can shed some light on what’s going on in the dark.

In fact, as Goff tells Western Mass News the places he investigates rarely, if ever, look like they do in the movies.

“I have yet to investigate your stereotypical haunted house, according to Hollywood standards. Usually, it’s just the family that lives next door that they’re just freaked out about something that’s happening in their own home,” notes Goff.

In other words, it’s not what the house looks like from the outside that’s important. It’s what’s happening on the inside. According to Carol, there’s been plenty going on inside: phantom footsteps, disembodied voices, lights turned on and off. Just the other night, while she was in bed watching television, Carol was startled by strange noises coming from the kitchen.

“So, I laid there for a few minutes and I didn’t hear it again and I thought ‘Aww, it’s nothing’ and then I heard it again a little while later and I said “Oh my God” so I bent down and looked, didn’t see anything. I just turned the TV up and went to sleep after awhile. I woke up in the morning and my kitchen cupboard was wide open, the door was wide open. Don’t ask me what that was all about,” Carol adds.

She said these strange experiences in her house began after her husband of 51 years passed away.

“My husband always wore a white T-shirt and jeans and after he died, I was in the kitchen doing the dishes one day and out of the corner of my eye, I just felt something watching me or standing next to me and I turned around and all I saw was jeans and a t-shirt, no body, but it was an instant thing and then it was gone. It startled me so bad, I screamed out loud. I thought someone was in the house with me and there was nothing there,” says Carol.

It’s occurrences like that that convinced Carol to invite Agawam Paranormal in to get answers and while founder Robb Goff will never definitively say whether or not ghosts are real, it didn’t take long for his team to start collecting potential evidence.

Several pictures show orbs throughout the house, like one by the window in the spare bedroom or a succession of shots showing the movement of team members, and the infrared cameras show similar orb activity, like one shooting down the stairs to the basement just after 9 p.m.

Upstairs, about an hour later, a camera set-up in Carol’s office caught a picture moving on the wall by itself. At the same time, the motion detector off screen turned on and reflected off the glass clock face.

However, the strangest experience of all came later that night. While a team is in the basement with their sound recorders on, directly above them upstairs, an infrared camera points down the hall towards the kitchen. In the pitch dark, the motion detector went off as the team downstairs and captured footsteps overhead, walking down that hall.

“I hear steps like there’s somebody in the house,” said one Agawam Paranormal crew member.

However, there is no one upstairs, at least no one living. Is it evidence of paranormal activity? Does Carol’s late husband still refuse to leave the side of his longtime bride? That’s for you...and Carol to decide.

Copyright 2022. Western Mass News (WGGB/WSHM). All rights reserved.