The Shanley Hotel

   
 The Shanley Hotel Investigations  "The Spirits are Inn"
 Napanoch, NY

 April 4, 2009; April 16, 2009;May 2, 2009 & August 15, 2009
 

 

 April 4, 2009 - Saturday Photo Gallery
   
Mass Paranormal (live web cast) and Brian Harnois were hosts of the event with Sal and Cindy Nicosia.  Approximately 24 guests attended this event and spent one of two nights at the gathering.
 
NPI equipment:  Sony Digital Voice Recorder, 2 ea K-2 meters with modified switch, night vision Sony mini DV camcorder with two supplemental IR light sources and an Olympus digital still camera.
 
Session 1- Gentleman's Quarters 10:00 PM to 10:50 PM with guests. Annie, a local medium hosted, the session.  EVP, K-2 and divining rods.  NPI attempted the rods with no success.  Others showed a 'response.'
No activity or evidence. NPI is very skeptical of the use of divining rods.
 
Session 2- Bordello 10:55 to 11:15.  This area consisted of four rooms.  NPI were sole occupants of the main room.  Four females in Rosie's Room. 5-6 individuals in corner room and two in right side room.  EVP, K-2 and video.

NPI captured an EVP.  A question from the corner room asked: "What year is this".  A voice close to NPI's voice recorder responded "This year." There is a woman in the next room talking during the EVP session which appears at the muffled voice throughout the clip, however, about one second after the question you can hear a low man's voice with a response. From the digital voice recorder-Listen here. Audio taken from the mini DV camcorder- Listen here (note, the miniDV was closer to anyone else in the area yet the response sounds more distant).  We have finally contacted the person who asked the question, they believe they also said "this year" as a follow-up to their question.  We can discount this as an EVP.
 
Session 3- Third floor 11:25 to 11:55.  NPI checked out a few rooms before the group settled in Joe's Room.  EVP and K-2 session.  Brian H. entered after about 10 minutes and it was his claim that a demonic or evil spirit entered the hotel.  A few minutes later Annie was summoned to help.  The group broke up about midnight as the live feed ended.
No activity or evidence.  NPI did witness four individuals who believed they were ridding the hotel of the bad spirit from room
13 on the third floor.
 
Break- everyone in the hotel regrouped in the Great Room for a prayer circle conducted by Brian H. 
 

Session 4- after 1AM- NPI and Mass Paranormal (great bunch, thanks Tom, Matt, Don and Chip) went to the third floor.  We started in Joe's Room.  EVP and K-2.  We started getting activity on the K-2 but it seemed too cyclical. We checked Sal and Cindy's apartment below and there was an electric heater or oven throwing a large EMF to most of that side of the third floor.  We moved to the room across the hall for K-2 and EVP.

No personal activity or video/audio evidence.
 
Session 5- approximately 3AM- NPI and Mass Paranormal in the Gentleman's Quarters for EVP and K-2.
Iteresting K-2 session with many responses.  A brief interpretation of the audio from the K-2 session HERE
 
End investigation at approximately 4AM
Conclusion: Interesting evening with many people with personal experiences.  Our EVP and K-2 were impressive, however, still not definitive proof of paranormal activity.
 
 April 16, 2009 - Thursday Photo Gallery      
 
NPI were the only guests this night of Sal and Cindy.  Kevin and Mitch investigated most of the areas showing activity from the last visit.
NPI equipment:  Olympus Digital Voice Recorder (thanks Sal), 2 ea K-2 meters with modified switch, night vision Sony mini DV camcorder with two supplemental IR light sources, Olympus digital still camera, Extech digital EMF meter, laser thermometer and a k-probe digital ambient thermometer. We also employed a DVR system with 4 IR cameras. Camera 1= Hallway off the Great Room leading to Bordello and Gentleman's Parlor; Camera 2=  Third Floor Hallway toward room 13; Camera 3= Gentleman's Parlor; Camera 4= Marguerite's Room on the second floor.
Session 1- Bordello- 8:30 PM- Air temp=64.8F; walls/floor/ceiling 62-65F; EMF background 0.0-0.3G; - EMF, K-2, Mini DV and voice recorder.
No personal activity or video/audio evidence.
Session 2- Gentleman's Parlor- 9:45 PM- Air temp=56F; walls/floor/ceiling 51-56F; EMF background 0.0-0.7G (small fridge 1.7 within 1.5 feet) ; EMF, K-2, Mini DV, voice recorder, static DVR cam

No personal activity or video evidence.
Upon review of the audio there is one possible EVP at the 10M52S mark of the original recording, midway through the clip there appears to be a female voice in the back ground at the 1.5 second mark of this clip.
Listen here. We believe she is saying "Thank you" after I said we like to visit.  Listen Here for a short amplified version. There may be more to the EVP but we can't make it out over my voice...

