The sleepy little town of Henderson is the county seat of Rusk County, Texas.  The town was first formed in 1843.  According to the City of Henderson website (www.hendersontx.us), most of the buildings in the downtown area were burned during a fire in 1860.  The downtown area now is quite picturesque again, but no more so than the Opera House.  The building was built in 1885; therefore, the outside of that building is mostly original and still truly reminds one of a by-gone era when men in their best suits and women in their finest dresses and beribboned hats must have flocked to see fine plays and hear touring "songbirds" of the era.

The theatre was built by J. T. Turner, there were irregular performances there until 1918, when the building was purchased by E. M. Dotson and J. E. Norvell, who operated a general mercantile business. In 1930, the second floor was partitioned into offices. The building has also been used as an Army/Navy depot, department store, as well as physician/dental offices on the third floor over the years before it was purchased by the Henderson Civic Theatre.

ASUP was recently contacted by a member of the Board of Directors for The Henderson Civic Theatre or "Opera House". She asked us to come to investigate because since they purchased the theatre in 1989, people have reported experiencing activity in the building. She stated that approximately 3/4ths of those who have participated in a production inside the building reported some sort of experiences. They ghost is called “Daphne” because she was first seen during a production of “Blithe Spirit” which was the first play to be performed there. People report that she can be heard and felt throughout the building and frequently whispers and laughter is heard from the third floor when only a couple of people are in the building. “There is a superstition that says if Daphne shows up during or after Grand Dress, it’ll be a great show.” Supposedly, “Daphne” likes to move and hide props, tools, and other small items; later they will be located again on the opposite side of the building from where they are supposed to have been sometimes turning up mere hours before opening night!

Upon ASUP's arrival, the team made note of the possibility of ambient noise traveling through the structure to be investigated, and some safeguards were put in place to restrict such noise as was possible. The theatre itself on the first floor afforded excellent acoustics, which only added to the possible audio pollution since it is on a relatively busy downtown street. This was noted and once back in the lab, all of the H-2 recordings were filtered for those occurrences. To further limit such pollution, team members were sequestered in the outer lobby area and teams of two were dispatched toward the back and upstairs in order to limit “telegraphing.” This seems to work fairly well as it was a very cold evening, and unfortunately having the investigators outside in their cars running the motors to keep warm would only have exacerbated the problem!

After several hours of investigating with IR/Full Spectrum imaging, several video cameras, H2 360 audio recorders, numerous handheld digital recorders, digital still cameras, Kestrel Environmental Station, Sperry EMF meters, and K-II meters, two inconclusive photos were captured: one of a white light shining on the corner of a prop "casket" in the third floor loft (storage area), and the other one of two unusual looking orbs on the stage which were subjected to analysis and found not to be consistent with dust.  However, these photos were still decided to be inconclusive proof of any paranormal activity.

This leaves the subjective assessment of the team members, who reported a variety of sounds, many captured on audio, that were not easily explained, including any number of footsteps in area where there were no other team members present. As noted before, the team is always broken into into pairs, so there was always two people present, but no more -- thus the sound of footsteps in a room that was heard by both individuals, is either true paranormal activity or as noted, environmental pollution from outside the building.

Our conclusion after reviewing all the evidence collected and reading all case notes is that there could be as many as three “spirits” in this building, but while not unfriendly, they are not all that outgoing either! In one session, we had camera malfunctions. The investigator asked if there was someone there who was causing the problem and got a positive response on the K-II. She asked if they wanted her to stop taking pictures and again the response was positive. She asked if they wanted her to leave, the answer was “no” on the K-II. When asked if they objected to the investigation, again the answer was negative. They simply did not, for whatever reason want flash photography. That, it should be noted is not a “normal” response.

In all there were many Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) heard on that evening, several are on tape, but nothing that would be considered unusual in a building over 100 years old. There ended up being eight more distinct EVP's (Electronic Voice Phenomena) captured after weeding out any others that were questionable ("When in doubt, throw it out!". The EVP's were extremely low audio, sounding like whispers. All the field recordings in this building were very “light” or whispers. There were no strong recordings of assertive personalities here, which is more likely found in cases that involve women and children spirits, rather than the more dominant male. There was anecdotal reports of “feelings” in the third floor area and the control room, the stage catwalk and stage area, but lacked concrete evidence or visualization to corroborate it. Verbalizations included someone saying “hi!” in return to the question is anyone here, “Hello” when asked to speak a second time. When placing a recorder on stage, the device was put on a stool center stage and a curtain behind it moved as the investigator turned to look back at the location. These could not be found on the resulting recordings.

Characteristic in such cases, there were equipment failures due to dead batteries, when the units were charged to maximum capacity only hours earlier. One unit with an 8 hour battery cycle died in 35 minutes, other failed accordingly, which is sometimes associated with paranormal activity. A review of the Kestrel Weather instrument showed no wide variation of temperature, humidity or barometric pressure during the evenings investigation.

The ASUP uses a system of limiting factors to arrive at a conclusion concerning a haunting. This is based on what is referred to as the Fourth Hypothesis, which was created by Professor Tim Barth, Chairman of the Psychology Department at Texas Christian University (TCU), which sets forth standards to map any paranormal case.

Basically, the Fourth Hypothesis allows investigators to consider all possible causes and come to a rational decision on the final summary. It is most easily explained by a much earlier quote from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who penned in a Sherlock Holmes tale:

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

In this particular case, the possibility of cognitive or emotional status scores higher (40%) because of the history of the building, its appearance, etc. While paranormal phenomenon was scored at 20% based on the few EVPs and two photos already discussed. Based on the Barth Paranormal Guide Map, the causes for reports of a haunting here as most probably from perception over actual paranormal influences.

Therefore, it was the finding of the Association for the Study of Unexplained Phenomenon (ASUP, Inc.) that based upon our visit in March, 2009, that the premises referred to as the Henderson Opera House is possibly “haunted” in the broadest interpretation of that phrase. This is based on both the field teams findings and a K-II session held after the investigation; however there is a lack of solid evidence to support these anecdotal findings. Review of the audio recordings have multiple indications of voices, but as noted earlier, there was no way to TOTALLY eliminate outside noise, so while these recordings seem to be legitimate attempts by someone to communicate, we cannot guarantee it is not simply carry-over from another part of the building or street.

The team did take extraordinary precautions (and a good deal of time) prior to beginning the investigation, checking to see that there were no intruders on the site, who might wish to pull a prank. That being said, any voices we did hear were either emanating from the room in which they were heard, or adjacent noise pollution. After all that is said and done, we are left with a core collection of voices to consider.

There were multiple reports of feeling that team members were “being observed” during the investigation and our technical specialist spent some time looking for alternative causes for such a “feeling.” One problem that has been scientifically confirmed that can cause such feelings, paranoia, disorientation and even physical discomfort can come from abnormally high EMF in an area. It was noted that there is a box in the rear control center that was emitting higher than safe EMF, but intermittently; this is not a paranormal occurrence, it is an engineering problem, but can cause such a response. Other areas were also noted as highly susceptible to feelings of being watched. The EMF in those areas were fluctuating above average, but not dangerously so, nor was there any physical reason for the fields in those areas. This COULD be a paranormal occurrence, but there is nothing completely definitive to hang our hats on in this particular case.

Click Here to Hear the 8 EVP's.

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