In March 2012, after talking with the owner of “Must Love Dogs” about their experiences in the store, we brought our team in to investigate.
The investigators present for this first investigation, along with Tonya and Brian, were Bill, Connie, Jay, Dani, and Jody.
After briefing the events to our team, and letting Tonya and Brian speak with the team, we began to set up our equipment in the areas with the most activity and interest.
As we began to take base readings of the store with our equipment, we discovered that the main floor of the store area was saturated with extremely high EMF (Electromagnetic field). The source for this EMF is the fluorescent lighting in the display shelving on both sides of the store floor. During the initial sweep for EMF throughout the building we found a couple of areas in the basement with slightly raised EMF levels, but still nowhere near the levels of the display shelving.
During one point in the investigation, we dug in the dirt in the old tunnel entrance. The store owner had found several letters from WWII. We managed to find a few more. The letters were from Pvt. John Otis Wright [U.S. Air Corps.] to his parents, Mel and Ruth Wright. Mel and Ruth owned this building in 1937 and ran a small grocery store. Later on, they converted the store into “Wrights Sandwich Shop”. Later during our investigation, we used some of these letters during EVP sessions as trigger objects to see if we could generate any responses. We also used some old meat hooks, which were found in the dirt as well, as trigger objects. These meat hooks are thought to be from when Edward Kinkema ran his butcher shop at this location.
During one session we used an old shoe, which was also found in the tunnel entrance dirt, as a trigger object. This session led to an interesting EVP which we captured. We are just guessing, but this EVP might be Mr. Kinkema saying “I could'a had that”.
Once we started reviewing all of the gathered evidence we found several questionable recordings and videos. As we started closely studying them we were able to identify most of the sounds as natural or contamination from outside or from the investigation team. The ones which we were not able to positively identify are listed later in this report. We then met with Tonya and Brian to show them some of these recordings on May 10, 2012.
The next morning we received a phone call from Tonya about an event that occurred shortly after we had left the previous evening. This event was captured on her security camera. So, we met with her and reviewed the camera footage.
In May 2012, we returned to re-investigate the store. After placing our equipment and updating the investigators on the security camera event, we started to investigate. The event that the security cameras captured involved a stack of clingy, nylon netting-style Doggy Tutus that was sitting on a table when, for some unknown reason, the stack – all but the bottom one, just flipped and landed on the floor. We spent a while working on debunking the fall of these Tutus from their place on the shelf. We looked at logical reasons for the event like a draft from a vent or ceiling fan, as well as how stable their placement on the shelf was. We determined that this event did not just happen naturally. We were not able to recreate the fall as it happened on camera. Every attempt that we made always reached inclusive results.
Shortly after we had started the investigation one of our investigators had to leave the building, and then the investigation all together. This investigator is EMF sensitive and with the high levels of EMF on the store floor she became too ill to continue. EMF can affect people in a very negative way, especially those who may be sensitive to it. EMF can cause things from headache, nausea, tension, and muscle aches to hallucinations and paranoia. Depending on how sensitive a person is to EMF, the side effects may happen quickly and strongly in a short amount of time. Also, it can make some people physically sick. Whereas others may be able to spend long periods of exposure with little or no side effects at all.
Toward the end of our investigation, we had a strange event happen involving Bill and his walkie-talkie. We managed to catch this event on camera as well as audio and we are not exactly sure what caused this to take place. It could have just been a radio malfunction, but I've never experienced this type of malfunction before. I find it hard to believe that there wasn't something else going on at this time.
Our investigations of “Must Love Dog” have shown to have been an interesting one. We did not collect enough evidence to positively state that this location is para-normally active. We did, however, find enough to determine that there may be more to uncover here, a lot more.
Picture of Mel and Ruth Right. Owners of the building in 1937 who owned a small grocery store.
Doggy tutus were strewn across the floor. It's explained how they were stacked, and how she came in to find them knocked over.
Footage of the doggy tutus falling over.