Mann House

The Mann House

Case File: Mann House
Description: The Mann House was a one-story suburban two-bedroom residence in Lake Wales. It is not revealed if the house in the segment is the actual residence.
Location: Lake Wales, Florida
Date: 1991

Case

History: In the fall of 1991, nineteen-year-old Alan Mann lived with his parents and worked nights. During the day, he was often home alone, but one day, he seemed to encounter a mysterious female spirit. "I had the afternoon off.", he described. "I'd come home and I guess it was about 3:00 in the afternoon. I'd finally gotten some sleep. The figure turned away from the door like it was leaving, and by the time I got up and walked three paces to the door, I don't know what happened, it just turned the corner and disappeared." He said he looked high and low for the mysterious woman. Even though the doors were locked from the inside, she was nowhere to be found.
He told his mother, Sandra, he thought he'd seen a ghost, but she refused to believe him. Eventually, he married a girl named Linda who also moved in with him. Shortly after the wedding, Sandra was watching TV with her new daughter-in-law and they both encountered the ghost. "I had my little dog Prince beside me, and he was on a pillow.", she describes it. "And I looked down at the end of the couch and I saw this white smoky thing. The first thing I thought was fire, and by that time, the dog had gotten up on his feet and then it just disappeared." Even though Linda hadn't seen the apparition, she was convinced the house was haunted. Determined to get the scoop, she enlisted a friend with a Ouija Board, and with Alan, they obtained the name "Kramer," but no one knew who that was.

Smoky Figure

Alan's father, David Mann, however, remained a skeptic until one day, he suddenly produced another name. "I stopped right in the middle of the hall.", he says. "I caught the smell again. And I didn't have any explanation for, it's like you get an idea, little voice inside your head, like your conscience or whatever it is. That little voice that you listen to. It said, 'This is Isabella.'"
On another night, Alan described Linda suddenly attacking him in their bedroom. According to him, "All of a sudden she just snapped, and she got this weird look. She pretty much attacked me. She was laughing. She had some weird laugh I had never heard. It didn't even sound like her. She has this squeaky little giggle, and this was almost an evil laugh. I tried to get away and it made her get more violent, and she started putting more force on my arms. So I pushed against her, and I slammed her against the wall three times, and she released me. She put her head on my shoulder again and started talking and picked up the conversation exactly where she left off before she snapped."
Linda has no memories of the incident. She says, "That's not me. I don't have an evil laugh. I don't do the things that he says I do, that's just not my type. I'm not that type of person. I just don't remember." Realizing the ghost had turned from random to dangerous, David consulted a spiritualist who told them to pour salt all around the house and keep bags of it under their beds and even a homegrown exorcism, but it didn't work.
Almost everyone in the family suffered from bad headaches, and they began hearing a whole mass of voices. The voices were dull, muttering with one woman's voice over the top of them, but they could not distinguish anything they were saying. A local psychic visited the house and named "Isabella Kramer" as the ghost that lives there. This was the same name that the Manns had come up with several weeks prior.
Two months later, after a visit from a local minister, the haunting appeared to abate, but David and Sandra decided they wanted to move. As they were packing, Linda was cursing and swearing at the ghost when a light bulb caught fire and exploded in a nearby unplugged lamp. "I offended the ghost.", she comments.
Background: There are no known records for an Isabella Kramer in the house or neighborhood. To date, no one has answered about who or what haunted the Mann family. However, it has been revealed the area was once an old laborer's cemetery, but all the bodies were removed previous to the houses.
Investigations: The Center for Paranormal Studies in Silver Springs, Florida eventually researched the Mann house. Armed with a truckload of electronic equipment, the center's three founders showed up there. Andrew Nichols was one of the parapsychologists on location, and he described it as having an oppressive ambiance to it, almost a depressive type of feeling. His team all began to experience headaches.

Polaroid taken in Alan's bedroom

According to him, Linda and Alan's old bedroom received the highest amount of paranormal activity, and they began taking Polaroid photographs, one during and one after a flux in paranormal activity. The second photograph was normal, but Andrew noticed something strange in the first one. "There was a vague humanoid shape in the forefront of the picture. It may be a reflection of some unusual environmental effect. It may be a strange artifact of the human psyche, or it may be a contact with a dimension of existence that's beyond our imagination." Sandra believes that the shape was of Isabella.
In March of 1993, the photograph was examined at Polaroid Headquarters. They determined that the shape was not a result of a defect in the film or the camera.
Extra Notes: This case originally ran on the October 27, 1993 episode.
Results: Unsolved - No new investigations have been done at the house. However, Alan's father, David Mann, passed away in June 2007. He was 62. Alan's mother Sandra Mann passed away in 2018, she was 72. Alan and Linda later divorced, but stayed friendly afterward. Alan later married again and had two children; he passed away November 2018. He was 46.
Links:

• Mann House at Unsolved.com
• Family tries to rid home of 'spirits'
• David Mann Obituary
• Alan Mann Obituary
• Sandra Mann Obituary
• Sandra Mann - Find A Grave
• Alan Mann - Find A Grave
• David Mann - Find A Gave

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