The Farrar EXPERIENCE

Kelly and I talk A LOT about the importance of using our senses as well as the technology. This is an old post from an old blog from what feels like a life time ago. Back before Travelers Moon. Back when I was “The Paranomad”.

But we thought this was a valuable story.

One that shares our important message of the powers of the very human ability to tap into the spirit world; because we are, after all, spirits ourselves…

The Farrar Experience

A fair amount of my stories are cautionary ones. Things like ‘Don’t tresspass’, ‘Avoid extended periods of time in haunted asylums’, or ‘Don’t be a dick’ have all been or are probably going to be themes.

This one is the same…but also, a little different. There are no repercussions to be feared here. No phantom attackers or separated shoulders (DEFINITELY a story for another time).

Instead, this is simply advice. And it begins with one of the biggest “professional” blunders of my so called ‘career’.

Enter, the Farrar School House.

I used to think a big part of this website was going to be sharing technical information on the many haunts across these United States, and maybe even, the world. But that market has become over saturated and I get more joy writing my personal stories so if you want to learn everything there is to know about the Farrar Schoolhouse Google it or, better yet, book your over night stay at hauntingatfarrar.com.

This was back in 2017 or so. Back when it was still doing a lot of stuff with my dad.

For the night, we were joining forces (and more importantly, cost) with another team out of Iowa. A few I knew, but the majority of them started the night as strangers to me.

Now let me preface this monstrous blunder with: it’s a mistake anybody could have made.

We did a lot of shows, expos, and conventions back in the day. With that came A LOT of promotional stuff. Banners, t-shirts, photos, flyers, and table cloths. That’s a lot of stuff! So, in order to make transport easier, we kept it all in a large, silver chest.

We were also a more tech based team. Cameras, K2 meters, voice recorders, specialty equipment. The works. And that is A LOT of stuff to be hauling around. So, in order to transport easier, we kept it all in a large, silver chest.

I think you can imagine where this is going…

And so it all began.

An Iowa August is not always the most comfortable. 90 degrees with 90 percent humidity is sticky.

We’d spent the better part of the day in the cool, air conditioned car so stepping out into that mess could be considered the starting point of a rough afternoon.

We had shown up before the other team. Hell, we showed up before the owner. So with a bit of free time I figured it was time for a photo op of the large brick structure that loomed over the “town” of Farrar. Which is using the word loosely to say the least. Farrar consists of the school, a cemetery, a church, and maybe a couple houses. All lost in the seemingly countless miles of corn fields that is central Iowa.

I kept my personal, more high quality camera in a separate bag and braved the heat to circle the building and take pictures.

Not too long later the owner showed up quickly followed by the other team. Stories were shared and the doors were unlocked. I don’t recall why, but before I hoisted the equipment case out of the trunk I opened it up to take a look inside.

There wasn’t as much embarrassment as there was complete shock at my own careless blunder. Inside, instead of the desired equipment were banners, t-shirts, photos, flyers, and table cloths.

This marked the beginning of arguably one of the coolest nights of my life as a paranormal investigator.

So with one camera, one recorder, and an early sense of defeat we went in…

You could almost imagine the days the old school building was open. The wide stairs lead up to halls still clad in lockers and educational decorations. The gym still begs for you to pick up one of the many abandoned balls and play.

Yet something is amiss. The innocence that is in the air is slightly tainted by an indescribable tang of oppression. An unseen authority figure that could at any point bring an abrupt end to all of the fun and games to be had in this place.

Maybe it’s a preconceived notion because I know the stories of the place, but I can never shake the feeling of being watched when I’m in there.

I’ve told people for years over many different forums, ‘the best tool we have as a paranormal investigator is our own body’. The sensations you can’t put a finger on but are just as concrete to the people that experience them as any photograph or E.V.P.

I had been experiencing more lately. Seeing things, knowing things or at least getting sensations in applicable ways and places. Perhaps my bone head move of grabbing the wrong case could be something serendipitous.

I decided I was going to use this night to flex this newly developing muscle.

It started in the library.

