Riddle House is the fourth episode of Season 1 of Ghost Adventures. The Ghost Adventures Crew travels to West Palm Beach, FL, to investigate the Riddle House. Formerly used as a funeral parlor and home to cemetery caretakers, the house has seen its share of death and dark haunting.
Walkthrough[]
Zak, Nick, and Aaron travel to Florida to investigate the Riddle House, a private residence. It was built in 1905 in downtown West Palm Beach originally as a place called the "Gatekeeper's Cottage" and originally served as a home to the overseers of the woodlawn cemetery across the street. The entire house had since actually moved a few miles down a road from where it was first built to be where it stands today in a town called Yesteryear Village. At its new site, it was first used as a funeral parlor, but is now used as a private residence for one John Riddle.
Zak meets with Mr. Riddle of the Riddle House, and also with Steve Carr, someone who assisted with the move of the house from its original location. Riddle tells Zak that his uncle Sam, the superintendent of the cemetery, came and lived in the house in 1920, and had written in his diary about how the stairs in the house would creak with such noise that it sounded like somebody dragging a chain up the steps. Carr says that noticeable paranormal events that occurred while the house was being reconstructed included that ladders would always be in different places or tipped over or missing the next morning. Riddle then tells the history of the house that seems to be the spark of the ghostly occurrences: Early on in the Great Depression (the early 1900's) when the house was in West Palm Beach, a man named Joseph came around and got a job as hired help for Carl Riddle, doing handiwork around the house. He was supposedly having some financial trouble and the domestic problems that come with that, which drove him to hang himself up in the attic. One climbs up and kicks away a ladder to hang oneself; The connection with the ghostly occurrences involving the ladders becomes clear upon hearing this. Carr then relates that the paranormal encounters only escalated from there. There was this one incident where a 2x4 board was hurled across from one end of a room to strike a guy on the head right next to him.
As Zak investigates Yesteryear Village, he discovers that ghosts and paranormal occurrences are present throughout all the village, not just the Riddle house, leading him to call it as equal to the "village of the dead". Carr reports that a building constructed opposite the Riddle house that belonged to a civil-war captain caused the shared paranormal activity between them to escalate, where things would be discovered broken in one building one day and things would be discovered broken in the other building the following day. Barry Reed, a former Chief of Security of Yesteryear Village, reports that he would often get reports from witnesses about images of lights and people going across the windows in the Riddle House. Marilyn Rhinehart reports that the house makes noises, people's hair gets touched or grabbed, and when you go through each room you get a different feeling, such as being watched.
Riddle reports that there's been several sightings of a person, usually a female in a white period dress and accompanied by a white afghan dog, walking around the building and dissipating in mid-air. A more astounding event transpired some time back: People had been able to access through the local historical society photographs of this house dating back to before the turn of the century, and were arranging an event in town to unveil these photographs around the house. The people working here saw a fairly young couple in their late thirties walking through the area. They were impeccably dressed in victorian-era costumes. When the unveiling process for the photos was announced, the people working here looked for this couple, believing they would make an excellent-looking backdrop for the event's modern-day cameras, but they were nowhere to be found in town. However, one of the old photographs of the house depicted the very people witnessed walking here.
Rhinehart warns Zak to stay out of the kids room upstairs in the Riddle House, filled with toys and the like. Carr also says that if one wants to draw out paranormal activity, bring an American flag into the house, because flags always disappear from the closets they're stored in. Zak then arranges for two tours of the house prior to their lockdown, the first by the village curator Jennifer Irsay knowledgeable about the house, the second by psychic medium Sheila Powell who is unfamiliar with the house (this is the first time the Ghost Adventures crew uses a psychic medium).
Sheila very quickly picks up on the name "Joseph", impressing Zak a lot, and reports that this spirit has "taken ownership" of this house and doesn't like that it's here moved from its original location. Sheila picks up on an overwhelming feeling of sadness and anger in the kids room, and says that it was an apparently a heated argument between at least four men from West Palm Beach in the room, which lead to the suicide in the attic in some way. The subject was that the man who had hung himself, Joseph, was wrongly accused of stealing money from either a company or someone important to West Palm, which was something that one of the other men did; the other guy was from a well-known family and couldn't possibly take the blame, so it was pinned on Joseph, who died quite a traumatic death. And when Sheila goes to the infamous attic, she picks up on a very angry, malevolent, violent spirit present and which likes to throw things. Sheila reports that the spirit has a specific hate for men because of what had happened in the past, and apparently has the most specific contempt for Aaron for some reason. Joseph, the evil spirit who feeds off of people's fear, watches people from the window of the attic and likes scaring people.
Curator Jennifer reports that a couple months ago, one of their maintenance staff was in the parlor, and when she went to vacuum the carpet, she saw that a chair had been moved behind her. Jennifer, in the attic, tells the story that some time after Joseph hung himself in the attic, the beams in the attic involved in the hanging mysteriously caught fire. She then tells that shortly after she started working for Yesteryear village, she was working in the attic and heard some very faint 1920s music playing in the room, but she couldn't find any source in the room, and it was dead silent outside when she checked.
