Sedamsville Rectory

 

Sedamsville Rectory - By Johnathan Brown

Sedamsville Rectory 

639 Steiner Street

Cincinnati, Ohio 45204

 I drove down to Sedamsville with a long time friend of mine, Brendan. We were the first to arrive so we had the privilege of being the first inside of the Rectory. Immediately after entering you could feel the energy within the building. Having been here before I could feel the difference from arriving first as opposed to coming in with a group already there.

We decided to set our equipment in the break area and make our rounds throughout the building. Grabbing my digital recorder we went straight for the basement.  The decline of the basement steps always made the transition from the first floor to the basement challenging, not to mention the low ceiling that provided the opportunity to bust your head.  Down in the basement we began to feel the place out.

I didn’t feel too much outside of the usual chill when making the rounds in a place like this. In the room to the right there was a dog cage. If you knew the history of the place you knew exactly why it was there. Personally, I did not see the point outside of the ‘thrill’ factor, which I never agree with.  From there we made our way over to the side room. In this room is where the energy really began to pick up for me. The slight chill turned into a tingling sensation on my skin. We looked over our surroundings and I immediately began to feel energy towards my back. Behind me was the other part of the basement. The boiler and a room further into the back.

I wanted to make sure that this ‘tingle’ wasn’t a result of high EMF. I began to do K2 readings of the basement and found that near the boiler the K2 spiked. The surrounding area did not carry as much of the charge as the K2 lost that spike. The back room was a rectangle shaped room with old wood planks and junk pilled in it.  When you passed the threshold of the room the energy hit you. I really felt something was up with this room and knew we’d get something good.

We didn’t spend much more time in the basement of the Rectory. We made our way upstairs and began to feel the place out. While touring the Rectory we did notice that they had pictures posted throughout the home that listed what prior paranormal investigators had found while investigating. I ignored them, asked that they all be removed and placed on the ground, facing the wall. This is something I personally frown upon. The intention of coming into these places is to investigate and find what we can. Having pictures that hang on the wall telling what ‘may’ have been found creates a false lead for an investigator. Considering that the majority of the claims revolve around negative entities within the site. Not to mention we had mediums that would be coming into the home.

Soon after Brendan and I finished the initial walkthrough and the rest of the investigators arrived. We all knew the night would be very exciting. From there we broke into groups. I started with Jon Greene and his team in the attic. There Jon was communicating with a child spirit. During his conversation I was recording and heard a response to one of his questions.  I couldn’t make it out but upon review I heard a clear response. They used some of the toys to see if they could get any of them to move in response to Jon’s questions. We continued asking questions and at one point we decided to run a Spirit Box session.  We got a few responses there but overall we kept this line of communication very short. Eventually communication with these spirits faded and we moved to our next area of the Rectory.

Typically we take small breaks to communicate with everyone between investigation spots. Since Victor was coming to the Rectory and his birthday was a few days ago. We decided to get him a little birthday cake. It wasn’t the best cake in the world but something we decided would be nice to get.  Unofficially Victor turned “?”. So we had a bit of cake and snacks and exchanged what we were picking up so far. While I was taking pictures of our little paw-wow I noticed a few odd occurrences passing by the camera. I showed Robert from Shadow Hunters and we both came to the conclusion that it was nothing more than dust.

During this break, Lori and Victor spoke about a priest they had picked up on. They felt he wasn’t the nicest person and did some unspeakable things. Lori felt that the priest was abusing young men. From what I recall they felt he had a very strong presence inside the building. He wasn’t from the time when the animal abuse occurred in the home but from a time before that. The priest was very stand-offish towards the mediums.

From here we all decided that we would head up to the room that had the rocking chair and see if we could get the priest to present himself. Everyone sat around the room, some of us in chairs, some on the floor. I wanted to use the rocking chair as the trigger object. I thought it should be the focus of the session. I wanted to welcome any spirit who came to have a seat and speak with us. So we set up some equipment on the rocking chair and began a session in which we asked the spirit of the priest to come and speak to us. The majority of our questions focused on who he was, if he really did these things to the children and what his mind set was. Throughout the questioning we had some responses but in the end I began to feel as if he felt that he didn’t have to answer any of our questions, this was his home and so he lost interest.

Later in the night we took a group of investigations consisting of Dave, Robert, Taryn and her sister into the basement to conduct a few EVP sessions. We began with a typical EVP session. I greeted the spirits and let them know who I was. I then told them what my intentions were and how they could communicate with me. Next I let them know I would be using EVP Maker, a program that takes utterances, raw sounds and allophones randomizing them so that spirit can use them to create words. Once this was done I started the EVP Maker and began to ask for the Guardian Spirit of the Rectory. After letting the EVP Maker play for a moment we reviewed the audio and found that it said “I am Oracle” in response to the questions of “Who are you?” We all found this very surprising and continue the session where Robert asked “If you’re who you say you are. Do you know who the president is?” the response through EVP Maker was “I do. Get out of here.” This was equally surprising as well as many other responses. After this a Spirit Box session was started and I dismissed myself from the session to relax upstairs with the remaining members.

Overall the night was a blast. The Sedamsville Rectory’s staff was very accommodating and the site has been very well taken care of. I hope to see more improvements to the site as more and more Paranormal teams make their way through the home. I also hope that the spirits of the animals and people inside the home find peace sooner, rather than later.