Or something that resembled one. In the dimly lit room the silhouette of book shelves lined the wall. Old cards littered the ground. They recorded archaic hieroglyphs. The Dewey Decimal system I believe it was called.

I lie down on investigations. I don’t know why. Maybe because it’s night time and that’s normally the time people do that sort of thing.

If you’re investigating with me and I have gone missing and you cannot find me anywhere, odds are, you haven’t examined the ground thoroughly enough.

It was a few hours in and I had found a particularly comfortable looking patch of worn carpet and Dad was utilizing his only camera and muttering something like, ‘I can’t believe we left our shit at home. It’s my fault. I shoulda’ checked the case.’

It was kind of him, but the proverbial pie was more or less on my face with this one. I was the one who loaded the damned thing after all.

As some of my seasoned paranormal investigator friends can attest, the flashing of the camera in a dark room over and over again can jar the senses. So after a bit I rolled over and stared out the door into the hall.

Across the way there was another class room. Parts of a black board were visible. A couple desks, too.

After a relatively short time something odd started to occur in the darkened room. A figure, light grey in appearance, emerged. And another! I blinked and rubbed my eyes like any normal person would do. Assuming the low light and dry contact lenses were teaming up to trick my senses.

But they stayed in the room. What’s more, they seemed to be interacting. Bobbing back and forth in each other’s direction in some strange, innocuous dance. Almost like a conversation was being had.

I didn’t move to alert the others in the room. I just watched. It was, after all, a little nuts and I was having a hard time processing what was going on myself.

The strangest thing was, as soon as I turned my thoughts towards them, when the thought ‘What the hell am I seeing?’ crossed my mind (because for some reason that took some time) it was as though they took notice of me.

They paused and seemed to look at me with a similar curiosity as I was looking at them.

‘Hey. Come check out this picture.’ Dad’s request for help took me by surprise and almost made me jump. I was so enthralled in what I was seeing. I turned to look at him and quickly back to the other occupied classroom.

But as strangely as they appeared, my misty grey friends were gone.

The night stayed pretty relaxed for awhile after that.

I spent a lot of time just walking around the halls, looking into classrooms, and opening lockers in the hopes that some unseen kid might be feeling playful and slam them shut.

Time was spent in a common area on the second floor chatting about recent investigations and art.

There’s a point in the night where the feeling of a group becomes a mixed bag of boredom, sleepiness, and the need to make good use of the time we spent our money on to be here.

‘I’m gonna pay our friend the principal a visit. Wanna come?’ I was getting a little too comfortable on the old, itchy couch and had I stayed sleep would have been inevitable.

‘Nah. You go ahead.’ Dad was socializing at this point. Showing picture of his art and looking at photos on a friends’ phone.

It’s a curious phenomena that happens to paranormal investigators at 3 or so in the morning. After a night of trying to communicate with the dead, chatting with the living does the mind good.

I nodded, got up, and headed out the door and back into the halls of the school.

I walked around on my own for a bit. Making my way along, listlessly meandering the halls, occasionally poking my head in a classroom or two until I made it up to the 3rd floor.

There was already a small gathering of people joined in what was thought to be the principal’s office so I squeezed in with them.

They were all gathered around a MEL meter that was maxed out. For those of you unfamiliar with the technology, this is not at all common.

I’m not sure which side of the fence I fall on when it comes to EMF being a concrete indicator of paranormal activity, but I had to admit, it was interesting and something I had never seen before.

Already glad I had come up, I was curious to see where things went from there. It wasn’t long I had to wait.

There is a story to this place. Keep in mind that it is only a story. I’m sure the Farrar Schoolhouse is full of nothing but fond memories to it’s former alumni, but it’s said in hushed tones in certain groups that, for others, this was not a happy place.

It’s said that behind the door that was now to my right, unpleasant things happened to children.

Can I deviate for a second?

Why is that? Why does every haunted location have to have some sort of dark, ugly energy?

To me, the history of any given place, although innocuous at times, is very interesting on its own. The idea of looking back in time and seeing the way things used to be. And with what we do, actually getting to know these people.

Why is that not enough for some people? Why must life and death be dressed with the trappings of the most awful that humans have to offer?

