http://www.paranormalinvestigators.com.au

Date: Saturday 5th July - Sunday 6th July 2008
Location: Goulburn
Weather: cold but clear
Investigation time period: 2.00pm - 3.00am

Attila Kaldy:

This was one of those locations that would easily wet an investigator's appetite and have him/her coming back for more. It seems that we are attracted to eerie old, dilapidated hospitals. Our previous experiences had proven the fact that facilities as such attract a different level of activity. Hitherto we have not discovered anything that would surpass the magnitude of events we experienced in February 2007. I guess we have been searching for a new benchmark ever since.

The complex we investigated is situated approximately 200 kilometres southwest of Sydney. Built in the 19th century, the large scale of buildings sits on 200 acres. Some of its empty wards give a stark resemblance to an unpleasant atmosphere that still lingers among the corridors. The old psychiatric asylum is now a ghost town that displays elaborate Victorian architecture of a bygone era. The grandeur of some of these buildings draws amazement from those who stand and admire them. But as the sun sets, the shadows and dark windows present a very different atmosphere.

On 5th July 2008 we arrived early afternoon to set up a base station at one of the wards where many strange and unexplained occurrences had been reported - phantom footsteps, doors and windows open and shut by themselves, strange noises echoing through empty rooms ... the list goes on. It was said to be the most 'active' building in the complex, so naturally we decided to invest the entire investigation in this particular ward.
In the heart of this ward there was a large congregation room which proved to be perfect for our base station.


Kellie Pataky:

Frank, Michelle and I met the group at the facility just after lunch, and quickly began assessing this enormous place. Frank started out taking lots of random shots with his camera, while Michelle (our history researcher) and I walked around different parts of the property having a good look inside all the buildings and getting a general feel about the place.

Later in the evening, we headed up to the Administration building where I immediately felt "activity". I was able to get contact with a gentleman by the name of Robert Earls. He told me he had passed over in 1936 and had been a patient at the hospital. Robert was quite an interesting fellow, and showed distinctive signs of paranoia and schizophrenia. I had visions of him running up and down the hallways and sticking his head into different rooms trying to scare people. He would talk to me calmly, and then completely change his attitude and start screaming whilst looking behind him, as though he knew he was going to be taken away.

Robert also told me he had been at the hospital twice, and had also been "over there". I am presuming he was referring to the Goulburn Jail. I also had a vague picture of him, showing a tall gentleman with graying hair and beard and a problem with his left eye. I don't know what happened to his eye, but I got a vision of some sort of accident - like an explosion.


Larraine Cilia:

One section of the hospital was set aside for dangerous and psychotic inmates, thousands died there. Today a mass burial area remains, a cemetery of unmarked and forgotten graves. Even during daytime hours surveying the hospital, the buildings stand looking down giving one an ominous and spooky feeling.

We only had one night to investigate and given the size of the grounds we decided to concentrate on two main buildings. We made Ward 15 our base. It came with a history of haunting stories told by the staff who had worked in the hospital. Also the Administration Block, which was home to the murder of a nurse by a mentally disturbed patient and a Doctor who suicidally hung himself within its walls.


Darren Broadie:

We decided to try something new so when we arrived at the venue and found our central location, Attila and I went to work and set up our equipment to try and capture EVP using a method we have not tried before. Usually EVP is captured using white noise such as recording with a radio or TV tuned off station giving a static noise.

Using this medium of white noise can make any EVP picked up questionable as it could be argued that the EVP was coming from one of the regular stations.
Attila created different types of white noise or background static utilising an audio program to eliminate any chance of station ghosting (No Pun intended). We asked questions to spirit leaving a pause hoping to pick up a reply and repeated the process for each frequency.


Attila Kaldy:

I took the liberty to investigate the entire ward from room to room. There was one open area, upstairs that sent cold shivers down my spine. You didn't have to be psychic to pick up on the unpleasant sensations around you. It was obviously on a residual level but still it was strong enough to make you sick. Both mediums, Andrea and Kellie picked up on some of the patients. They saw how some were restraint to their beds, screaming and yelling. This was something that could have occurred a long time ago. As a researcher this set the perfect environment to conduct a few experiments.

Before we left, I took the opportunity to generate and record various interference noises to see if we could capture EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon). The whole idea was to generate white, brown and pink noise using an audio program rather than using standard static produced by a radio transmitter. If the experiment was successful, it would eliminate the possibilities of an interfering transmission.

The three types of noises were recoded in 10 minute intervals on a CD: Brown Noise - random noise which replicates Brownian motion (a thermal molecular motion in a liquid environment caused by the bombardment of liquid molecules upon suspended particles), White Noise - containing and equal amount of energy on all frequencies, Pink Noise - which contains equal amount of energy in each octave band. The experiment was to see which frequency would be most susceptible to carry EVP.

Darren and I set up a CD player with two 60 Watt speakers near the entry. We positioned an IC recorder approximately 2/3 of the way towards the other end of the ward to cover a reasonable size area. The final experiment was conducted by using only ambient noise.

After we completed the experiment, we returned to our base station and uploaded the audio files onto a computer. After assessing each file, no anomalies were discovered.
This exercise has given us an opportunity to experiment with certain frequencies. Future experiments will include other frequencies in different parts of the spectrum.

