John's Haunted House
By Joseph Flammer
The story of John’s Haunted House is one that
goes a lot deeper than meets the eye.
It involves the manipulation of time by a
ghost.
Specifically, the ghost is that of John’s mother
Dorothy who died at age 73 of natural causes
in 2002.
Why would John’s mother Dorothy come back
as a ghost? Simple: to let John know she
loves him and that she is here beside him in
this world: He is not alone.
- more below -
Click on the arrow above to start video
Here’s what happened:
In the summer of 2005 Diane Hill and I
were invited by our good friend Karen to
join her and others in investigating John's
house in Patchogue, New York. John
lives in the house with his family. It
hadn't been long after they moved in that
John realized his beautiful Victorian
with a wide wrap-around porch was
obviously haunted.
Fans and lights went on and off, things
fell over, and sensations of spirits
present were common.
Diane and I were part of a group of six
investigators.
In the summer of 2005 Diane Hill and I
were invited by our good friend Karen to
join her and others in investigating John's
house in Patchogue, New York. John
lives in the house with his family. It
hadn't been long after they moved in that
John realized his beautiful Victorian
with a wide wrap-around porch was
obviously haunted.
Fans and lights went on and off, things
fell over, and sensations of spirits
present were common.
Diane and I were part of a group of six
investigators.
Dorothy
Among us was a medium, a psychic, one person who claims some psychic abilities, and a “sensitive”. While
Diane and I have no extraordinary psychic abilities, we do have heightened sensitivity to spirits from our years as
paranormal investigators.
I was equipped with a compass, a video camera and our eight-megapixal Sony digital SRL; Diane photographed
with a Canon digital. We wanted to record the rooms and the activities of the others investigators of the group.
John was extremely gracious and invited us in with a warm smile and encouraged us to roam the house as we wished.
He explained there were several spirits in the house. He said he could sense their different personalities. One way
he sensed the various spirits was by gauging the way his body reacted when they were around. For example, goose
bumps rise on his arms in different distinct ways when he is in areas where certain spirits are present.
He senses a strong spirit in the basement. The basement is where he keeps items related to his mother’s funeral, and
boxes of other personal items she had owned during her lifetime.
The plot thickens:
Now I must digress to a cold November afternoon a year-and-a-half earlier – before Diane and I ever heard of John
or even ever met his friend Karen whom John invited over and who, in turn, invited us to investigate John’s house.
On this particular Sunday afternoon Diane and I were with Reverend Bill Hill, an interfaith minister who
communicates with angels. We were in an historic cemetery in Hempstead, Long Island. Diane and I were
photographing the graveyard. Reverend Bill walked amid the graves, sensing spirits there.
We hopped in Diane’s SUV to leave when we wrapped up our visit. Before we even drove away from the cemetery I
had a nagging feeling at the back of my neck and my chest was tight, too. These are signs to me that a spirit is present.
I photographed the inside of the vehicle.
We saw we had photographed nothing extraordinary in the cemetery when we downloaded the photos we had taken
that day from the digital cameras to the computer. But a picture I had taken from the back seat of Diane’s SUV
showed half a face in the side-view mirror of the vehicle.
It was a woman’s face and it was much larger than life. It was smack in the middle of the picture, staring at the side-
view mirror at me shooting her with my camera as she sat in the back seat beside me.(See photograph).
Diane, who is not psychic, told me the spirit’s name was “Dorothy”. She knew this with absolute certainty, but she
didn’t know why. She only knew that the spirit was telling her this was so. She could feel it. Though she does not
claim to be psychic, she does have abilities to connect with the spirits sometimes, as we all do. This connection was
solid, she said. She was certain.
A few weeks later, Diane, Reverend Bill and I returned to the cemetery in Hempstead to see if we could locate a
stone upon which the name “Dorothy” might be chiseled out. We found no such headstone.
We were confused. Where did Dorothy come from? Hadn’t we made her acquaintance at the cemetery in
Hempstead? After all, that’s where we were when we realized she was with us.
This was not the end of Dorothy. In fact, it was just the beginning.
Diane and I experienced many paranormal events that indicated to us a female spirit was with us, particularly in my
house where we heard a woman laughing beside us in my kitchen as we worked on a newspaper article about an
abandoned lighthouse. We experienced unexplainable lights flashing in the darkness, phantom music sounding in the
white noise hum of my cooling fans, light bulbs burning out and house lights flickering. The television and stereo
were going on and off by themselves. And often we felt the sensations of a spirit's presence.
All of it told us Dorothy's spirit was trying to make herself known.
Dorothy haunted Diane’s house as well.
