The Wainwright House Recordings

In the autumn of 2023, I received a call from a family in a town no one has ever heard of, a place called Ashgrove, nestled in the rolling hills of northern Pennsylvania. The Wainwrights—Ethan, a lanky engineer with tired eyes; his wife, Sarah, an artist who painted landscapes in their drafty Victorian; and their three kids, 12-year-old Max, 9-year-old Lily, and 6-year-old Samuel, who had autism—had moved into a house that had stood since 1874, a sprawling farmhouse with a steep pitched roof and a wraparound porch, but now sat surrounded by newer, smaller homes. They were normal folks, save for a pet rat named Nibbles, and they were scared.

From the first week, things were off. Sarah felt eyes on her back as she worked in the sunroom, the hairs on her neck pricking like needles. Max heard his name whispered from the hallway outside his bedroom, always at the edge of sleep. But the worst was Samuel. He didn’t speak much, but he communicated in other ways—through drawings, through humming. He would sometimes stop in the middle of playing and stare at a corner, his little face slack. Once, he pointed at a blank wall and said, ‘He’s sad.’ When they asked who, he just repeated, ‘He’s sad.’ They thought it was imaginary, but as the weeks went on, Samuel became more agitated, especially near the basement door.

The Wainwrights asked me to conduct an EVP session, as I had a reputation for capturing things others missed. I set up my equipment in the living room, a space with high ceilings and a bay window that overlooked a dying oak. I placed a digital recorder on a coffee table, its red light blinking like a patient heartbeat. Sarah sat on a floral sofa, her hands folded tight, while Max sat cross-legged on the floor, a notebook in his lap. Ethan hovered by the doorway, arms crossed. I explained my methods: I would ask questions, leave gaps, and later analyze the audio for anything anomalous.

I began with simple questions: ‘Is there someone here with us? What is your name? Are you trying to communicate?’ The room was silent, save for the ticking of a grandfather clock. Then, a low creak from the floorboards above—but that was expected in an old house. For the first fifteen minutes, nothing. I decided to change tactics. I asked, ‘Is there something you want the family to know? Something about the house?’ I let the recorder run for a full minute of silence. When I played it back on my laptop, a faint, garbled voice emerged, as if from underwater: ‘Get out.’ I felt a chill. Sarah’s eyes widened. Max leaned in. Ethan’s jaw tightened.

We did a second session in the basement, a stone-walled cellar with a dirt floor and a musty smell. I had set up a camera on a tripod, its night vision casting a green glow. In the corner, there was an old coal chute, boarded up. As I asked more questions, my recorder picked up a series of knocks—three sharp raps, then a pause, then two. I asked, ‘Are you doing that?’ A single knock. My heart raced. I asked, ‘What do you want?’ A long silence, then a whisper that my ear barely caught, but the recorder captured clearly: ‘Out.’ Sarah gasped. Samuel, who had been sitting on a crate, suddenly stood and pointed at a dark corner. ‘He’s there,’ he said, in a flat, unnerving tone. I asked, ‘Who is there, Samuel?’ He replied, ‘The man in the tall hat.’ No one had told him about the old photograph we’d found in the attic earlier—a sepia portrait of a stern man in a stovepipe hat, standing in front of this very house.

We retreated to the kitchen, shaken. I had brought a spirit box, and I decided to try it despite the interference. I set it to sweep frequencies rapidly, and as I asked, ‘What is your name?’ a voice broke through the static: ‘Wainwright.’ Ethan’s face went pale. He said, ‘That’s my grandfather’s name, but he was never here. He lived in Ohio.’ But the voice was unmistakable. It seemed to know them.

Over the next week, I analyzed the recordings. There were dozens of EVPs, each one distinct. One said: ‘The boy sees me.’ Another: ‘Leave the child.’ The most chilling was a series of soft humming, identical to the tune Samuel hummed when he was nervous. I returned to the house for a final session, this time alone, as the family had gone to stay with relatives. I wanted to try a different approach—using a pendulum and more open-ended questions. As I sat in the living room, I asked, ‘Why are you here?’ The recorder crackled. I played it back: ‘I was forgotten.’ I asked, ‘Forgotten by whom?’ A long pause, then a whisper so faint I had to enhance the audio: ‘By the living.’

I never edited or sensationalized my EVPs; I took them at face value. But the more I listened, the more I realized the voice was not angry—it was mournful. It was a man who had died in this house, likely in the basement, and whose remains had been sealed in a wall or buried in the yard. His name, as it turned out, was Elias Thorne, and he had been a 19th-century coachman who had lived here when the house was a farm. He had no family, no one to remember him, and his spirit had lingered, desperate to be acknowledged. The Wainwrights’ fear was born of misunderstanding—he wasn’t trying to scare them; he was trying to get their attention.

In the end, I helped them perform a simple ritual: we placed a photograph of Elias Thorne in a place of honor, next to the family photos on the mantel, and I read a short eulogy, recognizing his life and his death. The activity subsided. The whispering ceased. Sarah stopped feeling watched. Max slept soundly. And Samuel, for the first time in months, smiled at the corner where he’d seen the man. He said, ‘He’s happy now.’

But I kept one recording, the one I never played for them, because it wasn’t for them. In the final session, after I’d acknowledged Elias, I asked, ‘Is there anything else?’ The voice that answered was not Elias. It was a child’s voice, high and thin, and it said: ‘Now you know. But there are more.’ I never went back to Ashgrove. I put the recording in a steel box and buried it in my backyard. I don’t want to know what else is out there, waiting to be forgotten.