Darren Broadie:

We investigated other buildings at the venue prior to nightfall and in one building Kellie picked up on a spirit who appeared to running from room to room screaming. This was in a building that had prior reports of footsteps coming from the upstairs section.

Kellie was given the name of this spirit and we decided to see if there was a record of this person at the Department of Births, Deaths and Marriages (since I had my trusty PDA with me) and wouldn't you know it the name and locality of this Spirit matched.


Larraine Cilia:

Nightfall. Sitting in Ward 15 we filled the area with fog and called on Spirits to communicate with us. It was very, very cold, in some areas only 2-degrees, but the air felt electrically charged with energy. Laszlo's camera kept turning off by itself. This happened a number of times to the point where Attila inquired if it was faulty.

Next we split up into 3 groups of 3. Dom, Laszlo and I stayed in the back amenities section of ward 15. Once again Laszlo's camera switched itself off. Laszlo was adamant that the camera was not faulty, so this time we changed to a different camera. Lo and behold this camera also switched itself off. It was obvious that spirit didn't want to be recorded.


Dominic McNamara:

This facility was used as trial-run of an experimental black and white CCD camera using a lens specifically produced for infrared spectrum viewing on 1/3" CCD modules. The camera gives out streaming video at 600 TV lines over a two wire analogue 1Volt p-p channel. No audio was set up alongside.
A simple infrared array of LED's was mounted offset from the camera and 'shone' down the hallways ahead. Both devices were powered by a common sealed lead acid 1.3 Ampere-hour portable battery set on the floor next to the tripod. This battery, although reasonably full, had been set on charge for the entire previous day in order to ensure that there was no possibility that the chemically stored charge could be low before starting this investigation. During filming, the doorway to the hallway was closed and no-one entered during each session.

First Session
During the first session, a full half hour of continuous recording into a standard VHS tape recorder was cut short at that time due to a camera malfunction. It turned out that the battery was completely 'dead' - registering a loaded voltage of just under 7 Volts. Yet when the session began the tested voltage under load was 12 .95 Volts.

When the tape was reviewed, there was a moment of video interruption which did not make sense. When video or power is interrupted for a brief moment, the signal simply ceases and no raster is displayed. This fault however occurred in such a fashion as to be mystifying. The result was a diagonal striation of band lines across the screen for about 1 second. Then the image returned. This happened approximately 20 minutes into the session. From that moment on, the image degraded terribly, indicating that something had 'sapped' the charge from the battery, even though there was no evidence of a fault. No person or anomalous images were seen before or after this event.

Second session
The second session used a second battery, also fully charged and also reading close to 13 Volts when first loaded. This battery lasted for the entire duration until the investigation ended - some two and a half hours of recording later. There was no sign of the images degrading at all - which is how it should have been in the first session.

When the second session tape was reviewed, for the most part, there was nothing unusual. Then, with only a few minutes remaining, I saw something which I thought I recognised.

If I didn't know any better, I would have thought that someone was in a room that led off the hallway right in front of the camera. But nobody had ever been in that room. I saw a flash of light come from under this closed door, as if someone had taken a photograph from inside. It then occurred to me that someone could have been outside the main building in the quadrangle area - but it was now 2:30 am in the morning and the complex was deserted as it pretty much always is. Two minutes and 10 - seconds later, four of our party actually opened the door to the hallway and filed past the camera.

When asked, each of the party knew exactly what they were doing just prior to this event. No-one was taking photographs in the sun deck area or the quadrangle.

Although the result still looks like a photographic flash, I have no idea what it was that was responsible as all parties were accounted for and all were nowhere near that area.

During the sessions, I did not personally witness anything strange; I was however, party to a strange aftermath. Upstairs was an old dormitory. At one end, two of the party were observing that area. The other end led down the stairwell to where my partner and I and one other were changing tapes and monitoring the hallway camera. Suddenly, there was a loud bang of a door being slammed shut from upstairs. We all went up to se what had happened. I couldn't open the door. Having tried to find out on CB radio, we were alarmed to find out that both parties thought it was the doing of the other. The door was shut tight enough to have to use my shoulder to help burst it open. Neither party knew how it had shut in the first place.


Kellie Pataky:

Later on into the night we split up into 3 groups and investigated different parts of Ward 12. Frank, Michelle and I (Kellie) had an interesting experience in the top attic. We saw lots of shadows (the size of a tall man) and also had the top floor door slam shut while one of the other groups were coming upstairs. The door was slammed with such a force, Dom had to go around the other side and force it open. I think they were enforcing that we had stayed too long!

In the very early hours of Sunday morning, we loaded the cars up and headed home. Another very successful investigation! I wait with baited breath, the information Michelle can research on Robert.


Larraine Cilia:

Dom, myself (Larraine) and Laszlo were downstairs and Kelly, Frank and Michelle were upstairs. Attila, Andrea and Darren had just descended the stairs from the opposite end of the upstairs section. Suddenly we heard a door slam. Upon trying to open the door, it was well and truly jammed shut and wouldn't budge, yet there was no wind and no one near the door. Later Frank was to tell of seeing shadows passing the doorway.


Darren Broadie:

The rest of the night had some of the usual phenomena of cameras turning off and in one case a Battery that should normally last for hours was drained within an hour of use. How do you explain this? That is the million dollar question!

It is obvious that some strange force was at play. Other members experienced strange light and noise phenomena as well.