A Haunted Hunt: A walk through of the haunted Alexander Major’s mansion and our experiences with the paranormal

Have you ever passed the colonial style mansion placed inconveniently between QuickTrip and Waterway on 83rd and State Line? You might’ve spotted the sore-eye of Alexander Major’s mansion — originally serving as the base of operations for Majors’ company: Russel, Majors & Waddel. But, have you ever seen the mansion after dusk?

As we got informed by the infamous East Ghost Moms  — a group of local moms who investigate all kinds of haunted buildings — that we would be ghost hunting in the mansion from dusk til midnight, we were reluctant to flake. 

And no, we’re not talking about the so-called “haunted houses” filled with zombie actors and plastic rats. We mean a literal haunted house — imagine the pouring rain, creaking floor boards and distant screams.

Neither of us believed in ghosts. But the paranormal activity in the Alexander Majors house was too skin-crawling to be a coincidence. After reviewing our plan of starting in the sitting room, heading upstairs to the nursery and finishing the night in the depths of the concrete basement, the Ovilus — a phone looking object that picks up frequencies — spit out the word Beezlebub, which is a term for devil. Great start! 

Heading into the front sitting room, we were surrounded by old letters, large feather pens and broken rocking chairs as the house doubled as a museum, adding to the old time vibe and a feel as if we had traveled back to 1856.

We flipped on the switch on the REM pod, scattered cat balls, set up the shadow and motion detectors facing the interior and exterior doorways. Grasping each other’s hands while shivering in the frigid darkness — apparently ghosts don’t need heating — we questioned whether we were about to get paranormal activity or a bad cold. Was this trip a fluke?

As the shadow detector lit up the room with a bright white flash and an eerily slow lullaby, we shrieked with fright — all my doubts were thrown out the window as this felt too real. Voices shaking, we asked the spirit questions: Can you come talk to us? Are you a man or a woman? After six minutes of waiting for a response we headed upstairs — as this spirit was clearly more involved with playing with the music from the shadow box than haunting us.

If we could give any advice to recreational ghost hunters, it would be to never walk into the nursery of a 167-year-old house. Cribs, toys and a splinter-filled, worn-out, wooden rocking horse filled the frigid nursery as the tree branches hit the windows and eerie car lights lit up the room while they sped down State Line.

We set up a REM pod in the crib, a cat ball on the rocking horse and a shadow and motion detector pointing toward the hall. After the previous activity that happened downstairs in our first room, we weren’t sure if the spirit would follow us upstairs. But within minutes, we huddled together in the room — the sound of sickening music and our shrieks echoed through the silent mansion.

But it wasn’t over yet. The motion detector caught movement coming upstairs and flashed light in the room as the Ovilus spit out the word “climb.” Our flashlight — resting off on a table a few feet away — popped on and shined straight into our eyes. 

It’s now almost midnight and the Ghost Moms led us into the basement of the house — supposedly filled with ghosts galore. As we descended into a trap door we realized this so-called basement is actually a bomb shelter leading into pitch black concrete — we’ve entered a dusty box from hell. 

After meeting our 200-year-old ghostly friends from upstairs, I could already predict the monster-filled dreams that would haunt my sleep that week. We thought it couldn’t get any worse than a ghost whispering “blood” next to the baby’s crib. It could. 

But not right away. After 10 minutes of pacing around the concrete coffin, we thought the ghosts had already had enough fun securing their spots in our nightmares. But no. 

The motion detector facing the bolted door went off with a flash of a white light, forcing me to close my eyes as if that made any of this disappear. Then the other motion detector with the red light lit up our faces, switching off back and forth between white and red as if the ghost was supposedly pacing between our traps. The Ovilus then sent chills up our spine as it blurted out “help.” How awesome.

Still shaking, we said our goodbyes to Alexander Major’s humble and hellish abode. Ensuring nothing was going to hop in our car or latch onto my sweatshirt, we exited into the rainy night and completed our first and last ghost hunt.