I am Haunted: Living Life Through the Dead (14 page)

So how does a ritualistic suicide in Ontario matter in Indiana? The way Herb killed himself tells me a lot about how this family is still being affected by him. I think that he killed one bird for each of his victims, believing that it was a way for him to remain earthbound instead of going to hell. I think he did this because he believed that he could stay in the house and continue to control anyone who lived there. But he treats the Graves family the same way he treated his own family, with respect.

So is Herb’s spirit still there, and is he possessing or controlling Rob Graves? Is Graves carrying around the spirit of Herb Baumeister unknowingly? The whole time we were searching for Herb’s spirit and believing that we were coming into contact with the spirits of his victims, were we actually talking to Herb in a way? After all, the Graves family lives in the same rooms that Herb inhabited and uses the same everyday items that Herb used.

Vicki Graves said that she felt scared at times, especially in the master bathroom, and she would shake at the thought of being in the presence of Herb’s spirit. Rob, however, didn’t flinch. He was adamant that the spirits were there in the house because “[Herb] liked it here, and the victims are still here.” He even had a creepy demeanor at the times when Vicki seemed the most scared. Sometimes as we filmed, I would catch Rob watching us through the blinds, as if through Rob, Herb was keeping an eye on us so that we didn’t learn too much (or maybe to ensure that we saw something he wanted us to see). Rob also got uncomfortable when we talked about certain parts of Herb’s life. I’m not saying that Rob Graves is a serial killer, but I couldn’t shake the idea that the spirit of Herb Baumeister could be affecting him. I think if you spend a long time in a place filled with bad energy, that energy becomes a part of you, and that’s what was happening at Fox Hollow Farm.

The people who live in the locations we film for
Ghost Adventures
often ask us to investigate over here or over there, or ask us to come in early so we can find more, without realizing that the spirits are actually the ones guiding them. The spirits know what happened there and channel that information through the living. This was true of Fox Hollow Farm. The family pointed out details of the property, and I kept wondering if it could be the spirit of Herb (or his victims) channeling information through them.

As I said earlier, many places where mass murders or other atrocities occur are changed or torn down in order to wipe away the memories. The ones that survive (like the Viscilla Axe Murder House in Iowa) are usually turned into tourist attractions. But Fox Hollow Farm was different. Not only was it still intact, but a family was living there among the remnants of Baumeister’s life. They swam in the same pool in which Baumeister drowned people. They showed me pictures of bones of unnamed victims that they found popping up out of the ground in the backyard. Items that Herb might have used as murder weapons, like the hose with which he strangled some of his victims, were still being used. A serial killer is the closest thing to a demon walking the Earth, and this family was living in his house with all the same stuff. Being there was deeply disturbing, and I can’t help but think that the Graves family was being affected by Herb’s spirit.

(NOT SO) FUN FACT:
W
HILE WE WERE FILMING A SOUND BYTE IN THE BACKYARD (WHERE THE BONES WERE FOUND), SOMETHING COMPELLED
ME TO LOOK UP AT THE UPSTAIRS WINDOW
. W
HEN
I
DID, A CURTAIN DREW OPEN AND
R
OB
G
RAVES STARED BACK AT ME, BUT ALL
I
REALLY SAW WAS
H
ERB
B
AUMEISTER LOOKING AT ME.
S
CARED THE CRAP OUT OF ME
.

The whole time we’re looking for spirits in the nooks and crannies of a place, the spirit may actually be found in a person who lives there. Many spirits just want their physical bodies back, after all. They want to smoke a cigarette, eat a pancake, lay out by the pool, and feel the wind on their face or the touch of a loved one.

The David Oman house in California is another prime example of a person rather than the location itself being haunted. David lives in a house that even the most intelligent and respected paranormal experts fear to enter. Barry Taff is a parapsychologist and PhD who has done more than 4,500 investigations using the most advanced equipment, yet he says that the David Oman house is the only place he feared to set foot in again after investigating it once. Dr. Taff claims that the house almost killed him and that nearly every time he goes there (more than twenty visits so far), he winds up in the hospital. So I had to ask: How could someone live there and not be affected?

