FEATHERSTONE HOUSE
Location: The old Featherstone house is located in a residential area of San Diego, California; the current owners do not want any visitors.
Description of Place: The Featherstone house is a two-story modern Spanish stucco two-bedroom residence with a modern kitchen and enclosed back yard.
Ghostly Manifestations: On October 11, 2006, the body of day-trader Michah Amadeus Sloat was discovered in a drainage canal near San Diego, California. The police immediately turned their attention upon his living partner, Kathryn Alexis Featherstone, a college student who had recently gone missing as well. In their investigation of the case, they visited the home which Sloat and Featherstone and discovered about three weeks of video footage inside the house from September 26, 2006 up to October 8, 2006, the day Micah is believed to have been murdered. Apparently, he believed that the Spanish stucco home he shared with Featherstone was possibly haunted. The police scrutinized the tapes for clues and then turned them over to psychologist Professor L. A. Fredericks to study and give his impression of the alleged paranormal activity in the footage. However, someone anonymously leaked the tapes to the paranormal community and launched one of the most unusual paranormal cases in the last ten years. Copies have been floating around of the original material through a few paranormal societies and it is only through Mike Reynolds of the Hollywood Paranormal Society that the CGS is able to analyze the footage. This is the first time the CGS has been able to document a haunting solely by video footage without having visited the location.
The video is amateur footage taped by Micah Sloat to document the alleged hauntings in the home he shared with Katy Featherstone. Among the activity they experienced was strange banging and scratching noises, footsteps at night, flickering lights, water faucets being turned on and incoherent whispering. Micah's choice to tape the activity is a pure example of what is becoming a video-dominated/voyeuristic generation. Katy treats his decision to tape the activity with disdain. In fact, there are several moments where she orders Micah to stop filming. She blames the haunting on activity she experienced when she was eight-years old and saw a shadowy presence, something she believes has been following her since. This belief that people have paranormal beings following them is familiar; the Batzel family of Virginia believed they were followed by ghosts through all seven of their homes and young Heidi Wyrick of Ellerslie, Georgia herself was believed to attract the spirits of the deceased. It would seem to suggest from the start that Katy Featherstone possibly had psychic potential and was experiencing something akin to a poltergeist, a phenomenon that involves uncontrolled psychic energy that can be confused for a haunting..
The footage begins on September 18, 2006 when Micah receives his camera equipment. The first signs of activity caught on video are attributed to the ice-maker of their refrigerator, but later on, Micah mounts the camera on a base shooting out the door of their bedroom with a view of the room, their staircase and far bedroom. Later that night at eight minutes after 2am, one can hear humming and thumping in the house and a distant tinkle from somewhere in the house. The following morning, the sound is explained as Katy discovers her keys on the floor just under the counter where she recalls leaving them.
The footage on September 19, 2006 features the arrival of Dr. Fredericks to the house. Called to examine the possibility for a haunting or if the occurrences have more grounded explanations, he is treated by Micah acting irreverent and flippant, quite unusual for a home-owner wanting a solution for whatever is happening in his home. Katy responds more appropriate and reveals some of her earlier experiences when she was younger. Fredericks warns them the presence could be negative and refers them to Los Angeles demonologist Dr. Johann Augustus. Eager to rid himself of the presence in the house, Micah asks about using a Ouija board to determinate what the presence wants to placate it, but Fredericks shrewdly warns him against doing so. Using a Ouija board will both encourage and excite paranormal activity. Fredericks knows this, but Micah wants a quick solution. That night at six minutes after 2AM, Micah's nightly taping picks up humming, creaking and rattling in the house and their bedroom door moves a bit. Rumbling noise sounds like it could be thunder outside the house. The other noises could merely be the house settling. It is well know that in cold temperatures that wood can expand as much as a sixteenth of an inch and cause noises throughout normal structures. The moving door could be their AC kicking on.
There is another break in activity. The allowed footage jumps ahead to September 22, and it has to be guessed nothing of note occurred in the three days until Micah and Katy are startled awake late one night by a slamming door downstairs in the house. With Katy handling the camera, Micah investigates but finds nothing amiss in the house. When he mentions the possibility of using the Ouija to find out what the ghost wants, Katy warns him against trying it.
The footage jumps ahead for eight days again to the night of September 30, 2006. At 3:15AM, Katy wakes and listens to what seems to be ambient noises off and on for about a minute - noises which culminate with a loud thud from downstairs. Micah and Katy investigate the noise and notice their chandelier swaying mildly, but this could just be from their movement through the house. They discover nothing out of the ordinary, but they get more ambient noises for another ten minutes. The humming noises on tape could easily be Micah's camera, but he tries to talk to the presence to try and get a response. When he mentions using the Ouija board again, Katy can be heard grumbling. Her patience with the activity as well as with Micah seems to be thinning.
