A Ghost Hunt at Thornhaven Manor #200

We went to Thornhaven Manor. It is a beautiful old home that had been abandoned for many years. A young man purchased the home and the seven acres it sits on a while back. He had what he considered ghost activity in it and started allowing people to sit up ghost hunts in it. He plans to take the money he makes to restore the home and property.

The home was built in the early 1800′s by a very wealthy family. One of the things that interested me is that it is close to the area where my great great grandfather lived. Two sons of the family who built the home served in the Civil War. My great great grandfather served in the Civil War at the same time. I haven’t been able to determine if he served with either of the sons, but since people joined up in the areas in which they lived, it’s possible they may have served together.

The home has been sitting empty for years, well except for maybe a few ghosts inhabiting it, and is crumbling on it’s foundation. The house was built over a spring and water flows under it. It is built solidly of brick. There are a few rooms with floors caving into the basement. Of course those are off limits.

There is some evidence that points to this old mansion being a stop in the Underground Railroad. This would make perfect sense due to the fact that there are several other locations within a decent radius of this home. There is some information that a tunnel runs underneath the house and goes to the edge of the old property lines, of course, running north from the house. The owner has not been able to locate the tunnel due to some collapsing in the location where the entrance to the tunnel lies. An older man that still lives nearby remembers playing in the tunnel as a child.

We got there at 6 o’clock in the evening to start our hunt. The owner took us on a tour of the home and told us the history of the building. There are also 2 barns on the property. One of them has partially collapsed and the other it in pretty poor shape. You can see the potential in that barn though. The owner plans to restore that barn first and use it to host wedding receptions there someday.

We spent time looking over the house while it was still daylight. We walked around inside and out. The barn is supposedly haunted too, so we went through the barn. We didn’t see any ghosts but we did find some baby vultures inside the barn. They were up in the loft and one of the girls climbed up there and took pictures. She didn’t get too close because she didn’t want to upset them or their mother.

Just before dark the females in the group made a last run to town since there are no restrooms on the property. It was time to seriously start looking for ghosts.

The guys from “Ghost Adventures“ did an investigation on the property a few months ago and aired an episode on it. I looked through the videos and read the transcripts just to see what to expect. They seemed to get lots of activity during their investigation.

Our investigation started out slowly. We had lots of lights flashing on the EMF Sensors. I guess this means there is something in the location of the sensor. We had it lighting up all the lights on it pretty steadily for quite some time. In one of the pictures taken with a thermal imaging camera something weird showed up, but we don’t know that it was a spirit.

Throughout the evening there was some noises in the house that we couldn’t quite figure out where they were coming from, but nothing that we could really call “ghosts.”

One of the men felt like he may have been touched on the elbow, but even he wouldn’t say that it was something touching him. It could possibly have been a slight breeze. One of the women was having some feelings of pressure and dizziness at certain places during the evening.

The voice box didn’t bring out any “messages” and the flashlights weren’t really giving us anything solid to go on. There were four flashlights on the table and one of them seemed to come on at the beginning in response to questions asked. After a while it just came on when no questions were asked and the other never lit up in response to the requests to turn them on. It’s possible the flashlight was coming on due to a “fluke”.

All in all it was a fairly quiet night in the old “haunted” mansion. There were several recorders going and many pictures taken. It is going to take some time to see if any “evidence” will be found on any of those. I will do a follow up to let you know if we found anything on those.

So, my first real ghost hunt didn’t get too exciting, which is probably for the best. If I had felt something touch me or talk to me, I probably would have run screaming from the house!

Will I go again? I just might! I still want to know if the things they show on the ghost shows on TV really happen. If something like that does happen it will probably scare the crap out of me and I will be done.

I have some great pictures but since I signed a waiver I can’t use them.

The money we spent on touring the house will go to help restore the home and keep a piece of history. I am glad the house will be around for future generations to see. I hope to return someday and see the beautiful old mansion standing majestically upon the hill with possibly a ghost peering out the window.