Seeking Beyond Paranormal

At the end of July 2026, we were contacted by someone in Killen, Alabama about handing off what they claimed to be a haunted object. For the sake of their privacy, we will be keeping this client anonymous. We were, of course, interested in investigating a potentially haunted item, but we didn't know how to go about doing so. Our initial response was to suggest we come out that weekend and do an in situ investigation of the item to see if we could find anything before taking the item off their hands. However, the suggestion was quickly shot down in favor of them going out of their way to deliver it directly to us to expedite the item's removal from their home. That really piqued our interest.

The story of how we got this item is sort of intertwined with the claims, so for this article we'll be skipping out on the usual separate claims section. In the client's initial email to us, she stated that she started having what she described as visceral, "demonic" dreams that pointed to three new items in the household. She didn't know it at the time, but her mother had recently thrifted this sewing cabinet and two boxes of sewing notions. The items were kept in their garage for some time, but the day when they were brought into the house happened to be the same day these dreams started happening.

Dreams alone, no matter how "demonic" aren't really reason enough to claim something is paranormal in nature, at least not to us. But the story continues — when the client found out about the recently thrifted items and their arrival date, she concluded that the items and her dreams must be connected in some manner. The dreams were evidently so potent and upsetting that the client and her mother decided to move the sewing cabinet and two boxes of sewing notions outside, and that action apparently had immediate results — no more demonic dreams. The client and her mother then decided to sage the house and the items, and claimed that when they tried to sage the items, the sage stopped burning completely... twice. Additionally, sometime between this saging event and us acquiring the items, the clients had a psychic medium friend inspect the items, and claimed they discovered some kind of negative energy associated with the items. The story as a whole was captivating enough for us to at least look into it.

Now, as a respectful disclaimer, we as investigators cannot hold the findings of psychic mediums as objective evidence. It's not out of any kind of disrespect for any mediums, to be clear. It is just our belief that the findings of any psychic medium cannot be objectively, impartially captured or understood through scientific inquiry or process. Where we connect with those findings, though, is on the same level as personal experiences during other investigations. But more importantly, those findings lend value to us a paranormal investigators when they can unknowningly corroborate other findings.

Wrapping up the story, we agreed to the quick delivery of the items. To add a little extra context to how eager they were to get rid of these items, they contacted us on a Monday and by Tuesday afternoon we had them sitting in our own garage. Jecca took delivery of the items while I was at work. She said that the client was so careful with the items as to even wrap them in a bed sheet they were willing to discard, and then saged their car before making the drive back home. Now it was our problem.

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Equipment and Setup

Since this was our first investigation of a haunted object, we didn't quite know how to go about it. Our best guess was to do it the same exact way we do any other investigation. So for this investigation, we brought out a REM Pod, both of our voice recorders, an EMF meter, our flashlights, and our Estes Method kit. We also brought out the Infinity Deck in case we decided to go crazy with it, but ultimately we never did anything with it during this investigation.

As excited and interested as we were to investigate a haunted object, we don't really want anything paranormal in our house. We consider our garage to be a transitionary or exterior space, separate from the inside of our house, so we kept the items in our garage. In fact, I'm writing this article several months after the fact, and the items haven't even moved from where the investigation took place — they are staying out there. But as far as the investigation goes, we set out a table in the center of our garage and placed the sewing cabinet and two boxes of sewing notions on it so we could approach them from all around.

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The Investigation

This investigation took place over the course of two weekends. The first part of the investigation was just for our team — myself (David), Jecca, Juliana, and Dan. We wanted to approach this first part of the investigation through our normal set of procedures without influencing what we planned for our second part. This first part focused on voice recorder sessions and Estes Method sessions, but we cast a wide net by including other tools in case they proved easier to interact with.

To our surprise, one of the flashlights turned on several times. It didn't seem to do so in any intelligent manner, but bear in mind, this was on a concrete floor — no ordinary vibrations could have influenced the flashlight hardware. For additional context regarding vibrations, we live near a military installation that does munitions disposal, and these disposals are so violent they will actually shake our windows. No disposals occurred that night, though. Furthermore, I was filming the investigation so I was walking around. When the flashlight turned on, I attempted to debunk it by stomping around right in front of the flashlight to try to cause some kind of vibration that would turn it on. As the video below shows, my attempts did not turn the flashlight on. We were unable to come up with an explanation for the flashlight activity. We even did a sweep of the garage looking for strong electrmagnetic fields, and the only hits on the meter came from a GFCI outlet and our house's breaker panel. Neither area's electromagnetic field emanated more than a few inches out, and were at least five feet away from the flashlights.

We also ran a pair of Estes Method sessions during this first part of the investigation. Neither produced anything terribly fruitful outside of a small handful of responses that seemed to count how many of us were present and how many males were in the room. That part was interesting, but without anything else to further suggest an intelligence, we couldn't really lean on that as anything particularly concrete. Additionally, as we typically do, we ran our voice recorders during these Estes Method sessions — one sitting outside the cabinet, and one inside it. Neither voice recorder picked up anything during this first part of the investigation.

The second part of the investigation took place a week later. This may seem counterintuitive to the disclaimer I made above, but we actually invited our own psychic medium (Wendy) out to investigate the reportedly haunted items for an additional perspective. This was the same medium we had out on a previous case. Wendy ordinarily does readings for people whose lives have been impacted by severe trauma and suicide, so this was a bit outside of her normal practice. We didn't tell her anything other than "we acquired a haunted object," as we wanted her to come in without any foreknowledge or bias to see if she would organically corroborate what the other psychic medium told the client originally.

It was an incredible session to witness. This time around, we just observed while Wendy tapped into the objects. The only thing we did to participate was to set our voice recorders on the table. Wendy found there to be a negative energy associated with the object, some kind of non-human entity that she described as "not a major energy" — it was a "frivolous energy" that apparently enjoyed troublemaking. We as paranormal investigators might refer to this as "trickster energy," more commonly. The important thing here, though, was that Wendy organically corroborated what the other psychic medium said. Additionally, she found that the cabinet contained this entity as if it used the cabinet as a space to hide in, so it was with the object and likely not still hanging around the client's house. Days later, I was able to contact the client and confirm that no further activity was ocurring with her (re: dreams) or in their home.

Curiously, we actually managed to capture an EVP during this second session. This EVP is of two breaths, and nothing in particular prompted them. They just showed up in the audio, and do not match the audio from any of us in the room. You'll want to turn your volume up to hear them — one happens right at the beginning, and the other toward the end.

Regarding the two boxes of sewing notions, Wendy did not find either of them to have any notable energy attached to them. Once Wendy was done, we had her perform some bindings and blessings on the cabinet to keep it all isolated to the cabinet. You can see the full session in the video below.

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Our Results

As of this article, we're a little over three years into this whole ghost hunting thing, so most things right now are learning opportunities for us. This antique sewing cabinet was our first encounter with a reportedly haunted object, and it was a wonderful learning experience. We still have it, in fact, though we are uncertain what to do with it. We haven't had any personal experiences with it, but we don't want to chance it by bringing it into the house. It was also a wonderful learning experience in working with a psychic medium. Having worked with Wendy twice now, we're sure to get her involved in some other investigations down the road. While it wasn't as dramatic as some other haunted objects, we did manage to squeeze out a few results: