Thomas Paine Cottage in New Rochelle Home to Six Spirits from 1700’s, Paranormal Investigators Determine

Written By: Robert Cox

Paranormal 718, a paranormal investigations group from Queens, NY, led a late night investigation this past Saturday night into some of the mysteries surrounding The Thomas Paine Cottage Museum in New Rochelle, NY.

The Thomas Paine Cottage was Paine’s last home before he died. Paine was buried near the house but his remains were later disinterred and shipped to England.

By the time the investigation ended in the wee hours of Sunday morning, even skeptics like John Wright, the Executive Director for the cottage, were intrigued. One reporter began to have doubts about his skepticism.

Wright and his wife Kathy shared information about the property and the Deveaux family, unknown to the team from Paranormal 718, that appeared to confirm some of what the ghost-hunters experienced over the course of the evening.

The Paranormal 718 investigation was led by Vincent Sinatra and his partner, Philip Orlando. Joining them was their wives, Denise and Suzanne, along with two reporters, Robert Cox of Talk of the Sound, and his wife Maria and Zak Failla of The Daily Voice who wrote his own account of the evening here.

Sinatra had been saying all week, as preparations were made to investigation the Cottage, that the evening would be an attempt to make contact with Paine’s ghost.

He got more than he bargained for when he asked “How many spirits were in the house?”.

A voice was picked up on a specialized piece of equipment used by Paranormal 718. The response, “six”.

Other spirits appeared to be connected to the Deveaux family, loyalists to the British crown.

The property presented to Paine in 1784 by act of the New York State Legislature for his service during the Revolutionary War was a 300 acre farm. The property had been seized during the way from Frederick DeVeaux, a loyalist, who was captured during a battle in Mamaroneck, taken to White Plains, tried and banished to Nova Scotia, Canada. The DeVeaux family had owned parts of the property for three generations and family members returned to visit the farm afterthe war.

A number of different techniques were used – night vision cameras, thermal imaging cameras, heat-sensing devices and others — but the most success was had with a “spirit box”, a specialized sort of radio frequency scanner that rapidly scans short-range frequencies.

Within the first few minutes, initial contact was made using the “spirit box”.

“The spirit box is somewhat the modern day version of a ouija board'” said Sinatra. “The sprit box scans radio stations backwards, scanning though hundreds of AM radio stations in a matter of 20 seconds, so fast that a listener cannot hear a single radio station hence the constant white noise heard while it is on.”

The voices coming from the spirit box were far more clear in person than what was picked up on the recordings made by a hand-held digital audio recorder and further degraded when converted to mp3 compressed-audio format (links below).

Sinatra and Orland began to loudly ask questions, standing in what was Paine’s bedroom.

Everyone was together in the room when Sinatra and Orland asked “are you here?”, several seconds later a faint reply is heard, “here”.

EVP1 – 0421

When asked, “Is Thomas Paine was with us tonight”, a half second later a stronger reply is heard, “yes”

Spirit Box 1 – 0422

Suzanne, Phil Orlando’s wife, entered the room to say that something touched her on the arm.

Orlando asks the sprit if he was the one who touch Suzanne’s arm. The spirit replies “Oui.”

Please let me know if you get it

Spirit Box 1A – 0440

The group seemed surprised to get a response in French but from that point forward efforts were made to ask questions in English and French.

A number of efforts were undertaken but one particular night vision camera picked up several odd lights in the attic, the oldest and most original part of the Cottage.

The group moved upstairs to a crowded, dusty attic where what took place was amazing — a very slow but distinct conversation took place.

Spirit Box 2 – 0423

Sinatra asked the spirit, “are you up here right now?, spirit replies “hello”.

Spirit Box 3 – 0424

Asked for a name, the spirit replies “war”.

Spirit Box 4 – 0431

Sinatra asked the spirit, if he was one of the red coats, spirit replies emphatically about 10 seconds later, “NOT”.

Spirit Box 5 – 0432

Sinatra asked the spirit, if he wanted the group to leave the attic, spirit replies 5 seconds later “in a minute”.

Spirit Box 6 – 0433

Sinatra asked the spirit to make a sound, spirit replies “NO”, when Sinatra observes that the spirit does not have the power to do that, the spirit replies “Why?”

When Sinatra says we are going to leave and go downstairs, the spirit replies “au revoir” as simultaneously Sinatra feels something brush past him, a light touch on his neck.

Spirit Box 7 – 0435

After a break, the group went back up to the attic.

Sinatra asked the spirit for more information about himself, how old he is, the spirit replies “28”.

Spirit Box 8 – 0436

An exchange takes place, audio still pending, where the spirit communicates that he is not a redcoat and not in the militia. Asked what color uniform he wore, Sinatra lists colors “red, blue, grey…” The spirit interrupts to say “green”.

Photo 3No one is expecting that answer but it is later revealed that Frederick Deveaux fought in the Queen’s Rangers during the war, it was as a part of this unit that Deveaux was captured. The uniforms of the Queen’s Rangers were green.

The spirit communicates that it is hiding in the attic FROM the redcoats, convinced that a man he sees outside the window every day is a red coat. The spirit says the name “John” twice.

Spirit Box 9 – – 0438

John Wright, the Executive Director, does dress a redcoat during reenactments at The Cottage.

After mentioning Johns name twice, Sinatra asks the sprit if John is the person he sees outside the window, the spirit replies “yes”.

Assured by Sinatra, that John is not a red coat but does take care of the house, Sinatra asks “do you like how John takes care of the house”.

The spirit replies “mais, oui”, French for “of course”.

There was much more and still more to be discovered of what took place Saturday night. Paranormal 718 expects to have a full report available in the coming weeks.

As a second trip to the attic ended, the group said “goodbye”.

The spirit replied, “bye” and then a second voice, a young boy’s voice, said “bye-bye”.

Paranormal 718 is still processing audio from microphones placed throughout the house as well as video tape and other recordings from the evening.

“We found about twenty five pieces of evidence that we had to scratch our head over and put into paranormal,” said Sinatra.

“We were very lucky to have the sprit box go off as much as it did Saturday night,” he added.

“What is incredible about the sprit box and last night, was the clear and intelligent responses we were getting last from the same male voice,” said an excited Sinatra.

“At one point on two separate occasions last night, the sprit responded to us, skipping though 38-40 different radio stations, with the same voice in one full clear sentence,” he said. “The sprits can use the energy of the batteries in the sprit box to communicate with us. It’s basically draws the energy.”

Sinatra is confident that the spirits have no bad intent but are unaware they are dead.

When Sinatra tried to communicate to the spirit that he was dead, there was, for the first time, an extended silence on the spirit box.