Welcome, one and all, to the latest installment of BOO BOYS Investigate. Today, you will be coming along with us on a journey to the Missourian town of Springfield, when we will be investigating our first ever castle. Why is there a genuine castle in this little town? Well, you'll be reading all about that shortly. Please sit back, relax, and maybe have lo-fi beats to relax and study to playing in the background as we delve into the haunted halls and dungeons of the Pythian Castle...
*Disclaimer: The video files contained in this blog contain some profanity and colorful language*
Our minds were racing as we approached the doors to the Carthage Stone castle, slowly climbing the steps, making sure to capture plenty of footage as we inched closer in awe of this seemingly out-of-place marvel. Stone gargoyles on either side of the steps beckoned us toward the entrance, still and unmoving, yet appearing as though they could have been slumbering undisturbed while awaiting new guests.
What would be waiting for us within the walls of this impressive Missourian architectural oddity? Would the inside be well-kept, clean and orderly, or would it be disheveled, run down and falling apart? Would we find more than we bargained for on our quest for the supernatural? Would we meet Dracula? These questioned burned within, as we opened the doors and made our way into the lobby to begin our investigation of the Pythian Castle.
The Castle's Construction
The Pythian Castle was built in 1913, by the fraternal order of the knights of Pythias, a secret society formed in Washington, DC during the Civil War. It first served as an orphanage and a place for the widows of deceased members of the order, as well as a retirement home and place where the Knights of Pythias could hold their meetings.
Girls and boys living within the castle were prohibited from speaking or interacting with each other, regardless of whether they were siblings, and were forced to perform various laborious tasks on the property. They would sleep in separate bunkhouses on opposite sides of the castle, and boys were expected to work in the fields and tend to cattle, while the girls worked in the kitchen and had laundry duties. The castle would serve this purpose for some decades, until World War II, when the U. S. Army would take the castle by order of immediate possession.
As we entered the lobby, we were happy to see that the building had been well cared for. It was very clean and finely decorated, with nice-looking furniture, suits of armor, and various works of art and old photos throughout the first floor.
The Night Begins
We approached a small table in the middle of the room and were greeted by a tour guide who seemed to be somewhat high-strung and was just wrapping up the last tour of the night. As I began asking about the most active areas of the castle, she started muttering some sentences that I couldn’t make out, before ushering us to the ballroom and then disappearing, presumably to corral the rowdy tourists.
Zach and I began unpacking the Boo-Gear in the ballroom, “staging on the stage.” As I began pulling out our various pieces of equipment that would be used throughout our investigation, I felt somewhat intimidated by the sheer size of the structure and the ground we had to cover within the three-and-a-half-hour window that was at our disposal. We started by setting up a stationary camera within the ballroom, figuring that it would provide a good view of what was happening on the first floor, before descending to the basement, where we would find ourselves within the dark halls of the castle dungeons…
Enter the Dungeon
In the 1940s, the Army would take possession of the castle, turning it into a hospital for wounded veterans and an entertainment venue that would host a myriad of concerts and performances. During this time, the Army would use the basement as a dungeon where Italian and German prisoners of war would be held and forced to perform labor on the castle grounds. The prison would also hold one Japanese soldier, who due to good behavior during their incarceration, was given paint which would be used to leave a reminder of this castle's history...
Upon entering the dimly lit basement, we were greeted by a variety of miscellaneous props and decorations, likely used during Halloween or the regularly scheduled daytime events and escape rooms.
Walking through the dungeon and peering into the vacant cells on each side of the corridor, we decided this would be a great place to set up additional surveillance, as this has been said to be one of the more active areas of the castle.
We placed a camera overlooking the majority of the dungeon with some motion balls within view, as well as a REM-Pod in one of the cells. The REM- Pod creates its own electromagnetic field and senses if anything conducting electricity (including humans and potentially ghosts) enters its vicinity. When it detects this occurence, it uses a loud audio alarm and a visual alarm to notify users of this event.
Once we thoroughly familiarized ourselves with the basement (or so we thought) we made our way up to the third floor, where we would officially begin our investigation from top to bottom of the Pythian Castle...
THIRD FLOOR
After walking up a narrow flight of stairs on the second floor, we found ourselves in a small room with some antique furniture, a window view of the parking lot, and more steps leading to some sort of door that seemed to have sealed off for reasons unknown.
