I never realised how long it’s been since anyone last posted here, and we sort of left you all hanging about what happened. My sincere apologies.

I am now well after being quite sick the last time something was posted. It took me a fair while to recover, but I am now much better.

I also, over my absence, got in touch with my estranged father.

I am currently working on a scientific paper with Emery on our findings at DeLair Manor, and am working a quite large project too, writing a book about our experiences in DeLair Manor, as there was a LOT of stuff that was never posted here that happened in the house since it all happened so quickly. So hopefully within the next year the book will be published.

“He who forgets will be destined to remember.” – Eddie Venner

We got back from the trip last Friday, but while there Mary was attacked by the spirit of Charles Linden, and for some reason, he stayed with her. We were all plagued by him while in the house, which will have to be explained later, I am sincerely sorry, but the only who wasn’t harmed until the end was Mary, and because all the others left relatively in a hurry, Charles then had the chance to ‘leech’ onto Mary, as she was the weakest left who hadn’t been threatened, and now it seems that Charles is angry and out for blood.

She is in agony, being tormented by him, and it seems that Emery has no power over him. There is something seriously wrong, and I think its killing her, both mentally and physically. We have got a priest looking over her, and he is trying to find someone else from a church who can assist him with an exorcism, as we have no other options, and he doesn’t seem to want to “show” himself to Emery (as he so clearly put it, since I am not a psychic, nor do I understand that kind of thing in any great detail), even with his power of being able to see the deceased, he just can’t, he has blocked Emery from having any power over him.

Emery would have liked to post sooner, but he is not, for any reason, going to leave Mary’s side, not now, not like this.

I just had to post, just so that people didn’t think we had died in the house, but everyone else is safe, to the best of my knowledge.

And we all pray that Mary wins this battle against the evil that’s with her.

Goodbye.

According to an old paper from July in 1882, Margaret died in a tragic horse riding accident at the age of 39.

While together the DeLair’s never had any children and Henry never remarried.

After his wife’s death, Henry had taken up to living as a recluse in his house near his farmland.

All production from the farm stopped after he gave up caring, and decided that he no longer wanted the land and sold it, with the sale of his farm this was then the money which funded the building of DeLair Manor.

The construction of DeLair Manor was started in 1896 and took 3 years to finish, being completed in 1899. The Manor was built by Mr. DeLair for his late wife Margaret in her memory.

He lived out the last 30 years of his life alone in the manor, and the only contact he had was with a few staff that helped Mr. DeLair and cared for him, also working on the house, keeping in good condition.

Reports from his helper at the time, Delores (last name unknown), there were five staff members working for Henry in DeLair Manor including a gardener, two maids, an occasional repairman, as well as his personal helper herself.

After 1924 Henry, who had by this time become a complete recluse, lived alone, except for the occasional visit by his doctor, Argyle Shilling.

It was unclear how long Mr. DeLair had been deceased, but his body was found in January of 1929, when Dr. Shilling, whom had went for a visit, found him dead in his bed.

It was recorded that Mr. Henry DeLair had died of natural causes at the age of 86.

The house wasn’t occupied until 3 years later in 1932, when George Harker and his wife Alice bought it, and later that year Alice gave birth to a son, whom they named David.

They decided to keep all of the DeLair’s things, including furniture and such things, as Alice felt that it would be disrespectful to throw away any of the manors items.

No changes were made to the house while the Harker’s were living there, except that Alice Harker changed the name of the house to Eve, named after her late twin sister, who had died from heart complications when they were both 20, which was in the year 1916.

In the year of 1936, one of the Harker’s maids was in the garden and out of the surrounding forest stumbled a young confused and worn looking man. He did not know who he was nor where he came from, and no one in the area could identify him, so the Harker’s gave him a job working for them, and from then he was referred to as Walter.

As the Harker’s were socialites, they often held parties in the manor.

In 1936 they threw an extravagant party for Alice’s 40^th birthday. For unknown reasons the party took a sharp turn for the worst when Walter took a kitchen knife and began butchering the guests.

Among his victims were both George and Alice Harker, but luckily the maid who had been caring for then 5 year old David managed to make it out alive with the boy, as well as a small number of guests.

After killing most of the guests and the Harkers, Walter proceeded to the second floor where he then flooded the bathroom and ended his own life in there with the knife.

The massacre was reported around the country and eventually it was found that the killer “Walter” was actually a young man by the name of Charles Linden whom had been reported missing for sometime by his family.

The tragedy was soon forgotten but it wasn’t until many years later that the house was once again occupied, this time by an out-of-province couple that didn’t know of the houses past or of what happened there.

