- [Chris] Coming up on "One Detroit," as Halloween approaches, we'll take a look back at some past ghost-hunting stories.

First, we visit The Whitney restaurant in Detroit, where employees and guests have experienced spooky encounters, and then, we go to the historical Orson Starr House in Royal Oak, which has a reputation for being among the state's most haunted places, and we'll end the show with a performance by the horror-themed punk band, the 3D Invisibles.

It's all coming up next on "One Detroit."

- [Narrator] Across our Masco family of companies, our goal is to deliver better living possibilities and make positive changes in the neighborhoods where we live, work, and do business.

Masco, a Michigan company since 1929.

- [Narrator] Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Through our giving, we are committed to meeting the needs of the communities we serve statewide to help ensure a bright and thriving future for all.

Learn more at dtefoundation.com.

- [Narrator] Nissan Foundation, and viewers like you.

(relaxed electronic music) - Can you push it just a little bit my way?

- [Chris] Coming up on a Halloween-themed episode of "One Detroit," we revisit some of the Detroit area's haunted history by visiting two historical houses that have long been said to be the sites of paranormal activity.

First, the Whitney Mansion in Detroit, which was owned by 19th century lumber baron David Whitney Jr., and today, is a popular restaurant, and then, the Orson Starr House in Royal Oak, which is the oldest existing home in that city, and is now a museum and historical site.

I learned about both places from their resident historians, then our "One Detroit" crew went in search of ghosts with paranormal investigators.

(traffic humming) - Once we start it running like this, you let it run for a second, but then we'll start asking questions, hopefully questions that make sense to them, the spirits, something that's relevant, but if anybody has a question, ask it out loud.

- Do you like that we're up here?

(loud static) - [Person] No.

(loud static) - [Chris] Well, it's something.

- [Andrea] Do you like that we're up here?

(loud static) - [Person] No.

(loud static) - [Chris] Chad and Heather Dye are paranormal investigators under the name Dye Paranormal.

They're also the official resident ghost hunters at The Whitney, the 19th century lumber baron's mansion in Detroit, which is now an iconic restaurant, and which has long been said to be haunted.

They invited "One Detroit" to participate in one of their twice-a-month public ghost tours.

- It's good being the resident investigators because we get to come back to a place that's familiar, we get to try some of the same things we've tried before, maybe with a different result, but hopefully, if there are spirits here, they get used to seeing us, they'll, you know, maybe know us, maybe that'll give them an opportunity to reach out to us.

That's our hope.

- Make them more comfortable as opposed to just walking into a random space that you've not been in before, I think that maybe this year we've gotten to a point where they're starting to engage with us more.

That was loud and clear to me.

- We take people out to the carriage house and we try to recreate some of the things we've done in the past to try and quantify, you know, what's happening out there, and like I said, we can't make things happen, we can only hope that maybe one of the guests, their vibe, their energy will cause a spirit to connect with us, and that's what we're there for, we want to connect in a respectful way to whatever spirits are here and hopefully get answers from them as to why they're here.

- [Chris] But first, I spoke to The Whitney's house historian, Yvonne Szymczak, to learn more about the building's rich history.

- So before it was Motor City, it was Lumber City, and David Whitney Jr.

was the most successful lumber baron in the state of Michigan.

The Whitney family lived in the house from 1894 when the build was completed, and it was until about 1917 when David Whitney Jr.

's wife, Sarah, had passed, by choice of the Whitney family, they wanted to give it to the Wayne County Medical Association, which they did do, so that was the next in line in terms of ownership.

(whimsical piano music) My favorite stories are the ones that come from the people that come here, and I had a gentleman on one of the tours tell me, "I know about this place in a totally different context!"

And he said, "My grandfather came here to get a physical so that he could go off to war."

- How does your job as a historian kinda interact with the myths and legends and folklore of this place, being a famously haunted building?

- It validates a lot of things, it opens up a lot of questions, it just makes things more colorful.

It brings things to life and it gives people names, you suddenly have names of people that have been here, you know, and it's not just the Whitneys, because this place was a party house, I mean, this place was wired by Thomas Edison, this place has seen a lot of notable people pass through it.

- So you're the resident historian, we're also here with the resident paranormal investigators, how do your different worlds interface?

- Our stories intertwine because the... There's so much of that history that backs up a lot of those stories that lead people to ask, "Hey, who haunts this place?"

I mean, obviously we think David Whitney Jr., but why?

he died in his bedroom.

This is something that people are really intrigued with and they often say, "I can feel that, I can feel that in this room," it gives them something to hang onto.

- We know for a fact from our research, three people have died in the house.

We don't know if anybody died during the construction of the house.