One morning Diane was home alone and in a rush to get to work, but she couldn't find her car keys. She searched
madly for awhile before she found them. They were sitting on the living room couch in plain sight. She had checked
the couch repeatedly. They hadn’t been there five minutes before she found them. Every fiber in her body told her
Dorothy was responsible for the keys disappearing and then reappearing.
Dorothy was letting Diane know she was real, even if disincarnate.
Back to John’s house a year-and-a-half later.
Upon walking into the dining room at John's house for the first time I spotted a picture in a frame prominently
displayed not on a shelf but on the dining room table itself. The face immediately grabbed my attention, for it was
face of woman in her later years and the face was all too familiar. I didn’t know anything about John’s mother at this
point. I didn’t know her name or if she had passed on yet. I photogrraphed the face with my video camera so I could
later compare the image to the image I had captured in the back of Diane's truck because I felt an immediate
connection.
I only knew the face in the picture was strikingly familiar and it carried a resonance of the picture I had taken of
Dorothy in the SUV a year-and-a-half earlier. The immediate connection of the two pictures made my heart race as I
groped inwardly for an explanation. Was it the same face?
Diane had the exact same reaction to the picture. We did not see it together.
We did not talk a word about it while we were in the house for the first hour. We both wanted to privately discuss
this. And when the time came, after I had shot video of myself asking John about his mother, about her name, neither
Diane nor I could hold back our desire to ascertain the meaning of all this. Had Dorothy the ghost made the
impossible possible? Had she arranged our meeting with John?
The Disclose:
A few months later Diane and I visited John again. We had not mentioned our connection with his mother to the
picture I had taken a year-and-a-half earlier. We were afraid he’d be offended if we brought this up to him. But we
could not let this extraordinary episode pass without verifying the connection between pictures and so we gave him a
call and asked him if we could stop over to talk. Diane and I met with him alone in his house. We sat at his computer
and from a CD we had brought he popped up the picture of Dorothy I had taken eighteen months before.
We had to ask him about the photograph I had taken in the back of Diane’s SUV. Specifically, we had to ask him if
the face was that of his monther's, Dorothy.
“That’s my girl,” he said when he saw the face I had photographed in the truck. “That’s my mother, Dorothy.
She’s younger in this picture than when she died, but that’s her.”
John knew instantly that the pictures were a match. I questioned him as to why his mother would arrange for us to
photograph her spirit over a year before and then to meet John. "She wants me to know she's here with me," he
said.
A mystery had been solved.
“She was into ghosts in a big way,” said John. “This is like something she would do.”
Conclusion:
Dorothy set up a meeting between her son and Diane and me a year-and-a-half in advance so that she could show
John she was still with him . Dorothy's obvious message to her son was simple: A mother's love never dies.
Hats off to Dorothy!
-30-
Diane and I have no extraordinary psychic abilities, we do have heightened sensitivity to spirits from our years as
paranormal investigators.
I was equipped with a compass, a video camera and our eight-megapixal Sony digital SRL; Diane photographed
with a Canon digital. We wanted to record the rooms and the activities of the others investigators of the group.
John was extremely gracious and invited us in with a warm smile and encouraged us to roam the house as we wished.
He explained there were several spirits in the house. He said he could sense their different personalities. One way
he sensed the various spirits was by gauging the way his body reacted when they were around. For example, goose
bumps rise on his arms in different distinct ways when he is in areas where certain spirits are present.
He senses a strong spirit in the basement. The basement is where he keeps items related to his mother’s funeral, and
boxes of other personal items she had owned during her lifetime.
The plot thickens:
Now I must digress to a cold November afternoon a year-and-a-half earlier – before Diane and I ever heard of John
or even ever met his friend Karen whom John invited over and who, in turn, invited us to investigate John’s house.
On this particular Sunday afternoon Diane and I were with Reverend Bill Hill, an interfaith minister who
communicates with angels. We were in an historic cemetery in Hempstead, Long Island. Diane and I were
photographing the graveyard. Reverend Bill walked amid the graves, sensing spirits there.
We hopped in Diane’s SUV to leave when we wrapped up our visit. Before we even drove away from the cemetery I
had a nagging feeling at the back of my neck and my chest was tight, too. These are signs to me that a spirit is present.
I photographed the inside of the vehicle.
We saw we had photographed nothing extraordinary in the cemetery when we downloaded the photos we had taken
that day from the digital cameras to the computer. But a picture I had taken from the back seat of Diane’s SUV
showed half a face in the side-view mirror of the vehicle.
It was a woman’s face and it was much larger than life. It was smack in the middle of the picture, staring at the side-
view mirror at me shooting her with my camera as she sat in the back seat beside me.(See photograph).
