KALAMAZOO — These are the ghosts of Henderson Castle: There are the spirits of Frank and Mary Henderson, the castle’s original owners.

There’s the spirit of Clare Burleigh, a Spanish-American War veteran who served with the Henderson’s son.

There’s the spirit of at least one unidentified child, a little girl.

There’s even the spirit of a dog.

This is according to Denise Gowen-Krueger, secretary and case manager for the Southern Michigan ParaNormals (SMP), who have investigated the Kalamazoo property at 100 Monroe St. — now a bed and breakfast — nearly half a dozen times since 2008.

From the first investigation two years ago, when SMP’s president and lead investigator, Dan Holroyd, heard an audible “Hey” when no one was around, to the latest on Oct. 19, when a man’s voice came over a radio that was turned off to say “Kim said it’s proof,” the group is rarely disappointed with their investigations at the 115-year-old castle.

According to Gowen-Krueger, some of the paranormal experiences the group has encountered at the castle include finding a framed picture with the name “Clare” freshly written on it in the dust, presumably a reference to Burleigh; and a number of EVPs — “electronic voice phenomena” — in which an voice is heard on a recorder that wasn’t present when the person was recording — including a woman’s voice saying “Flowers and candy” after flowers and candy were presented.

“Several of us have seen someone at the top of the first staircase,” Gowen-Krueger says, “and we’ve all had the feeling that it’s Mary Henderson.”

Of the more than 60 historical sites and more than 30 private residences the SMP has investigated as a group, Gowen-Krueger rates the castle as “very active” on the haunt scale.

“It’s more active than a lot of places that we’ve been,” she says.

'Go away'

It isn’t just investigators of the paranormal who have taken note of peculiar goings on inside the castle. In a February article from the Detroit Free Press, travel writer Ellen Creager noted an experience she had in the second-floor Dutch Room of the castle, in which someone — or some thing — tapped her on the arm and spoke to her from the darkness.

“I don’t believe in ghosts, but it was very strange,” Creager wrote in an e-mail. “I was sound asleep in the Dutch Room when I felt a tap, tap, tap on my forearm. I woke up and it was pitch dark. I heard a woman’s voice say, ‘Go away.’ I lay awake for a while. I knew it wasn’t a dream, but if it wasn’t a dream, what was it?”

Later, Creager wrote, she heard from a person, who hadn’t read her article, who’d had an almost identical experience.

Unexplained phenomena

Peter Livingstone-McNelis, who has owned the castle with his wife since 2005, says former and current staff members and even his son have experienced unexplained phenomena in the house, though aside from the occasional odd sound and doors popping open once in a while, he never has.

When Livingstone-McNelis’ son Vincent, now 11, was 7 or 8 years old, and before anyone else had ever reported anything strange happening in the house, Livingstone-McNelis says, he saw the apparition of a figure in the Victorian Room, originally the changing room for Mary Henderson.

“My son said, ‘She looked like one of these women, that’s what she was wearing,’ ” Livingstone-McNelis said on a recent afternoon, pointing at a picture of women dressed in period clothing. “When we asked him to describe what it looked like, he pointed to these, and I’m like, well, the kid got it right. Because if it’s gonna be Mary, Mary would be dressed like this.”

While staff at the castle haven’t reported experiences as visual as Vincent’s over the years, there have been instances of the unexplained. One former innkeeper who stayed at the castle each night told Livingstone-McNelis on numerous occasions that she felt a presence coming up and down the staircase, a movement passing her on the stairs.

Another led some guests through the maid’s scullery to the dining room, and when she went back through to the kitchen all of the upper cabinet doors in the scullery had been opened.

“Nobody can reach those,” Livingstone-McNelis says. “Those are 15 feet, 12 feet in the air.”

Castle bookkeeper Deb Beatty has had a number of experiences as well.

“I’ve heard footsteps upstairs, I’ve heard doors banging when I know I’m the only one here and the doors are all locked,” Beatty says. “It’s always when I’m the only one here.”

'Good energy'

Regardless of the nature of the experiences, one thing seems common among those who experience them: Aside, perhaps, from Creager’s dreamlike experience in the Dutch Room, the incidences with the unexplained at the castle are never described as being creepy or disturbing. Livingstone-McNelis says that all they’ve had is “good energy,” while Gowen-Krueger calls the atmosphere at the castle “very warming.”

Even Livingstone-McNelis’ son, Vincent, after seeing what most kids would presumably take for a ghost, wasn’t scared after seeing the apparition.

“I think he was in awe,” Livingstone-McNelis says. “I think he would just say he was fascinated.”

Beatty has found her own way to deal with the phenomena.

“I brought a radio, so I can just turn it up,” she says, laughing. “Or I just make sure I beat Peter out.”

Simon A. Thalmann edits online content for publications from Booth Newspapers' Specialty Content Center, including Your Home, Your Life and Be Your Best magazines.



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