The Ghost Investigation of the Carnegie Community Center, Somerset, Kentucky
Once I moved to Nancy, I have had so many awesome people to reach out to me to share haunted locations with paranormal activity and local ghost lore. The local historian for the Carnegie Community Art Center, Karen Pedroza, was one of the first to contact me. She wanted to share the ghost stories of the Carnegie and proposed to do a ghost investigation to see if we could capture evidence of one of the most active ghosts there. His name is Mark Thatcher.
After completing the YouTube segment that I did with Kyle Kadel, who operates the International Paranormal Museum and Research Center located in the basement of the Carnegie Community and Art Center, he also gave me valuable information about little Mark Thatcher. At one time, Kyle was part of the management team at the Carnegie and he had real time experiencing the activity from the child ghost, Mark.
Before the Carnegie Center was a library, it was a post office and before that it was the home of the Morrow family. In 1898, when Mark was 11 years old, he and his siblings were visiting their cousins, the Morrow children, while playing outside. At the time, Mark lived across the street and loved playing with the family children. The history of his death is not real clear, but they do know that somehow Mark was shot with an arrow while the children were playing. Who knows if they were playing cowboys and Indians or maybe testing out their archery skills and were trying to shoot an object from Mark’s hand or even off his head? All that can be gathered from the stories is that he died while playing with the children after being shot with an arrow.
Shortly after Mark’s death his family had a portrait made of him. In the 1970’s his portrait was later placed in the Pulaski County Library for many years. Once they built the new library, on South Main Street in 2007, the portrait was moved there. Then the original library, on North Main Street, became known as the Carnegie Community Art Center.
Not long after the portrait of Mark was displayed, spooky and chilling sights and sounds began. Many of the employees and members of the library started seeing quick glances of a little boy when no children were present at that time. Some said they heard a little boy laughing. They also reported hearing light footsteps of a child running from one end of the room to the other end. The most talked about activity happened in the elevator. Sometimes the lights would flicker as the elevator went from floor to floor. Once while Karen was riding the elevator the level buttons would light up for another floor. She would have to ride the elevator up and down before she could get off. She told me that often she would avoid the elevator and take the stairs. It was a little too much for her to feel trapped in the elevator while Mark played with the buttons. There were also times when the empty elevator would start moving from floor to floor and back again and no one was in the elevator. Maintenance was performed on the elevators to see if it was malfunctioning, but they did not find any problems to cause the elevator to operate on its own. I was told that these types of activity still take place on all three floors.
I called Karen and Kyle to see if they would join me for a very quaint investigation at the Carnegie. Since I have not unpacked from my move and most of my ghost hunting equipment is still in storage, it has restricted my investigation to a small arsenal of equipment. I only have my smart phone for photos and videos, two EMF meters, and an audio recorder to use on an investigation.
Once we arrived at the center, Kyle was gracious in letting us use his special bear in hopes to attract the child, Mark, to this toy. This bear is called the BooBuddy Ghost Hunter Interactive Bear. This bear is used on ghost investigations and is equipped with an EMF meter that can register a disturbance in the EMF field and a thermometer to register abrupt changes of temperatures. If it picks up on the energy it lights up one of its paws. It also speaks words to encourage conversations with the ghosts in the room. This is the first time I have seen this type of equipment and was excited to be able to use it. You can find this bear at the GhostStop.
Before starting the investigation, we said a group prayer for guidance and protection while collecting evidence during our interaction with the ghosts that may be haunting this location. We gathered around the bear as Kyle turned it own to see if we could get some type of reaction with Mark. After a while of no significant responses or any indication that Mark was paying any attention to the bear, we considered that 10-year-old Mark might have thought the bear was too childish for him. As an older child he might have felt he was too old to play with a bear. After all, he was accidently killed while playing with a bow and arrow.
I reached for my audio recorder and decided to see if I could get an EVP that might validate that Mark was with us. I took my Panasonic digital recorder, which was voice activated, and continued with a 30 second EVP session. I asked for a name and after the 30 seconds played the recorder back to see if I had capture anything. At first it was static and then I got a voice that said, “Mark” with emphasis on the “k” at the end of his name. As I continued to listen to the play back, I got more static and again heard the name Mark. This, for me, was great evidence that we might be in the presence of Mark.
