Whispering Souls offers paranormal experiences to those with ‘an open mind’
Patty Henderson spent a good deal of her childhood at her grandparent’s house, where as a little child she sometimes played with another young girl.
“Everybody thought it was an imaginary friend,” said Henderson, who grew up in Jefferson Hills and now calls Bethel Park home. “I just assumed I was playing with an actual little girl until my grandmother saw her and said, ‘No, that’s a ghost, Patty.'”
Beginning with the apparition friend, strange things have happened throughout Henderson’s life. Before she entered kindergarten, Henderson’s grandmother introduced her to “The Exorcist” and haunted houses, and Henderson leaned into the unexplainable, always searching for mysteries and reasons why, always eager to share her experiences with others.
“I wasn’t one of these girls that liked to play with Barbie dolls, put makeup on and dress up. Me and my friends would run through the woods because I swore there were aliens,” Henderson laughed. “I was curious. I always was fascinated with stuff like that, the unknown.”
Henderson has channelled that unceasing curiosity into a successful business. Whispering Souls Paranormal Investigations offers explorations of local haunted spaces led by experienced paranormal investigators.
“We are an actual business. Some people, they hear you’re a ghost hunter and they think it’s funny,” Henderson said. “We are not experts; nobody is an expert until they die. You can’t scientifically claim what a ghost is. There’s just no way to prove it scientifically. We utilize our experiences and our equipment.”
That state-of-the-art equipment is available for use during Whispering Souls events, which are hosted throughout the year, mostly on weekends. Every paranormal investigation begins with an introduction of Whipsering Souls’s staff and the roughly 40 guests, and a history of the location. Locations include Castle Blood and the Bethel Park School House, locally, and the Westminster Hall and Burying Grounds in Baltimore.
“We like to keep it intimate. We really like to get to know our guests and hear their stories,” Henderson said.
Haunted spaces are divided into sections, and guests split into small groups that spend between 30 and 45 minutes in each section. Using either their own, sometimes homemade tools, or Whispering Souls’s equipment, attendees attempt to capture evidence of paranormal activity in the area.
That activity ranges from spikes on a K-II meter, which monitors electromagnetic energy, to electronic voice phenomena (EVP) recordings. Investigation guests are encouraged to put their phones on airplane mode so as not to accidentally give off electromagnetic energy, to shoot photos — three pictures of the same area, because you never know which frame a spirit will appear in, Henderson said. They should also thoroughly check areas with high activity for rational explanations before concluding paranormal activity has been captured.
“My investigators are there to oversee, answer any questions, help you along the way,” Henderson said.
While ghost hunting can be fun, it’s not for the faint of heart.
“We were at Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. We saw this huge shadow man coming towards us. I’m never scared when I go into locations. I don’t get freaked out. That was the only time I got freaked out. It was just this mist coming at you. It wouldn’t stop. I just sat still and I put my head down,” Henderson said.
Another time, at Rolling Hills Asylum in New York, where Henderson and her team have captured lots of paranormal activity, her adult son and a small group were exploring the third floor when a door opened itself.
“His group all saw this door open and slam. A girl said, ‘Let’s check it out.’ He said, ‘Hell, no,'” Henderson laughed.
On the asylum’s second floor, people have reported an unseen entity pushing them in a wheelchair that sits in the hallway. Supposedly, if one takes a seat in the wheelchair and yells, “Help,” that person will feel a tugging and one of the doors along the hallway will open.
“We actually caught it on video; the doors opening with one of our guests sitting in the wheelchair,” Henderson said.
Some might think it dangerous to interact so intimately with the undead, but Henderson said that in her more than 20 years as a paranormal investigator, nothing has ever followed her home. She’s never seen someone get thrown against a wall (though she can’t promise a guest’s hair won’t be pulled, she said), and believes that most of what is shown on TV is fabricated.
“I don’t ever feel in harm’s way,” she said. “I don’t believe any type of spirit will leave our event. They are wandering that area for a specific reason, and that specific reason we do not know.”
However, Henderson encourages all tour guests to trust their instincts.
“If you feel that you’re in an area that you’re not safe, or something’s telling you, I shouldn’t be here, then go. Your body will tell you. You just know, in that moment in time, that it’s not right,” she said.
People are either turned off or fascinated when they learn Henderson, who works in finance by day, owns Whispering Souls.
“People don’t believe in life after death and they’re like, you’re off your rocker. People are just like, you’re nuts. There are no ghosts. It’s all fake. Some people are very religious-based, they feel what we do is completely evil. But most of the time, people are super fascinated when I tell them I do ghost hunting. They step back; ‘That’s a thing?’ They want to know more. There’s more people that are inquisitive about the field than turn away from what we do,” Henderson said.
She’s very open to sharing her own personal experiences. They began with flashlight-lit excursions through cemeteries in high school, when she got her first recorder. There were trips into abandoned buildings and a haunting in her son’s childhood bedroom. It’s the shared experience of seeking, and experiencing, the unexplainable that fuels Whispering Souls.
“It’s like a door that kind of connects our worlds. When the doors open, they come into ours or we go into theirs. That’s kind of how we visually see the spirit world,” Henderson said. “I don’t believe that I have a gift. I’m not a psychic, I’m not an empath. I just keep an open mind to strange things that happen.”
Visit whisperingsoulsparanormal.com or follow WSPI on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/whisperingsoulsparanormal/ for a schedule of events or more information.