So the house was bought by a young wealthy business man, Richard Blair and his wife Beth in 1948.

The couple was unable to have any of their own children, and Beth believed that a house so big should be filled with people and thought it fitting to turn it into a school, so in 1950, she opened the house as a small Christian school, also that year, Mrs. Blair hired a young lady by the name of Susan Bean to help teach and tend to the house.

Susan Bean was an aspiring actress who was also known by the name of Donna Beaumont, although she never really achieved anything, so she took up the job working for Beth Blair.

But in 1955, the houses horror returned and the 7 children that attended the school disappeared, Richard and Beth had been out at the time and left Miss. Bean to care for the children for a little while.

When the Blair’s arrived back home they found the house’s doors to be locked and a large smear of blood leading from the front door and disappearing around the corner of the house where it ended. They called the police using a nearby phone who arrived promptly.

The broke into the house but as they went up to the second floor the power went out and in the dark they heard crying coming from the bathroom. As the approached the door the power came back on and they saw that they were standing in red tainted water and upon opening the door to the bathroom they found Susan Bean sitting in the running bath covered in blood.

The police took Miss. Bean into custody, and was hauled to the station without uttering a single word on her part, but later when the shock had worn off she told police that it was a young man that had taken and killed the children, hearing their screams coming from the forest.

Because the police were unable to find anything relating to the supposed “young man” they charged Susan Bean with the children’s murders, although they were unable to find any bodies, and she was committed to an asylum.

The police searched for days in the house, and around the surrounding land and forest, but they were unable to find anything. It wasn’t until 35 years after the disappearances of the children that their bodies were found in the forest behind the house.

It was on March 2^nd 1990 when a nature walker and his dog ended up in the woods of the manor and discovered the remains of the children.

Since then the house had been abandoned up until 2006, when a family bought the house, Benjamin and Nancy Alverton and their 5 children. They fixed the house up and redecorated the inside and such, but after hearing strange noises the refuse to stay there, they still own the house and all of their things are still inside, but they no longer live there, and since they have found it difficult to sell, they have just left it as it is.

It’s me, Emery.

You haven’t yet had the pleasure of me posting to you before and since Mary is unable, I shall.

We are all just sitting around talking right now, we just had dinner a few hours ago, 2 minute noodles, the only thing that any of us can actually cook, well, actually Mary did all the “cooking”, and she is unable to type right now because she is a still little shaken up and is asleep on the couch beside me.

Once again Curtis went missing today, he went up to the third level, just having a bit of a look around, but by himself, which he shouldn’t have done, well, he is young and this is really his field at all, so I should probably remind him of what can happen in a place like this if your alone, then again, I think his little “experience” today might make him think twice before trying it again. But after he had gone upstairs, the rest of the group and I, who were working on some of the equipment didn’t see him disappear. It must have been 1pm when we realized that he was missing, and we knew that he had been with us an hour earlier because we all had lunch together.

After he went missing we could hear footsteps above us, like someone was running around, but the thing was, it wasn’t just one person running, but several. We tried to record it but it didn’t seem to work as the sound was muffled going through from the third floor down to the first where we were working, but the recorder didn’t even pick up muffled sounds, after listening to the recording there was just a faint high pitch buzzing on it, even when analyzing it and taking away the buzz, there is nothing else there, not even sounds of us moving or breathing, which most recordings in the past have had.

Trudy thinks that the tape recorder mustn’t be set right or that there is a problem with the tape, which may be the case, but usually isn’t on an expedition like this one.

After the sounds we decided to head up stairs all together, there were no more sounds of people running after that. But as we approached the stairs to the third floor from the second we could hear Curtis yelling and banging his fists on the wall or a door. We all hurried up and there was no one there, so we looked around a bit, as the third floor isn’t that big, it just has a lot of hidden rooms around corners and such where you can’t see the door until you get into the nooks up there. Curtis seemed to be trapped inside one of the small broom cupboards, the kind that cleaners use to keep their equipment. He was banging quite hard with his fists against the door. Ted got the handle and tried to yank it open but it wouldn’t budge. Curtis was screaming for us to get him out of there.

It suddenly when scarily quite and we were all yelling to Curtis through the door to see if he was still there and, unfortunately this is what I was thinking, but if he was still alive.

Ted yanked on the door again, but it was to easy and the door swung open with great force, which caused him to fall to the ground, and because the gap between the door the and the wall in the nook where it was situated, Ted hit his head, not to badly, but enough to cause it to bleed.