It looked as though it could have once been a children's reading room, as there were plenty of children’s books strewn about, though we were unsure since we did not take the tour prior to beginning the investigation (Probably would have been a good idea). With plenty of questions that needed answering, we set our various bits of equipment around the room and began our usual routine of asking questions and making requests for the ghostly residents of the castle to show themselves.
Pictured Above: Attempting to capture EVPs while asking questions
While investigating this floor, we seemed to capture what could have possibly been a spirit orb on our infrared camera... Or maybe just dust. What do you think?
Despite our requests and reassurance that we meant no harm, we received no responses to our inquiries on this floor, and with the only other door on this floor being mysteriously sealed off, we made our way down to the second floor where we expected and hoped for more promising results.
SECOND FLOOR
We began in a small room that came off as somewhat of a memorial dedicated to racing greyhounds, with paintings of such dogs on the walls and even boxes of what I can only assume to be the ashes of several of these
greyhounds. We weren’t expecting to run into good boy ghosts here.
It was at this point in the investigation that we began utilizing our SLS camera, a tool that uses a grid of infrared dots to map out human shapes.
We would be primarily pairing the infrared thermometer with the SLS camera in this room, hoping to either detect a shape appearing in the chair by the fireplace, or a decrease in temperature to indicate a potential presence.
After performing more of the same tests in this room with little success, we continued onward, thoroughly investigating each room on the second floor.
At the next set of rooms, we once again started setting up our equipment in various positions, giving the spirits a variety of ways to communicate.
Pictured above: Ron pointing to a motion ball, requesting for any nearby spirits to interact with it.
While asking questions and asking for the ghosts to make themselves known, we appeared to have captured a glimpse of what could have possibly been the spirit of a small child on our SLS camera...
I watched in disbelief as this figure’s body seemed to melt and fling around like ragdoll physics in an early 2000s video game, wondering what it might look like if I could physically see ghosts...
After receiving no further signs of activity in the area, our next stop on this floor was the nursery, which has been said to be a hotspot for paranormal activity in this castle...
Otherworldly Encounters
With over one-hundred deaths believed to have taken place within the castle and 80 of these death certificates in possession of the castle’s owner, it's no surprise that visitors have experienced multiple instances of the paranormal within its walls. Witnesses have reported seeing the apparitions of small children on the second floor, and a mysterious woman in a white dress near the bathrooms. While in the nursery, one guest reported hearing mysterious voices and feeling the presence of others in the room, despite being alone. The owner has also had her fair share of encounters with the spirits of the castle, hearing voices throughout the castle and claiming to have been awoken from her sleep one night by the sound of gunshots and a mysterious man wearing army fatigues standing beside her bed staring down at her. Hopefully, we would capture some voices of our own during our investigation of the nursery...
Once in the nursery, we again set up equipment in different areas of the room, making sure to have our digital voice recorder running in the hopes of capturing an electronic voice phenomenon (EVP). We primarily tried to reach out to the children of the orphanage in this room, offering to play games and assuring that we meant no harm.
Pictured above: Demonstrating how the ball works as I ask if any spirits would like to play
Shown above: Using the laser grid pen and asking for spirits to run through it, hoping that they might cast a silhouette
Throughout our second-floor investigation, we also noticed that our surveillance cameras seemed to be notifying us of motion being detected on the first floor and basement...
After spending several minutes in the nursery with no luck, we moved on to the last remaining room on this floor, the theater, in which live concerts and shows were once held during the Army’s ownership of the castle.
In this room, we took a fairly different approach at communication, deciding to use our SB-7 spirit box for an Estes spirit box session following our initial attempts at contact with the usual equipment spread.
The Estes method of spirit box communication works by having one person wear noise cancelling headphones plugged into the spirit box, while another asks questions directed at the spirits. The purpose is to avoid misleading answers by ensuring no bias or leading questions. Most of the time, complete nonsense is the anticipated result, however, when answers are coherent or consistently make sense, that is an indicator that an intelligent being may be communicating...
Below is the result of the Estes session in the theater room:
Though I was completely oblivious to the results of this session, Zach assured me that it was a good one. With our investigation of the second floor now complete, we decided to make our way down to the first floor to further investigate the remainder of the castle. Unbeknownst to us, our camera in the dungeon seemed to be picking up lots of REM-Pod activity while we were conducting our investigation of the upper floors…
The REM-Pod is a significant piece of evidence in this investigation, since we have never received repetitive and consistent alarms when using it. Additionally, nobody was in the basement at the times that it was going off, meaning there was no possible human interference.
FIRST FLOOR
We started our first-floor investigation in a small lounge room near the entrance of the castle.
