The attic of the Duff Green mansion is a dark, long hall of a room filled with an eerie number of mannequins dressed in Civil War garb. At either end are doors leading out onto a balcony overlooking the mansion’s grounds. Both doors can be deadbolted shut. The old house was used as a hospital during the siege of Vicksburg, and ever since, stories of its being haunted have abound.
It was here that Danny Holland, an investigator with the non-profit group Mississippi Paranormal Research, had his first experience with the unexplainable.
“It was way prior to me belonging to the team,” he said. “The owner is a friend of mine, and he gave us the top floor to stay on. Of course we had heard the stories that the place was haunted and that the attic was particularly haunted.”
Holland said since the Civil War, the mansion has been used for everything from a boys’ orphanage to a retirement home for widows.
“It was about two in the morning, and we decided to head up to the attic. We went out on to the balcony that the owner normally uses,” he said. “We were going back down to the mansion’s veranda, and after a few minutes we heard a banging.”
It was then Holland noticed someone was missing from his group.
“So I went downstairs to see if someone had gone down and got locked out,” he said. “But downstairs, I heard the banging again, and it seemed even farther away. So we checked back in the attic. My friend was outside on the balcony – pale white; he was really shook up. He said the door had slammed shut behind him, and the door had deadbolted itself.”
But Holland said this is not evidence of paranormal activity; it only shows the door was closed. This would not meet Mississippi Paranormal Research’s stringent standards of what is paranormal.
The group requires three separate accounts of activity before they call it evidence of the paranormal.
MPR is headed by the founder Robbie Wade, a Rankin County police officer. Andrea Wade, a fellow police officer, and Danny Holland are also investigators. Their technology managers are Matt Canfield and Kirschen Canfield, and also Mississippi State University instructor Cassondra Sumrall.
“Before the team even begins an investigation, there’s a lengthy interview,” Holland said. “When people contact us, they’re at the end of their rope. Our clients will notice something disturbing in their house or conjure up something in their minds they believe is a ghost or some kind of entity in their home.”
Holland said those who believe they are affected by the paranormal will start searching the Internet for answers and it is after they have gone to their preacher, family or friends.
“They’ll normally contact one or two groups in the state, and eventually decide to bring us into their homes because [the team] is mainly comprised of police officers and soldiers with some genuine investigative background.”
Before any on-site investigation beings, the team assesses the person’s state of mind and determines whether or not they have children. Those cases then become high priority. It is only after all of these steps that MPR will begin a preliminary investigation.
Holland said to be wary of some illegitimate groups on the internet. One group claims to have pictures of a commonly perceived phenomenon called orbs.
“There are places on the Internet where they will present photographs of dust particles as orbs,” he said. “It is nothing supernatural, just light off dust particles. But there are groups who will literally say ‘look at all of this activity at the dirt track during a race.'”
With MPR, the initial investigation consists of making sure only people associated with the team are in the area investigating. Then, the team takes temperature, pressure and electromagnetic field measurements throughout the area of supposed activity.
“All of this paranormal is just theory – indefinable by science – but we go in with a scientific mindset,” he said. “We don’t use Ouija boards or do seances. There’s no place for that in scientific research.”
Matt Canfield described what kind of equipment the team uses.
“We record temperature, EMF readings, audio and video in specific areas of interest,” Matt Canfield said. “We sync all of these devices together to make sure we have valid results.”
He said there are two types of electromagnetic fields: natural and man-made. Depending on the sensitivity of the person, these can cause nausea, dizziness and headaches.
In one case, a woman thought there was an entity in her closet. An investigation determined she was highly sensitive to EMFs produced by a humidifier she had on her nightstand.
“But there are things we can’t explain or debunk sometimes,” Holland said. “We will have a house completely locked down, but still record footsteps inside.”