Hinsdale?s celebrated haunted house returns to the spotlight this week, courtesy of The Discovery Channel.
The house will be featured in an hour-long program titled ?Dark Forest,? part of the network?s ?A Haunting? series that looks at ?true stories of the paranormal.? The program airs at 9 p.m. Thursday.
The Hinsdale house, located at the end of the dead-end McMahon Road in the hills just east of the village, is legendary for its tales of strange and mysterious happenings. Clara Miller, who moved into the house in 1970, wrote about her family?s troubled years in the home in ?Echoes of a Haunting,? a book published in 2000.
Paranormal investigator Michael J. Rambacher of Olean, who continues to probe strange phenomena in and around the home and runs periodic tours to the area out of Denny?s Hut Family Restaurant on Route 16 in Hinsdale, supplied photos, newspaper clippings, recordings and mountains of notes to Discovery Channel producers.
Like anyone else, Michael loves a good ghost story. But his fascination with the Hinsdale house ? the sightings of apparitions and balls of light, the capture on film of otherwise invisible energy fields and on tape of ?inaudible? voices and sounds ? goes beyond the creepy to the scientific and spiritual side of the unknown.
Even Einstein acknowledged the presence of energy fields and scientific mysteries to which man is not yet attuned, he said.
And spiritual people like the late Father Alphonsus Trabold, a theology professor at St. Bonaventure University and an advisor to Clara Miller and her family as they confronted the unknown in the 1970s, saw the world of the paranormal as another manifestation of God.
Michael, ordained by the Reunification Church in the Order of Melchizedek in Rochester, said he works in the tradition of the late Father ?Al,? which is to help those whose lives are disrupted by paranormal events.
?It?s about the people ? those who are affected out of the clear blue sky by something they have no explanation for,? he said. ?I don?t profess to know why any of this happens.?
He does, however, feel a particular calling. ?Father Al said I had a gift,? he said.
His interest in the unknown began some 40 years ago when he was in the Air Force and saw a UFO swoop down over a landing strip and hover at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
Later, as a civilian living in Jamestown, he joined an effort to save that city?s Palace Theater, which was reportedly haunted. ?There were tons of stories, things that would make you go creep in the night,? he said. It was there that he honed his craft as a paranormal investigator, finding historical links to the sights and sounds being reported ? a explanation for the release of energy.
Michael became aware of his special ?connection? to other dimensions in 1996 during visits to the Lily Dale Assembly, a spiritualist community in Chautauqua County. ?Once I found that I opened myself up to that, things began to happen. I moved forward,? he said.
He became a medium and healer, and has been involved in at least one exorcism, he said. His work has taken him from Philadelphia to Indianapolis.
He continues to have an interest in the Hinsdale house and to work with Clara Miller, who now lives in Oregon, and with the present occupants of the house.
While the perception is that the house is haunted, it?s more correct to say that the house sits on land that is witness to the discharge of certain energies, he said. For whatever reason, the entire Hinsdale area is subject to the manifestation of paranormal activity.
Michael, 59, works in airport operations at the Jamestown Airport. He hopes to devote more time to paranormal activities when he retires.
He will run another tour of the house on Friday, starting at 5:30 p.m. at Denny?s Hut. Following a presentation by Michael at the restaurant, participants will car pool to McMahon Road, stopping at points of interest along the way before arriving at the home. They will meet the present occupants of the house and take a walking tour of the property, stopping at places described in the book.
The cost is $5, with most of the proceeds going to the home?s current residents.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?news ... 2746&rfi=6
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