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1889 McInteer Villa

Atchison, Kansas

August 11, 2023

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Here it is. Anniversary number twelve. Married a whole dozen years. Continuing the tradition, yet another paranormal location. In 2017 we stayed overnight at the Sallie House, also in Atchison, Kansas. McInteer Villa is about a mile away to the west. I heard about this place from a friend of mine who stayed there overnight previously and he said it was active. This is coming from a guy who is skeptical of this stuff and tries to debunk everything. If there is a rational explanation for something, he will go with that instead of jumping directly to "It's a Demon House!!" When he was there he mentioned hearing footsteps in the upstairs hallway and while attempting to sleep on the couch in the main living room, it moved about a foot with him on it.

So we are ready for this place. We arrive and meet up with Steph who bought the place a few years back and has since furnished and decorated the place beautifully. One aspect of this place was all the pocket doors. Simply doors that slid into the wall, and to close you pull out of the wall and the entrance was closed off. Reminded me of Lemp Mansion and the doors in some of the rooms, where there were actually two rooms but could be made into one big one with the use of pocket doors. I could be wrong, but it seemed to involve taxes and the number or rooms. I'm rambling. These pocket doors come into play later.

After our tour of the main floor, second floor, and basement we unpacked our stuff for the night's investigation and overnight stay. We did get a brief tour of the attic but very brief. Spotted some wasps, bees, or something flying around, so we cut that short.

Steph took off and we did an initial walkthrough with the recorder going just in case we pick up anything that we will hear later. Starting out Nikki said she thought she heard a cat, which is one of the claims. Listening back to the audio, there is a noise before she said that, but it is nothing I would want to put up as audio evidence of a cat. We did get a couple interesting EVPs near the kids room upstairs, the one with all the dolls. Leaving the kids room I was moving something to get look at the cabinet of toys. When I did, I hear "Goldie" pretty clear. "Goldie" is the nickname of Isobel Altis, who lived there almost 20 years before passing away in the rocking stair which is still in the living room. While just outside the kids room, I also picked up what I hear to be, "Raggedy", as in Raggedy Ann and Andy, which there are those dolls in the kids room. That's pretty specific and not just some random word given what room we were just in.

We make our way down the hallway and are in a room with oldey timey record player. While I'm in that room, Nikki who is in the hallway asks me if the floor is creaking underneath me. It was not. Listening back on the audio, you can hear something that could be interpreted as a creak, certainly an interesting sound. It was a little distant, and she said it sounded like it was downstairs. For comparison, you can hear what a creak near me sounds like.

Next stop is the attic. I'm still on the second floor in the hallway, and Nikki is ahead of me up on the next landing before going up the stairs leading to the attic door. I was getting ready to head up the first set of stairs before the landing and she said the door is opening. This is real time, and I must not have been paying attention but listening to the audio, the creaking of the door was loud enough to be picked up. She said it opened about a couple inches.

Being still early in the evening, the attic was way too hot to be spending any time in, so Nikki says we can go to the basement and I say, "Yeah"...followed by what sounds like, "Yup" which was not either of us. Before going into the basement, and it being quite warm, we go downstairs to the kitchen and I hear on the audio later what may be a child going "Ahh Ahhhh". If we hear anything during an investigation we will note it on the recording. We did not note this so we did not hear this while in the kitchen.

By this point, it is almost 6:00 PM and we head to Lopez de Mexico for dinner. I put the audio recorder on the couch in the front room, hit record, and we head off to dinner. About 5 minutes after we leave there is a creaking door. It sounds too close to be the attic door that was creaking earlier when Nikki heard it creaking and watched it open. Earlier I mentioned the pocket doors, that's what I recall being downstairs, and those do not creak. Pocket door would slide open. This was a definite creak was on and off for 20 seconds. The only door in the area was the front door, which was closed and locked, and there was a normal door leading to the den and I do not recall that door being out of place for as long as that creak lasted. Would have had to be half way closed. So I do not know what door closed/opened.

Got a REM-POD hit when in the downstairs room with the piano, also where we slept. Asked if anyone wanted to say, "Hi" and REM-POD went off and didn't stop until we asked for whatever to step away, and then it stopped. On the other side of the living room is the den. I ask if this is a room to go to to get away and I heard multiple words/syllables and asked Nikki if it was her, and it was not.

We head upstairs to the library. On the audio, you hear me sniff, and then I pick up what I hear as "Opal" or maybe "Oh Paul". I don't know if there was an Opal or a Paul that lived here, but that was interesting. Nikki heard, "Go home". You be the judge...but it is something there that we did not hear. During the tour, Steph told us this is the room that one of the residents in the early 1900's committed suicide. Charles Donovan shot himself in the head with a .22 rifle. The bullet lodged in his head and he died two hours later.

We are in the library for quite a bit of time, so we leave the recorder on and take a break. During the 15 minutes we were outside, the audio picked up a pretty loud knock about 2 minutes after we were gone. Picked up what sounds like walking, a couple more bangs, and more footsteps a minute before you hear us walking up the stairs, down the hallway and into the room. So technically we heard the claims of footsteps on the second floor, but we were not there when that happened. We were out back, but we picked up something that sounds like footsteps.

We gave the attic all night to cool down before spending any amount of time up there, so we went up around 2:00 AM and it was still toasty. There is an area with a table some chairs and a couch. I put out the cat balls on each and as I'm being all inviting, I ask if someone wants to sit down and as I'm pointing at the couch, the cat ball lights up. We are up there about 20 minutes and as we are finishing up, I get up to collect the cat balls and one that was on a chair started lighting up as I was reaching for it.

This was a great place and the owner, Steph, was a hoot to hang out with. Did not hear any of the footsteps while we were there, but pretty sure we recorded them while we were not inside the house. Didn't have any pieces of furniture move, but we did have a good night of investigating. For fun, I recorded my walkthrough in the dark using only the camera view to make my way around. Got a little dicey on the stairs and even bumped into a table and I thought I broke some dishes that were on it. No cups and saucers were harmed during the making of that video which is on my YOUTUBE CHANNEL.

Audio

The EVPs below are best listened to with headphones or earbuds. I have increased the volume on the section containing what I think is an EVP.