Visitors to Brownella Cottage any morning this week would have seen wires travelling through hallways, up the front staircase, and throughout the ground floor. In the entrance parlor, a sophisticated sound system topped by a large microphone sat poised to register the slightest noise.

This week, the Galion Historical Society welcomed a follow-up series of daily visits from Dr. John Gruber of “SPATS,” otherwise known as “Supernatural, Paranormal and Technical Services.” The purpose was to attempt to capture additional “EVPs” – what the group calls “electronic voice phenomena” – to augment the material presented in May at the Society’s “Paranormal Presence” event (click here to access our story from that evening).

While we here at GalionLive take no position on the validity or reality of phenomena at Brownella, we were there on Friday morning and watched Gruber conduct his sound experiments. Some thirty questions were asked audibly, with the machine picking up any noise from one of four positioned microphones. On several occasions, Gruber noted that he heard sounds, including the opening and closing of doors, muffled voices, etc.. While lined-up dominoes did fall in another session this week, none fell on Friday. That shared, these noises were generally consistent with that previously heard at the site, he remarked; the full extent of EVPs will not be known until the tape is reviewed and the sound dramatically increased at a studio in California.

One small puzzle seemed to be solved this week as the sessions progressed. In the first set of EVPs, there was an active voice which went by the name of “Walter.” No one with the Society recognized then or since anyone associated with the Bishop or Mrs. Brown by that name. This week, however, correspondence conducted by a Society member with the Bishop’s biographer, Professor Ron Carden of South Plains College in Texas, revealed that there was indeed a “Walter” with significance to the Brown family. Carden noted that

“…Walter was Ella’s brother. When she was adopted by William and Mary Bradford in 1866, they did not adopt her brother who went to a middle class family in Kentucky. He later married and had two sons. He died in 1931. The Bishop and Ella could not go to the funeral because they were ill, but they wrote letters to Laura, Walter’s widow, and gave her their condolences.”

As Ripley would say, “Believe it or not!”

Dr. Gruber’s book profiling the entire series of SPATS investigations at Brownella will be published this December.