Rippavilla Plantation
Rippavilla Plantation was built in 1852 and served as a headquarters for Confederate General John Bell Hood during the Franklin-Nashville Campaign of 1864. The property has a long history of reported paranormal activity, particularly in the main house and surrounding grounds.
Methods Used
Findings
The above clip is from a session held by Volunteer State Paranormal Research in the cellar of Rippavilla Plantation, located in Spring Hill, Tennessee. A great deal of paranormal activity had previously been experienced in the cellar. Our team used the PX Oviluss with great results. This is just a short clip of the hour we investigated in the cellar.
"ITC" stands for Instrumental Trans-Communication. ITC is communication between the living and spirits or other entities utilizing any type of electronic device. Some examples of common household devices that have been used in the past are tape recorders, fax machines, TV sets, and computers. ITC can include visual effects in addition to audio anomalies. The term "Instrumental Trans-Communication" found its origins through Professor Ernst Senkowski who was a physicist at Faculty of Engineering in University of Mainz, Germany. Unfortunately, the scientific community per-say has not yet accepted the validity of ITC.
The electronic device we used for our ITC experiments in this video is a PX Box. The PX was invented by Bill Chappell. It is an electronic device that reads changes in the EMF (Electromagnetic Field) and converts those readings into words. The theory behind this piece of equipment is that spirits seeking to communicate learn how to interact with the device by changing the EMF causing the PX Box to announce the words they wish to communicate to the audience.
EVP stands for Electronic Voice Phenomena. EVPs are intelligible speech generated on electric devices, but are not the result of intentional voice recordings by the person using the recorder. Electronic Voice Phenomena is created with static, radio, or background noise, etc. The theory behind EVP is that the spirit can create a shift in frequency outside of the normal human voice range that shows up on audio recorders. The length of EVP can range from a single word to an entire sentence. The recorder used in this investigation was an Olympus Digital Recorder WS-100.
Sources: Transcommunication White Paper With Emphasis on Electronic Voice Phenomena. Association TransCommunication. atransc.org/theory/white_paper-evp.htm — Instrumental Trans-Communication. Spiritinvestigations.org. spinvestigations.org/ITC.pdf
Historical Context
Built by Nathaniel Cheairs, Rippavilla was one of the finest antebellum homes in Maury County. General Hood used the home as his headquarters the night before the Battle of Franklin. The property is now a museum and event venue.