Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

Throughout elementary school, there were rumors and stories passed from one child to the next about the Rahn family and the vicious murder that happened when the family slept and the middle son went mad with fever.  This story went as so many child’s tales do, elaborated on a bit differently with each teller attempting to get the biggest scare from their captivated audiences.

Behind the school, coincidentally called Rahn Elementary, there is a dense wood that on it’s own without any story association was eerie enough to keep we youngsters at bay.  Inside this wood, if you were daring enough to trek through the brambles, underbrush and heroically risk the possibility of poison ivy, you’d find a deep foundation with a square shape so perfectly formed in the ground with weather worn stone that it’s all but impossible to misidentify it as anything but the remains of a former residence.

The story, despite all the years and different tellings, has a base core to it which runs concurrent.  When my hometown was first settled in 1853, it was a huge span of farms interconnected by a central hub for the export of goods.  The towns Mayor elect was a man by the name of William Rahn who had a family that entailed his wife, Evelyn, and his three children.  The two oldest were boys by the names of Henry and James, the daughter Mary.  With the success of Eagan as a fair leader and heavy contributor to the city coffers, he built a new house for his family.  Unfortunately, after a month of living there, the second boy, James, came down with a serious fever.  Historical records suggest that he may have contracted Typhoid or Scarlet Fever which, given the time period and lack of adequate medical protection, seems reasonable.  In the story, as I heard countless times as a child, James went mad in his fever with hallucinations and, thinking Satan had corrupted his family and turned those he loved against him, took an axe to each and every family member as they slept.

As an adult, one can virtually taste the skepticism when one considers all the various stories that resonate with this same sort of core plot.  After all, didn’t Lizzy Borden take an Axe and give her mother forty whacks?  As a child, however, it seemed very real and of course kept me away from that dreaded wood.  It’s shadow seemed to stretch unnaturally long in the afternoon sun when we left the school for those large yellow buses and their drivers waiting impatiently for children to board.

After I moved on from Elementary school to Junior High and inevitably to High School, I never really gave the wood or the story of the Rahn family much thought.  Unfortunately, I found myself entrenched in regional lore once again when I happened across a dear friend from those early years of my life.  As we talked over coffee and caught up with lives, marriages, children, employment and hobbies, I confessed that the majority of my past time was spent attempting to contact the dead and find proof that there was something more than just the solid world the majority of mankind wallowed in.  I tried to explain to her my belief, as a metaphor, that to me there’s a veil, this as tissue but so translucent that it’s all but impossible to see anything but shadows on the other side.  I went on to describe what lay beyond that veil, what I hoped to prove laid beyond that veil.

Being the ever open minded friend, she promptly reminded me of the Rahn Manor story and the wood behind our old Alma Mater.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful, she queried, if something could actually be proven about the old foundation in the woods?  Of course, bless her mischievous heart, this got my gears to grinding and I eventually approached my friends and colleagues from the local paranormal group we founded about perhaps investigating the wood.  They seemed enthusiastic about possibly finding evidence that could actually link the story to some small bit of truth.  After calling the school district and the administrative board to receive permission, we set a date and waited.  I find it’s better to get that permission that risk an arrest for trespassing.

The night arrived and we headed out into the woods armed with our thermal camera, digital display cameras and digital voice recorders on the off chance that we might catch some EVP’s (Electronic Voice Phenomenon).  Walking to the wood wasn’t an issue.  However, even after twenty years, I found that subtle chill roll up my spine which is completely uncharacteristic for me.  I go into every situation expecting to disprove rumors.  My goal as an investigator is to try and find a reasonable explanation for some strange occurrence.  Of course, when I can come up with nothing to explain why, say, that wine goblet sitting perfectly balanced on the center of a coffee table flies a good four feet across the room without breaking and nothing to move it, I’m willing to say there is something paranormal happening there.  I’m a believer…. but I need evidence.  I need that experience.

Once we breached the edge of the wood and found ourselves swallowed in the silence of the dark wood, we flipped on our flashlights and carefully began picking our way through dry, autumn brush and fallen leaves.  Dry twigs accounted for a number of clothing snags which could be a very logical explanation for those variations of the story that claim if you enter the wood in search of Rahn Manor, the closer you get, the more persistent the murder victims will be at tugging your clothing to keep you away.  One myth down, several hundred more to go.  Finally, after approximately forty to forty five minutes of edging through uncertain terrain and thick trees, we found what we were looking for.  Just as described, we found the open foundation of what could only have been a house at one point.  Stone steps carved into the right wall allowed passage into the bottom of the pit which myself and two other investigators carefully navigated while two investigators remained topside; one with the thermal camera to sweep our surroundings for signs of activity, the other with a DVD handheld camera.  Once at the bottom of the basement, we each took a corner and settled with our backs to it, peering out at one another with our digital recorders rolling.

We asked various questions and when silence prevailed for over an hour, I began to provoke, calling out for the child of legend, James.  Perhaps I went too far but whatever the cause, I felt a sharp pain on the palm of my hand which had been hanging loosely at my side while the other held the camera.  Simultaneously, I heard a startled gasp from the investigator topside to my left who held the thermal camera.  Startled, of course, by both the gasp and the sharp pain in my hand, I lifted it to examine my palm.  Flipping on my flashlight, I saw a three inch long, superficial cut which seeped blood.  Reasonably on edge, I asked my friend if he had caught anything on thermal and he promptly responded in a strained voice that he had.  Perplexed by the cut, we again began to address James, myself asking if he was the one that cut me.  In what we all felt was a curt response, two rocks about the size of large gumballs you buy for a quarter from the vending machine were hurled at me.  One struck the stone wall beside my left ear and the other caught me below the left eye, cutting my cheek.  That, was decided, was the end of our search.

After we left the wood, I found myself having a hard time sleeping.  Random rapping on my closet door seemed to jolt me from sleep’s embrace just before I would fall into dreams and twice one these startled occasions, I would catch something dark running past the open bedroom door and into the living room of the apartment I share with my longtime partner and his two cats.  I didn’t sleep much that night.

The next morning, a Saturday, thank the powers that be, I got together with the other investigators in the basement of one of their homes which we used as the base of our operations to examine the evidence we had captured.  The EVP’s were a dud.  The wind that night, while not out of control, distorted even the sounds of our own voices as it seemed to conveniently cut across the devices microphone at just the right angle to ruin everything.  Wind, however, didn’t much effect the thermal capture.  At the exact moment I jolted in surprised pain at the cut to my hand, we spotted a small figure no taller than four feet that was warmer than it’s surroundings, cooler than myself, and seemed to run quickly by my right side.

Was it James Rahn that cut me that night?  Had he made himself very clear in his displeasure regarding our presence after I had begun to provoke him?  I can’t say for sure, either way.  I do know, however, that there is something paranormal going on at Rahn Manor in that eerie wood.  Dozens of our digital camera shots showed signs of orbs but generally we discount these.  They could be a bug, a fleck of dust, or any other manner or organic element in our surroundings.

The location of the school has not been listed at the behest of the School Board and the Administrative Board as a condition for our search.  The name of the school is accurate as is the history.

Written by Cinder Evans, Copyright 2008