By Gen Louise Mangiaratti, Vermont Country Magazine.
Thomas D’Agostino has seen, felt and heard some strange things.
As a college student, he briefly lived in a house in Scituate, R.I., that a friend was planning to flip. The first night, staying on the third floor, he heard banging and loud movement coming from below. Thinking rambunctious youth were sneaking in, he left powder on the floor to create footprints. The next night, he heard the same noises, but by the morning, the powder hadn’t moved. In the same house, he says he experienced something invisible run up the stairs and kick open a door. Another time, he heard a kitchen table, with dishes and glasses on it get overthrown, only to run in and find nothing disturbed. He says he saw apparitions in the parlor and in a photograph, looking out a window when the house should have been empty.
The final straw was when he and others saw a window frame come out of the wall.
“I moved out because I couldn’t sleep or anything,” D’Agostino recalls. “That’s when I started studying meteorology, sociology, psychology, astronomy, astrology, philosophy, physics, ethics — anything and everything to figure out what is happening? Is any of this, all of it or none of it, a reason why these things happen to people?”
He also claims the house where he grew up, in Smithfield, R.I., was haunted.
So it’s no surprise he grew up to be an investigator of the paranormal, and the supernatural seems to follow him. During investigations, unseen forces have lifted his wife and co-investigator Arlene Nicholson into the air, slammed a door on him and pinned him, and hurled a board at another member of their team — among other phenomena he has been unable to explain. That’s how D’Agostino defines paranormal, or supernatural: anything that cannot be easily explained through science or common sense.
The team has spent some time in Vermont, and their adventures can be read about in his and Nicholson’s book “Haunted Vermont,” published by Schiffer Publishing in 2011. At Bennington College, they write of mysterious footsteps, phantom conversations and instruments that seem to play themselves in the historical Jennings Hall, believed by some to have inspired Shirley Jackson in the writing of “The Haunting of Hill House.” In a Windham County meetinghouse, an organ plays itself and an apparition appears in a nearby graveyard.
Exorcisms were performed to break suspected vampiric curses in Dummerston and Manchester. And at a Southern Vermont inn, doors open and slam shut on their own, and an apparition of an old woman appears in a rocking chair. The chapters of “Haunted Vermont” give a detailed history of each site as well as descriptions of paranormal occurrences.
“We love Vermont,” D’Agostino said. “My family’s from Vermont.”
His mother’s side of the family was from Swanton, and moved to Rutland before coming to Rhode Island.
D’Agostino and Nicholson’s newest book is “Ghosts of King Philip’s War,” published in July by The History Press (Arcadia Publishing). King Philip’s War took place in New England well before Vermont was made the 14th state. Haunts include a bog where crying is heard, dancing lights that appear out of nowhere (and have been debunked as not fireflies — they appear in the winter), a cursed river and mysterious cairns that emit strange energy.
For more information and the opportunity to buy books by D’Agostino and Nicholson, ask your favorite Southern Vermont bookstore.
From his and Nicholson’s home in Putnam, Conn. — a former nursing home they believe is haunted — D’Agostino, now going on 43 years of paranormal investigating, took the time to talk about what happens in an investigation, the role of Tarot cards and being friendly with the dead, and to answer the age-old question: Do you believe in ghosts?
Q: Can you start off by giving me an introduction to yourselves and what you do?
A: I’ve been investigating the paranormal now and researching for going on 43 years. I studied a lot of different sciences in college, to hopefully figure out why, or what happens. And Arlene and I have been doing this together since the ’90s, almost 30 years. We were friends, and then we got married 23 years ago, but we’ve been investigating all over New England.
This is the 18th book, “Ghosts of King Philip’s War,” that we actually are responsible for. We do investigations, private investigations. We don’t charge for any of our investigations. We never have. We do a thing called Dining With The Dead 1031, where we go to haunted inns and hotels and restaurants, and people become the investigators.
We have a dinner first. We do giveaways. Then, we show them how to use the equipment, and there’s tons of equipment in each of the rooms, and they actually become the investigators for the night. Then we go over the stuff and send it to them.
Q: What happens in an investigation?
A: First of all, everybody has a different approach. What you see on television isn’t necessarily what happens. We don’t meet with the people in front of cameras and all that.
One thing we do, is we go in shooting. Let’s say we’re going into someone’s house. The second they answer the door, we have at least a handheld camera in-hand and a recorder and say, “Do you mind if we record right away, while we’re setting up?” because we’ve had stuff happen while we were setting up.
We’ve come to realize that ghosts, spirits, energy, they might just be like pets. You know how a pet, when you first walk into someone’s house, they’re all excited, they’re all over you and everything, then they get bored and go away? Then maybe 45 minutes, they’re all over you again, because they’re bored. Again. That’s what’s happened a majority of times when we do investigations is it happens right away — all of a sudden, this energy in that house, it’s, “whoa, new energy.”
We do that, and then we set up in areas, and we also try to just simulate the exact time. If these people saying, “Every day at 2:30, this ghost walks through this room,” we’re not going to be there at 9:30 at night. We’re going to be there to be set up by 2:30.
We ask questions. Arlene uses Tarot cards to try to field questions. She’s a gifted Tarot reader, and she uses Tarot cards. It’s better than saying, “Do you like pizza?” We’ve had amazing success, where she’s drawn a card and asked a question based on it, and we’ve gotten the most amazing answers. Other than that, you’re just gonna say, “Yeah, do you like pizza?” “What color shirt do you wear?” or whatever.
The Tarot cards seem to connect an energy force, and we’ll also act as if we’re all just part of a party. We don’t drill. We will ask questions. You would ask questions if you’re hanging out with somebody, you just met somebody, just to get to know about them. But we also interact like they’re part of this, and not just like they’re being — boom, bang, bang — interrogated. And we’re always nice, too.
Q: What is the protocol for setting up private investigations? I understand they are confidential.
A: For private investigations, people will call us up, or they’ll email us and say they’ve got an issue. Something’s happening, and they want to know why. Then I or Arlene will call them back. We’ll just have a meeting with them, see what’s going on, things we really want to know, in any circumstance: the age of the house, how long they lived there, do they know anyone who lived there before, is it anyone that may have died in the house? — the history basically, their history, what’s going on, do you have children, do you have pets? When does it happen? Does it happen at night, during the day, all the time?
Then we will set up a time where we go, “OK, we’re gonna go over your house and check it out.” What we do is, we go there, and we’re very discreet about the equipment, too. A truck doesn’t pull up with, you know, “Tom and Arlene” written on the side.
A lot of people don’t want everyone to know. A lot of these groups will go, “Well, we can’t say anything. But tonight, we’re going to be in Warwick, R.I., at 18 Main St., doing a private investigation” — we don’t do that. Anything we write about, in these books and everything, is not people’s homes.
Q: If someone were to ask you, do you believe in ghosts, what would your answer be?
A: I have no choice. I have absolutely no choice. Even if I didn’t want to believe in them, I have no choice. I’ve seen many things happen.
Gen Louise Mangiaratti, is editor of Vermont Country magazine and is arts & entertainment editor for Vermont News & Media. She lives in Brattleboro with her cat, Theodora, and welcomes your post-idyllic holiday music recommendations at gmangiaratti@reformer.com.
