An Unusual Storm
The weather over Staten Island on the night of August 3rd, 2019, was unusual to say the least. My wife and I first noticed it as we drove home from a party. Isolated flashes of lighting, pinkish-orange in color, with no thunder. The lightning appeared at first to be localized behind a single cloud, not lighting up the entire sky. But there was no lightning bolt to speak of. The flickering seemed a bit too frequent. We joked that it was possibly a UFO, due to the odd color and localized nature of the light. We decided that once we got home, we’d sit in our yard and watch it. There was no rain, and the clouds weren’t even that thick, as we were able to see stars. Just a fun, late-summer lightning show, and we watched it for about an hour as the phenomenon moved off towards New York City proper, hovering over Brooklyn and Manhattan before fading away.
Just a few miles east of, the storm was also being noticed by a woman named Rose. Camping at Fort Wadsworth for the night with her family and friends, Rose decided to break away from her group and film the lightning. The Fort, located at the foot of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, offered a beautiful view of the sky and the light show that mother nature was providing. Rose filmed a brief video of the lightning, and went back to her friends.
A Chilling Voice
The next day, when Rose was watching her video again, she noticed something unusual. Starting at the 23-second mark, there was a voice she could not account for. Rose posted the video on her Facebook page, and got over one hundred comments. A mutual friend of ours suggested she contact me. As soon as I watched the video, I knew that it was very different than most of the submissions we get. I had to know more, and before I could reach out to her, Rose had emailed me. We emailed back and forth a bit, and we decided to meet at Fort Wadsworth the following Saturday to talk more about what she caught, and for me to get more of the backstory. I won’t say here just yet what people think they hear. But give it a listen, and I’ll talk about it more below. As with all EVPs, this is best experienced with headphones. But it’s also completely audible with just speakers.
A Closer Look
I met Rose at Fort Wadsworth on August 10th, a week after she caught her EVP, and her 13-year old son and his friend, who were also there at the campout on August 3rd, came along as well. Rose showed me the exact spot where she captured the voice. She wasn’t far from the rest of her friends, maybe 75 feet from everyone else. But Rose was alone, on a wooden deck on the top of a small hill, overlooking the bay.
During the video, you can occasionally hear other people in their group, far in the background, having a good time. But the voice that Rose captured sounded like it was close to her phone while she was recording, practically a whisper directly into her phone, and Rose states that nobody came out on the deck with her. The deck is made from wood so understandably it’s a tad bit creaky, and I think she would have known if someone else was there. I checked under the deck as well, and it would have been hard for anyone to have snuck down below her to try to scare her.
Even though it was nighttime, being on a military base, across from Brooklyn, underneath the Verrazano Bridge, there still would have been plenty of light. She would have seen another person coming near her without much of a problem. So I was fairly satisfied that this wasn’t another person, either from her group or just someone else visiting the fort.
Always Trust Your Instincts
But Rose mentioned something else about that night that I found interesting. She said for most of the night, especially during the time of the lightning storm, she had a very creepy feeling, like something was watching her, and didn’t want her there. Now, the fort itself has been in existence in some shape or form since before the Revolutionary War. People have reported seeing ghosts there on the grounds, and our group has even helped to host Halloween events at Fort Wadsworth. So a paranormal experience in and of itself isn’t surprising to me.
But Rose didn’t see a ghost, she had more of a feeling, like she was in the deep woods, and not a feeling people typically would feel while they were essentially on the outskirts of the biggest city in the world. People all around, cars going over the bridge, boats passing by in the harbor, and yet Rose felt a feeling that most people report when they are alone, isolated, say in a spooky and deserted house, or deep in the woods far from civilization. Situations like that.
So what does the voice say? I hear two things. At first, it sounds like a breath, or a mumbled “here,” followed by a clearer “down here.” Other people have said it sounds like “come here.” Again, as with most EVPs, it can be open to some interpretation. But most people can hear the “here” part at least.
When we were parting ways, Rose’s son asked me if I thought the voice was that of a ghost. As with anything we capture or come across, I’m always reluctant to say for sure this was definitively a ghost, or anything paranormal for that matter. But having been at the location, knowing that nobody was within 75 feet of her at the time she made this recording, I can only repeat what I told Rose and her son: I can’t explain it.
What do you hear?