Jump ahead three days to the morning of October 2, 2006, and Micah's camera catches Katy waking and sleepwalking through the house. Sleepwalking is a psychological condition and is not a paranormal activity; it can be caused by stress and reaction to sleep-inducing medication. When Katy wakes on camera, she's in a sleep-induced trance and stands over Micah unerringly for two hours before wandering out of the house. Micah wakes and finds her outside in a swinging chair. When he proceeds inside to get her some blankets, he tapes a loud thump upstairs and the television on by itself. Katy also appears suddenly behind Micah, but when she watches this footage in the morning, she has no memory of it.
Despite the warnings given him, Micah irresponsibly appears with a Ouija board the following day, and Katy catches him with it. She orders him to get rid of it before he can have a chance to do anything with it and he leaves it untouched in the living room with the camera focused on it. In what has to be one of the most hotly debated incidents in the Sloat footage is the seeming manipulation of the planchette and an odd flame on the marble board. Before this, there is a light breeze which moves the curtains and plants, but the activity on the unattended board is the first instance of possible fakery. There is no recorded incident of a Ouija board ever being manipulated unattended in paranormal research, and the fact that Micah centers his camera on it to get the footage has elicited the opinion that Micah could have been faking the hauntings. Another indication of this is an obvious tape jump between the planchette resting on the floor and then ending up in Micah's hand as if he did not want himself being taped undoing his "special effects." Consequently, Katy alienates him for a short time for bringing the Ouija into their house before quickly dropping her grudge by the following morning.
The following night, Micah uses baking powder on the upstairs landing to try and catch evidence of the presence. By now, Katy seems indifferent to his efforts to catch even more evidence of their haunting. At 3:15AM the following morning. their nightly camera vigil tapes a rumbling sound in the house and the sound of footsteps. Micah and Katy wake to discover powdery footsteps that enter their room but do not go out. They're traced to a hall closet with attic access, and after Katy notices the door ajar, Micah goes up to investigate, returning with a photograph Katy believed lost at another house. This moment is like a bad horror movie plot point and says more of a possible hoax directed at Katy than a serious paranormal incident, also there is no way to tell just when the footsteps appear in the bedroom as the prints appear digitally inserted into the video. It's believed the prints were added to the floor before taping and masked to be revealed in the footage afterward.
For much of the footage. the activity seems light, but after the Ouija board is introduced, activity becomes more agitated and embellished. At 3:53AM the morning of October 4, 2006, the camera vigil tapes the sounds of pounding coming up the stairs, the light comes on in the the upstairs hall closet and the bedroom door slams shut. When Micah pulls it open, the closet light is off as he and Katy search the house, but as they are downstairs, the door slams shut again and this time, the pounding and rumbling is in their bedroom as they are downstairs, but instead of leaving the camera upstairs of this footage, Micah has the camera so there's never footage of what is causing the noise.
By October 5, 1996, Katie is lethargic from the sleepless night. During the day, Micah videotapes a loud thud from upstairs and when they go to investigate, they notice a framed photo has fallen and shattered on the floor. Kathy notices an odd scratch from the glass across Micah's image suggesting the presence is hostile to his presence in the house. Katy also feels breathing on her. When Dr. Fredericks arrives that night to extend his help once again, he only appears just for a moment to leave Katy and Micah as defenseless as before. His behavior seems complacent; meanwhile, Katy is sinking into depression.
On October 6, 2006, the sound of humming in the footage turns into faint scratching noises. The sheet on the bed moves, and at four minutes after 3AM, the light in the far closet goes on and off. Katie wakes to describe the breathing sound again as the appearance of a shadow passes over her door.
By October 7, Katy is paranoid and short-tempered. She and Micah are fighting as he tries to help, and she has a mental breakdown on the landing. That night at 4:31AM, the shadow enters the room again and Katy is quite literally taped being dragged from her bed and out of the room as the bedroom slams shut. This is the only phenomenon besides the noises that occurs right on tape and can be analyzed. There is no sign of anything dragging Katy, but Micah pursues after her and returns her to the bedroom. Instead of leaving the house that night, Micah makes the plans to get out the following morning. By daylight, Katy finds red and pink bite marks on her back. Sick and lethargic, she confines herself to bed and refuses to leave when Micah comes after her. She seems to have made a realization about the haunting, but what that is is unrevealed.
That night at 1:27AM, Katy has a second sleepwalking episode. Once again, she enters a sleep-induced trance and stands unerringly over Micah for almost two hours before wandering out of the room and going downstairs. When she starts screaming, it's the only incident in Micah's non-stop taping that he doesn't grab the camera to tape what he finds. What follows occurs off camera on the first floor beyond camera range, but he can be heard screaming himself briefly before a loud thud ends his voice. This is believed when Katy took his life. What happens next is unexplained, but a vague shape knocks over the camera and when Katy appears over it, she has Micah's blood on her.
There are numerous questions with the footage. Was Katy causing the poltergeist activity which occurred, and was Micah perpetuating the haunting for reasons of his own? Was the house even haunted? The only person who might have these answers is currently wanted by the police for questioning.
History: The house was built in 2005 in a sub-division of San Diego, California. The new owners have not reported ay activity.
Identity of Ghosts: It's believed Katie was causing the activity.
Source/Comments: Paranormal Activity (2006) - Activity based entirely on the movie