Paranormal investigators, family say presence of 7-year-old is in Somers home

Oct. 23—SOMERS — There are many tales of haunted houses, both fictional and non-fictional, stories of ghouls, ghosts, demons, and poltergeists that terrorize homeowners, with intrepid paranormal specialists or exorcists or ghostbusters coming to the rescue.

But, according to local paranormal investigators, most ghostly encounters are nothing of the sort. Sometimes, such as with the case of the Lamson family at Sokol Road, the spirits involved are not just friendly, they're family.

"It was 1990, she was seven," Pamela Lamson said of her daughter, Heather. "She had a very rare tumor. It was a cancer. She was very sick."

Heather Lamson died Jan. 3, 1990. She is buried in West Cemetery — in the last available plot there — up the hill from Lamson's colonial home and barn.

"It would be easy to walk there and visit," she said.

It turned out, though, Lamson wouldn't have to travel at all to visit Heather. Her daughter comes to visit her instead.

"Maybe it was about a year or so that we noticed different things," she said. "I just knew she was here. We have a barn and Heather always liked kids' music."

Pamela said she collected wind-up toys that play music and would place them in the barn for her children and grandchildren to play with and listen to.

"When we played the music, it was like other kids were there," she said. "It was a feeling that there were a lot of kids there. I felt like she was there."

Years passed and then, at a presentation in 2018, her son and daughter-in-law, Kevin and Ada Lamson, met David Bray and Chris O'Connor of the Eastern Connecticut Paranormal Society, a statewide paranormal investigative team.

O'Connor, the team's medium, said that their mission is to "find the truth."

"When we formed there were many paranormal teams that were dramatized, sensationalized," he said.

He said their organization isn't like the teams dramatized on television shows and have, in fact, turned down television offers because of requests to act scared or dramatize an event for entertainment purposes.

"Eli (Freund), our research analyst, he'll research everything and before we go into a house, he will try to do all the debunking he can or have data ready for us," O'Connor said. "Eli will confirm or deny information."

O'Connor said the paranormal team has checks and balances to verify any kind of presence, and just because there appears to be an orb on the video doesn't mean there's something spiritual there. Other evidence of manifestation should present itself, such as a physical sensation or getting a reading on their electric voice phenomenon device.

"Less than 1% of paranormal cases are malevolent or demonic," he said. "Benign spirits, they have a message or have a story to have told. In the case of Heather, it was her time to communicate with her parents. She finally got a medium to do the communication."

He said that when he, Kevin, and their team went to visit Kevin and Ada Lamson's home, they didn't know Pamela and her husband Gary were going to be there.

"On the way there, I got arm pain and I started coughing," O'Connor said. "It turned out that once I got there, Pam had a cold and that same day, (Gary) fell and injured his arm."

"When I first met Heather, I was talking with Kevin," O'Connor said. He told him, "'You have a young girl here, a sister.'"

He said this caused a strong reaction from Ada.

"It was like you were in a movie," Ada said. "It was unreal. It was amazing."

O'Connor said while in the barn, Heather showed him the color purple.

"I asked Pam if she could come over," he said. "I already knew her favorite color, the rest of my team didn't."

He said the team used a "spirit box" — a device that feeds radio frequencies really fast and creates a white noise effect. Spirits come through it to speak — and the word "purple" came out of it.

"Pam was excited and emotional. I think Pam said, 'I love you, sweetie,' and through the spirit box, 'I love you too, Mommy,' O'Connor said.

"It was like she was next to you," Ada said. "That's how good it was. She was communicating with her mother."

"First I was afraid," Pamela said. "I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Then when he asked her what her favorite color was and she said purple, you could hear it really well. It was her.

"It makes me happy to know she's around," she said. "We miss her so much."

O'Connor said Heather told him they'll know she's present in the home when they feel pressure on their face, because she's touching their face, or when they go into her bedroom, which has been preserved the way it was when Heather died, and a doll that sits on a chair has tipped over.

"Pam had left the room the way it was," O'Connor said. "I didn't know about the doll being moved.

"I'm a true believer that our loved ones come to visit us," he said. "Going from here on, Pam and her husband know when Heather is there. Heather only visits Kevin when Kevin is at her parents' house."

Heather isn't the only spirit that visits the Lamson homes.

According to their report, the investigative team also made contact with a boy named Josiah, who died in an accident inside the barn while playing. He fell and was impaled on a hay grapple hook.

Though there is no historical record of who Josiah was, O'Connor said, he suspects the child lived in the early 19th century.

Ada said she and her children have also seen other spirits, including one of a farmer who walks around the property.

"A lot have seen him," she said. "Not sure who that was. There were different occasions where I've had people over at the house and say, 'There's somebody at the door.'... It's the farmer."

She and Pamela said they hope the paranormal team will return to their homes to further investigate those entities.

"By the time they left and the whole thing was over, I was a believer," Pamela said. "They proved to me there are things we don't know about and are on the other side and they reach out every once in awhile. They aren't all bad. I was a non-believer, but I'm not anymore."

Since the visit by the Eastern Connecticut Paranormal Society, Pamela and Ada said that Heather still visits them.

"Heather plays and does stuff with my daughter, Trinity," Ada said. "In the beginning we thought it was an imaginary friend. Chris said she was playing with Heather."

"There's times when, quiet times when you're alone," Pamela said, "I would talk to her. Tell her things, hope that she's okay. It's a feeling. I can feel her. The warm love."

Pamela said that knowing Heather around helps her own spiritual life.

"I don't have any fear of dying, because I feel like I will be with her and we'll be together again and we'll be happy," she said.

For coverage of local restaurants, cultural events, music, and an extensive range of Connecticut theater reviews, follow Tim Leininger on Twitter: @Tim_E_Leininger, Facebook: Tim Leininger's Journal Inquirer News page, and Instagram: @One_Mans_Opinion77.