There’s almost an inability in this field at times to look at the positive. We focus on the murders. The rapes. We have to imagine atrocity and who died at a place instead who lived in these places.

I’m going to get back on subject before this really falls into a tangent…

‘So what will happen to one of us if we go in through that door?’ One of the other team members piped up. ‘Will you do bad things to us too?’

After my own experiences, it’s lost on me why someone would provoke something they can’t seen. But I suppose it was how I was at one point too.

The fella grabbed the door knob and gave it a bit of a turn before pushing on the door with his shoulder. In non-door-like fashion though, it supported his weight. The door wouldn’t budge.

A couple other people made an attempt at it, but with no success. Eventually it was my turn and sure enough there was no luck. I turned the knob as far as I could and I’m even sure I heard the latch click. I pressed against the door with all my weight (which by the way is no small amount). No even a creek. I might as well have been trying to push through a wall.

After a second I remembered something from a place I had been to before called the Hollis Inn.

‘Look. You don’t want us in there. But I’m coming in.’ It was hard to sound confident, but I did my best. Especially since I was talking to an unseen opponent with capabilities I couldn’t know. Although I had an idea, and because of that, I had reason enough to exercise caution.

But it worked. As though granting permission, the door gave way.

But the 3rd floor wasn’t done with us yet.

Not by a lot actually, and time after our incident with the door passed quickly.

I had mentioned before that there’s a point in the night where the feeling of a group becomes a mix of boredom, sleepiness, and investigating…what happened next is the result of that.

I sat in this strange half floor observing the 3rd floor hallway. The locker lined walls looking like the teeth of the mouth of some sort of monstrous, school themed creature ready to swallow you into the black chasm that was the end of the hallway. What lied at the bottom of that sinister gullet? The unseen administrator of this building? Ready to inflict his twisted punishments. Some sort of portal to hell? A place where eternal damnation waited for us. Or was it something worse? Multiplication times tables.

My focus was soon broken by a change in light. As if by magic, the dim lights of the hall got brighter and then seemed to dance. I think our mystery person was beginning to realize that he had everyone sitting on end and asking questions about these phantom lights and had gotten his humor out of it because after a minute or so an inquisitive voice came from below.

‘Hey were you guys messing with a door up here?’ For the life of me I don’t remember the name of the guy asking that night. Bryce, I think was his name.

We explained that it was us and he explained the lights were him. Apparently we had been causing a fair amount of sound and had disturbed a separate investigation on the floor below us. He actually thought we were screwing with him just like he had been with us.

Like I had mentioned…3 a.m. can be a boring time in the life of a paranormal investigator, and boredom leads to fuckery.

With the adrenaline caused by the mystery lights fading our little group became relaxed again.

Some sat in chairs in the little office-type area. Others found a home in the strange closet off to the side. I sat on a desk looking down the stairs and down the hall, my view being slightly blocked by a larger guy whose name was, if I recall correctly, Tony.

He stood in the door with his arms propped up in the frame. It was smart I thought, to keep yourself standing. It certainly reduced the risk of getting comfortable and falling asleep.

The idea of sleep was getting tempting again.

“I’ll just close my eyes and feel the building. This was, after all, an intuitive type investigation for me.”

A lie to myself of course, to justify getting closer to slumber. A cool relaxation came over me. Starting in my head and neck, then making my way down my shoulder and arms…sleep became very tantalizing.

I was quickly jolted back to reality by an abrupt shift in the room.

Tony had gone from relaxed in the door to about 3 feet back in my direction. Had he tripped the poor bastard would have been in my lap. His hands were up and in a type of boxing guard.

‘What the fuck, man?’ Someone in the room asked. He had apparently gotten everyone’s attention.

‘I don’t really know,’ he explained, “it just felt like someone rushed up on me.’

Naturally, I was now curious. I offered up my spot in the room for Tony’s position in the door. The odds were slim, but I was hoping for my chance to experience the same, or better, see what caused it.

I took my place in the door frame. Arms propping me up like my predecessor.