Session 3- Marguerite's Room- Second floor room #4- 11:35PM-Air temp=62.4F; walls/floor/ceiling 60-64F; EMF background 0.0-0.3G (left rear side wall 3.2); EMF, K-2, voice recorder, static DVR cam
No personal activity or video evidence.
Upon review of the audio there is one possible EVP at the 6M14S mark of the original recording. There is a strange sound in response to 'Can you tell us  your name?"
Listen here
Session 4- Third floor Jonathan's Room-12:10AM- Air temp=64F; walls/floor/ceiling 60-64F; EMF background 0.0-0.4G;  EMF, K-2, voice recorder, Mini DV.  We also ventured into the Hallway (DVR cam) with Jonathan's toys at 12:45AM for a few minutes before we had a full voice recorder and took a break to dump the audio.
No personal activity or video evidence.
Upon review of the audio there are two possible EVP's. First one at the 43M05S mark of the original recording. 8 seconds after I say the word "Toronto" there's a faint sound.
Listen here The second is at the 56M46S mark of the original recording. A very faint sound that is voice like at the 4.5 second mark of this clip- Listen here
Session 5- Third Floor Joe's Room- 1:40AM- No background readings (assumed the same as earlier). K-2, voice recorder, Mini DV.  and
Session 6- 2:00AM- Ten minutes in the room across the hall on the third floor with no activity.
No personal activity or video evidence.
Upon review of the audio there are three interesting events in Joe's Room.  At the 01M57S mark, 04M01S mark and the 09M56S mark of the original recording of this session, there is a "plink" sound. It seems to be in response to questions and also seems to be occurring close to the recorder based on the volume 
An evaluation of the  mini DV recorder showed the second two plinks non-existent on the recording but the first one sounds like a low click.
Could it be Joe giving the recorder a little flick?  We can not rule out the recorder itself doing something funny, but this occurs three times in 8 minutes during this session and twice in five minutes at a later session and at no other times all night. Digital Voice Recorder=
Listen here to the first plink. Listen here to the second plink. Listen here to the third plink.
Session 7- Gentleman's Parlor- 2:40AM- No background readings (assumed the same as earlier). EMF, K-2, Mini DV, voice recorder, static DVR cam.
No personal activity or video evidence.
Here we have two more plink sounds at the 02M43S and 07M56S marks of the original recording. 
Listen here to the first plink. Listen closely and you'll hear a double click, almost sounds like a push button flashlight being turned on.  However, when we review the audio from our camcorder at the same moment, you can hear only the second click which may be our flashlight, our flashlights were at the table with us with the camcorder and the voice recorder. The sound is generated close to the voice recorder, not anywhere else based on the volume and lack of echo (the flashlights echo on the recording).  Listen here to the second plink. We also may have another interesting response. At the 12M52S mark on the original recording we have five knocks in response to the question "Can anyone give us a sign of your presence?". Listen here. We can't rule out that the table or one of the chairs made the noise from our movements and we didn't notice, but we are not sure.
Wrap up investigation at 3:25AM
Conclusion: Further review of the plinking noises still seem to indicate that the sound came from close vicinity of the digital voice recorder, or from a hit to the recorder itself. We can not explain the origin of these noises. In Joe's Room the recorder was on the window sill away from us by at least 5-6 feet at all times.
Review of the DVR recordings were completed April 24, 2009. The recorder ran from approximately 8:30 PM through 6:30 AM. The review yielded no paranormal activity or evidence.
All in all it was a quiet night and we still cannot say definitively that the source of any of the above evidence is paranormal.  What we can say is they are unexplained! What are your thoughts?
 May 2, 2009 - Saturday  Photo Gallery 
NPI brought along our visiting psychic Vincent J. Barra to possibly shed some insight as to the residual spirits that may be present throughout the hotel.
NPI equipment:  Sony Digital Voice Recorder, 2 ea K-2 meters with modified switch, night vision Sony mini DV camcorder with two supplemental IR light sources, Olympus digital still camera, Canon digital still camera.
A late afternoon tour found Vincent sensing many things.  What was interesting about his visit that was different from the usual visit by a psychic to the hotel was that he claimed to sense spirits from the original building or before almost exclusively. Capt. Cornel, Fannie, Claire (may be the Claire from the current building), a Mr. Garrison or something with a 'G' (actually a previous owner of the hotel was George Gosselin), a child or infant named Eric, a woman that hanged herself on the third floor in the original hotel, a Native American shaman woman or medicine woman from before either hotel was on the third floor with healing roots, James Morrow in the Gentelman's Quarters, Darlene Madison on the third floor among others.
After dark we visited the Gentleman's Quarters, the Bordello, second floor rooms and then on to the third floor. 
No response from the K-2.  No EVP's.
Jonathan's Room- Video recorder, two K-2 meters on a chair and the voice recorder next to them.
No EVP's on audio. 
We did get a response on a K-2 meter. Although they were next to each other only one showed a response. The K-2 meters were on a chair toward the south side of the room, away from Joe's Room.
At 06:14 on Video Tape 8 we asked: "Can you make a noise? You got to get to know us, we've been here before" Then we got a nice jump on the meter in response. We then asked "Is that a sign? Please do it again?". We then had a double jump on the meter as a second response. We then asked a series of questions: "Tell us your name." "Do you live here at the hotel?" "Did you live at the original hotel, the old hotel?"
At 07:23 on Video Tape 8 we had a small response on the meter to: "Is this your room?"
Then the meter was quiet until 22:30 on Video Tape 8.  There was another small response to us saying "Let's move" ( we were getting ready to go next door to Joe's Room).
We do not typically use K-2 responses as a basis for collecting data, however, since many others use it, we incorporate them at times since we are investigating the techiniques of others as well as the locale.
Joe's Room- Video recorder, two K-2 meters and the voice recorder on the window sill.
We had something interesting happen during the last investigation in Joe's Room- see above.
We placed our voice recorder in the same spot as last time, on the window sill pointing in to the room. Within 30 seconds of us getting into Joe's Room we got another click on the recorder! (01:25:38)
Listen Here. We were unable to hear this click on the video when reviewed. Strange indeed, last time we used Sal's Olympus recorder, this time it was our Sony recorder.Fifty two seconds later we had another click (01:26:30). Listen Here. This time we heard a faint click on the video but it still sounded like it came from close to the recorder.  The video camera was about three to four feet from the audio recorder being held as Kevin sat in Joe's chair..
We had one other click on the recorder the whole evening see below,  Any similar sound had a tone or echo to it that sounded like it came from within the room.
We still have no explanation for this.  Sal stated his recorder never made that noise and we state our recorder never did either.
Third floor room above Oscar's and Grover's Room- Video recorder, two K-2 meters and the voice recorder.
Although the hotel was feeling 'empty' or quiet, Vincent was sensing an older native American women in this room.  There was no video evidence or K-2 activity but we picked up another click on the audio recorder (01:54:42) Listen Here. Again, it is not heard on the video but sounds very close to the audio recorder.  The recorder was set down on an inverted pail and was not being held at the time.
Wrap up investigation around midnight.
All in all, it was another quiet night at the Shanley.  A little K-2 activity and those out of place clicks.  We will be back...
 August 15 2009 - Saturday   
   
