Case File: Mann House
Location: Lake Wales, Florida
Date: 1991
Description: Coming Up
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 o'clock 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."
Alan Mann 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 he thought he'd seen a ghost, but his mother refused to believe him. Eventually, Alan married a girl named Linda who also moved in with him. Shortly after the wedding, Alan's mother, 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." Sandra Mann 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. 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."
Of the incident, Linda has no memories. 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 Mann consulted a spiritualist who told them to pour salt all around the house and keep bags of salt 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, dull, muttering with one woman's voice over the top of them, but they could not distinguish anything they were saying.
Two months later, after a visit from a local minister, the haunting appeared to abate, but David and Sandra decided they wanted to move out and live in another house. As they were packing, Linda was cursing swearing at the ghost when a lightbulb 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 had been answer about who or what haunted the Mann Family.
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 at the Manns' house. Andrew Nichols was one of the parapsychologists on location, and he described the house as having an oppressive ambience to it, almost a depressive type of feeling. His team all began to experience headaches. According to Andrew, 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:
"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."
Extra Notes: This case originally ran on the October 27, 1993 episode.
Results: Unsolved.
Links: None