I couldn’t tell you how long I stood there. Definitely no longer than 10 minutes.

I could see to the end of the hall where the stairs dropped down to the next floor. The clear silhouette of a person began to come up the sitars.

At first I thought it was Dad, but the figure was a little too short and thin.

‘Is someone at the end of the hall there?’ I asked.

The figure said nothing.

I assumed it was just someone screwing with us again. Trying to be this creepy, silent figure on the stairs. But then it make it’s way to the landing and started coming my direction.

The part that got me with this is that it made no sound as it made its advance. It bobbed as though it was walking, but the sound of footsteps were absent.

‘Hey!’ I said a bit louder, hoping that this mysterious figure would acknowledge me some how. But it just continued towards me, now past the first classroom.

‘Bryce, is that you?’ I asked, hoping it was just my fellow investigator playing some sort of prank.

Silence.

‘Hey! Who’s down th-.’

I was cut off. As soon as this thing crossed the threshold of the second door in the hall it closed the gap in the matter of a second! Moving 50 feet down the hall and half up the sitars to me before I could even finish my sentence.

Just like Tony, I leapt back, hands in the air, ready to defend myself from my shadowy attacker.

I didn’t care to stay up in the office after that.

Instead, I wandered the 3rd floor hallway hoping to find some sort of explanation to what I had just seen.

Now, there was this guy with the group. I don’t remember his name but I do recall two things, he was new to the group, and that just with his style of interaction with the spirits, I could tell his favorite paranormal show involves a spiky haired man.

‘So what, you just like picking on people?’ He taunted form the upper office. ‘Picking on kids? What did you take them in the office for?’ He followed up with a few more exceptionally lurid things I won’t repeat here.

‘Hey man, take it down a notch or two up there.’ I was warning him just as much for his own good as I was the peace of mind of the unseen residents of the school. I disagreed with his methods, but I could at least see why he interacted the way he did. As misguided as it was.

There’s something sexy about being the guy who stands up to the boogie man. The problem is, he couldn’t have possibly known that the person he was talking to was the boogie man or if what was said about him was true. When in doubt, always try to be on the side of the pleasant guest in these places.

He seemed almost taken aback by my scolding and seemed to simmer down a bit. Taunting still, but in a less aggressive fashion.

It’s what he said next that triggered something I wasn’t ready for.

‘Hey.’ He postured up agian. ‘This is my office now. This is my school.’

Its was an effective approach, be it a kind of douchey one. But I was not the only one to take notice of what he said.

From where I was standing I could look up the stairs to see the office. I could also see down to the landing of the second floor. And that’s where she was.

When the guy declared the school his, a little girl stepped on to the landing. She was looking up in his direction with a confused expression. Her blonde hair parted in the middle with pig tails falling over her shoulders. She wore a white dress or shirt with a blue stripe across the middle. You see, I couldn’t tell you what kind of article of clothing it was because she seemed to fade to nothing just above her waist.

As one could expect, this startled me. I jumped at the sight of her. She in turn noticed me and with just as much surprise as I had, turned and ran back down the stairs.

Not much more happened that night.

Shortly after the little girl made her exit so did the other group. Dad and I settled down to call it a night on the common area couches to get at least of couple hours of sleep before the 4 hour drive the next day.

‘So how do you think the night went?’ Dad asked. It is a common question in this field. An opportunity to share stories and compare notes.

‘It was a good one. I’m glad we came.’ I really was. As a documentation and “professional” I was disappointed and honestly a little embarrassed but all of that fell by the way side to all of the truly profound personal experiences I had that night.

So what was the take away? What was to be learned here?

I have a lot of cautionary tales. Tonight I have advice.

There’s something comforting to a good picture or E.V.P. There’s a vague solidarity to an on-point I.T.C session. I suppose it’s confirmation.

I encourage you to step away from those on occasion and spend some time on the fringes of possibility. Experience things for yourself and question it later.

I encourage you to spend a little less time behind an LCD screen next time you’re out there and just look around. See what you might normally miss. Hear what the walls have to say. Feel the place you’re at. This is, after all, a field found on other peoples experiences and stories. Make your own.