GHU101

Garibaldi-Meucci Museum: Ghost Hunter University 101

Date: 3/3/07

Investigators: Arthur Matos, Jason Stroming, Laura Pennace

The Garibaldi-Meucci Museum, located in Rosebank, Staten Island, NY, is the historic home of Italian inventor Antonio Meucci, and his friend, Italian Revolutionary and war hero Giuseppe Garibaldi. The home itself was built in approximately 1840. Originally occupied by Meucci and his wife Ester, they later opened their doors to their friend Garibaldi, who was in exile from Italy. Meucci created many innovative inventions, but is probably best known (or least known) for actually inventing the telephone. Garibaldi later returned to Italy, leading military forces to reunify Italy and became a national hero.

Today, the Meucci-Garibaldi home is a museum owned and operated by The Order Sons of Italy. It is a national landmark, with a library, historical and educational tours & programs for children and adults, language classes, and more offerings to the public. You can visit their website for more information here: http://garibaldimeuccimuseum.org/index.html

However, the museum does hold another kind of tour: a ghost tour. The museum is supposedly haunted, and staff members of the museum have experienced many unusual happenings in the museum. Ghost tours are held monthly at the museum, and so it was a fitting location for Haunted Times Magazine to hold one of it's Ghost Hunter Universities here.

Haunted Times Magazine is owned and operated by Chris Moon, a long-time paranormal researcher. He conducts seminars called Ghost Hunter University, where he goes over the basics of ghost hunting, techniques used, equipment that is useful, theories on the paranormal, etc. He also shares some of his own personal stories. After the main seminar, an actual investigation of the location was conducted. Chris brought along one very interesting piece of equipment as well, called Frank's Box. It's basically an update on an invention by Thomas Edison, a box that can theoretically "pick up" voices of the dead. It was an interesting device, to say the least. Attending members were split into teams to investigate the location using cameras, EMF detectors, and any other equipment they may have brought. We brought along our Mini DV, 35mm camera, digital camera, digital audio recorder, analog tape recorder, and a few thermal scanners.

Below are some pictures from the evening, including Chris' use of Frank's Box. We did not use the digital audio recorder, since we felt that there were too many attendees in the house, and that would lead to all sorts of contamination. So far, we have not seen anything of note on video, either. We did find one picture with an anomaly, and it's posted below. The EPIC Team will be returning to the Garibaldi-Meucci Museum on April 14th to conduct a formal investigation!

First, the anomaly:

Pictures of the museum, the EPIC Team with Chris Moon, Frank's Box, and Chris using Frank's Box