INVESTIGATION OF MILITARY-OWNED RESIDENCE AT WARREN AFB, CHEYENNE, WYOMING.
SATURDAY JANUARY 7 2006.

Warren Air Force Base is the oldest continually-active military installation in the continental United States. It began life back in 1867 as Fort D.A. Russell as a home to the U.S. cavalry, and today houses over one hundred strategic and tactical nuclear missiles. Needless to say, security  is extremely high at Warren and these are folks who take things very seriously indeed – they are not fanciful, or prone to making up stories of “ghosts and goblins”. That said, the base personnel are very open about Warren’s haunted history and it has been the subject of several publications.

Before moving on to the specifics of our case, I will first outline some of the more interesting paranormal occurrences to be reported at this site. It is worth noting that base personnel actually keep a fairly weighty log-book of ghostly occurrences, adding to it each time a new incident is reported.

By far the most common sightings are those of cavalrymen dating from the 19th century. Base personnel frequently report sightings of cavalry troopers and officers, and some have communicated with the Air Force personnel. During the 1980s (according to Matt Cox of the 90th Communications Squadron) , Staff Sergeant Edward Davis encountered a cavalry officer who, when Davis greeted him with “good evening”, responded with “howdy”. He then vanished.

One of the older houses on base was home to a service family whose daughter awakened in the night to see a cavalry officer standing in her play room. Similar tales abound from houses in this old section of the base. One property is even known informally as “the ghost house” because of the frequent disturbances there. A captain once lived here and was killed falling from a second-storey window while trying to escape, when his family came home early to find him in bed with his mistress upstairs. This captain has been reported in the ghost house by numerous inhabitants over the years, primarily in the room that once housed his office.

Another romantic indiscretion took place in the 1890s when an officer was transferred to another post and left without informing his mistress. The lovesick woman committed suicide, and her ghost has been seen walking around the upper floor of one of the base houses.

Another home on-base is haunted by the apparition of a young girl. When the residents were away on a recent vacation, the neighbors saw her staring out of the front window. The residents have two sons and no girls.

Warren has its’ own cemetery, located next to the officers’ quarters. According to reports from base security, a veiled woman dressed in black has often been seen lurking in the graveyard. When guards approach her, she disappears.

Security officers constantly drive out to the missile silos to perform checks, and several have reported seeing Indian braves riding on horseback on the prairie. The family camp area, which is located within spitting distance of the home we would be investigating, was the scene of a particularly heinous crime – cavalrymen raped and then bludgeoned to death a Native American woman there. Her screams and cries have been reported to base security forces on several occasions, but when patrols are dispatched to the creek to investigate nothing is ever found.

At the general's quarters, former homeowners said a cavalryman and his dog haunt the building. Whenever a new general moves in and tries to remove a certain picture frame from the attic wall, he is guaranteed nights filled with eerie noises -- complete with a dog barking, until the frame is hung back in its original place.

The base is home to the USAF Intercontinental Ballistic Missile museum, which is very haunted according to the curator. The security system disarms itself frequently and the door unlocks and opens itself. Lights turn on and off, and the chandeliers swing when nobody else is in the building. The elevator has been rendered unusable because of the frequency with which it traps visitors between floors, but mechanics have been unable to find a cause for it. Several police dog handlers admitted that their dogs refuse to enter the attic. Bemused museum staff nicknamed the ghost “Jeffrey” and say they have learned to live with him.

Before I advance to the specifics of this case, it is important to note that we have the utmost respect for the security practices of the United States Air Force and will not divulge any information regarding our means of entry to the base. Suffice to say that we have changed the names of the residents living in the property under investigation, and will not divulge their address or any personal details whatsoever. They desire no publicity and we will respect their wishes.

Paul and Jane moved into their property in July of 2005. It is a two-storey semi-detached residence owned by the military. Paul is a serving member of the USAF and Jane works in the medical field. They have a son that we’ll call David who is eight years old. Although purely subjective, it is the unanimous opinion of the investigative team that we are dealing with normal, well-adjusted people who are dealing with an unusual situation. We do not believe that they are imagining things or attempting to defraud us, nor do they seem to be highly-strung or superstitious. It is also safe to assume that the Air Force would not allow such people to work with nuclear weapons.

We were unable to track down the former occupants, but did find out that the only problem the neighbors are having is that their toilet seat raises itself up when nobody is home. They have reported no apparitions or other associated phenomena.

