Seeking Spooky Secrets Of Fort Sewall
By Kris Olson
A teenage shadow chaser is asking for permission to look for ghosts at Fort Sewall, in Marblehead, Massachusetts.
The historic marker at Fort Sewall
Is Fort Sewall haunted? Teenaged ghost hunter Nicholas Smith is not ruling it out, having previously detected sufficient evidence to request permission from the Marblehead Board of Selectmen to investigate further.
That investigation will be put on hold for now, as Smith leaves Friday for Green Mountain College in Vermont. But it may resume, fittingly enough, in October, when Smith next returns to town.
Smith first wrote to the selectmen July 24, introducing himself as the founder and director of CPI, Crypto Paranormal Investigations, “a non-profit research group which conducts scientific investigations of allegedly haunted locations.”
Smith explained in a phone interview Tuesday that his six-member team enters its investigation with a goal using science to disprove paranormal activity, something it accomplishes 95-96 percent of the time.
Smith, whose family owns a summer home on Pleasant Street, said he had been to Fort Sewall a dozen times before deciding it might be a “fun exercise” to do a basic paranormal investigation at the site. What he discovered has his interest piqued in digging a little deeper.
In addition to an electromagnetic field (EMF) detector, thermometers and motion sensors, Smith also brought an audio recorder. One frequently observed type of paranormal activity, he explained, is what is known as “electronic voice phenomenon,” or EVPs, sound that was inaudible to the person at the time the recording was made but which reveals itself upon playback of the tape.
Smith explained that he recorded at least two possible EVPs at Fort Sewall. The first occurred as he was calling out EMF readings so that they would be recorded. Smith said he can be heard calling out readings of “point-one,” “point-two” and “point-three,” all within the normal, average EMF range, he explained. When he hit “point-four” Smith said a voice can be heard on the tape asking, “What’s point-four?”
“It was pretty astonishing on our end, to get an actual response,” said Smith, who explained he was alone at the time and the fort was, for the most part, deserted.
Smith returned a couple of nights later with a more sensitive parabolic microphone and tape recorder. Using skills he said he learned by reading perhaps 100 books on the subject of paranormal investigations, Smith asked a series of questions, like “Are you British or American?” and “Were you born overseas?” He would pause after asking each of the questions.
Smith said that, when playing back the tape, a voice could be heard yelling, pretty loudly and on a couple of occasions, “Help!”
For those inclined to believe in ghosts, the cries might make sense. The fort, which is perhaps best known for providing refuge for the USS Constitution on April 3, 1814, from a pair or pursuing British frigates, still contains bunkers and underground rooms once used to detain prisoners in less than ideal conditions.
Smith, for one, believes “something is going on at Fort Sewall,” which is why he wrote to the selectmen asking for permission to do a more extensive investigation, preferably at night, with additional equipment, like night-vision cameras and monitors. Smith is also seeking access to the sealed rooms of the fort, having previously only explored the public areas.
Jackie Belf-Becker, chairwoman of the Board of Selectmen, said she and her colleagues lacked enough information to make a decision on Smith’s request at their most recent meeting Aug. 13. Especially given the fort’s historical significance, they thought it more prudent to bring Smith in for a visit to ensure that Smith’s work was a “legitimate venture,” she said.
Smith has also explored other sites in town, including Old Burial Hill, which he found to be “pretty quiet,” and Screaming Woman Beach at Lovis Cove, where, on Sept. 21, 1690, the infamous and cruel pirate Captain Ned Low and his pirates reportedly brought a woman on shore, raped her and took her jewelry. Legend has it that neighbors heard a woman’s screams on the beach but were too afraid to do anything about it. The next day they found the ravaged body of a woman with her fingers cut off and her rings stolen. People say they still hear a woman’s screams coming from the beach today on each anniversary of her death, giving the beach its name. There, too, however, Smith’s findings were unremarkable.
Smith said he has had more success at a resort hotel, where he recorded an EVP of a small child’s voice saying “no!” and at the Devil’s Den battlefield in Gettysburg, Pa., where he recorded a man yelling, “Fire!” He and his team have also explored Lizzie Borden’s home in Fall River and are still in the process of analyzing data collected in an exploration of the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia.
Smith said he and his cohorts are also hired to investigate private homes, businesses and abandoned buildings but pledge confidentiality to their clients.
Smith is aware how many are likely to perceive his avocation, noting that he downplayed it, though he did mention it, on his college applications.
He added that people’s skepticism is well placed in a day and age when it is pretty easy to doctor photographs, video or audio recordings.
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