A man bought a Victorian home in Mitchell, Indiana for its price and its character, and spent the following months learning exactly what else came with it. This is the story of Van Renier, the house he refused to walk away from, and a table that answered a question no one expected it to answer.

EPISODE NOTES

● Owner Van Renier has publicly stated the house holds a confirmed record of six deaths, not counting any patients who may have died during Dr. John Gibbons's twenty-six years of medical practice there.

● The Rachel legend has at least three competing versions: a Christmas 1912 fire, a carriage accident that killed her parents before her adoption, and a darker possibility raised in Richard Estep's own research that she may have been killed by her father. No record confirms a girl named Rachel ever lived in the house under any version.

● A documented infant named Elizabeth died in the master bedroom of unrecorded causes; guests report the scent of baby powder and the sound of a baby crying in that same room.

● The May 4, 2014 investigation by the Ghost Research Society, led by Dale Kaczmarek with the Champaign-Urbana Paranormal Society, is a named, dated centerpiece of the episode: a ghost box correctly answered 'Gibbons' and 'Mabel' unprompted; investigators Marge Sucha and Michael Wright each developed unexplained marks minutes apart, and investigator Stan Suho openly reported his own footage turned up nothing.

● The cold open is built from a real guest's own written account of a table-tipping session that answered 'yes' when asked if it was a demon, then reacted aggressively when the group said they'd stop talking to it. The episode makes it explicit that this event and the shadow entity 'Big Black' have never been formally connected.

● Includes Mary Ann's own theological belief that child apparitions may be demonic entities using a child's likeness as a disguise, since she does not believe God leaves children's souls earthbound.

SCRIPTURE

1 John 4:1 (NIV) — 'Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.'

SOURCES

● Van Renier's own account, as reported by WAVE 3 News (2014) and in the documentary When the Walls Talk (2017)

● Ghost Research Society investigation report, ghostresearch.org, May 4, 2014

● Richard Estep, Whispers in the Darkness: The Haunting of Whispers Estate

● Ghost Stalkers television episode, October 2014

● A guest's own published account of a table-tipping session at Whispers Estate