Investigating Florida's Infamous Riddle House

wpbf.com - The Riddle house has a haunting history in West Palm Beach.

In the 1900s, it was the home for caretakers of Woodlawn Cemetery. After that, it became a funeral parlor. In the 1980s, the house was moved to Yesteryear Village, and some say its unwanted guests came with it.

Those dark stories have attracted many ghost hunters who investigate the paranormal.

"Everybody who is on the team is a skeptic," said Florida Ghost Team supervisor Chuck Aurin. "You can't do this work without being skeptical in some shape or form."

Several events unfolded inside the Riddle house overnight on a recent ghost hunting expedition.

"We're starting to gather the evidence, and hopefully once we review that evidence, we'll find something that we can chalk up to being paranormal," Aurin said.

The ghost hunters set up a camera to monitor flags across one room in the house.

"Employees say every time they try and hang a flag, it gets torn down," said Florida Ghost Team manager Gary Bussa.

That camera and three others with night vision act as surveillance that records to a DVR so the hunters can watch and analyze.

"We're going to go ahead and debunk everything we can debunk," Aurin said.

The team recalled several stories that could lead to paranormal activity.

"A maintenance worker was struck in the head by a 2-by-4 that came out of nowhere," Aurin said.

"Where you see the charred beams is where one of the employees hung himself," Bussa said of one room in the house.

The Florida Ghost Team members carried with them an electromagnetic field detector to measure changes in electricity.

"If there is a ghost manifesting, it can bring energy up and it will set off EMF detectors, give us an idea that they're trying to communicate with us," said Florida Ghost Team investigator Bob Cenkner.

Aurin said the team got strong EMF readings from the area where an employee allegedly hung himself.

The team also studied the home for electronic voice phenomena, or EVP. Those are specific recordings that aren't audible to the human ear without the proper equipment.

"We've had a door opening and closing on us," Bussa said. "In all parts of the house there has been known to be footsteps, things moving, things clinking. Some of the staff won't come into these homes at night."

They said they use a provoking technique when a possible entity might be acting elusive and a thermal imaging camera to test for areas of differing temperatures. Aurin said the camera showed them footsteps going up a ladder.

"If there was hard evidence and you could prove things beyond a shadow of a doubt, it wouldn't be paranormal, it would be normal," Aurin said.

The ghost team has reviewed all the video and audio from the Riddle house taken that night, and it is still undetermined whether the house is haunted. They said they're continuing their investigation.

All the members participate in ghost hunting in their spare time and don't charge to investigate.

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