Paranormal researcher and ITC expert Tim Woolworth has been on many paranormal investigations and we want to know what some of the “scariest” moments he has encountered.
Radio Wasteland: As a paranormal researcher, what’s the scariest thing that’s ever happened?
Tim Woolworth: Well, there’s two. One, I wound up with an attachment which wasn’t physically scary, but it was mentally scary because I was young. I was young in the field. This was about a decade ago. It was a mansion that we were investigating in New York. It belonged to a Pittsburgh steel magnate who had died on the Titanic. And he had passed on and the land went from his family to a church who used it as a retreat with a bunch of bunks, with a bunch of cabins, with bunk all over the land. But there’s this one little building at the base of the hill. When you walked up, there was the caretaker’s section, the caretaker’s house, and it was quite a distance from the top of the hill, I’d say probably quarter of a mile. And I was on an investigation team at the time and everybody I was the last one into that particular building. And the other groups had been there. They kept saying, wait for Tim, wait for Tim, wait for Tim. He’s going to bring something to communicate with you. So I go down there instantly assailed by cold. A bunch of things went on while we’re sitting there doing an EVP session. You can actually hear physical murmuring in the room where it sounded like people were talking just outside of the wall and you could like hear that slight burble that murmur of their voices carrying through.
So we actually went all around the place and there’s no one around. It was that active. And then I broke out a box to do a crossover smash crossover session. And I wound up getting in directly in touch with some Revolutionary War soldiers who died at a place called Cherry Valley, just up the way the British had paid the paid Mohawks to come through and kill them in the middle of the night. And they were coming through. They were saying things like, I’ve been shot, I’ve been stabbed. All of this stuff was they’re put to what their regiment was, the commander’s name, all that stuff. And it’s like, okay, don’t worry, don’t worry. I’ll take care of you. We’ll help you get to the other side. And at that time, the lady who ran the team, she just walked in the door and said, that’s it. Pack up. We’ve got to go. It’s done. They made a huge mistake. I said, hey, why don’t you just come find me tomorrow and I’ll continue this? Because I think, you know, we’re like when I can be in a. It’s like the old blue light at Kmart. When you turn that on and your consciousness on the other side just says, hey, I’m here to communicate. They swarm. They absolutely swarm around you.
And I figured, you know, they’ll be able to find in the next day. Well, I wound up with was a physical attachment. It lasted the better part of four days. I was sleeping 20 plus hours a day. And it was just absolutely a miserable experience. And at the very end, I collected African masks at the time. And one of them had come off the wall while I was sleeping, was about 10 feet from the wall. It had rotated 90 degrees and was laying on the floor facing me. And those of them saying that they’re they’ve left off. So that was both scary because I was dumb and I didn’t know about protection and what my limitations were with the other side. And that was a little scary because, you know, it can lead to something much deeper than most physical scary thing I ever had. I was at a bed and breakfast that was on the Mason-Dixon line. In the basement is where they kept the slaves. The slaves were chained to the wall every night because they were a few steps from freedom, basically, if they could get out. You know, also how they had to do is walk out in the yard and they were free. So they had to be under. They had to be monitored all the damn time because they were on the Mason-Dixon line and.
This particular place had had activity. The owners had had an exorcism done down there, one part of the basement was completely blocked off with the cross and everything else would have been done with the exorcism. In one corner, the room was a small doll that a little black doll on a rocking chair. And it had a note saying that this was my great grandmother’s doll and she was a slave in this basement. Just really creepy stuff. There’s a table down there. So obviously, as a paranormal investigator, you’re going to go to the place where there’s the most activity to do an investigation. So it was a table with a chairs thrown outside and one on each end. I sat at the head of the table, so an investigation had never been done there. I am a white man surrounded by a bunch of white women sitting at the head of the table trying to address slaves in their quarter. And what happened was at the other end of the table, a giant black mass just assembled, and the women were just shrieking and it came right across the table and hit me in the chest. And that was the only time that I ever walked out of an investigation. And that’s one of the things that we really need to reiterate to people when you’re walking into place is you have no control over the other side ever.
Basically, they can do what they want when they want. And if they can manifest and mess with you, they will manifest and messed with you if that is their desire. There is no control you had. You can’t walk into a place and say, get out. You can’t walk in with sage and salt and somehow drive the spirit out. It just does not work that way. You can have conversations with them and try to get them to leave, but you can’t force anything. And that is one of the biggest things that I can not reiterate enough is you have no control of the other side. You have to know what you’re getting into and there’s risk in every possible situation that you will find yourself in. And the other thing is, if you’re investigating, it’s going to follow you home. If you’re in this long enough, you will become haunted. You’re going to open up doors that you cannot close. You may find knocks, shadow people, things falling that’s going to find you eventually. It does, because you’re showing an interest in the other side. The other side’s going to show an interest in you. While that may be cool for you as an investigator, think about your partner. Think about your kids. Think about your pets because they didn’t sign up for it.
So always be aware that you could be biting off way more than you can chew when you got into this field.