We know David Whitney Jr.

died in the house in his bedroom.

After he had passed, it's believed that Sarah, his wife, moved in her brother and parents for a short time.

Her brother, John McLaughlin died in... On... In the house, on property, and then, of course, she died after, like, an 18-month illness being bedridden.

- We are always exchanging stories and photographs and videos and EVPs and it all makes sense because as you talk about the story of the house, and the story spans from 1894 to now, that ghost storytelling culture has been such a part of it.

- The carriage house is where a lot of the paranormal activity is said to happen.

What's the history of why that would be?

What's the history of the carriage house?

- One of the youngest daughters, Catherine, did take care of orphans, and there's a connection somewhere in there having to do with the sound of children's voices.

- We have an EVP audio capture, electronic voice phenomenon, for those who don't know, of a guest asking, "Would you like me to get out of your seat?"

And I was wearing headphones, and I heard, "Yes," whispered.

Nobody else heard it because I was running my audio recorder with my headphones on, so I said, who said "Yes?"

And I'm looking at the crowd thinking somebody's pulling my leg, and they're all like, "What are you talking about?

What do you mean?"

And I hear "I said yes" underneath it.

- Can you say hello for us?

- [Chris] What are the tools that you use?

- I always tell everyone that you, yourself, are your primary tool.

What you feel in a space, the energy that you pick up, you know, did it change?

Did it shift?

Did the temperature drop?

And then, the first tool most people buy when they're investigating is a digital voice recorder, which gathers audio evidence.

We use equipment that detects electromagnetic fields, we use spirit boxes that are basically transistor radios that are broken to run through white noise so that the spirits can manipulate it.

- [Chris] The spirit box white-noise radio, locked in a Faraday cage to prevent interference from ordinary radio waves, is what my colleague Andrea Riley used to ask the spirits in the Whitney carriage house if they were happy we were there.

Both of us and our colleague, Leland Stein, all independently reported hearing a girl's voice say "No."

- Do you like that we're up here?

(loud static) - [Person] No.

- [Chris] A trick of audio and imagination, or potentially a paranormal encounter?

This electromagnetic field sensor goes off when the field around it is disturbed.

It went off when Chad was alone in the room and we were filming next door.

(loud beeping) - [Andrea] What?

- [Chris] What was that?

- That was my... (indistinct) Going off.

(footsteps tapping) If you're here with us, can you touch that again?

No, I just... I reached for the the candle to put it in the bag.

(loud beeping) There it is.

Thank you for touching that again.

If you get closer to it, all the lights will come on.

(loud beeping) - Hey.

- [Chad] It's going off again.

- [Chris] Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Was the sensor set off by a spirit trying to communicate?

That will remain a mystery.

Perhaps "One Detroit's" contribution to The Whitney's tradition of ghost stories and folklore, which is so interwoven with the building's rich history.

- If you're looking for an authentic experience and stories and history, go on a paranormal investigation, and once you've been on a paranormal investigation and you've enthralled yourself in that environment, then you can truly say that you've been a part of something that isn't manufactured and isn't commercialized.

We are authentic and genuine, and we want that to be your experience.

(traffic humming) - Did you want me to leave, or are you okay with me staying here?

Oh, it switched.

- [Person] Yep.

Sure did.

- [Andrea] Oh, wow.

- [Person] Well, if you want her to stay in and you want me to help keep the guys out, hit the bell for us, go touch it, go ding it.

Ding it.

(laughs) - Can you make a noise for us?

(bell ringing) Thank you.

- [Person] Three seconds.

- [Person] Electromagnetic.

- [Andrea] Thank you so much.

- [Chris] The Orson Starr House, a historic 19th century farmhouse preserved in period-accurate style as a museum, much like something you would expect at Greenfield Village, but hidden in plain sight along Main Street in Royal Oak, just south of 13 Mile.

It is also famously said to be haunted.

- It had a history or a reputation through the city workers that it was haunted, and that's kind of always been that way, so when I came in, I was very skeptical, so I didn't really believe it until something happened to me.

- [Chris] I stopped by the Starr House to learn about its history from Royal Oak Historical Commission chair Alexandra Kerrigan before our "One Detroit" team of myself, Andrea Riley, and Nate Turner joined a paranormal investigation of the house with its resident ghost hunters John Yost and David Boyer of Flyer Paranormal.

- You have a family that came in and was pioneering, essentially, setting the economy for this area.

13 Mile Road was Starr Road, we have Starr Presbyterian, so they were... You could tell that they had an impact on the area, they were quite a prominent family.

Orson Starr, him and his wife Rhoda came from upper state New York in 1831, and they were looking for land and to continue manufacturing cowbells.

