Ghost World

It’s the things that go bump in the night – and day – that pique the interest of Ambler's Nicole McCutcheon and Hatfield's Alan Fenstermaker.

Ghosts, spirits, apparitions – whatever you call it, the pair and their colleagues with the Paranormal Explorers and Investigators are ready to investigate it, research it, test it, sense it and exorcise it.

Often times, it’s a spirit or 10 that are calling out for help.

In some cases, those spirits are reaching out for help, like the one that touched McCutcheon during an investigation of an attic crawl space in a now-demolished barn in Pipersville.

“They have it on film,” said McCutcheon. “I couldn’t believe something physically tried to grab me and pull me in.”

Other times, it’s something more vehicular in nature.

Take the ghost train the group witnessed recently while investigating The Great Train Wreck of 1856 in Ambler during the 155th anniversary.

“The second time we went,” said Fenstermaker, “we were walking on the tracks, and a ghost train came out of nowhere.”

“I checked the schedule,” McCutcheon said, who recently moved to Ambler. “There was no train scheduled that day. I still don’t know how that happened. I never experienced anything like that. The tracks weren’t even warm or humming.”

It was that train wreck where got its name: Mary Ambler rescued people in the wreck, prompting officials to rename the town of Wissahickon after her.

To See ...

The ghosthunting group began back in January when they first investigated McCutcheon’s wedding chapel in Philadelphia, where the certified minister officiates weddings.

Since then, they’ve investigated many places in the Tri-State Area: the Old Baptist Road murder house in Collegeville, an old Blue Bell house on Route 73 right next to the entrance to Whitpain Hills, a private residence in Green Lane and another in New Castle, Delaware, the General Wayne Inn, the haunted Dark Hollow Road in Skippack, and numerous cemeteries and historical sites, including Gettysburg.

They capture all their investigations on digital camera and film.

While they don’t have the sophisticated, expensive equipment you might see on various TV shows, the group does use some high-tech devices like an Electromagnetic Field detector, UV cameras, laser grid and digital voice recorders.

They also use sage, tarot cards, and items called dowsing rods. Dowsing rods, McCutcheon said, are spirit wands that can be used to talk to spirits and allow spirits to point in direction of where they are located.

“The one investigation in Pipersville, we investigated a barn and a house on the same land. They both just got torn down. But when we investigated up there, we were doing EMF sweeps in the crawlspace in the attic,” said Fenstermaker. “When Nicole went in the crawlspace to get a reading on the EMF detector, she felt something touch her. After I put the videos on the computer and online, we had comments from people saying, when Nicole jumped out of the crawlspace, they saw something touch her.”

If their films don’t catch movement, then they catch orbs. McCutcheon said she has a couple orb pictures of more than 10,000 souls from The Great Train Wreck investigation.

“These places have been abandoned all these years, and we know that there is something there. These pictures are out of control with orb pics and ectoplasmic pics. There’s really great documentation and evidence on it,” she said.

Orbs? What about water droplets in the air?

“An an orb picture, the orbs are sitting on their own. If you take it frame by frame, and if the spots are still there in the same spot, that’s water condensation. Orb pictures will show one frame with orbs and another it will be clear again,” she said.

At the Old Baptist Road murder house, a member of their group, Robyn Marie, had a picture taken of her in the doorway. There were orbs hovering around her, Fenstermaker said.

“One thing we found there,” he said, “is there’s a ghost dog you can hear barking there. I’m not sure of the timeframe, but the story with the house is, the father went nuts and killed his family. He burned the house down and killed himself.”

The house is in fragments, he said, and they have investigated an owner, but found none.

“We go to these places during the day,” said McCutcheon. “With abandoned places, we try to find the owners, but with a place like the Old Baptist Road house, nobody owns it. It’s abandoned in a park area.”

She said if they return to a place, it is usually to cleanse it, with the owner’s permission.

“Often times, these places are just sitting there,” she said.

Certain locations, like the train wreck, are investigated at night.

The Blue Bell house was investigated at both times of the day.

“I was there at night,” McCutcheon said. “It was not a positive place to be.”

She said Robyn Marie’s first paranormal experience was there as a child; Marie grew up in Whitpain Hills.