We found Curtis inside the cupboard on the floor, in the corner. Trudy screamed when she noticed that he was bleeding quite heavily from the mouth, as if someone had punched him, also his hands were a little cut from splinters in the wooden door because the top part of the house is quite old and is slightly falling apart and rotting.

Trudy took them both to the emergency room at the general hospital in town, while the rest of us stayed here.

While they were gone, nothing else really happened, except that when Linda was using the video camera to tape the gardens from inside the main sitting room she got frightened when a bird flew into the window and hit the glass, which caused her to drop the camera which broke on the wooden floor. She began to stress because of the fright she got and that she had broken the camera, but Ronald assured her that the video camera wouldn’t have given much more proof than a regular camera. Plus, Ron and I both know in our field of work that video proof doesn’t mean anything because so many people can digitally tamper with footage these days.

Trudy has finally come back with Ted, but she said that the hospital wanted to keep Curtis there overnight because he also had some heavy bruising and may have a fractured ankle, they said that Ted was alright and he only needed a couple of stitches in his head and that it wasn’t enough to cause any serious harm or concussion.

Another odd thing was when Mary was making dinner, she was in the kitchen with Linda, which at one point Linda must have stepped away for a bit to talk to Ron because the next thing they knew there was a crash and when they reentered the kitchen together it was dark. After hearing the sound come from the kitchen and knowing Mary was in there I ran down the hallway to where she was. I pushed my way past Ron and Linda who were standing stunned in the doorway, only to find the room quite dark, as the kitchen is very old and unlike houses these days, back then, kitchens didn’t have large windows, if any, this one happens to have a small rectangle one but quite high up near the ceiling, so the room had a little bit of light.

I was able to see that Mary was on the ground, lying with her hands over her head.

The light that hung in the middle of the kitchen had fallen where she was working and shattered. Luckily none of the glass seriously hurt her, because she had sheltered herself on the floor, but there were a few small scratches on her hands and a bit of glass scattered on her which was easily brushed off.

So now, Mary is asleep and the rest of us are just discussing the history of DeLair Manor.

I shall now pass the reigns over to the others so they may introduce themselves.

Trudy Conner:

My name is Dr. Trudy Conner, and I am a psychologist in Seattle. I am 57 years old and have been a licensed psychologist for 22 years.

I have been married for 31 years and have two daughters, Helen who is 27 and Gale who turned 30 last month.

Gale is married and has a 5 year old boy, Peter, which makes me a grandmother, but as they say, you’re only as old as you feel, and I certainly don’t feel old.

My husband Frank is also a Doctor of Psychology but couldn’t come on this trip because he is away at a conference overseas.

I actually know Ronald Officer, and he has been a family for quite a few years now, as he and my husband are “golf buddies”.

I know Emery and Mary through work with the Police on serious crimes. I work with traumatized victims to retrieve any information about a crime that they are able to provide us with.

Ted Hickson:

Hi, my name is Ted, and I am an Officer of the Law (I love saying that). Well technically, I am not an official officer yet, I am still in training, but in about 6 months I will be.

I am 27 and my friends say I am one of the most immature people in the world.

I decided to come on this trip to DeLair Manor, just because I met Emery a few months ago through a mutual friend in the force and thought that it would be fun. It’s a new experience and will open my eyes to a whole other side of the world. Plus the team needs a little muscle, and I am their man =P

Ron Officer and Linda Peck:

My name is Ronald Officer and my assistant is Linda Peck. We are Paranormal Researchers and have been a team for 4 years now.

I am a freelance Paranormal Detective and met Linda in 2005 when she approached me about a job, and the rest is history.

I met Emery though the Seattle Chapter of the Institute of Local Paranormal Phenomenon, back in 2006 during one of the meetings in which we both happened to go to.

Curtis Lyle:

Unfortunately he isn’t here, but Curtis is a Lab Assistant at the College and knows Mary and me because he occasionally works with Mary in the Lab, who is kind of like a mentor to him when she is there.

Mary Ashwood:

I just realized that Mary hasn’t posted anything about herself on our blog, so I shall introduced her here.

Mary is a Forensic Scientist but kindly stepped away from her position to work with me on my paranormal research. She is 33, turning 34 this coming Friday.

We met in 1999 while working on a homicide case, it was her first time working in the field after getting her degree. We have been engaged since January of 2008, and are planning to get married this October.

Well that’s all from us now. It’s is prime haunting time now, so we should be getting to work.

Farewell.

To the trip:

The team arrived at our house at around 8am, a few people were late because they had to go pick up some of the equipment this morning before they came over. After organizing everything that we needed for the trip we ended up heading off at about 9.30am.