Prior to the lockdown, Zak brings Sheila to West Palm to try to determine wherever it was the house used to sit, though they get caught in a thunderstorm while doing so. Sheila points out a particular empty field located at Acacia Road, which is indeed where the house was located and where Joseph's argument and subsequent hanging had occurred.
Lockdown[]
The lockdown begins at 6:00 PM, with Chief Operating Officer Victoria Chouris locking them in the Riddle house, and Zak begins his provocation in earnest. He first sets up a 2x4 board on the stairs to the attic. As they are about to initiating their investigation at around 8:20, one of the locked doors is heard slamming as though someone is trying to get in, and as the GA crew discusses it, they hear footsteps in the kids room above them. Zak, as he walks around using an EMF detector, feels some noticeable c7old spots, then suddenly they hear some clattering and find that the 2x4 has been tossed down the nearby stairs a fair distance. Right afterward all three of them feel a blast of cold air as if something came down the stairs and passed right through them. Shortly afterward while investigating the staircase, they hear something being hurled again, and find that the flag they set up in one room has been knocked over in a way that could only be done intelligently. They discuss the flag, but then briefly hear a female voice.
With the Riddle House being the site of frequent and impressive activity, the crew goes up to the second floor, and as they do more provoking, they hear walking up in the attic above them, and Zak comes across a huge cold spot (69 degrees, compared to the 89 degrees of what is the norm for this house at night in the dead heat of summer). So they move up onto the attic, and agree to have Aaron stay up there alone to confront this evil spirit and record EVPs while being taped with a couple static night vision cameras. Aaron asks questions, and after a while swears he heard something amongst the junk behind him. Zak and Nick continue investigating the rest of the house downstairs in the meantime, but even before they're able to fully sit down in the funeral parlor room to have an EVP session together, they hear something noisily falling down in the kitchen where all their equipment is stored. They immediately investigate but don't find out what object was involved in projecting the loud noise, but figure it sounded like a big kettle pot moving or something. As they head back to the funeral parlor, Nick alleges he heard something run up the nearby stairs they are passing by. They sit back down in the funeral parlor in an attempt to have the recent paranormal activity repeat itself in some way.
Aaron continues his EVP questioning in the attic, by 1:13 AM. What happens next shocks everyone, and is entirely documented by one of the static night vision cameras: A birdcage located in one corner of the attic behind Aaron is pushed over by an invisible force and made to fall and clatter noisily to the ground, and Aaron runs out of the attic screaming in terror. He climbs down the stairs as Zak and Nick climb up so that they meet on the second floor, and discuss what happened and decide to head back up into the attic together to investigate. They aren't able to find out what made the big bang they heard, and wouldn't until reviewing their footage later after the investigation. They hear a thump downstairs while investigating the attic upstairs though, which turns out to have been recorded as occurring in the kitchen by the static camera set up there.
The three engage one last plan for the night: They set up four more night vision cameras in the house at where they had encountered hot spots of activity, and have them roll for the rest of the night. An hour and a half after hitting record on the camera set up in the kids room, that camera's gold beryllium microphone picks up a ghostly noise resembling a young female child. The remarkable lockdown session ends at 6:00 AM, with Victoria letting them out.
Evidence[]
- Moving Object: Unseen forces move a small piece of wood that Zak placed at the top of the stairs.
- Residual Noises: Footsteps, Door slamming
- Moving Object: In the attic, unseen forces knock a bird cage off a table, startling the lone Aaron, who was asking provocative questions to the alleged ghost of a man who hanged himself in the attic.
- Moving Object: Also, while Nick and Zak are in the funeral parlor, an unseen force tips over the American flag in the other room. When Zak goes up to the flag, he demonstrates how much force is needed to get it to tip over. There is no way it fell over by itself.
- Moving Object: When Nick and Zak were in the Funeral Parlor trying to capture EVPs, the camera's audio picks up what Zak said to be a large kettle pot falling in the kitchen. The camera even shakes a little due to the bang.
- EVPs: Child's voice
- Unexplained Voice: Right after Zak demonstrates how the flag couldn't have fallen over by itself, the GAC hears a woman's voice.
References[]
- People
- John Riddle - Former Owner, Riddle House
- Steve Carr - Eyewitness
- Barry Reed - Former Chief of Security, Yesteryear Village
- Marilyn Rhinehart - Maintenance Tech, Yesteryear Village
- Jennifer Irsay - Curator, Yesteryear Village
- Sheila Powell - Psychic Medium
- Victoria Chouris - Chief Operating Officer, Yesteryear Village
Trivia[]
The former plot of the Old Street House
- In a deleted scene from Ghost Adventures Season 1 DVD, Barry Reed provides information about hauntings in other buildings located within Yesteryear Village.
- World War I building: During the Civil War, a plantation house was located close to where the current building stands. A soldier banged on the door one time and was let in, where he collapsed and died. During certain conditions, you can see blood stains on the floor board and a mist of the solider rising up. There are also reports of shadows, typically in moisture-based conditions.
- Old Street House: A weeping woman can be seen in the window crying. She waited for her husband to come home from buying groceries in town. He was killed in a Poker game. When Barry and the crew arrive to the location of the house, they all find out that it had been moved.
- The Second Home Sweet Hell episode.
Full Episode[]