By ADAM McNAUGHTON
Pocono Record Writer
January 14, 2008
From the outside, the large white house at the corner where Church Street meets Main Street in Tobyhanna seems quiet and peaceful.
But ever since Cheryl Byrne and her husband, Bill, moved into the house in May, 2001, their family has been dealing with what may be the ghosts of previous residents.
"It began only a few weeks after we moved in," Cheryl said. "We would constantly hear movement or footsteps in the room above the kitchen, which used to be the maid's room."
"After that, things started getting worse."
Cheryl, Bill, their daughter and their 5-year-old grandson Adam have all had frightening and unexplained experiences in the house.
The Byrne's story and an investigation of the paranormal activity at the house will be featured on a new episode of the A&E channel series, "Paranormal State," airing tonight at 10 p.m.
The show follows investigations into paranormal activity by Penn State students with the Paranormal Research Society, a club at Penn State.
"They came and set up all kinds of electrical equipment to monitor the house," Cheryl said of the investigation, taped for tonight's show.
"They used anything you can think of: heat sensors, motion detectors, lights and cameras."
The investigators came to examine the house for paranormal activity, such as unexplained sights and sounds.
The house gave investigators a long and dark history of death and depression to look into.
A death in the family
The home was built and owned by George and Emma Rhodes in 1884, according to a relative who has provided the Byrne's with a family history.
But when Emma Rhodes died giving birth to the family's fifth child in the room that would become 5-year-old Adam's bedroom, the house gained what might be its first ghost.
Two years ago, when her grandson Adam was only 3, he came downstairs from his bedroom to tell Cheryl that he had been talking with a "nice lady" up in his room about his toys.
"At first, I thought 'well, he's young, he's got an imaginary friend,'" Cheryl said. "But then I asked him what she looked like and he started describing Emma, whose picture he's never seen."
A deep depression
The Rhodes family continued to live in the house as it was passed into the hands of the family's middle child, Alfred.
Alfred Rhodes married and began a medical practice out of a first-floor room of the house. But when his wife died suddenly he fell into a deep depression, rarely going outside for the next 20 years before his death inside the house.
It is Alfred's spirit that investigators on tonight's show focused on, since the family's encounters with him have been the most frightening.
Cheryl says the door at the bottom of the stairway leading to the attic is always closed, but one night it seemed someone wanted it opened.
"My daughter and one of her friends were upstairs a few years ago," Cheryl said. "And all of a sudden it sounds like a 400-pound man is running down the stairs from the attic. Then there's a huge bang that shook the whole house, I could hear it from downstairs."
"They fell on the floor crying, my daughter's friend even hurt herself they were trying to run away so fast."
That incident, the feeling of constantly being watched and other unexplained happenings in the house brought Cheryl ? and the show's investigators ? to the conclusion that there are too many coincidences to not be paranormal activity.
After Alfred's death the house changed hands many times, eventually falling into foreclosure and abandonment for several years before the Byrnes purchased it and began renovations in 2001.
"I like this house," Cheryl said, standing in the home's front yard. "There's no way I'm moving. The only way I'm leaving is in a box. We're not going to be chased out."
The episode on the home is titled "Man of the House" and will air on A&E at 10 p.m.
http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.d ... /-1/NEWS01
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