On August 20 2005, Jane was walking down the staircase when she encountered a Native American male aged somewhere between forty and fifty years old. He had a jowly face which looked “very disapproving, like he had caught me with my hand in the cookie jar”. The man’s hair was long and thinning, oily black and tied back. He was wearing a t-shirt, but Jane could not remember what kind of pants and footwear he had on. Jane screamed and ran into the bathroom, locking the door. She insists that she could hear a young female voice crying and screaming while she was locked in there. As noted earlier, outside the home is the family camp ground (formerly White Rock creek) from where we have numerous reports of a female screaming and crying.

In September, Paul came home from duty and noticed a dark human-shaped shadow standing in the front window. When he entered the house, nobody was present, but Paul did witness a small black shadow (“dog-sized”) move down the hallway at high speed, make a sharp ninety-degree left turn into the kitchen, and then disappeared through the closed and locked back door. No animals were present in the home at the time. It is a matter of official record that the military police were called out for a possible home intrusion and swept the house from top to bottom, finding nothing. On departing, the sergeant told Paul that this was “not an unusual situation” at Warren.

During November, the eight year-old son David was terrified one night by the apparition of a Caucasian male of indeterminate age standing behind his chair in the bedroom. I immediately separated David from his parents to question him alone. He gave me a very precise description of the man in his room, which tallied precisely with what he had described to his parents when I questioned them later. David described the man as having grey hair and a long beard, with a modern-style blue work shirt and blue jeans. The man was a “nice guy, he was kinda smiling”. David stated that he walked across the room to the window and disappeared.

Since this occurrence, David refuses to separated from his parents, sitting outside the toilet door when his mom is inside and demanding that he sleep with his parents. Since disturbances in the home worsened in December, Jane and Paul refuse to come downstairs for water alone at night – they travel in pairs within their own home.

Over the past six weeks, footsteps are often heard on the staircase during the night. Cupboard doors and drawers in the kitchen open and close by themselves and can be heard slamming at night when the family is in bed. One morning in December, Paul and Jane came downstairs to find an unknown material smeared all over their refrigerator.
                                

 The substance is brown and red, and appears to spell “Go Now” in the opinion of the homeowner. The substance had a “sweet smell” and Paul spent the morning going through the contents of the kitchen, trying to find something to match this material in the kitchen cupboards – peanut butter, jam, and other substances were tried, but none looked remotely similar to whatever was smeared on the fridge door. A sample has been retained for future analysis.

Paul and Jane have recently acquired two dogs who have started to stare into thin air and also to chase an invisible “something” around the bedroom. Objects have begun to disappear, sometimes permanently (some cookware) and sometimes to return in a different room (a hammer). On one occasion a candle was burning when Paul came home, but Jane had not lit the candle when she left. Cold spots are frequent, with Paul describing the atmosphere as feeling “like a meat locker” several times.

Having described the phenomena that are reported, it is worth noting what has not occurred. So far, there have been no rappings or knockings on walls of the home. No olfactory phenomena whatsoever has been reported. No voices have been heard within the house. The occupants deny having nightmares or unusual dreams.

The investigative team arrived on-site at four in the afternoon. It was an exceptionally windy day, which meant that any “unusual” noises would probably have to be discounted right off the bat. Base weather reported wind gusts of up to 50mph.

After a brief tour and supper, the investigation proper kicked off at around 7pm. The entire upper floor of the house was wired with microphones, video cameras (including night-vision) and thermometers. Control objects were placed in the location of the apparition sighting in David’s room. I took baseline EMF readings and found the entire house to be normal and virtually inert, just the usual EMF spikes from the fridge, microwave, lighting and outlets. EMF levels remained normal across the board all throughout the night.

Interestingly enough, the temperature upstairs remained 4-6 degrees Farenheit colder than downstairs, all through the night (70-72 downstairs, 64-66 upstairs). According to Paul and Jane, this was the reverse of normal – typically the upstairs is extremely hot and the downstairs is cooler.

Observers were posted in the child’s bedroom, on the stairs, and downstairs throughout the night. The only unusual occurrence was a window opening seemingly by itself in the master bedroom (it was not open when I swept the room for EMF earlier in the evening) at 22:10pm. Once closed, the window stayed shut all night.

None of the control objects were moved overnight. Although there were slightly unusual tapping sounds emanating from the child’s bedroom, the howling winds mean that this cannot be regarded as paranormal in origin – future investigation on a calm night should help settle the matter.

In conclusion, we would like to return to the property next month to conduct a follow-up investigation. Paul and Jane state that the disturbances worsen when they are experiencing a period of domestic upheaval (even arguing over “something stupid”) and also over the full-moon period. While there is no scientific reason for assuming that the lunar cycle has any affect at all upon paranormal phenomena, we will try to time our next visit to coincide with the full moon to see if their theory is borne out. RMPRS packed up and left in the pre-dawn hours and looks forward to returning to Warren Air Force base at a future date.