Old Hamilton County Jail

3995 County Road 51, 

Jasper, FL 32052

Contact: Renee Daigle

February 22, 2014

Members Present: Terry

Chad

Manny

CeeCee

Robert

Weather: Cloudy, crescent moon.  No rain.  Approximately 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

Claims:

The Old Hamilton County Jail was the site of several hangings as a form of judicial enforcement.  It is the site of the last two legal hangings “this side of the Mississippi”; including two African Americans and one Caucasian man.  There are several alleged deaths, including one woman who committed suicide, and a man who was killed within the prison.

Past research from other groups alleges that there is great activity in two main locations; the colored cells, and the office of the prison.  Upon sitting down and talking with Renee, she has noticed that many groups will actually catch EVPs of names of people who spend a good amount of time there (including her own).

There is also a local who has been told from previous groups that he may be a psychic.  He participated with our group for part of the night, but preferred to remain off cameras as much as possible.  Our group did not find any reason to believe that he was psychic, however.

Also, according to Renee (the curator, and head of the local Historic society), the hangings occurred outside.  This is collaborated with the pictures and newspaper articles which are on display.

The local cell was mostly left open, and was for public intoxication.  People would be brought there, the door never closed, and they would sleep it off.  The locals were actually known to have answered the phones.

The Night Of:

Possible orb activity caught by CeeCee prior to even entering the building.

The group arrived around 8:30 PM at night.  We were given a tour by Renee, and shown where all the lights were, and instructed on the use of keys and where we could go.  Solitary is actually outside of the building, and we were told that if there was any disturbance to call the police and that they would come and take care of it.  We had no problems for the night.

The jail, allegedly, is something that nobody in the town wants anything to do with.  While our group was outside, we did have several people drive by slowly looking at us, and there are several residences around that can cause interference with EVPs.

We conducted a short meeting, where Manny did his ‘prayer of protection’, which was new for us, and I don’t think we will be repeating.  It is actually recommended on the instructions to the Spirit Box (which was our first use during this night) – and I think it fed to the power of suggestion that several members of our group were feeling.

After that, I (Terry) split from the group and went to Office, while everyone else went to check out the Women’s cell.  During my short time in the office with the Ovilus and a night vision camera, I was able to catch several things, including; the Ovilus saying that ‘teacher’ ‘opened’ (which was appropriate, considering that Renee is a teacher who opened the building for us.  Also, I captured several orbs on camera that would not be headlights (as they are dots, not flashes or lines of light.

Meanwhile, the other group explored and didn’t really catch anything on camera.  It is my firm belief that static cameras and small groups of people make evidence much easier to collect, with less interference.  Upon review, I thought I kept hearing people on the camera carried from this group, but everything had the potential to be easily debunked.

At this point, CeeCee joined me, while Manny and Chad took the Office.  CeeCee and I went to the women’s cell, where we had the Ovilus and an EMF detector, that uses a copper wire to light a blue LED when EMF is present.  In the first cell, there wasn’t really a lot of activity.  The second cell, which faces a window was much better.

In both cells, the Ovilus said “food” several times.  It said “moaning” as well.  We did not actually hear moaning.  I propose that the Ovilus feeds to the power of suggestion.  A creative person could develop stories using the words that the Ovilus provides, thus creating a false sense of history or knowledge of a location.  I believe that if spirits are able to manipulate the word data base, it would be highly limited – like the ‘teacher’ ‘opened’ evidence that I collected earlier in the night.  But, having to tell a whole story by stretching words seems absurd.  So does the ability for the Ovilus to identify identities, as it has a 2,000 word database.

In the second cell, we were requesting a spirit to contact us by touching the copper wire to set off the EMF detector.  We heard the Ovilus say very clearly, “fool yourself”, and then seconds later the detector went off.  I consider this to be evidence of an intelligent haunting.

We investigated the kitchen, and did not find anything to be noteworthy.  Then, we went upstairs to the local, colored, and white cells.  In the colored cell, we have video evidence of a ping pong ball moving, but do not have how it moved on camera.  In the locals cell, we had strong response to the “knocking” test.  We would perform the shave and a haircut knock, to which the spirit had to finish the last two knocks via knocking or a radiation detector response.  While the responses seemed genuine, there are extra “beeps” which could debunk this as just coincidence.  However, our test had several verifiable experiences, caught on camera.

The large group received very little evidence.  At one point, Chad says the ghost box told them to “stay in school”, very clearly.  In my opinion, more experience is needed with the ghost box to make it a verifiable tool that is able to collect evidence.

Diagnosis:

Based upon the evidence we received:

– Ovilus intelligent and short relevant readings.

– EMF and Radiation detector activity.

– The recording of an intelligent orb movement on video camera.

– The results of the knocking test.

– The moved ping pong ball.

– EMF light activity collaborated with the Ovilus.

– Possible Ghost box activity.

We believe that paranormal activity is present at the Old Hamilton County Jail..  We would like to revisit this property in the future in smaller groups, exploring the different cells and performing standard investigation procedure with each tool in each room and record it this way.

Also, smaller groups would be very productive in our opinion.  Large groups were unable to find productive evidence.