Kyle demonstrated where he and others had seen a little boy run through the room and towards the elevator. (When we reviewed the video at this point, we picked up an EVP of a long whisper that said, “Noooo”…) I thought this would be a good time to take the elevator to the 3rd floor to continue the investigation there. I was hoping that we might get some activity on the elevator on our way up. Then I asked myself if I wanted to be in an elevator that was known to go up and down from floor to floor unable to get off. This was one of the common things that would happen on the elevator. Three of us decided to ride the elevator while the other two took the stairs. When the elevator door opened it revealed a small area to stand. We pushed the 3rd floor button, and the elevator began to move upward. Almost immediately it started to shimmy and shake and really unnerved me. I was hoping we would make it to the top without it crashing down. Later, I asked Karen if the elevator had shaken like that before and she answered, “No”. She added that the shaking also scared her as well. Needless to say, after our completion of the investigation I took the stairs on our return to the basement. I am quite sure, after that experience, I will not be taking that elevator again.
On the 3rd floor we thought we would talk more about Mark since Kyle had brought copies of his portrait. He mentioned that since the portrait is now at the new library people have reported some of the same chilling activity happening there. Kyle commented, “I guess he goes back and forth from this building to the new library.”
I like to use some of the smart phone apps that I have seen other ghost hunters use during ghost investigations. One of the apps displays a stick formation if you focus on a person. The algorithm will outline the human body as a stick person. When you move your phone around the room this app might reveal the stick formation where there is no human present. This is when we stop and focus this area. We take note to the size, motion, and interaction. I used this app while encouraging Mark to use his energy so we could see him through this app. Karen was also using another app that was programed to place a square around most of the images in the room and label them, such as table, lamp, book, dog, person. I asked two members of the group to stand a few feet apart while we used the stick app and the box app in hopes to capture the energy of Mark. As I asked Mark to come stand between them, I got a small stick figure come through the app. Karen turned to me to let me know that she also had a box labeled person in the same area. We were extremely excited to get the same reaction from both apps. Then I noticed two framed pictures of human faces propped up on a table in between and behind them. Knowing that these apps had an algorithm to pick up human form I realized that it might be translating the pictures. I had Kyle to turn the pictures around to expose the back side and the small stick figure from my app and the box marked person from Karen’s app had disappeared. I was so hoping that we were, in fact, picking up on the energy of Mark. I want to make sure that we are totally aware of our surroundings when using these apps. It is important to me to debunk as much as I can during the investigation before confirming the evidence. If I had not noticed the two framed pictures between them, I would have made the mistake of thinking we had captured the energy of Mark.
Before we concluded the investigation of the little boy Mark, I wanted to share with the group the EVP I had gotten at the center a couple of weeks earlier. As I shared the EVP, Edwin, to the group I was so pleased at their reaction. They all agreed that the name was definitely “Edwin”.
When I arrived at the prior investigation of two weeks ago, I met with Karen and other who joined us. Along with the group I met Melissa Snyder, a psychic medium. I told Melissa that I had received spirit information that a new ghost was going to be revealed. Melissa smiled and said, “We have already found him. Our group did an investigation a few days ago and I picked up on a new identity. I gave the name to Karen and when she researched the history, she validated the name of the ghost.
As I did the pre-investigation of the Carnegie that night, I took the time to do an EVP session. On the playback I got the name Edwin. Melissa gasped and said, “Play that again, please.” When I played it back, she told me that the name Edwin was the name that she received during the previous investigation. Until that moment I did not know the name that she had received through spirit. Through Karen’s research she revealed that Edwin had lived in the first house built on this property, the Morrow House. His full name was Edwin Porch Morrow. He was born November 28, 1877 – died June 15, 1935. He was born in Somerset, Kentucky and became the 40th Governor of Kentucky from 1919 to 1923. As we reviewed the history of Edwin, we noticed that on this night of the investigation was his birthday, November 28.
This was a perfect way to end a ghost investigation. We plan to make a case study of this location to see if we can get more information to why these ghosts are here and what they can teach us.
To view the actual investigation please click on this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-DiliH2BzQ . I have it posted to my YouTube channel. I would be so grateful if you would take a quick moment to like, subscribe and click the bell to get notice as I post more segments to my YouTube channel. Thank you.
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