The members of our team are:

Trudy Conner, Curtis Lyle, Ted Hickson, Linda Peck and Ronald Officer.

They are all colleagues of Emery’s and mine, from the College and Police Force (more about them when they are awake and can write about themselves).

We had to use Ted’s Van, as it was the largest vehicle any of us owned without having to rent one, and he had to drive, as Emery was the only one who had previously been to the location but can’t drive long distances without his hand hurting.

It was approximately a 2 hour drive to reach our destination, DeLair Manor which happens to be near Abbotsford across the boarder in British Columbia, Canada. So we arrived at the house just a little after 1pm after stopping at the border and also grabbing a meal at the Crossroads Restaurant which scarily enough was right near a road called Delair Road. The Manor happens to be near DeLair but is not named after it and is not connected to that name in anyway, the name comes from the original owner of the house, but I shall get into the history later on.

Last night we spent most of the time getting our bearings around the main rooms of the house, we went around the outside and into the large gardens and forest areas surrounding the house, Curtis did manage to get lost for a little bit but we found him, he just seemed to have wandered off a little too far into the dense trees behind the house.

After emptying the van of the equipment and our luggage and after the walk around the house and such it ended up being time for dinner. So we all just drove back into the town and had something to eat.

When we got back to the Manor, we began to set up the equipment and after a few hours everyone was sick of that so we all headed into the main sitting area, where there are nice soft couches and chairs, and we all talked for a while until we started to get tired and headed off up to the second floor where all the bedrooms are and went to sleep, which was about 4am.

I am the first one up this morning and everyone else must still be asleep, as I haven’t seen or heard anyone.

Last night was pretty uneventful, paranormal wise, as nothing out of the ordinary happened, well actually, that is yet to be discovered, as someone may have experienced something while in their room alone, I shall wait for the others to wake and then report on anything that happened.

For the time being I think I will hop back into bed where it’s warm and soft.

I will also have some photos up later of the house that I have taken, and I shall analyze them with Emery for anything suspicious.

I am unable to sleep very well right now, I am very excited about the trip we are taking to conduct some paranormal research, and it is going to start in less than 7 hours.

The rest of the team, whom I will have pictures of and will introduce in the next post, will be meeting Emery and I here at our home, then we will be driving the location. I haven’t been there yet myself, but Emery met up with the owner a few days ago and went over the details and such. Nancy Alverton was her name, I am not sure if I spelt it right or not, but that’s how it sounds. Anyway, we will be driving there, I am unsure exactly where it is but I will soon.

The equipment will be arriving with the team this morning at about 8am, as we had planned, and then will be heading to the location.

The next time I will post will be at the house, well, I should really say Manor or Mansion, as it is huge, it has over 9 bedrooms and has a magnificent history, which I shall post up sometime in the next post, because I will have a bit more time to write as we will be settling in for the coming week, well, it’s not going to be the full week, but we are going to see how long we can spend in the house, a week is a limit, and it could even just last a couple of days, but longer would be better, because I have yet to experience anything like this, and I know with Emery beside me, I will be safe.

The folder of notes that I was given to read based on the history of the house actually had a very nice recent aerial shot of it and can be seen below.

Anyway, I should most likely try to get some sleep so that I am not too tired for tomorrow.

DeLair Manor

A couple of days ago Emery and I attended Ally O’Sullivan’s birthday party. We had a marvelous time, the food at the venue was spectacular, and Emery made sure to watch his consumption rate, because he has worked so hard to keep his weight down, and I am very proud of him and his immense will power.

Anyway, back to about the party. Emery and I gave Ally an antique Edwardian chair. It was actually an old piece from Rose Red which we found from a private seller of antiques over the border in Canada. It was a reasonable price considering where it is from, and its history.

Before we gave it to Ally as a birthday present, Emery did his psychic “once over” on it to remove any evil paranormal residue from it. We wouldn’t want to give Ally a haunted piece of furniture just to have it come back 10 times worse for here considering where she lives and all.

The full details about the party and such can be found here on Ally’s blog.

Also, the next post coming up will be about the paranormal research trip we are taking, because after a fair while of searching and planning, we have found the perfect house to study and we have put together a small team.

So until next time

Ipsa scientia potestas est – Knowledge itself is power

In the email to her, he mentioned that he would also email Emery, which has has done. The email is as follows.

