A team of paranormal detectives conducted a daring investigation of an old building in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where a caretaker found the skeleton of a 15-year-old girl in the 1990s.
Since its construction in 1884, the building at 312 W. 17th St. has been the home of the Knights of Pythias, a secret fraternal society that has been active since the 1870s.
Although membership in the obscure community has declined, it still exists today and has around 50 loyal members.
In the 1990s, a caretaker named Mike was cleaning the stage area of the Knights of Pythias meeting space and discovered that a piece of the floor had come loose.
The caretaker knelt down to investigate the matter, assuming that the old floor only needed a little repair. But what he found surprised him.
In the dusty old building where the secret society met, in the heart of their meeting room, there was a trap door that led under the stage.
Way Out West Paranormal was founded by Aaron BlackBurn and his wife, Gina.
Paranormal investigators examined a building in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where the secret fraternity The Knights of Pythias is based.
In the 1990s, the skeleton of a 15-year-old girl was found in a trapdoor leading under the stage.
The caretaker investigated the space. He found something that made his blood run cold. There was an old coffin covered in dust. And there was something inside him.
Later, members of the Knights of Pythias arrived and opened the coffin. Inside, they found a skeleton, which forensics later determined belonged to a 15-year-old girl.
She had been dead for about 50 years, quietly rotting in the coffin under the trapdoor.
No one knew who the girl could have been, not even the most senior member of the Knights of Pythias. A look at missing persons reports from the time the girl reportedly disappeared turned up nothing.
It is a macabre and creepy story, which acts as a magnet for paranormal investigators.
In 2010, the Wyoming Paranormal Investigations Team inspected the building and claimed to have taken a photograph of a shadowy apparition lurking at the top of the stairs.
And in late March, Way Out West Paranormal, a team of paranormal investigators founded by Arron BlackBurn and his wife, Gina, visited the haunted building.
Way Out West posted a video of their investigation, in which they can be seen exploring the basement of the building, which is turned into a haunted house each year to raise money for scholarships in the community.
Paranormal detectives hoped to discover the name of the dead girl, whose identity remains a mystery.
When the skeleton was discovered, forensic experts determined that it had been languishing under the stage for 50 years.
The Way Out West Paranormal team was armed with all kinds of technology to help them communicate with spirits.
In the video, which was recorded with a night vision camera, members of Way Out West Paranormal could be seen standing in the dark, each person operating a special device to try to make contact with the spirits.
The basement was filled with fake tombstones, tattered sheets, and plastic skeletons—remnants of the haunted house.
But one item in the basement was genuine: the coffin containing the 15-year-old girl’s skeleton.
BlackBurn, who has spent wedding anniversaries ghost hunting with his wife, said Cowboy State Daily that the area where the coffin is kept in the basement is occasionally a hotspot for paranormal activity.
In the video, researchers observed an iPad measuring supernatural activity.
“We’ve never seen meters rise so much for so long,” someone commented. They tried to bring the shy spirit out of its shell by playing London Bridge is Falling down.
One of the investigators commented that he had heard a spirit “running audibly down the hallway.”
Blackburn said the area of the building where they saw the most activity was the stage area.
Video recorded by investigators showed the team investigating the basement of the building.
The basement is turned into a haunted house every year, and in addition to the fake tombstones and plastic skeletons, there is one truly haunted object: the coffin that contained the skeleton.
Using their tablets, the researchers were able to measure the presence of nearby spectra.
A series of lights placed near the stage flashed several times even though no one was near them.
BlackBurn informed other members of his paranormal group that he had previously heard voices in the stage area, including a voice that possibly belonged to a woman. The voice cryptically told him that her name began with the letter ‘V’.
But before BlackBurn could speak to her, a male voice appeared, silencing the female voice. She hasn’t spoken again.
During their investigation, the BlackBurn team used their electronic devices to communicate with some spirits. In response to one of BlackBurn’s questions, the spirits said: “military”, “officer” and “medical”.
Blackburn believed that perhaps several spirits had not answered that question, and it had been an individual spirit that had answered.
He speculated that the spirit might have been F.E. Warren, a former senator from Wyoming and member of the Knights of Pythias. In their prime, which was from 1930 to 1960, the Knights of Pythias attracted many influential figures, including other politicians such as Wyoming Governor Stanley Hathaway.
In the course of their investigation, the team communicated with several spirits, including one that possibly belonged to a deceased senator and member of the Friends of Pythias.
They also discerned the words “birthday” and “whiskey” at one point in their research.
Aaron Blackburn told the rest of the group that he once heard of a female spirit in the building. The spirit told him that her name began with the letter ‘V’, before a male voice silenced her.
Earlier that day, a spirit told investigators that he was Warren.
And during a session in the society’s pool hall, where the air is still thick with the smell of tobacco and smoke, the researchers picked up the words “birthday” and “whiskey.”
“I think the spirits want to communicate with us,” BlackBurn said.
“There is a connection between our side and theirs and hopefully at some point we can find out more about how it works,” he said.