RETURN TO STRAWBERRY HILL - UNEXPLAINED VOICES

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In two different incidents, as detailed below, multiple investigators reported hearing a male voice or voices apparently engaged in conversation. In neither instance could specific words be made out, and in neither instance could a source for the male voice or voices be found.
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MALE VOICE HEARD DURING EQUIPMENT SET-UP

Unfortunately, during the time when we set-up our equipment we don't always have audio or video equipment recording. That is not a mistake we will make in the future. At around 9:15 PM Stew, Dave, and Shawn were in the Old Kitchen setting up the DVR video recording system.
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Suddenly all three of them heard a male voice speaking in the next room...the Children's Dining Hall. The voice appeared to be coming from near the back door of the building. Knowing that Laura and I were on the other side of the building near the Chapel, the three of them rushed into the Children's Dining Hall in an attempt to figure out the source of the male voice.
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They looked outside the back door and there was no one there. In the Children's Dining Hall itself, they found our host Francie sitting quietly at a table reading a book. They asked Francie if she had said anything or made any noises at all in the past few minutes, and she insisted that she had not spoken or made any noises.

They then asked Francie if she had heard a male voice just a minute earlier, either in her room or more specifically by the back door. She again insisted that she had not heard a male voice at all.

Stew, Dave, and Shawn were encouraged that they had heard a male voice where there should have been silence, but they were simultaneously disappointed that they had not captured the voice on audio or video tape.		  
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MALE VOICE HEARD IN TWO PLACES SIMULTANEOUSLY

During one of our vigils of the night, Shawn and Stew were in the north end of the Nun's Hallway, while Mark, Laura, and Dave were on the 3rd floor in the empty room outside the James Cruise closet. At about 1035 hours, Stew and Shawn heard a male voice talking at their location in the Nun's Hallway. At the exact same time, Dave heard a male voice talking at his location on the 3rd floor.
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  All three investigators that heard the male voice could not make out the specific words that they heard. They simply heard a what was clear to all of them was a male voice speaking softly.

Shawn and Stew thought voice came from above them, and naturally assumed the voice had traveled through an air vent or some other method from another part of the Strawberry Hill Museum.

Since Laura and Mark were with Dave, but Mark had not heard the voice and Laura had heard something very indistinct, we were not as clear about where the voice may have come from. After communicating over our walkie-talkies and discovering that members of both groups had heard the voice, we then set out to recreate the phenomenon.
 

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But before we describe how we attempted to recreate the male voice phenomenon, listen to these two sound clips of the incident. In this first audio clip, you'll hear silence interrupted by the occasional clicking of our electromagnetic field detector. You'll then hear Dave begin to ask whether we heard a voice or not. I comment that I heard a shuffling sound from behind Dave and Laura suggests that Francie's son-in-law, who she was expecting, had arrived downstairs.
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And in this next clip, you'll hear Shawn begin to question us over the walkie-talkie about hearing a male voice, and "whether we had been talking." True to form, Shawn and Stew were already looking for the natural cause to the strange voice they had heard.
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WAV files in case MP3's don't work for you: Dave Hears Voices & Shawn Radios Us

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First of all, we wanted to eliminate ourselves as the cause for the voice that had been heard by members of both vigil groups. So on cue, Stew and Shawn spoke in a normal voice, then a loud voice, and eventually a yelling voice from their location in the Nun's Hallway...and Dave, Mark, and Laura listened for them from our location on the 3rd floor. We were unable to hear them at any volume level.

Next, Dave, Mark, and Laura replicated the experiment from our end, speaking in a normal voice, then a loud voice, and eventually a yelling voice from our location on the 3rd floor...and Stew and Shawn listened for us from their location in the Nun's Hallway. They were unable to hear us at any volume level. This is most likely due to the fact that we were located in two different wings of the very large building. The 3rd floor attic Dave, Laura, and Mark were located within is not the 3rd floor attic that is over the building where Shawn and Stew were located. The buildings are connected, but the attic we were in is completely separate from the attic over Shawn and Stew's heads on the 2nd floor.

With that natural cause excluded, Dave, Laura, and Mark went downstairs to the Childrens' Dining Room on the 1st floor of the Strawberry Hill Museum, and spoke with Francie and her son-in-law, who had arrived. Francie reported to us that her son-in-law had arrived about 15 minutes earlier, and that they had been talking quietly in the Dining Hall. They insisted that they had not left the Childrens' Dining Room since he had arrived and they had been talking at an average level of volume.
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With Stew and Shawn still located in the Nun's Hallway on the 2nd floor, Dave, Mark, and Laura stood in the Childrens' Dining Room and spoke in a normal voice, then a louder voice, and finally a yelling voice. At no point could Shawn and Stew hear the racket we were making in the Dining Room. As a final test of the group's initial "vent" theory, Mark stood on a chair under a vent in the Childrens' Dining Room, and screamed into the vent. Even this direct method of delivering sound into the vent system did not reach Stew and Shawn's ears.

We later determined that the vent systems in the two wings of the building are completely separate. They do not connect and are supplied hot and cold air by separate systems.
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Both instances of hearing unexplained voices at the Strawberry Hill Museum had a strong impact on our investigators. The voice that three Ghost Vigil investigators heard in the Old Kitchen caught them by surprise. And the male voice heard simultaneously in two different areas of the Strawberry Hill Museum remains unexplained. While anecdotal experiences like this do not rise to the level of "conclusive evidence of paranormal activity," they do become part of a larger circumstantial case that we will continue to build....

-Mark Stinson
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