There are many stories on the internet of the supposed haunting of the Mason House Inn in Bentonsport Iowa. The claims of the haunting of the Inn sounded interesting so we decided to go there and see if we could find any evidence that would validate these claims.

On April 2, 2006 we arrived at the Inn at 8 PM and were met by Joy, one of the owners. She told us some of the stories of the haunting and some of the recent experiences of guests. She then took us on a tour of the Inn, pointing out areas where activity has taken place. We were to stay in room 5, and in this room the sound of a rocking chair is heard from the attic above. The rocking chair is said to be where Mary Mason Clark was sitting when she dropped dead in 1911. Also people sleeping in that room have complained of their bed being shaken while they are asleep and the chandelier in this room was moving by itself. Room 6 was the room where an apparition was supposed to have been seen by one of the occupants, and a picture was taken there supposedly showing the ghost of a confederate soldier sitting amongst some school children there on a field trip. After a better look at the picture it appears to be one of the children from the field trip. The light coming through the window has totally silhouetted the child making him or her look like a shadowy form. They claimed you could see it was a Confederate Soldier’s hat on his head, but if you look closely you can see the child’s hair sticking up, not a hat. Room 7 was where the murder of the drunk patron was supposed to have taken place. It is said that a female staying in this room had an unseen person climb into bed with her and a man staying in this room had an unseen person tugging on his sleeve waking him up. Room 8 is where the light in the bathroom mysteriously turns itself on and off. Besides the experiences in these rooms, there are stories of other spirits roaming the building. The many “psychics” that have visited the Inn have added to the numerous stories of ghosts haunting this place.

After completing our tour of the Inn we unpacked and setup our equipment. We placed a cameras in rooms 5, 6, 7, and 8. The digital audio recorder and external mic was setup in room 5 in an attempt to record the sounds of the rocking chair from above or the sounds of phantom footsteps that are sometimes heard coming up the stairs. We place the Natural EM Meter on a table in on the landing at the top of the stairs outside of room 4. That way it could pick up any anomalous magnetic energy in the main area of the second floor. If the alarm on the EM Meter did go off and we weren’t around it would be recorded on the audio recorder.

After every thing was setup we started recording at 9 PM. We then did a walkthrough of the second floor and took baseline readings with the emf meter and the noncontact infrared thermometer. The building was then left for an hour while the equipment continued to record. When we returned at 10 PM, we proceeded to attempt evp’s in all of the hot spots that were pointed out to us by Joy. We also conducted ghost watches in rooms 6, 7, and 8 for different periods of time throughout the night. During this time we conducted and experiment with a candle that was provided to us by Joy. She claimed that when a psychic was there recording evp’s the spirits were manipulating the flame on command. We went into room 7 and set the candle on the table next to the bed and lit it. As we started our evp session the flame did start to flare up and get dimmer as we asked if the spirits could move the flame. This did seem strange until we examined the candle. The candle is one that is inside of a glass container, and as the candle starts to burn and the wax melts and pools, the burning wick touches the melted wax. This causes the flame to flare up and get dimmer. When we got home the next day we lit a similar candle at Jim’s house and got the same results. Jim spent a period of time laying in the bed in room 7 to see if he could experience the unseen person attempting to get into the bed. At 11:45 we did another emf sweep and found nothing out of the ordinary. We then went up in to the attic to the room where Mary supposedly died. Attempts to record evp’s were made while we conducted a ghost watch of this area for an hour. During this time we moved the Natural EM Meter upstairs with us to try and detect and fluctuations in the magnetic field while we were there. We went back to the second floor at 1 AM, and went back to our observations of the various rooms on this floor. At 1:45 we conducted another emf sweep and found nothing anomalous. It was a very slow night, with no strange occurrences, so we decided to wrap up the investigation at 3 AM.

After reviewing all of the data collected from the investigation we found nothing anomalous in the video, audio, pictures (both digital and film), or in any of the environmental readings we took throughout the night. We did find that if someone is walking around on the third floor it causes the chandelier to move. It was a windy night and there are many natural noises caused by the fact that it is a very old building. There have been reports of one of the spirits that knocks on the walls during evp sessions. We recorded this knocking, but it was a loose shutter banging in the wind on the building across the street. It could be that it was just a slow night and there was no activity occurring that we could record. We just find this hard to believe after hearing of the number of spirits that “psychics” have said inhabit this building. There are numerous stories that support the supposed haunting of the Mason House Inn. That there are so many stories, may in fact be a part of the problem. There are booklets that are given to everyone who is going to stay there that tell of all of these “experiences.” People could read all of these stories and their imaginations start to work. Then while spending the night in an old building, misinterpret a very natural sound as something paranormal. We have went on other investigator’s web sites to listen to the evp’s that were recorded there and the majority are extremely questionable. There are numerous pictures of orbs that are being used as proof of the haunting. The orbs are proof of airborne foreign objects reflecting the flash of the camera, not proof of a haunting. The Mason House Inn is indeed a very old building with much history that could support claims of a haunting, unfortunately we were unable to find any proof ourselves. We do believe that if any activity is going on in this location, it would more than likely be a residual type of haunting. This would explain the sounds of the footsteps, the rocking chair, and even some of the sightings of apparitions. However we found no proof whatsoever of the interactive haunting that is claimed to occur here. This is only our opinion based upon our own experience and the evidence we collected in our stay there. We were only there for one night and maybe it was a slow one.