Free Dark World: Into the Shadows with the Lead Investigator of the Ghost Adventures Crew by Kelly Crigger, Zak Bagans Page B

their trance. This wasn’t as extreme as that, but it made me feel almost the same. Now if Jerusha had made herself visible, and she looked like one of those vampires, I wouldn’t be typing this right now—catch my drift?
    In Anna Corbin’s room I felt at peace, as if she was telling me everything was going to be alright. I felt that Anna knew she was dead and did not want me to feel sad over it. With Jerusha, it was more like she was longing for the companionship of someone. I believe spirits like Anna and Jerusha want you to feel their emotions. They try to work through you like an avatar, and once you tap into that energy, it’s better to talk about the emotion and make a connection with the spirit instead of opposing it (but not when you encounter an evil one).
    Although it didn’t happen while I was there, we captured visual evidence of a spirit in room number nine on a full-spectrum camera that we set up. As its name implies, the full-spectrum camera operates in the full light spectrum, from infrared to ultraviolet. It can see things our eyes can’t and is very efficient at detecting any changes in light.
    When I reviewed the footage from that camera the next morning, I was surprised at what I saw. A mist, clearly in the form of a woman, manifested next to the bed in room nine. It formed, floated for a moment, and then dissipated. It looked like a woman walking around the bed, and I knew instantly that this was the spirit who reached out to me earlier in the evening. I finally got to see the woman who touched me. I saw Jerusha Howe. Even more exciting was that just before this capture, I clearly saw with my own eyes a white dress moving toward Jerusha’s room from the top of the staircase. So to have captured on film the same thing that I saw was astounding.
    Jerusha’s sadness stems from the longing for a loved one whose fate she never learned. Hers is a sad story, but not on the same level as another spirit I encountered who blamed himself for the accidental deaths of several people and who still wanders the Earth wracked with guilt.
    The story of Jonathon Widders goes like this: In the spring of 1914 the wealthiest family in North Adams, Massachusetts, the Houghtons, invested in their first car, a huge status symbol in those days. On August 1, Mr. A. C. Houghton and his daughter, Mary, decided to go to Bennington, Vermont, for a pleasure drive of about three hours. The family’s matriarch, Cordelia Houghton, stayed at home, so they were accompanied instead by Dr. and Mrs. Robert Hutton of New York.
    With their longtime chauffeur, Jonathon Widders, at the wheel, the car left the mansion at 9:00 AM and by 9:30 the group was in Pownal, Vermont, heading up an inclined road. The road was under repair and partially blocked by a team of horses on the right side as their car approached. Behind the wheel, Jonathon Widders decided to pass the horses on the left at about twelve miles per hour. It would prove to be a deadly mistake.
    On the narrow left shoulder the car tilted. One wheel slipped over the edge and the vehicle began an unrecoverable slide down a steep embankment. The vehicle rolled over three times before coming to rest in an upright position in a farmer’s field. Everyone except Mary Houghton was thrown clear. The men all escaped with minor injuries, but Mrs. Hutton was killed almost instantly when the car rolled over her. Mary Houghton was just as badly injured and died five and a half hours later at the North Adams Hospital. Expecting to survive, Mr. Houghton was taken home, traumatized and in disbelief. The investigator for the State of Vermont cleared Widders of all wrongdoing, blaming the accident instead on the soft shoulder of the road. But Widders still blamed himself, and the next morning he took his own life in the cellar of the Houghton barn with a single gunshot to the head. Ten days later, A. C. Houghton, having lost his precious daughter, passed away in his beloved mansion.
    In the basement