This area is perfect for manufacturing cowbells, the soil is just the right mixture of clay and sand.

Five generations in all lived here, and then, the family line decided to sell it, and the city took over and made it into a museum.

- [Chris] Alexandra leads the open house tours of the Orson Starr House that happen one Sunday a month from fall through spring.

She also joins Flyer Paranormal on their once-a-month ghost tours.

- She will give our groups the... Basically a history lesson on the Orson Starr House, and then, once that's over, we start our investigation.

- So what do we know as far as the historical record goes about who died here?

Who these ghosts are thought to be?

- Right, so the family had 10 children in all, and only five minute to adulthood, so you had five children passing away, like I said, three in one week, Mr.

Starr dying, and it was presumably in this house, there's not a lot of record as to why or how, and for a time period, there was a descendant who had a husband who was a funeral director, so there was also funerals being held here.

- What was that first experience that made you think the stories of this house being haunted might be real?

- Well, I was here cleaning one day, it was in April, and April's a big month for the house because it's a lot... When a lot of the family members had passed away.

Beautiful sunny day, you wouldn't expect, you know, to hear anything on a, you know, bright sunny day, and I was in the master bedroom cleaning and I heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and at that point I thought, well, you know, maybe it's just somebody on the front porch and I'm hearing an echo, so I go to the front door, there was nobody outside, there was nobody around the house, and I hear footsteps upstairs in the children's room walking across, there was nobody in here, and so I'm like, "Okay," the first thing that everyone had described is their experience in the house... (indistinct) But for me were... It was the footsteps.

- Do things like that happen often when you're here?

- I have heard footsteps since then, I've had the doors be left open that I know I've locked, I've had my hair touched in one of the rooms, I could feel someone touching it.

- [Chris] John and David from Flyer Paranormal have had their share of equally spooky experiences.

- I'm in the kitchen at the counter and I notice something come to the kitchen door, there was a figure that came to the kitchen door, and I thought it was my wife, and I turn around and I look and there's nothing there.

I go back to, you know, doing what I'm doing on the computer and next thing you know, it comes back, so I see it out of the corner of my eye and I turn real slow, and this time, this shadow figure stayed in my eyesight a little bit longer, and then, it disappeared, and I'm shaking my head and go back to doing what I'm doing, here it comes a third time, on our way home that night, me, David, my wife, I said, "Hey, I gotta tell you guys about an experience," and my wife cut me off and she said, "No, I have to tell you what happened," she said, "John, when you were in the kitchen, someone kept walking up to the kitchen door," and she said that she seen someone walk up to the doorway to the kitchen and watch what I was doing three separate times, and that was our very first night here.

- Yep, the very first night.

- So when you do a tour here, what do you do?

- I try to interact with spirits before we start any... Using any kind of devices, I want to try to get interaction as far as feeling what kind of energy is in the room.

Are you coming to see what we're doing in here?

- [David] Well, maybe find a good spot.

- You can join us.

- [John] Feel free.

- Yeah, come say hi.

- [John] Come join our circle.

- We'll do, like, a baseline K2 reading or EMF reading, and we'll set up a REM pod.

- [Chris] EMF, electromagnetic field, which spirits are said to give off and which the devices used in this investigation measure in different ways.

- Get it off green.

Help me out here.

We'll have that... We'll all sit around in a circle, maybe say our names, you know, respect the spirits and have them, you know, get to know us a little bit better and go from there.

- We've got new friends.

Yep.

We've got new friends here.

And we ask the spirit for communication, if there's any way that you can let us know that you're here, give us an indication, give us a sign and, you know, questions and basically games, "Can you play with us?

Is there anything that you can do for us?"

And, you know, we get hits on our devices and whatnot.

- Can you push it just a little bit my way?

- [Chris] We got quite a bit of device activity in the children's bedroom.

- I'd really like the ball back.

- [Chris] Where the legends of the house say that the spirits of the Starr family children who died on the property might reside.

- [John] Yeah!

That's what I'm talking about.

- Can whoever's in here say their name?

- [Computer] Connected to... (indistinct) (bell ringing) - What did you just ask?

- The name.

- One of them is Arissa.

Ethan.

Lidia.

- Is Arissa here?

(faint speaking) Is Ethan here?

- [David] Hey, John, I'm about to run that... (indistinct) For a minute.

- [John] Yeah, go ahead.

- [David] To get a little sense of what that sounds like.

(bell ringing) - [Chris] Whoa, was that...?

- Was that Ethan?

Ethan, if you're there, make the bell go off again, or you can say something to our friends out there.

- Yeah, say something to this device, make it go off.

(bell ringing) Oh, that was quick.

- [Andrea] Hi, Ethan!

