A Haunting We Will Go at the the GCHS Museum

Although not quite autumn, the September nights have a chill in the air and that fall feeling has returned to Greene County. People are thinking about colorful leaves, cozy sweaters, warm bonfires – and spooky stories. Greene County is rich with folklore and seems to have its share of haunted places. No place seems to have such a tragic and haunted history than the Greene County Historical Society Museum.

The building that now houses the museum once served as the county’s poor farm and records indicate that at least 1000 people died there during its century of serving Greene County’s poor, mentally impaired, and aged population. A large portion of its time as the poorhouse was under the stewardship of William B. Cage. Sadistic and cruel, reports of Cage’s actions can be found in local newspapers published during the later decades of the 19th century. During his years as steward, multiple poorhouse inmates disappeared from the records and their fates remain unknown.

Matt Cumberledge, director of the museum, welcomes our group into the main hall of the museum and shares that “the museum has been very active, they knew you were coming.” Matt, a confirmed skeptic when starting at the museum has completed a turnaround during his time as director. Within his first month as director, he began experiencing unusual sounds, including incredibly loud footsteps upstairs while he worked in his office below. He shares these stories and other fragments of the museum’s darker history with everyone. Outsider Paranormal, a group of paranormal investigators from Greene County, has agreed to lead a private investigation through the museum for the GreeneScene. Readers may recall that we visited the museum two years ago for an investigation with T.J. Porfeli and we’ve returned for a second investigation into Greene County’s most haunted location.

After a quick, lighted tour through the museum to see the renovations Matt and his dedicated crew of volunteers have brought to the museum over the past year, the group assembles in the main hall and prepares our equipment. Since we worked with Outsider Paranormal last year, they’ve added new gear to their collection. Fred Tennant shows me some of their additional acquisitions and some modifications. “I like to take the technology that we have and find a way to put it together to make it better,” he says. “It’s always best to have more than one way to have proof of activity. It adds credibility to the evidence.” One of the recent updates is the mobile computer/SLS camera they’re using that’s been modified to be portable. An SLS camera uses an IR light projector and CMOS sensor to map out human forms. Last year during a tour, the camera was used to pick up a small human form that appeared to be crawling out of a stove – something that actually falls in line with one of the museum’s darkest recorded moments.

During preparations, the group shares experiences of their own that they’ve had at the museum and other haunted locations in the tri-state area. In addition to visiting some well-known haunted locations, the group has investigated several residential homes. “We’ve tried to stay busy, but the pandemic has effected paranormal investigations like it has everything else,” Damon Keys shares. “The biggest thing that we’ve done over the past year is repackaged ourselves. I felt like I was getting a little lost for a while, so I took a step back to look and readjust. We still want to help people.”

Once the team is equipped and ready to start, it’s time to go dark. Matt turns the museum’s lights out building-wide, and the group – consisting of myself, Damon and Fred, team members Adam and Mark, my husband Daytona, and Matt head for the notorious upper west wing. The upper west wing is known to be an energetic source of activity, often leaving visitors and investigators feeling ill or anxious.

We begin the session in the west wing with introductions and Damon follows with an invitation for anyone listening to talk, while Adam and Fred record video with different equipment. Almost immediately, a stick figure is caught on the SLS camera computer that Fred carries, leaning on the case housing former steward Cage’s infamous cane. The K-II unit also shows some activity near the same case, lighting up. After a period of quiet, Matt unlocks the doors for the west wing, saying, “they usually get more active once all the doors are open.”

Shortly after this, we all begin hearing a strange sound echoing through the museum’s hallways. The deep, heavy breathing sound fills the halls and each person hears the sound as though it’s coming from a different direction. We all listen quietly as the sound continues intermittently and Matt shares, “I’ve never heard that sound before.” We spread out to investigate the bellows-like sound but can’t pinpoint it to one location. Some team members even seem to feel reverberations through the floor. Careful not to get too excited, we discuss what outside influences could be causing this before declaring it legitimately paranormal. After some talk, we consider the possibilities of gas wells in the area and how well sound can carry on a clear Greene County night, and head outside to see if we can still hear the sound – and we do.

More discussion leads to consensus that what we’re hearing is related to a gas well in the distance – much to everyone’s relief. “That’s an important part of investigation,” says Damon. “Some investigators may have recorded the sound and ran with it as proof, without working all the possibilities out as to what it could be.”

After that excitement, we take a short break and then head back upstairs to the front bedrooms, where Matt says that the beds have appeared almost slept in each morning when staff arrives. We take our places along the walls in one bedroom and begin our session. Damon again leads off with questions asking for interactions from anything that might be there. After getting some reactions with the mag light and K-II meters, Fred begins working with the spirit box. In the room we continue to get some temperature changes, flickering lights, and possibly a woman’s voice from the spirit box. We move to the second bedroom where we seem to get a lot more activity, especially with the K-II meters. The intermittently light up all the way into the red zone, especially when talk turns to the jail cells and the dungeon. During our time investigating this room, multiple group members report feeling or seeing the same thing including strange shadows outside in the hallway, shirt tugging, sudden temperature changes, and a ringing sensation in their ears that ends abruptly.

Since we seemed to hit on something with talk of the dungeon, the group heads down into the basement, known as ‘the dungeon,’ due to its history while it was part of the poorhouse. Remnants of the hooks used to restrain prisoners still remain in one room, and a strange bricked-up room has recently been reopened as part of the building’s renovations. We seem to get a little bit of activity, but for the most part the basement stays pretty quiet – though it isn’t always that way. During a previous public tour around the museum last fall, the group did pick up some strange photographic evidence of what appears to be two blue eyes. We wrap up our session and head back up to the main room to pack up the equipment and talk. Another interesting night at the never-disappointing museum is in the books.

Whether you’re a believer of the paranormal or a skeptic, visit the Greene County Historical Society. You won’t be disappointed. During their week-long Harvest Festival in October, there will be paranormal lectures and other activities that are sure to inspire some curiosity - and the museum will be open to visitors.

Published in October 2020 GreeneScene Magazine.