Strange Happenings at the Woodcarvers Building

Strange Happenings at the
WOODCARVERS BUILDING

by Bob Freeman

originally published in Doorways Magazine, March 2008

INTRODUCTION

The Woodcarvers Building, as it is now called, stands ominously in the very heart of the small rural town of Converse, Indiana. Its nineteenth century Italianate façade has weathered much, sheltering the strange happenings within its architecture with a stoic resolve. It is a building with a rich and storied history, but for me the story began in the summer of 2006.

It was an early Saturday morning when my phone rang, rousing me from a troubling sleep. It was my father. He was an officer in the Eastern Woodland Carvers Club and he in turn had been raised by a similar call to the one he now delivered to me.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, still trying to rub the sleep dirt from my eyes.

“I need you to come to the Carvers Building,” he’d said. “I’ve got a hysterical woman up here and I need you to check some things out for me.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She saw a ghost.”

That turned out to be somewhat inaccurate, but the interview with the woman in question did lead me to a series of subsequent investigations of the Woodcarvers Building that has left me with the following conclusion:

In my twenty-five plus years of paranormal adventuring, this building, that looms above the very essence of the Hoosier Heartland, is in fact the most haunted site I have investigated to date. It is a veritable hotbed of paranormal activity.

After dozens of on site investigations, with my team The Nightstalkers of Indiana, as well as with guest investigators from across the State, the Woodcarvers Building has never failed to deliver evidence of a supernatural nature. It is alive with preternatural occurrences that simply cannot be explained any other way. The Woodcarvers Building is teeming with unseen forces, some of them decidedly unfriendly.

HISTORY

The Woodcarvers Building was built in the mid-nineteenth century, its two stories comprised of a ground floor hardware and general store, and a second floor that housed apartments and various offices, including: a Masonic Lodge Room, a doctor’s waiting room and surgery; a lawyer’s office; and offices for the Ku Klux Klan.

As the century drew to a close, the building was purchased by the local chapter of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and a third story was added to house the fraternal order’s Lodge and Grand Hall.

These Odd Fellows purchased land on the outskirts of town and established a community cemetery there and their primary charitable focus was providing funerary support to the needy.

Did the Order’s seeming obsession with the dead somehow establish the building as a nexus point for paranormal activity?

I know that as part of their initiation ritual, a probationer was led to lie within a coffin that was occupied by a skeleton. The probationer would be removed from the coffin, reborn into the Order as a brother.

Fast-forward nearly a century and we find the Converse Lodge of the I.O.O.F. fallen on hard times. Its membership was old and their numbers dwindling with each passing year. The building itself was all but unused and becoming derelict. Enter the Eastern Woodland Carvers Club.

The E.W.C.C. was in need of a building and the I.O.O.F.’s three-story structure fit the bill perfectly. The surviving members of the Odd Fellows sold the building for little more than a song in the mid-nineties and the Woodcarvers set to work renovating the historic structure.

The first floor was transformed into a meeting hall. The second floor houses a meeting place for “The Crafty Ladies”, a museum honoring “The Hammer Man”, and several sleeping rooms for visiting carving instructors who come to stay during conferences and award banquets that are held throughout the year.

I was called in to investigate the building after a visiting couple, who were set to give a demonstration on caricature carving that weekend, had an experience that, quite frankly, scared the living daylights out of them.

INTERVIEW

The visiting woodcarvers, who have asked to remain anonymous, had settled down for the night in a guest room on the second floor. It was shortly after midnight when they were awakened by the sounds of someone or something walking across the third floor. They heard the figure descend the stairs and then walk down the second floor hallway, stopping outside their door. The door handle jiggled and turned, but the door was not opened. Instead, what the couple heard were murmured whispers on the other side of the door.

The husband was roused from bed and he snuck across the room and whipped the door open.

The hallway was empty, as was the building.

The couple were alone… or were they?

Local folklore had ascribed “ghostly phenomena” to the Woodcarvers Building for years, as many such buildings can lay claim to in small towns across the world. Something told me that this was different and I was eager to delve into the mystery surrounding this location and decide for myself if there were indeed strange happenings within its walls.

INVESTIGATION

Intrigued, I agreed to spend some time in the Woodcarvers Building that very evening. Alone within the imposing edifice, I made an initial sweep of the property, concentrating my efforts on the third floor initially. Its appearance alone was enough to set me on edge.

The Great Hall was in disrepair, with long strips of wallpaper hanging from the water-damaged ceiling, spurring my fertile imagination to envision it as strips of flayed flesh.

My awareness heightened, I had little doubt that there was a presence in the building with me. I could feel something just out of reach of my traditional senses, engaging instead my preternatural sense of dread.

I knew the site warranted a full investigation, and that was cemented for me when, upon descending to the second floor, I heard the scuffle of footsteps overhead. Over the course of the next two years, The Nightstalkers and I would host several teams of paranormal investigators,  including Wabash Paranormal Investigation and Research Group, Quest Paranormal Research, Indiana Ghost Trackers, and Crossroads Paranormal, on a thorough scrutiny of the site with all available technologies.

Data was collected independently and examined leading one to the only conclusion possible.

This building was indeed haunted, and by multiple entities.

EVIDENCE

The evidence collected over the course of dozens of investigations has been legion. The Woodcarvers Building opened itself up to investigators and provided a veritable treasure trove of phenomena that could not readily be explained.

More than a hundred investigators have explored the site and every one of them came away with personal experiences.

Investigators have heard footsteps falling when there was no one about to create them.

They have experienced being touched, bumped, poked, prodded, and even choked by unseen forces.

They’ve heard the haunting child-like melodies played on the second floor piano.

They have followed cold spots down the narrow hallway.

And they’ve seen full-bodied apparitions and shadow figures all within this incredible site.

Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) has been captured on numerous occasions. A little girl commanding, “Be Quiet!” A woman complaining of being cold. And a dark male voice who declared, “I brought them through.”

And more… so much more.

But perhaps the most telling evidence was captured recently on videotape, when Quest Paranormal Research visited the Woodcarvers Building to film an episode of Ghost Diaries.

A second floor camera watched as a full-bodied figure stepped out of the second floor kitchen and simply vanished. Then, a shadow figure began making its way down the hall. Don’t believe me? Well, you can watch it for yourself :

CONCLUSION

The Woodcarvers Building is, quite frankly, a paranormal investigator’s playground. With at least six verifiable preternatural entities that have been contacted and enough chain rattling to impress the most skeptical of observers, this is a site that never fails to provide an impressive array of evidence.

I will continue to explore the mysteries that lurk behind the Italianate façade of the Eastern Woodland Carvers Club, delving into the building’s past and making contact with the spirits that call it home.

My theory is that the Woodcarvers Building is a spiritual nexus and houses within its walls a gateway to “the beyond”.

It is a marvel and a location that offers up the promise of more startling revelations to come.

~Bob Freeman
www.occultdetective.com