“When she was five years old, she threw a piece of glass from the house into the woods, and something threw it back and it cut her,” McCutcheon said.

To Feel ...

McCutcheon labels herself a sensitive, a seer, a clairvoyant, a medium. She said ever since she was young, she has had a connection with the dead. McCutcheon is also the great-granddaughter of a New Orleans voodoo priestess.

“I can talk to spirits. I can feel them. I can get rid of them,” she said. “I learned through life of what I am.”

Most of the time, McCutcheon can feel the pain from the deceased, she said.

“I believe ghosts exist wherever they have a connection: it’s either where they died, or a person they were connected to before they died, a place they were connected to, or a thing,” she said. “I was at the chapel (on Sunday) and my chest was pounding. I couldn’t take it. I had to tell the client I had to sit down.”

McCutcheon thought she was having a heart attack. It turned out the bride had her father’s watch with her in the chapel; her father had died of a heart attack.

“It was a recipe for paranormal activity,” she said. “In the chapel, I see full body apparitions all the time. I talked to the father of the bride one time, looked away, turned back and he wasn’t there.”

Once, at Fenstermaker’s house, McCutcheon got an immense headache and headed to the bathroom to find medicine.

“I was upstairs,” Fenstermaker said, “and Nicole was in the bathroom, and she heard a male voice from the other room say, ‘Come in.’ In the living room was a hospital bed where my dad died of a brain tumor.”

“I never knew Alan’s dad passed in the house. There was no way for me to know he had a brain tumor,” McCutcheon said. “One of the reasons Alan trusts me now is because of that reason.”

Fenstermaker remarked that he believes it was his father communicating, and it wasn’t the first time.

A couple days after his father died, Fenstermaker’s mom was walking their dog, and she lost a tennis bracelet that her husband bought for her during the walk. After much frantic searching, she found the bracelet – on her nightstand.

To Bless ...

McCutcheon noted that her group doesn’t just come in, investigate and leave. In all cases, they perform a blessing to rid the spirits from the property.

“We have before and after documentation. You could see this woman’s life being drained. She was miserable. After we removed said energies, she is living happily, thriving and doing well,” she said.

McCutcheon said the goal is to bring more light into the space so less darkness can live in it.

“Certain situations have a definite recipe,” she said. “You leave a white candle in a room and an open glass jar with water in it. You clean out the whole house – and you leave the jar in the attic or basement – and you push the energy into the jar. Once you get to the final room, you do a powerful blessing in Aramaic. Then, you put the lid on the jar and take it to a cemetery to dispose of it.”

The paranormal investigators on TV create more problems for people after they leave, McCutcheon said.

“It’s like taking a wild bobcat and tying it up,” she said.

She said she goes to locations to put people at ease.

“I worked specifically after Ryan from ‘Paranormal State’ was in it. I was marrying the daughter of the owner of the home. We wind up talking, and I look at the mother, and she looks like death. She was drained,” she said. “I was cleansing it from whatever Ryan and his people did. I watch the shows, but it upsets me. They don’t clean up their mess. The families are left with even more activity.”

That’s where skeptics come in – McCutcheon welcomes them to accompany her and her team on a paranormal investigation.

“I get a better gauge (from skeptics) than someone who is seeking this out on a hobby-like basis,” she said. “If you are seeing and feeling something, it’s more legitimate to me.”

McCutcheon even considers herself a skeptic, after all these experiences.

“We try to make this as honest and valid as possible. Even though I’ve had thousands upon thousands of experiences, I’m going back in with a skeptical mind,” she said. “There are critics that want to say there is something else going on here. If you don’t believe me, come with me.”

Fenstermaker, an employee at Lamb Foundation in North Wales, said he will continue taking part in these investigations because he knows there’s things out there left unexplained.

“The more I’m around it,” he said, “I get intrigued by it.”

You can check out all of Fenstermaker, McCutcheon and company’s investigations at www.youtube.com/fenstermakerfilms and at www.youtube.com/ajfenstermaker0782.

For an investigation, or to tag along on one, contact the group at alan.fenstermaker@gmail.com or at 267-636-3127.