- Knowing the history that we know, we will go into questions about Orson Starr, Rhoda, some of the kids' names, and we will try to get, you know, verification using our devices, "If this is so-and-so, can you do this?"

And we've gotten names, multiple names of the kids here in the house, and that's just by asking, "Who's here with us?"

We'll get those names repeated, kind of incorporating the history into our questions and how we go about, you know, getting those answers.

- [Chris] John tried communicating with Rhoda Gibbs Starr in her bedroom.

After he felt a cold spot that he found unsettling, he asked if we were unwelcome in her personal space.

- We'd definitely respect your wishes if you let us know somehow that you wanted us out, whether by the bell or... Okay, there's the lights.

Out.

- [David] See you later, thanks for the communication.

- [Chris] John later went back into Rhoda's bedroom to try communicating again using a different method.

- We did an experiment called the Estes Method, and it's a sensory deprivation experiment where you use noise cancellation headphones, an eye mask, and you listen to the spirit box.

- [Chris] The results were pretty spooky.

- "I'm trying to tell you.

I'm telling you.

Kids."

- They should be in bed by now, don't you think?

- Yeah, they should be asleep.

- Are they upset...?

Are you upset because we're keeping the kids awake?

- "Yeah."

- They said "Yeah."

(laughs) (Chris groaning in dismay) We're sorry.

Is that you, Rhoda, that's trying to communicate with us?

- "In the morning."

- Are you wanting to go to sleep?

So it feels like someone's putting their arm around my neck.

Around the back on my neck.

Is someone in here right now?

- [People] No.

- Huh?

- [People] No!

- I can't hear you, touch me if you're in here.

- No!

- Okay.

- [David] "Okay," what?

- All right.

All right.

Yep.

Done.

(Chris exclaiming in shock) - [Chris] We took that as our cue to wrap things up for the night.

We can't offer an explanation, but we can say that it was a fascinating, extremely memorable night where ghostly local legend intersected with very real local history in a way that rewarded curiosity about both subjects.

- We get a lot of different folks, different backgrounds, different beliefs, and you can tell that when someone comes in with, you know, excitement, and they're ready to figure out what the heck's going on on the other side, we tend to see more activity.

(indistinct) - [Chris] That'll do it for this week's "One Detroit," thanks for watching.

We leave you now with a performance by Detroit's horror-themed punk band, the 3D Invisibles, at the Cadieux Cafe.

- Wait, this just in, it's been established that the unburied dead are coming back to life and seeking human victims!

(upbeat rock music) ♪ A swarm of zombies are pounding on my door ♪ ♪ By the morning, there'll be 100 more ♪ ♪ Board up the windows, board up the door ♪ ♪ We're surrounded ♪ They're coming through the floor ♪ ♪ Stab them with a knife, they come back to life ♪ ♪ Shoot 'em full of lead 'til they're blood runs red ♪ ♪ They won't stay dead ♪ They won't stay dead ♪ They won't stay dead (laughs) ♪ ♪ Acting on instinct, they just want to eat ♪ ♪ Brain-dead monsters hungry for meat ♪ ♪ Beat 'em, I'll burn 'em ♪ Get a torch or a club ♪ Yeah, they're dead ♪ They're all messed up ♪ Stab them with a knife, they come back to life ♪ ♪ Shoot 'em full of lead 'til they're blood runs red ♪ ♪ They won't stay dead ♪ They won't stay dead ♪ They won't stay dead (laughs) ♪ (upbeat rock music) (upbeat rock music continues) (upbeat rock music continues) ♪ Reanimated corpses rising from the grave ♪ ♪ Tender human flesh and guts are what they crave ♪ ♪ They're numbers are growing ♪ They're legs swell ♪ The dead walk the earth when there's no room in Hell ♪ ♪ Stab them with a knife, they come back to life ♪ ♪ Shoot 'em full of lead 'til they're blood runs red ♪ ♪ They won't stay dead ♪ They won't stay dead ♪ They won't stay dead (laughs) ♪ ♪ They won't stay dead (people cheering) - [Chris] Head to the "One Detroit" website for all the stories we're working on.

Follow us on social media, and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

- [Narrator] Across our Masco family of companies, our goal is to deliver better living possibilities and make positive changes in the neighborhoods where we live, work, and do business.

Masco, a Michigan company since 1929.

- [Narrator] Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Through our giving, we are committed to meeting the needs of the communities we serve statewide to help ensure a bright and thriving future for all.

Learn more at dtefoundation.com.

- [Narrator] Nissan Foundation, and viewers like you.

(relaxed electronic music) (relaxed electronic music continues) (relaxed electronic music continues) (relaxed piano music)