The Light in Zedediah McCumber’s Chicken House
An overconfident theology major delves into forbidden subjects.
I paused to consider what had been said thus far and wrote some final notes in my book. This obviously wasn’t something that we’d tackle within the next day or two, and I really wanted to think about it for a while. “Okay, I’m interested, but that’s quite a lot of evidence you’ve collected. I mean it’s a lot for me to digest. Do you have any particular date in mind?
“Here’s my business card,” said Davenport, sliding the card to me across the table. “Text me when you get time later and we’ll exchange numbers. I don’t have a specific date in mind yet, but I’m thinking of maybe in a week, two at the most.”
“Good deal,” I said. My chair was starting to hurt my back. I looked at my phone and was surprised to see that we’d been talking for an hour and a half. “Now I am going to go do some reading.”
“Me too. Got homework.” He motioned for Mia. “You go ahead, lunch is on me. Hannah...thank you for helping me out.”
“And thank you very much for the lunch, sir. I’ll text you later this evening.” Tired, I exited the building and headed back toward the school. It felt good to stretch my legs after sitting for so long. In a few minutes, I was back in my building. I decided that before I did anything else, the priority for the next hour or so was to take a nap.
I sent a text to Davenport late in the evening. He responded within half an hour, and I spent the rest of the evening reading and ordering takeout for dinner. After I had completed what I wanted to accomplish for my class, I turned my attention to the notepad I had used to record Davenport’s findings.
I spent the next few days getting ahead on schoolwork and only occasionally looking into what I had started calling the chicken house phenomena. The first thing I learned was that if you were going to study the paranormal, you’d either have to buy books about it or find a library that offers books on it, because the Institute’s library doesn’t offer any help of that sort. All their books, like Davenport had hinted at, pertained to church doctrine, and church doctrine held that anything supernatural or occult in origin was automatically the work of the devil. (I would find out years later that the school does have such books available—some of them written by the faculty—but I didn’t know it or have access to them at the time.)
The second thing I learned was that if you have an internet connection, you’ll probably have all the resources that you need at your disposal. Every state in the country has at least one group of individuals who call themselves ghost hunters or paranormal investigators. All of them have extensive web pages, and every one of them talk about hauntings of various kinds.
Before I started reading the writings of ghost hunters, I set about parsing my notes and getting them in order (and me more prepared). What happened on the land where the chicken house is located? Why does it host supernatural goings-on?
First, land was cleared about 150 years ago. A house was then built on a temple mound. A family was then murdered in the house, and the case was not solved. The murders must have been brutal because the victims were “abused” in some fashion. An attempt was made to rebuild the house, but some of the workers vanished. The workers were moved out of doors, and then the house began to be the source of unnatural light and strange music. Then, the house burned.
The remains of the house were demolished and plowed. The owner planted cotton, and for the most part the land was inactive in the paranormal sense. Well, that is except for one time. Someone reported a fiery team of cats plowing around the mound. The team was driven by a large red man. The devil? Old-fashioned term for a person of native origin? On this tale I agree with Mr. Davenport: It sounds like folklore. Still, it supposedly happened shortly after midnight, so we do have a time frame for our quest. If we can arrive and get everything set up just before midnight, it would be ideal.
The Vera land changed ownership at some point. Around 64 years later another house was built on the location, but it was never finished. Along with the house, which was abandoned due to lack of finances, came the mysterious light and the music. This time, passersby testified that they had seen “evil faces” peering from the windows.
The house, like the Vera house before it, eventually burned. Evidently the property was then used for pasture land and soybeans. Approximately 35 to 40 years after this, chicken houses were built on the property by Zedadiah McCumber. At the moment—even as I was writing—strange lights and unearthly music or singing were once again taking place at the location. Davenport has, he says, confirmed as much by “asking around.”
The haunting of McCumber’s farm was difficult for me to sort out in my mind. The records and information of professional ghost hunters didn’t help much. There was indeed a phenomenon called residual haunting. Residual hauntings can take place wherever a traumatic event has taken place. In some way, the events of a tragedy become imprinted upon an area and repeat, over and over, just like a tape recorder. For instance, if you see an apparition, it’s always doing the same thing, and never acknowledges your presence. Lights and music sounded residual to me, though I admit I was unsure.
An intelligent haunting, on the other hand, is probably the most well-known type. In this kind of haunting, for instance, a ghost might appear and speak to you or communicate in some way. It “makes its presence known,” according to those in the know. Typically, this type of apparition is (or had been) a human. I had no desire whatsoever to communicate with a spirit. I was glad I’d be outside monitoring the equipment.
The remainder of the hauntings all fell under the umbrella of intelligent hauntings. After the human type, there were the poltergeist, demonic, and elemental types of hauntings. All are considered to be intelligent—just not human. Basically, a poltergeist is a destructive force, demons are classic spirits of evil, and the elementals are...unique. The latter are the pure spirits of earth, air, fire, and water. They’re intelligent, but they’re inhuman, and they can be benign or destructive, depending upon how they feel that day, I guess.
Ghost hunting, which honestly sounds like so much nonsense, is much more involved than I ever thought, not that I had ever given it all that much thought. I thought I might be able to examine my notes and draw some conclusion as to what I was getting myself into, or what kind of haunting was taking place, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen. I admit I was a little more than disturbed by the fact that people had gone missing from the location. Still, I had my information outlined and in order, so I at least had a timeline of what had been taking place. Now, there was nothing left to do but wait on Tommy Davenport to text or call.
The text came about one week after we met at Greene’s. Tomorrow night, we leave at 11:00 PM. Will pick you up outside your dorm. Okay?
The next night I avoided questions from our dorm mom by going outside for a walk around 10:00 PM. Once I had escaped I sat out beneath the atrium with a notebook and pretended to be reading. Davenport, always punctual if not polite, arrived just before 11:00 PM.
We headed out of Clarkston, driving north on Highway 73. In Silver City we took a right onto CR 30, which is also called McCumber Road. About halfway down the road Tommy slowed the vehicle and I got my first view of the place. On the property were two large chicken houses and one mobile home that was unoccupied. Tommy turned onto a semi-graveled driveway and parked behind the second chicken house, which was obviously built on a mound of earth. There was no way that anyone could see us from the road.
It was about 11:30 when we arrived. Tommy handed me a flashlight and we got out of the car. He then opened the trunk, pulled out a case, and told me to come take a look. In it, I saw a security camera and an odd looking piece of equipment that Tommy said was a digital voice recorder. There was also a fair-sized battery pack and a small laptop. “I bought it all, used, on the net,” said Tommy. “I’ve already tested it. Let’s go, we’re burning daylight, so to speak.”
There was a normal sized door in the end of the building, to the left. Tommy went to it and, to our surprise, it was unlocked. “Here we go,” he said. He stepped inside, and I followed.
The inside of the building was nondescript. It was just a huge building. There was no evidence that chickens were ever housed in the place. In fact there was nothing there at all except a few sawhorses, a workbench in the corner, and a toolbox or two. It certainly didn’t “feel” haunted, but I didn’t want to stay in the building long enough to find out.
“Okay, what do I need to do?” I asked.
“Hold the light. I’m going to mount this camera and the voice recorder about halfway up that wall,” he replied. “Then you take the cables, they’re USB, outside and plug them into the laptop. Start the computer and we’ll see if everything’s working.”
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