Iron Island Museum - Scores 6 out of 6



Iron Island Museum in Buffalo, NY was built in 1895. It's hard to tell from photographs, but the building is constructed of brick. The year in which it was built and the location leads me to believe the basement/foundation at least is stone construction. I'm willing to give it a point for that. Originally a church, it was later used as a funeral home in the 1950s.

The episode of "Ghost Hunters" that explored this location really struck me as being one of the most ideal locations they've ever explored (along with St. Augustine and the Stanley Hotel). If you saw the episode, you probably heard the footsteps stomping upstairs in the attic where the original church's peak and windows were located. You might have heard the voices, as well as the amazing EVP including the angry old man sounding voice in the attic and the front door opening and closing itself. When I sat down for that episode what struck mew as the name of the place "Iron Island" and the reason for it. Railroad tracks. The site is located in between loads of railroad tracks zig-zagging around it. I remember thinking before TAPS started their investigation that this site was going to be active.

And it was!

I gave Iron Island this scoring (6 of 6)
1. Stone construction.
2. Older than 50 years.
3. History of death/trauma.
4. Sedimentary rock.
5. Train tracks.
6. Not far from water (less than a mile from a small lake). However, I have no way of knowing what underground springs might be in the area and in this part of the country, they should be numerous.

If you're noticing that some of the best evidentiary episodes of "Ghost Hunters" coincides with the highest scores, you're not alone. It hasn't escaped my notice either and I'm hoping eventually when I'm done gathering more information, to be able to postulate some ideas of just why these sites are more haunted. There might be times, like in the railway conditions of this site, that it has more weight on the haunted scale than just usual train tracks.

Comments

  1. I've noticed in your scoring that train tracks makes your grading. I get all the other criteria (water, rock, age of bldg, history), but I'm curious about why railroad tracks seem to affect hauntings? (I missed something somewhere about that. This is a new-to-me theory and it's VERY interesting!)

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  2. Yeah, it's been knocked around for years. I first heard about it as a kid in Fairfax. I remember a psychic that came to our house talked to my mom about the geology and the underwater springs and then she asked about train tracks. I thought that was weird. Later in life, I heard a few others mention the theory that train tracks just magically seem to be near haunted sites. I didn't think much about it until I moved west and started marking the haunted sites in my new state of AZ. I began to see things on the maps that looked interesting, like water/canals/HoHoKam waterway canals/arroyos (washes) and train tracks--again! They keep showing up. I talked to a ghost hunting friend who runs MVD Ghostchasers, Debe Branning, and she said that she and her associate, Megan, both had knocked that theory around for years. Now, I went from looking at waterways and geology to train tracks. One thing I've noticed in hunts in general is that energy seems to follow pathways like roads and hallways and train tracks are just another mechanism. I've wondered if the iron content might make them work somehow like a manmade leyline. I'd like a chance to do som dowsing on tracks and see what I come up with, but for now there's a strong correlation between haunted sites and tracks. Still, like I say, it's the chicken and the egg dilemma. Are older homes that are more likely to be haunted closer to the railways which was major transportation or do train tracks seem to create more ideal haunting places around them??? As I finish my research, I can probably come up with more theories. For now, I'm considering train tracks to be like round buildings and places near cemeteries, it's beneficial, but doesn't seem to be totally necessary. The next one I'm going to showcase is the place I grew up in and you'll see, it wasn't near tracks, but it was seriously haunted.

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  3. looking forward to the next post.

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