Shock, Awe, and Peace by James Paradie - Sugar Hill, NH

Shock, Awe, and Peace
Sugar Hill Inn; Sugar Hill, NH
Written by James Paradie

Published in White Mountain Shopper on May 21st, 2010

April 17th, 2010 will most likely live in infamy with me as well as the rest of the North Eastern Paranormal Investigations(NEPI)as it was just a night of full shock, awe, and peace. It was just one of those events where in one word you can not describe to anyone what it was like. One of those events where you just say, “you had to be there.” There was just so much that happened that you would have to be there to believe it and we had eleven people there to prove what happened as well as video, audio, and picture evidence.

For those of you who are not familiar with NEPI, the group consists of: Anthony Ardolino(leader), Nancy Fortin, Phyllis Ardolino, Michelle LaFontaine, Nicole Ardolino, Keegan MacBean, Lewkis MacBean, Val Fortin, and myself as I joined the group in October of 2009. The guests who joined us tonight were Ron Kolek and Ron Kolek Jr. from New England Ghost Project, and Paul Hayes of the Littleton Record.

The investigation roughly started at about 9:30ish as we had to set up base, we all got acquainted with the guests of the evening as well as a tour of the Sugar Hill Inn for our guests. The Sugar Hill Inn is quite small, but is nice for a place in the back woods of New Hampshire. Touring the Bettie Davis room was quite unique knowing she was at one time present in this room. Was she that night? We don’t know, but Anthony went over a story while we were showing our guests of the night the tour of the Inn and he recounted a story of how he was in Bettie Davis’ room on the last investigation and started singing some of her tunes. After that, Tony said if Bettie Davis is in the room at that moment, then she has permission to poke him and sure enough he felt a poke.

But there was no poking that night. There was just…intensity. Quite honestly since writing this up I still can’t think of a word that sums up that night. Maybe once I go threw everything with yourself, the reader, you can tell me yourself.

After the tour it was time for lights out. Complete darkness inside the, at the time, quiet and inactive Inn. We split up in two groups, let’s just call one Team Anthony and the other Team Nancy. Team Anthony was: Anthony, Ron Kolek Sr. and Jr., Nicole, and Paul. Team Nancy: Nancy, Phyllis, Michelle, Val, and myself. We went upstairs as Team Anthony was downstairs.

But, before lights out even began, the spirits started to make their presence known to their new guests. While Nancy and Phyllis were upstairs they were met by a surprise. Every room in the upstairs has a fire place in it. One caught them by surprise though as they went passed one of the rooms and the fire was going full blast. But, before hand, about a half hour before that, there was no fire’s going at all. I did video tape Nancy and Phyllis talking about this and it is on the NEPI Paranormal Experience page(Look for “Fire Place Starts on It’s Own?”)

Upstairs was already given us a Goosebumps type of vibe. The rooms were different temperature wise. One room would be chilly, one would be warm, and then another would be ice cold. One room seemed to be doing all three. Nothing came about though except for a strange breeze in the hallway; no windows were open at all during the investigation.

We then went into the library were there’s been some activity in the past to do a pendulum session. A pendulum is a chain with a stone hanging from it and the purpose of it is to make contact with a spirit who is either condemned to the property or visiting. Basically what we do is we tell the spirit who we are and tell them to show us a “yes”, a “no”, and a “maybe”. The way the stone swings to either yes, no, or maybe is totally up to the spirit itself, and sometimes we don’t get anything. A lot of people may also think this a fix and that we’re swinging the pendulum ourselves, but Nancy, who always handles the pendulum, has her hand still during the whole process(you can check out a pendulum session on our Facebook page to see for yourself). We believe we got in contact with James Oakes who had died in the kitchen area back in 1800’s. Later we asked if James was the one who started the fireplace upstairs, it said no. Then we asked if he starts the stove in the kitchen, it said yes. We asked if it would stop and it turned no to all amusement and fright for Val as he’s the head cook at the Sugar Hill Inn. Towards the end we got in contact with a child. We asked if the child was in visitation at the Inn, it said yes. If he was with his mother-no. Father-yes. We then switched and got back in contact with Mr. Oakes who was still with us and asked if he had a son-yes. Was he eight? Yes. The little boy replied to yes when we asked if he was with his father and if he was eight, so we believe that this child maybe Mr. Oakes son. Very interesting and intense stuff there(it’s all on video at our Facebook group).

