Seeking Beyond Paranormal

Center of Light for Applied Metaphysics

February 28, 2024 | 7:00pm to Midnight

The Claims | Equipment and Setup | The Investigation | Our Results

The Center of Light for Applied Metaphysics is a small church and educational center in Huntsville, Alabama. The Center's current location is a small mansion and former private residence that was built in 1920, and is located near the University of Alabama in Huntsville. It is a two-story structure with a basement — a chapel, meeting spaces, office space, and general household/hospitality spaces occupying the first floor, with multi-use and leased rooms occupying the second floor.

To the best of our knowledge, there have been no significant historical events that occurred in the building or on the property (i.e. no known links to Huntsville's history, etc.). However, that isn't to say the Center of Light lacks significance for us. In fact, Jessica's mother and father (Donell and Alan respectively) are leading members of the church, and Jessica's sister Sherrie has investigated here before. So our personal connection to this location is rather strong. That being said, there is one known death to have occurred in the building — a former occupant, an elderly woman, whose last days are tied to the room currently used as the Center's office. She was evidently quite sick, which became relevant during part of our investigation. Additionally, lots of church-related spiritual work occurs in and around the building. I can't speak to the specifics of the spiritual work myself, but it certainly adds to the context for any potential paranormal activity here.

The Claims

Before I dive into the claims themselves, I wanted to share our personal experiences in the Center of Light from years ago. Back when we were dating, Jessica took me to the Center to introduce me to the church as she was a more active participant at the time. She was showing me around, and when we went upstairs she showed me one room in particular that she always felt uncomfortable in. If I'm recalling correctly, there weren't any incidents that caused the discomfort, it was just an off feeling she had while inside that room. Being brand new to the building entirely, I didn't pick up on any strange vibes at the time. However, after having attended a fair share of luncheons and services there myself since, I have become far more familiar with the building and I have begun to feel that the upstairs portion of the building does have a different "feel" to it. I don't think I'm particularly sensitive, so perhaps it's the more closed-off nature of the space (smaller rooms, no wide-open spaces) that gives me a slightly claustrophobic sensation, but something about that space just makes me naturally want to take shallow breaths.

There are two primary claims of paranormal activity at the Center of Light. The first and perhaps most prevalent claim is the sightings of what is believed to be a 9 or 10-year-old boy who is seen upstairs. The second primary claim, and the one that really drew my attention, is the sightings of shadows or shadow people. This one has been corroborated by Jessica's sister Sherrie during her investigation of the Center years ago. Additionally, there is a claim of hearing knocking and walking upstairs while occupants are downstairs, as well as the occasional disembodied voice. None of the activity seems to be affected by the presence of the Center's members, nor does it appear to have any maliciousness. Moreover, current occupants who are aware of the activity have not reported feeling scared, intimidated, or harmed.

Jessica's mother Donell, one of the spiritual leaders of the Center, invited us to investigate. In our leadup to the investigation, I had her fill out a client questionairre that would provide us a good rundown of all the pertinent information for the investigation. One of the questions on the questionairre is "What would you like done about the activity?" The response was that they want to understand more about it, but also want it go away (in a positive manner, that is — finding the light, moving on, etc.). Of course, Jessica and I don't have any training to act on that second part at the moment, but whatever information we could gather from our investigation would be helpful for the Center's leadership to apply more targeted clearance work themselves. So this time around, we actually had a goal.

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Equipment and Setup

Since we knew the building already, we had a basic game plan for what equipment we wanted to run and where. I was really eager to try out some new devices I bought specifically for our investigations - a pair of Wyze Cam Pan v3 motion-tracking security cameras. We used one at our last investigation and had some curious results, and they are cheap enough that I was able to purchase two of them. They evidently track really well in the dark, and even have full-color night vision, so I figured they'd be perfect for this investigation in particular, considering the two main claims of activity. The plan was to set one at the end of the hallway upstairs and one in the office to watch out for shadows all night. Unfortunately, we ran into connectivity issues after setting the first one up, so we abandoned the idea so as to not burn too much investigation time troubleshooting the issue. There will be plenty of opportunities to work out the kinks going forward. Plus, thankfully, we already had a backup solution.

