Investigation: St. Andrew's Church - Staten island, NY
Date of Investigation: 5/2/08 and 10/24/08
Case File#: SACH - 05022008/10242008
UPDATE:
On the 9/23/09 episode of "Ghost Hunters," the TAPS team visited St. Andrew's Church. On this episode, Father Michael mentions some "kids doing missionary work" who noticed the chimes moving. That is inaccurate, as it was EPIC who caught the chimes moving, on camera. Jason & Grant also quickly "debunked" the chimes moving, because of the air vent underneath the chimes, and yet they are not shown once during the episode actually touching or testing the chimes. The chimes are extremely heavy, and even the strongest forced air unit would not be able to move those chimes. It should also be noted that like during the TAPS investigation, when we investigated, the forced air system was shut off, along with all the other circuit breakers in the church. No power means no forced air. And if it was forced air causing the chimes to ring, people would hear the chimes ringing a lot more often than the one time we heard it. We spent probably a half hour trying to explain why the chimes would move, and we could not do it.
We respect TAPS for all the work they do and the precedents they've set in this field, but we felt we needed to set the record straight on some of the facts. It's possible they did test the weight of the chimes to see if forced air could have moved them, and it simply got edited out of the broadcast. That's the unfortunate compromise they make to have episodes shown on TV. You can't show an 8-hour investigation in 22 minutes. But we also do not want people to think that these chimes were light, like the chimes you'd hang in your backyard. These are extremely heavy and you'd need a lot of wind to move them, more than an old church forced air unit could provide. The full report of our investigations, plus the video of the chimes moving, is posted here. We never claim that any activity is a "haunting" or a ghost, simply that it is unexplained. In a church with no air or breeze, chimes as heavy as those should not have rung. Therefore, it is unexplained.
The Scene
On Friday, October 24th, the EPIC team was called in to conduct a follow-up investigation of St. Andrew's Church on Staten Island, NY. The church is 300 years old, and was once used as a makeshift hospital for Revolutionary War soldiers. A myriad of paranormal activity has been reported here, including anomalous photographs taken by parishioners and employees, footsteps, voices, the feeling of being watched, pictures falling off walls, the organ seemingly playing by itself, and more.
The EPIC team set up its base of operations (or "safe room") in the side annex to the church, which has a kitchen and large room for entertaining. This annex also contains the entrance to the basement catacomb area, as well as some small upstairs storage rooms.
The Investigations
For the first investigation (May 2nd, 2008), we conducted a normal setup, using the DVR, 6 infrared cameras, 2 Hi8s, digital and wireless audio, digital and 35mm cameras, and the standard EMF detectors and thermal scanners. Cameras and audio recorders were set up in the church, the 2 upstairs rooms, and in the catacombs in the basement.
For our second investigation, we decided to focus solely on the church itself, since we captured all of our evidence from our first investigation in this area. The same equipment was used, with only 3 IR cameras in the church this time. This time, we were joined by a reporter and photographer from the Staten Island Advance.
Both investigations finished up at approximately 3:30am, at which point we began to break down the equipment and pack up.
The Findings
During the initial investigation, a few key pieces of evidence were captured. The first one, captured most clearly on one of our Hi8 cameras, seems to have the sounds of a woman crying in the church. This EVP lasts for approximately 2 minutes. The second, also caught on Hi8, shows a large set of chimes, hung by the altar, starting to move by themselves. The chimes slowly start moving, as if something vibrated them. The EPIC team was in the church at the time, with two investigators in a room behind the chimes. They heard the chimes gently beginning to ring as they were in this room. We checked the chimes, found them to be extremely heavy, so no wind could have gotten them to move. If someone had bumped into them, the sounds and movement would have been immediately apparent, and not gently swelling.
As far as photographic evidence, nothing of note was captured. There were some dust orbs on the digital stills, but these were obviously nothing more than dust particles. There were a few other photographic anomalies that seemed to be mist-like, but upon further review, we felt that these were more likely issues with the camera.
During our follow-up investigation, we had a number of personal experiences. Team members felt cold spots, saw shadows and heard movement and chatter, and at one point laughter was heard. We had some unusual readings on our natural EM meters as well. One of the Hi8 cameras captured what sounds like a possible EVP, but it is not clear, so we will not be posting it to the site at this time. Nothing showed up on the digital or 35mm photos, or on video. It should be noted that the chimes are no longer in the same location on the altar that they were in back in May, so we were not able to experiment to replicate our initial findings. We did capture one sound, which sounds like a door being banged on or slammed, but it's clearly not the door we were using to access the church. Again, the EPIC team had sole access to the church, and we were the only ones inside. We are not claiming this sound is paranormal, we just cannot explain it at this time. We are planning to return to St. Andrew's in the coming days to try to replicate the sound to see if we can figure out what it may have been.
Door we were using to access the church
Unexplained door slamming sound
Conclusions
The EPIC team investigated St. Andrew's twice, and came up with some interesting pieces of evidence during our first investigation, but had more personal experiences on the follow-up investigation. As paranormal investigators, we know that activity is not a constant thing. Some nights the activity is high, and many things are caught on film or audio. But other nights, not much will be going on. We do believe that there is activity in this location, and we will be keeping St. Andrew's as an open case file, with hopes to return for another follow-up investigation in the near future.
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