On December 27th and 28th, 2013, Ghost City Tours conducted an overnight ghost hunts at the Sedamsville Rectory in Cincinnati, Ohio. When we hold these ghost hunting events we always like to investigate before our guests arrive. This way we know what is happening.
The Sunday before the hunt, we spent the night at the Sedamsville Rectory. During our ghost hunt, we had many great experiences including some of the most clear EVPs I have ever captured. Here are some of our spooky findings.
Sunday afternoon we went to the Rectory in the daylight to get some b-roll footage and photographs of the outside of the building. The Rectory is an…interesting..neighborhood. Sedamsville is a poor area. More than a time of two, we felt very uncomfortable there. Even though it was daylight we had many strange people drive by to check us out, eye us up. When you have a lot of very expensive equipment with you, this can be unnerving.
During our afternoon there we had two people stop to tell us their experiences living soo close to the Rectory. John was a construction worker who had lived in the Rectory about 10 years ago. He told us about all of the ghostly experiences he had while living there. You could tell, 10 years later, he still didn’t feel comfortable being next to the house. Later in the evening he would bring his friend by, the one whom he lived with. His stories were very interesting..shadow figures, dogs whining in the basement, things moving on their own…
Everyone we talked to told us to make sure we didn’t leave any valuables in the car and ‘stay away from the top of the hill’. We heeded their warnings and left to go grab dinner before we had to be back for the ghost hunt.
We arrived at the Sedamsville Rectory around 8 pm to meet Tim, one of the owners of the Sedamsville Rectory. You may have seen Tim on the episode of Ghost Adventurers they filmed a few years back. He was a very nice guy and dealt with us while we mic’ed him up for the tour. He showed us a few of the hotspots throughout the building. When it came to going to the basement he told us he doesn’t go down to the basement anymore. He had an experience down there and didn’t want to subject himself to the place it happened. We understood completely.
After unloading all of our gear from the car we set up and starting to look for the ghosts of the Sedamsville Rectory. We didn’t know it, but it was going to be a pretty strange night.
Before we started our ghost hunt at the Rectory we had a guy stop by who knew a lot about the building. He used to live there. He took us around to different areas of the Sedamsville Rectory and told us the stories about his experiences in the building. Towards the end of his interview, we captured one of the clearest EVPs on one of the mics that we have ever got.
A woman’s voice came through and said ‘This Guy’. I don’t know if it was a reference to the man we were interviewing..or maybe it had no meaning at all. Regardless, it was very very clear. You can check out the video yourself here.
Our ghost hunt at the Sedamsville Rectory was very ‘off and on’. We would have a few things happen in the span on 10 minutes and then nothing for an hour or more. For me, personally, there were three moments that really stuck out.
The first thing that happened was simply something I observed. Chris and I were at the Rectory by ourselves. Skippy had went out to grab some McDonalds at one in the morning. While Skippy was gone Chris and I stepped out onto the back porch to gather some ideas for how the remainder of the ghost hunt would go. We were just talking casually when I noticed a big change in Chris’ behavior. Now, if you know Chris you know he is one of the most peaceful, relaxed guys around. I have personally never even seen the big guy get angry…ever. He just started talking about how angry he felt. I grabbed the camera and pointed it at him, filming what was going on. He really took on a different persona. He kept going on and on about how he just needed someone to fight, eyeing me up. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t slightly nervous. I was preparing myself to jump out of the way just in case he decided he was going to push me off of the porch! He stormed off to the abandoned church beside the Rectory. He vomited in the parking lot, took a few minutes for himself, and came back feeling fine.
I am not going to say something was influencing his thoughts and how he felt. However, I don’t know how else to describe it. The Chris I was talking to just wasn’t Chris.
After that little episode, we went upstairs to do some EVP sessions in one of the rooms with a bed in it. I laid down in the bed while Chris sat in the chair to the side of the bed. We were encouraging any ghosts or spirits that were with us to let us know they were there. The bed I was laying in had a wooden headboard and footboard. I felt, and we both heard, something hit the end of the bed, where the footboard was. It felt like something had hit it or kicked it. It was that strong. It wasn’t something hitting the floor next to the bed. Something had absolutely hit the footboard. This ghost was starting to get interesting.
After Skippy got back, we ate our food and continued with the ghost hunt. While Chris and I were upstairs we heard Skippy screaming downstairs, screaming at the MEL meter he was trying to use. We kinda blew it off as Skippy being a drama queen. When we asked him about it later, why he was yelling soo much about the equipment, he said he didn’t remember doing it. He had a look of confusion on his face when we were telling him that he was yelling at the top of his lungs…This was the second time during the ghost hunt that one of us seemed to be influenced and affected by something inside of the Rectory.
After a few more hours, around 5 in the morning, we decided to wrap up our ghost hunt at the Sedamsville Rectory. We had to be out by noon. This gave us a few hours to catch up on some much-needed sleep. Skippy went outside to smoke one last cigarette for the day. I headed up to my room to get some sleep. Skippy and I slept in separate rooms connected by a short hallway. As I was undressing, I happened to glance down that hallway into his room. He was still outside, but there was a person standing in the middle of his room. It was a large, 6-7 foot tall shadow person. I completely froze. I expected it to dart off as almost all shadow people tend to do once they are noticed. This thing didn’t. I simply stood in the middle of the room, silhouetted by the light coming in from the window behind it. I didn’t know what to do. I had no equipment with me and quite frankly I was more than a little intimidated. I wasn’t going to turn my back to it and walk away. For what seemed like 10 minutes, but was actually closer to 1, this shadow person and I simply stared at each other. Okay, technically I don’t know that it was looking at me. It was very unnerving none-the-less.
After a good minute, I backed out of the room and went down to grab a camera. Of course when I came back up, it was nowhere to be found. By this time Skippy was with me. While passing from one room to the next, through that hallway, the smell of sulfur was overwhelming. It came and went in only a few seconds worth of time but it was unmistakable in what it was.
After this, we decided to simply head to bed. I didn’t envy Skippy having that room as his sleeping quarters. I must have been dead tired because I passed out within minutes of putting my head down. Nothing else happened the rest of the night.
All of us had personal experiences that I didn’t mention. I don’t feel it is my place to tell their stories. We haven’t even begun to go over the recordings we collected that night. We have been consumed with trying to get out the evidence we collected with guests during our Bobby Mackey's ghost hunts. I am very anxious to see what we uncovered in our audio and video recordings. I have no doubt that there is something to be found in all of it.