We brought along our gear tote, containing everything we've used in the past: 2x K-IIb EMF meters, our REM Pod, 3x MagLite Mini flashlights, our assortment of light-up catball toys, our voice recorder, and our Spirit Box / Estes Method gear. Additionally, we brought along our plasma ball. It seems kind of hokey, considering it's a typical set piece for all manner of cheesy sci-fi B-movies, but the idea behind it is pretty interesting. A long-standing theory in the paranormal community is that spirits utilize, interact with, and are made up of various forms of energy. A plasma ball is a flyback transformer that pumps out a substantial amount of electromagnetic energy. The glowing tendrils you see inside the globe are the electric current flowing through the noble gas contained within the globe. The energy doesn't stop flowing at the edge of the globe, though, so the idea is that it can be a ready-made energy source that nearby spirits can draw from and perhaps encourage stronger, more noticeable activity. For a little extra validation on the paranormal investigation side of things, the Paranormal Quest team uses one from time to time for the same purpose.

In addition to our own equipment, Donell and Alan brought along their own Olympus WS-500M voice recorder and their handheld video camera (this is the best info I could find on it). Calling back to the connectivity issues on our fancy security cameras, we opted to place this video camera in the hallway upstairs so we could at least keep an eye on the hall while we were downstairs and in other rooms upstairs. Moreover, we placed a red ball at the top of the stairs in hopes that it would be all too enticing for the spirit of a 9-year-old boy to try to kick, and the camera's location was the perfect vantage point for keeping an eye on that ball as well.

Lastly, since we're still pretty early on in our journey as investigators, we thought we'd give some of these "ghost hunting" apps a whirl. These apps are supposedly made to pick up environmental feedback through your phone's magnetometer and provide a dictionary of words and phrases that spirits can supposedly interface with and choose to relay. How that works, I have no clue. And before I say any more on that, I just wanted to state up front that we're absolutely on the fence on these at best. Being fans of a handful of investigators on YouTube, we've seen these apps put to use plenty of times, oftentimes with incredibly compelling results. These apps mimic purpose-built devices like the Ovilus, so if you're familiar with that device, these apps supposedly do the same thing. The reason I'm on the fence with these apps (in a negative way) is that the generated results typically come from a limited dictionary and tend to feel either A) completely random, or B) highly suggestive and unnecessarily moody. And I'm not alone in thinking that — a huge portion of the paranormal community is healthily skeptical of these apps. For all we know, the apps are listening to the user and generating some kind of piecemealed story to garner a sense of believability. I don't want to write disparagingly about these apps, but without knowing exactly how they work, that mode of operating is asbolutely on the table. That being said, the other reason I'm on the fence (in a positive way) is that sometimes they churn out back-to-back, shockingly relevant results. If they were truly just random word generators, you'd expect an accidentally relevant word or phrase to come through on occasion, but not in a repeated manner. Either way you look at it, some of these apps are certainly compelling to say the least. For this investigation, we chose two of the more prominent apps: Necrometer and Spirit Talker. And for the sake of full transparency, we are not considering any of the results from these apps to be any sort of "evidence" at this time. Curiously relevant at times, certainly, but not much more than that.

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The Investigation

This seems obvious to state, but I feel there's an important distinction between this investigation and our previous efforts. This time around, we had a task given to us. We wouldn't be trying to find out IF anything is there — something is known to be there and had been confirmed by a previous investigation, we just had to find out more information: names, dates, events... anything that could be as identifying as possible through more targeted inquiries. So instead of probing at random to see what we could stir up, the task and the claims provided a rough guide in how we would approach this one. While we canvased the main areas of activity with catballs, did some light sweeping for possible EMF activity, and had a camera keeping an eye on the upstairs hallway, we would focus our efforts almost entirely on audio communication.