We then proceeded to go into the bar room. We then tried to do an EVP Session, but we all just started chatting about miscellaneous stuff which we always do anyways, because you could go hours without getting anything, but Mr. Oakes was going to keep his promise about something happening that night and he did. When we were talking, we heard a loud bang, Keegan took out his flashlight and there was one of them small, narrow, Shark vacuums on the floor. But, what’s odd, we didn’t see a vacuum and the tip was under the couch that Nancy and Phyllis was sitting on. It get’s odder though, we then purposely started chatting again about random things, because it seemed to us that we got more of a response when we weren’t giving our full attention to the spirit itself. Then, moments after, we heard ourselves talking back. Thinking that was strange I took out my flashlight and saw that my tape player which was actually still recording was playing at the same time. This got us all hyped up and excited, because it’s not a digital recorder, it’s an analog recorder. You have to put some pressure on the buttons in order to get the buttons down to do whichever task they have. Needless to say, the night was just going to get even more interesting.

Ron Kolek Sr. came downstairs, who was apart of Tony’s group, and we were going to try something called “Glass Swirling”. I really didn’t know what to expect from this as we just used an ordinary glass table with an ordinary drinking glass. I believe I have seen this on other shows and was skeptic about it, but you have to see to believe. How Glass Swirling works is that you need to envision yourself in a powerful light and give the spirit your energy to make the glass move. It took a little bit before the glass actually started to move, I tried to get the first part of it recorded but my camcorder doesn’t have a flashlight on it(I know, not great), but I ended up using Tony’s camcorder later that came out pretty good and I will try to post it on the NEPI Facebook page as soon as I can. But, the glass swirling experience was a pretty memorable one as half the time nobody could even keep their hands on the glass. Val, who is a skeptic, or was, then did it and he was amazed as was the rest of us. The glass actually kept on going to Tony for help, because Ron asked which one of us the spirit would like to help it. Sure enough, the glass kept on going to Tony and stopping. The glass would actually go so fast that not only could Nancy, Phyllis, Ron, Michelle, Nikki and Tony keep their fingers on it, but the glass was actually scrapping the table(no damages though).

After that, we got to witness the Frank’s Box. The Frank’s Box is where you use AM/FM frequencies from a radio to get in contact with a spirit. This was also mind blowing as well once we got it going. Ron would ask questions and we’d mostly get a yes or a no. Like for instance, Ron asked if the spirit wanted us to find something and we heard the word “picture.” Then, it said museum. But, the moment of that session was when the spirit said, “Anthony” clear as day. This spirit was really attached to Tony.

It was time for another break as well as saying bye for now to the great fellows from New England Ghost Project-Ron Sr. and Ron Jr. They were a pleasure to be around and if you want to learn more about NEGP go to their official website www.neghostproject.com We started packing, but we weren’t finished yet, we all wanted to do the glass swirling again, and this time we got some pretty intense results.

This time it was Nancy, Michelle, Phyllis, Val, Lewkis, and myself doing this next session. But, with no Tony in the mix we were all curious who the glass was going to go to; the lucky person was Michelle who thought we were doing this on purpose to freak her out. Val was mostly asking the questions this time around which range from what’s heaven like-is it as beautiful as Earth and sure enough the glass started going in circles. Then, he asked is there any grass, the glass stopped right on a dime. But, two fascinating parts about this session was: when the glass stopped it felt like it was spinning on an axis, spinning in place, that freaked us all out because we all felt it. Then, Phyllis-I believe-asked if there is an afterlife. The glass started making figure eights(8). Everyone started going ecstatic, because figure 8’s means eternal life. That got us all excited, but the spirit seemed like it was starting to get weak, so we then thanked it-it went into circles-and then we wished it goodnight and it stopped dead on it’s tracks.

After we said goodbye we all felt like at ease with life. Like everything was going to be okay. We felt at peace.

My Opinion: I believe that the Sugar Hill Inn definitely has some activity within it’s walls. It was an incredible experience, and it left all of us wanting more. I really hope we can do the Inn again as it was awesome.

Update: We did ... and this time it's not so peaceful. Click here to read all about it.

Until next time, this has been a NEPI Paranormal Experience. Take care.