NPI attended a Mass Paranormal event.  There were many people and for the most part there wasn't a lot of very quiet times throughout the evening.  We still had a blast with great friends and hosts.
We did capture a few interesting possible EVPs.
 
NPI equipment:  Sony Digital Voice Recorder, 2 ea K-2 meters with modified switch, night vision Sony mini DV camcorder with two supplemental IR light sources, modified stereo camera rig, IR still camera
 
Four of us in the Secret Room. At approximately 10:52 PM or at 11 min 57 sec on audio file 3 we all heard an audible sound and several seconds later another.  There was background chatter coming from the front porch from the opposite direction. Listen to an excerpt HERE at the 8 second mark. You'll hear everyone react and also at the very end of the clip you'll hear the people outside for a split second.
 
Later in the evening, the four of us, after a half hour or so in Jonathan's Room with the toys, went into Joe's Room next door and found the following: At approximately 10:50 PM on audio file 7 at the 35:35 mark we had what sounded like a tiny voice saying 'Tom' (20 second mark on excerpt), after being asked if its Tom or Joe? then we had a LOUD whisper at the 35:46 mark which sounds like "these are Tom's" (31 second mark on excerpt). Listen to excerpt here. Then at the 37:08 mark we had another tiny 'Tom' (10 second mark on excerpt) HERE.
 
If I were to attempt to interpret the interactions as spirit voices, I may conclude that the small child with the toys is actually named Tom.  When asked if its Joe or Tom we hear a possible Tom in a child's voice.  Then we hear an adult male whisper loudly "These are Tom's" which may be referring to the toys, then we hear the same child like voice say Tom again.  To clarify, we do not whisper during an EVP session. If someone does we note it and usually it is quite low in volume, not loud and clear like this recording. Further analysis is warranted.
 
   

We enjoyed our visits to the Shanley Hotel and will be going back when we have a chance.  Please contact us if you plan on visiting.
Copyright 2013 (C) Nyack Paranormal Investigations
 

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