The first major part of the investigation was held in the meeting room downstairs, which is a large room connected to the chapel. We had catball activity almost immediately, well before our introductions. On several occasions, we attempted to debunk the catball activity, thinking it may have been caused by shifting floorboards from walking, or otherwise some kind of vibration. At one point even a helicopter flew overhead and you could feel some slight vibration in the building, but neither our attempts to debunk nor the helicopter caused the catballs to light up. We were also careful to note our own interference in the moment so as to prevent any presumption of legitimate activity. Per usual, we introduced ourselves and explained what we were doing that night. After explaining all the equipment we set out, we jumped right into a voice recorder session, hoping to capture some electronic voice phenomena (EVP). Upon reviewing the recordings however — and as expected — we found the audio was a bit too difficult to listen to in the moment. The speaker on our Olympus WS-852 voice recorder just isn't high enough fidelity for us to hear subtle, whipser-quiet sounds. Of course, we still reviewed all of the voice recorder audio in the moment in the off-chance that something loud might come through, but we understood that all the audio would have to be carefully reviewed after the investigation. Spoiler alert: We did catch some EVPs during the investigation, but not in this room.

Next, we headed upstairs to what we referred to as "the kids' room." As of the date of the investigation, the room was empty and unused, but had once been used as a playroom for children of the Center's membership. While the spirit of the young boy is seen all over upstairs, we wanted to investigate that room in particular because of the strange feeling Jessica had experienced in that room in the past. We figured that her extrasensory experience might have pointed us toward a hotspot within the space, and sure enough, we had the most sunstantial activity in this room compared to the other rooms we investigated. Just like downstairs in the meeting room, we had lots of catball activity. Curiously, there was one instance where the catball wouldn't turn off. They usually only light up for 20 seconds (if they don't detect any motion after the initial impact), so to see it stay on for far longer was unsual. Even more curiously, once we started talking about how it wouldn't turn off, it turned off. Whether this was pure coincedence or an intelligent response to our discussion, we can't say. But given how long they are supposed to stay on, I'd be reluctant to brush this off as coincedental. During our time in this room, we also attempted to collect some EVPs with our voice recorder. Since we knew that there was a child spirit present, I brought along some chocolate coins as bribery in hopes of enticing specific activity. I chose chocolate coins because it was the oldest style candy I could find at last minute, figuring the older the type of candy the better chance a child from before our time might recognize it. How a spirit would enjoy candy, who is to say? But as a tool in our methodology, bringing trigger objects to evoke a sense of familiarity and happy thoughts might help to garner a bit of cooperation and focus out of those we want to communicate with. Unfortunately we didn't capture any EVPs from this portion of the investigation, but the catball activity was quite signficant and cemented the idea that we may have been interacting with a child.

Following our voice recorder session in the kids' room, we moved across the hall to the massage therapy room to conduct another voice recorder session. This room wasn't terribly active for us, and the recordings from our session were polluted with traffic noise. While reviewing in the moment, though, I thought we captured something because of the odd sound it had relative to the traffic noise, but upon closer review after the fact it was found to be a motorcycle shifting into higher gear. It just goes to show what a difference it can make to review audio in more controlled circumstances after the fact. As we were winding down in the massage therapy room, a sound in the hallway caught our attention. It turned out to just be some sound from the HVAC air return, but on our way out of the room to investigate, we saw a catball in the kids' room light up twice (I saw it first, then Jessica saw it a moment later). This was in the opposite corner of the room, far from us out in the hallway. This is actually caught on video and can be seen in the catball video posted a few paragraphs up at about the 6:15 minute mark. After capturing the catball lighting up back in the kids' room, we continued with another voice recorder session out in the hallway. Here we had an additional piece of equipment — our REM Pod — but this session ended up being rather quiet.

At this point in the evening, we decided to take a short break and we caught up with Donell and Alan to talk about our findings. They were in the downstairs meeting room performing their own voice recorder sessions and having more interaction with the catballs while we were upstairs. When we were done with our break, all four of us went back upstairs to the kids' room to perform our first Estes Method session of the night. A brief explanation of the Estes Method is that it is an alternative way of listening to a "Spirit Box" (a modified radio that cycles through radio stations rapidly) that involves noise cancelling headphones and a blindfold. The user is listening for complete words or phrases that come through the cycling radio static and relaying them to a second person who is asking questions. The sensory deprivation helps the listener focus on the audio and serves to isolate them from any questions being asked so that the responses can't be molded to fit the question, thereby removing bias from the equation.