Emery,
 
Been too long man. Sorry I’ve not been in touch. I got pretty busy
with the computer business a couple months ago when some poor old guy
managed to infect a very large local law company’s intranet with a
serious virus. It’s the on-site tech’s fault for not maintaining a more
secure/protected network code. I tried to not make a bigger deal about it
than I had to because the guy who spread the virus was near retirement
age anyway, and it’d suck to get fired for something like that and
lose the pension and everything. The on-site tech was a little SOB I’d
have been happy to call out, but that’s not my job. My job is to get
in, get to work, get it done, and get out. It took me some time to
clean up the mess, and then word of mouth spread and I was hired for a
few more emergency recovery type projects.
 
I’ve been in touch with Ally though, as you know. I didn’t know that
you were going to her place, though. I didn’t find that out until
after the fact. I guess you were doing a bit of emergency work
yourself, right?
 
I wrote a letter for the readers on Ally’s blog the other day and I
mentioned I’d e-mail you and scold you for being so reckless: going
into her condo on the old family property, knowing that there was
weird stuff going on there already. What were you thinking???
 
Well, truth is I know what you were thinking. You were thinking about
helping a friend, and at the end of the day it was pretty damn brave
of you to go back there.
 
It’s got me thinking about it, too. I haven’t set foot on the property
since we left the roses. I think all along Nick was right, Rose Red
wanted me as much as it wanted Annie, and that’s always terrified me.
I felt it as a kid and I felt it that weekend. Sometimes in my dreams
I still feel it. You going to Ally’s condo made me realize that it’s
time I faced my fears. I know I’m not a powerful psychic like you. I
know I can’t make whatever’s there stop bothering me the way you can.
I also know it could be lighting a fuse on a powder keg if Ellen’s
truly there, like your investigation suggested. Now that I type all
these things out, if I “know” this much, why the hell am I thinking
about going back? I must be crazy.
 
But “insanity” and “Rimbauer” go hand in hand…
 
I made a promise to Ally and her readers that I’d go to her condo
soon. And I’ll help as much as I can to recover the lost souls Rose
Red captured. Ally’s working hard at it on her own. It’s amazing, as
you know, the hours she spends researching the “curse” and the theory
she’s developing…which she has probably talked to you about but
hasn’t discussed on her blog yet…I’ll leave it until she makes the
big announcement about the pattern she’s seeing. She’s up against some
pretty powerful stuff now and I know she can rely on you to help her,
but it shouldn’t just be you (and Mary) and her against the world. Not
when I’m the last Rimbauer. My family, my house, my problem…my
friends…my fears. I’ve gotta man up now.
 
If it’s cool I’ll give you a call soon for your advice about what I
should do for protection before I go to the condo, or maybe we could
go together that first time. You could bring Mary. She’s a lot of fun
and maybe she’d like to see the place firsthand now that she’s
analyzed your evidence. I read her comment to Ally the other day that
you’re planning a new investigation someplace, though, so I won’t tie
you down. But I would like some input before I jump into the deep end,
so I’ll be in touch.
 
I know you’ve got a blog of your own now, I’ve followed the link over
from Ally’s site. I’m glad you and Mary will talk about some of the
things you’ve been up to. You’ve led an interesting life since 2001.
And as always, going all girly on you, I really do value your
friendship, even if things were touch and go for a while when we were
in the house. Everything’s changed so much since then. You’ve changed,
I’ve changed. I guess the only thing that hasn’t changed is whatever
place it is that Ellen and the rest are in, it seems.
 
Give me a call sometime soon, or I’ll call you.
 
Some scolding this turned out to be. I’m growing soft in my old age, I swear.
 
Steve

 

P.S. If you want to put this on your blog, you can too.
 
And say hi to Mary for me. Tell her I talked to Rachel the other day
and she said to thank you both for the gift you sent little Ellen. She
said she’ll write you too but if I talked to you first, to let you
know Ellen loved it and it was so nice to get a surprise out of the
blue. It’s still weird to me that she named her daughter after my
great-grandmother, but she really is a cute kid. Mary might have
gotten this already but this is a photo Rachel sent me of Ellen on
their vacation in Florida over Christmas.

Also here is a picture of Ellen, Rachel’s Daughter

So we have decided that we shall not choose a place such as those we have been looking at over the last couple of days, due to the fact that we wish to, once we have found a suitable house, update daily if possible on the events happening.

So there will be a few more days of checking out different sites for the trip, also that means soon, once we have found the house, we shall gather a small team together to help us out, because with just the two of us Emery and I won’t achieve as much as we would like, so we will be employing some help, most likely from some of our colleagues from the Force and the University.

So, “Keep a watchful eye, and look beyond the surface, because there is always something lying beneath the world.” – Emery Waterman, ‘Science Fiction and Horror Magazine’