When I met the owner, David Oman, I knew right away that something wasn’t right with him. I couldn’t tell if it was personal, mental, or the house, but it didn’t take long for something powerful and dark to affect me and my crew. It seemed to control David Oman and was trying to gain control of us, too. The question was, what was it? The spirits at Fox Hollow Farm were easy to identify because of the murders that had been committed there, but the David Oman house was different. As far as we knew, no deaths had occurred on the premises. The house was in close proximity to the mansion where Sharon Tate and her friends were murdered by members of the Charles Manson cult, but that was all we knew of, and those murders had occurred at least 200 yards away in a house that’s no longer there. Oman was quick to tell us that he feels he’s being affected by Tate’s spirit, but Dr. Taff felt that something more was going on, and I agreed. Taff described the energy of the house:

My instruments (Geomagnetometer, Natural Tri-Field Meter, Air Ion Counter, etc.) indicated bizarre and totally unprecedented magnetic field amplitudes and polarities throughout the entire house combined with an ambient electromagnetic background anywhere from 20–100 times normal. This house was a compass needle’s worst nightmare. In fact, there were several locations in David’s home where compass needles would spin wildly as if near a quadrapole, which does not occur in nature. And on other occasions almost everything in the house seemed to be emitting a very strong magnetic field, including glass, wood, plastic and leather. None of which are ferromagnetic or paramagnetic…

While on the stairwell, disembodied voices could be heard, but [were] not always recordable. At times, it sounded like someone loudly snoring or with severe asthma. At other times, it was like very muffled conversations were occurring. If I stood on the stairway too long, I became dizzy and nauseous.
*

Even more amazing is that the David Oman house allegedly sits on Native American burial grounds—never a good idea. Benedict Canyon is said to have been a sacred burial area for native tribes, but there’s no way to know for sure whether this is true. There were no historians, no record keepers, and no technologies to record their lives. But we do know that natives lived, fought, sacrificed animals, and buried their dead in this area. They had no crystal ball; they couldn’t have foreseen that one of the largest cities in the world would one day overtake their sacred land with tractors, homes, technology, parties, and even murders.

We have to remember the way native tribes thought. They had a relationship with Mother Nature on this land, and then we came along and desecrated it. Can you blame them for being pissed? I believe it curses the spirits and taints the energy there. The land is not supposed to be disturbed, let alone have houses built on it. It’s like an Egyptian sarcophagus that shouldn’t be opened. In my opinion, the Sharon Tate murders only agitated the energy even more. I think those heinous acts awakened something in the ground that either wants them to leave or wants vengeance, and whatever spirits were awakened are so strong that they are also affecting David Oman.

David is a nice guy, but we had issues with him. When the cameras were off, he liked to argue. He would be nice one minute and then be causing problems with the crew the next. He made the biggest deal of the smallest issues, like a mark on a wall that made him snap. We were wary around him and almost scared of him at times because he was so unpredictable. He could turn into someone else at the drop of a hat. But was that really him, or was something manipulating him?

David seemed to know when something paranormal was about to happen in the house. We were interviewing him once with the camera off, and he could tell us when figurines were going to fall over or loud noises were going to be heard. He seemed to have a relationship with the spirits, and Dr. Taff even said that he may be a “poltergeist host.” He talked to the spirits the way a parent talks to a noisy child when the family has company: with terse scolding. At times we were almost investigating David instead of the house. Dr. Taff was definitely afraid of him.

David Oman is another example of spirits living inside or through human beings, I believe. The affected people take on bizarre personalities and unpredictable behaviors. When I look into their eyes, I don’t see the person, but the spirit inside them—not their own spirit, but the spirit of someone else who’s passed over. They are half alive and half dead, almost like zombies. They have a hard time answering questions because they confuse the history of their own life with the history of the spirit inside them…like half their life is gone, or they just can’t remember it. Haunted locations can change people.

MAYBE THE SPIRITS WHO REFUSE TO LEAVE
THAT LOCATION ALSO REFUSE TO LEAVE
THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE THERE.

I hate them.

Believe it or not, this is easily the hardest chapter of this book to write, so it won’t be long. I hate dolls almost as much as I hate clowns, but for a different reason. When I’m around dolls, I can feel their eyes looking at me, and even though I know they’re not human eyes, it makes me very anxious, because I honestly believe that dolls can harbor spirits better than any other objects. To you, dolls may seem like harmless inanimate objects or playthings for children, but to me they’re vessels for spirits, and they scare me to the bone.

I’m not alone here. Hollywood tends to depict dolls in evil, horrible forms—think Chucky, Jigsaw, Blade, and the super-nightmarish clown doll from
Poltergeist.
Of course they’re not real, but I look at them a little differently because I have a theory that dolls can store paranormal energy better than most inanimate objects. There’s one simple explanation for this: They’ve been loved.

To a child who receives a doll as a gift, the doll is alive. It’s everything to them. They name it. They nurture it. They dress it up and talk to it like a friend and take it everywhere. To the child, the doll is real, just like everyone else around them. Children put a lot of love and feeling into their dolls, and I believe that some dolls not only retain that emotion, but also become doorways for spirits to get back to the physical world. And a doll can become a nest for a spirit to roost in after it’s crossed over. So when I see one, I don’t see factory plastic and fake horsehair; I see a container that could be holding a spirit.