Jessica performed the first Estes session, and this turned out to be one of the more substantial parts of our investigation with regards to our end results. Of the responses we got during the Estes Method itself, two names came through that would stand out from the rest: Paul and Eddie. Over the course of the evening, Paul would end up coming through in three separate occasions, and Eddie would come through twice (though the other instance of Eddie was actually "Ed"). Additionally, we were also running a voice recorder during Jessica's Estes session, and it's here that we actually caught two EVPs. One of the questions asked during the Estes session was "Do you know which city we're in?" We didn't get a response from the Spirit Box, but upon reviewing the voice recorder audio after the investigation, we discovered an EVP response in a child's voice that actually said "Huntsville." It might be difficult to hear in the video posted here, but if you turn up the volume, you'll hear two distinct syllables with the cadence and intonation of the word Huntsville. For full transparency, I have increased the volume of the secondary audio clips in this video and have applied a noise-reduction filter to it to help clean up some of the static sound. The EVP itself is otherwise unaltered.

The second EVP came a few minutes later. During the same Estes session, a response of "read it to me" came through. I responded by mentioning the library in the next room over, and asked if the spirit had a favorite book. There was no response to that from the Spirit Box, but after reviewing the voice recorder audio, a faint "yep" in a child's voice can be heard. As with the previous EVP audio, the volume has been increased and a noise-reduction filter was applied to it.

Furthermore, I still had the Spirit Talker app running on my phone during Jessica's Estes session, and the name John came through. As previously stated, we aren't considering any of the app responses to be evidence, but the name John did also come through with Donell and Alan's voice recorder session earlier. Considering the repeated instances of the two other names, it feels difficult to ignore the possibility that John wasn't also signficant to our findings since it was a result from another part of the investigation.

We finished off the investigation with a second Estes session downstairs in the meeting room. I went under for this session, and while it wasn't as fruitful of a session as Jessica's was, the name Paul came back up. What's interesting about the Estes Method is that while you hear the radio static predominantly, you can hear other types of sound in the mix. For example, in our previous investigation Jessica and Dianna both heard a deep male voice under the static. Others have heard loud vocal responses (e.g. screaming) speaking over the static as well. When I heard "I'm Paul" during this session, it was almost like the radio stations/static cut out for a second, then "I'm Paul" was stated over a quiet background, and then the normal radio static picked back up. It didn't sound like it was part of a radio broadcast either. So just to expand on the Estes Method explanation above, the listener repeats anything they hear, the cycling radio stations just accounts for the bulk of the audio. This Estes session can been seen below in it's entirety.

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Our Results

Our investigation of the Center of Light for Applied Metaphysics revealed some fascinating activity. We feel that the Venn Diagram of our results vs. the claims overlaps a healthy amount, despite not capturing anything visual other than catball activity. But that isn't to downplay the catball activity by any means — there was a LOT more of it than we could have possibly anticipated! The substantial catball activity combined with the two EVPs we caught do seem to corroborate the claim of a child spirit being present. Other activity found throughout the night all points toward a paranormal presence in general, but nothing specific to the claims. The highlights of our investigation are listed below.

In conclusion, we had a task to complete for this investigation, and I feel we came through with some helful results. We didn't manage to capture anything regarding the shadow people claim, but perhaps our findings just didn't have enough substance to connect those dots. Those connections may indeed be there, though, with the names we were able to come up with throughout the evening. Additional investigations might generate more results that can piece things together more solidly, but with any luck, this one investigation will serve its purpose for the Center's leadership. It's our hope that the names we collected — Paul, Johnny, and Eddie — will help the Center of Light direct their clearance efforts in more targeted manner.

We'd like to humbly thank the leadership of the Center of Light for Applied Metaphysics for allowing us this opportunity to investigate, and we'd like to personally thank Donell Koch, Spiritual Director for the Center of Light and mother to my better half, Jessica, for the invitation. The public side of paranormal investigation always shows the (in)famous, overtly scary locations where ghost hunting walks hand-in-hand with thrill-seeking. There's plenty of substance and good work on that side of things, to be clear, but investigations like this can inject a more impactful meaning to the world of paranormal investigation by helping individuals and communities understand more about the spaces they occupy.

by David Reimer, posted March 9, 2024

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Who We Are

Seeking Beyond Paranormal is a team of paranormal investigators based in Huntsville, Alabama. First started as a fun way to visit some of the country’s most haunted locations, Seeking Beyond now explores the realm of paranormal investigation.

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