We decided to perform an Estes session in this room, since the theater seemed to have provided us with somewhat intelligent responses. Below are the results of this session:
If you didn’t catch it during the above clip, something interesting happened in the background…
I'm going out on a limb here and saying that was most likely the guide who disappeared earlier, since it seems just a little too obvious to be a ghost lol. However, it struck me as interesting that despite the fact that the camera seemed to be pointing in the direction of the entryway, Zach stated that he didn’t recall seeing anyone walk by...
With this session coming to a wrap, we made our way to the adjacent room where we did a little more exploration before heading to the ballroom.
Just before leaving the room, we had a pretty funny experience with our SLS, in which a figure seemed to be trying to conceal the photos on the wall from our view...
Umm.. Should someone tell him that he's see-through?...
After concluding our investigation of the first floor, it was finally time to revisit the dungeons, where I would have an encounter that would nearly cause me to soil myself...
The Dungeon
During our dungeon investigation, we decided to take turns performing another Estes session in the cell where we had initially set up our REM-Pod. Below are the results of said session:
It was during this session when something unexpected and terrifying began to happen at the opposite end of the dungeon….
We would also discover a new area of the dungeon that had previously been blocked off. There, we would find more props and unexplored rooms, but would find nothing unusual during our exploration.
While we were still exploring the basement, our camera in the first-floor ballroom appeared to have captured an unusual orb-like anomaly...
It was at long last time for us to face our final challenge: the tunnel.
The Tunnel
The steam tunnel once served as a passageway between the castle and another building on the grounds. Visitors to the castle have reported encountering a spirit of a maintenance man who goes by “Mr. Boots” who is said to be friendly, but also somewhat of a trickster. One news channel visiting the castle had a terrifying experience within the tunnels, while attending a ghost tour at the castle. The group asked Mr. Boots to knock loudly on the pipes within the tunnel to make them aware of his presence, since he is said to do so upon request. Just after turning off their cameras, they suddenly heard loud banging of the pipes from within, causing them to bolt out of the tunnels and flee in terror. Besides Mr. Boots, there is also said to be another spirit who may not as kind to visitors as Mr. Boots... It is said that the spirit of another individual who used to abuse the children of the orphanage within the tunnels, may also still be lingering, and has even been blamed for a reported case of possession...
As Zach and I peered into the abyss of the seemingly endless void, our hearts began rapidly beating with excitement and anxiety. This tunnel was a far cry from the bright and inviting rooms of the upper floors, and I was beginning to rethink my life decisions leading up to this moment. Perhaps I should have stayed at the KOA and had s’mores and wieners... Despite our trepidation, we turned on our flashlights and began our journey into the tunnel depths.
After making it to the end and back alive and well, I knew that there was just one thing left to do here at the castle before calling this case closed. I needed to enter the tunnels again, only this time alone. Since I was too weak sauce to do it completely isolated, I wore headphones and maintained communications with Zach from the ballroom as I began my reentry into the dungeon. With fear already filling my snack-sized little body, I was having serious second thoughts about doing this. Nobody would have to know if I chickened out, and I could totally just not mention this at all, but in the name of the pseudoscience that is ghost hunting and with a determination for the truth overpowering my anxiety, I embarked once more for the tunnels...
After making it out of the tunnel, happy to be alive, I rendezvoused with Zach to go over what I had experienced. Though we were unable to hear the sound of the pipe during our immediate audio review, I would later enhance the audio and realize that I really did hear something during my solo time. Once we gathered our equipment and prepared to set out for camp, I decided to walk around and take some more photos since all I had really captured was shaky camera footage throughout the investigation.
I wouldn't realize until days later after reviewing the photos with Zach that we just might have some paranormal photobombers... Can you see them?
This next one especially piqued my interest...
Did we do it? Did we finally capture conclusive and solid evidence of the supernatural? Immediately after realizing what was hiding within this photo, I began to show it to many friends and the other Boo Boys. While those who were believers or on the fence found it compelling and creepy, I was somewhat surprised by the more skeptical people I showed it to who would either dismiss it as some trick of the light or would shrug their shoulders or give a lackluster "neat" in response to the image. I suppose it is possible that this was merely some sort of illusion, which is logically less of a stretch than an actual ghost, but unfortunately, we might never know unless we have the opportunity to try and replicate the photo. Man, do I feel like an idiot for not taking the photo more than once.
Nice investigation Ron and Zach. Very spooky indeed. Keep the content coming.