Diane, who is not psychic, told me the spirit’s name was “Dorothy”. She knew this with absolute certainty, but she
didn’t know why. She only knew that the spirit was telling her this was so. She could feel it. Though she does not
claim to be psychic, she does have abilities to connect with the spirits sometimes, as we all do. This connection was
solid, she said. She was certain.
A few weeks later, Diane, Reverend Bill and I returned to the cemetery in Hempstead to see if we could locate a
stone upon which the name “Dorothy” might be chiseled out. We found no such headstone.
We were confused. Where did Dorothy come from? Hadn’t we made her acquaintance at the cemetery in
Hempstead? After all, that’s where we were when we realized she was with us.
This was not the end of Dorothy. In fact, it was just the beginning.
Diane and I experienced many paranormal events that indicated to us a female spirit was with us, particularly in my
house where we heard a woman laughing beside us in my kitchen as we worked on a newspaper article about an
abandoned lighthouse. We experienced unexplainable lights flashing in the darkness, phantom music sounding in the
white noise hum of my cooling fans, light bulbs burning out and house lights flickering. The television and stereo
were going on and off by themselves. And often we felt the sensations of a spirit's presence.
All of it told us Dorothy's spirit was trying to make herself known.
Dorothy haunted Diane’s house as well.
One morning Diane was home alone and in a rush to get to work, but she couldn't find her car keys. She searched
madly for awhile before she found them. They were sitting on the living room couch in plain sight. She had checked
the couch repeatedly. They hadn’t been there five minutes before she found them. Every fiber in her body told her
Dorothy was responsible for the keys disappearing and then reappearing.
Dorothy was letting Diane know she was real, even if disincarnate.
Back to John’s house a year-and-a-half later.
Upon walking into the dining room at John's house for the first time I spotted a picture in a frame prominently
displayed not on a shelf but on the dining room table itself. The face immediately grabbed my attention, for it was
face of woman in her later years and the face was all too familiar. I didn’t know anything about John’s mother at this
point. I didn’t know her name or if she had passed on yet. I photogrraphed the face with my video camera so I could
later compare the image to the image I had captured in the back of Diane's truck because I felt an immediate
connection.
I only knew the face in the picture was strikingly familiar and it carried a resonance of the picture I had taken of
Dorothy in the SUV a year-and-a-half earlier. The immediate connection of the two pictures made my heart race as I
groped inwardly for an explanation. Was it the same face?
Diane had the exact same reaction to the picture. We did not see it together.
We did not talk a word about it while we were in the house for the first hour. We both wanted to privately discuss
this. And when the time came, after I had shot video of myself asking John about his mother, about her name, neither
Diane nor I could hold back our desire to ascertain the meaning of all this. Had Dorothy the ghost made the
impossible possible? Had she arranged our meeting with John?
The Disclose:
A few months later Diane and I visited John again. We had not mentioned our connection with his mother to the
picture I had taken a year-and-a-half earlier. We were afraid he’d be offended if we brought this up to him. But we
could not let this extraordinary episode pass without verifying the connection between pictures and so we gave him a
call and asked him if we could stop over to talk. Diane and I met with him alone in his house. We sat at his computer
and from a CD we had brought he popped up the picture of Dorothy I had taken eighteen months before.
We had to ask him about the photograph I had taken in the back of Diane’s SUV. Specifically, we had to ask him if
the face was that of his monther's, Dorothy.
“That’s my girl,” he said when he saw the face I had photographed in the truck. “That’s my mother, Dorothy.
She’s younger in this picture than when she died, but that’s her.”
John knew instantly that the pictures were a match. I questioned him as to why his mother would arrange for us to
photograph her spirit over a year before and then to meet John. "She wants me to know she's here with me," he
said.
A mystery had been solved.
“She was into ghosts in a big way,” said John. “This is like something she would do.”
Conclusion:
Dorothy set up a meeting between her son and Diane and me a year-and-a-half in advance so that she could show
John she was still with him . Dorothy's obvious message to her son was simple: A mother's love never dies.
Hats off to Dorothy!
-30-
 | |  | |  |
Photograph taken in Diane's
truck following a photography
session at a graveyard in
Hempstead, Long Island in
November, 2003.
Diane intuitively knew the
spirit's name was Dorothy.
truck following a photography
session at a graveyard in
Hempstead, Long Island in
November, 2003.
Diane intuitively knew the
spirit's name was Dorothy.
Dorothy stayed with us for
awhile, haunting us in our
houses, laughing, turning
things on and off, making
things dispear and then
reappear - just to let us know
she was really there.
Dorothy