DELETED SCENES FROM THE SALLIE HOUSE

Flying to Kansas

Joe, Michael, and Mark sat nearby. But they kept quiet, their minds racing about what they might face in the coming days. Joe kept looking for signs that would indicate whether he should either stay the course or back out.

The first potential warning came once they boarded the plane. After taxiing onto the runway, the captain announced that the flight would be delayed. The plane sat on the tarmac for about twenty minutes. Michael and Joe exchanged a look that said, "Uh-oh". Joe questioned if it was a sign that this was their last opportunity to drop out. And he knew by Michael's look that he was thinking the same thing.

But soon they were descending into Charlotte, North Carolina. As they taxied in, Michael spotted a group of small, aqua and orange propeller planes.

"Thank God we're not flying in those," Michael commented to Joe.

But was this potentially sign number two?

Wouldn't you know it," Joe remembers. "He's scared of flying and we flew to Kansas on one of those small planes. When Michael realized that, the look on his face was priceless."

Michael soon calmed down. Once on the flight, he spent the time talking to the woman sitting next to him. In the meantime, Mark hammered Joe with concerns. He knew Joe was excited about the investigation, but he cautioned against losing sight of their goal to help people understand what they're dealing with. For Mark it wasn't just about filming a documentary.

Interview with the News Media

The nightly television news team arrived. Joe and Michael took the TV news team on a brief tour of the house, then spent ten minutes being interviewed in the master bedroom.

"We were standing there with tee shirts that had ‘Dark Hauntings’ written on the front in blue, gothic-style font," Joe says. "The back of the shirts had a picture of an old Victorian home and the words ‘Sallie House Exposed’."

"So you all are the ghost hunters?" the attractive, dark-haired female reporter asked them.

"Not exactly," Michael chuckled into the camera. "We're not the ghost hunters from Rhode Island that you see on TV."

The reporter had mistaken Joe and Michael for Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson's Ghost Hunters television team that was also from Rhode Island.

"What brings you all the way to Kansas?" she continued.

"We're filming a pilot for a possible television show and documentary, and we're here to see if the Sallie House is truly haunted," Joe said.

The reporter raised an eyebrow. "And is it?"

"We're in the process of figuring that out," Michael said. "But it would appear that something paranormal is happening here."

"What got you into investigating hauntings and ghosts?"

"Our whole plan is to seek out the afterlife," Joe replied. "We also have a passion to help people. Unfortunately you can't call the police and say there's a ghost in my house throwing objects around, please come help me. So we do the job no one else seems to want."

"We deal with much darker cases," Michael interjected. "We consider ourselves instruments of God more than ghost chasers. We take our work seriously, and when push comes to shove, we're the ones you want on your side."

"Sounds dangerous," the reporter said. "Answer one final question. "Is there a ghost named Sallie?"

"That's the million dollar question," Joe said. "If there is, we'll find out by the end of the weekend."

Visit to the Hoof and Horn Restaurant

The Hoof and Horn supposedly was haunted, so Chad filmed a little as Joe and Michael meandered around the place and interviewed the owner and one of the waitresses. The owner had never witnessed anything paranormal but said he sometimes felt weird and uneasy. The waitress explained that one patron claimed to have seen a woman go into the kitchen area. She inquired who it was, but the waitress said no one was in the kitchen.

The group also visited the basement boiler room. It was filled with wine racks and old kegs, and Michael and Joe chose this spot to talk on camera about the Hoof and Horn. As was their custom, they shot digital pictures as well, picking up many wild-looking orbs. One picture showed a giant orb right by Joe's head.

By this time, the restaurant was filling up, so the group went back to the Sallie House, having never actually eaten at the Hoof and Horn.

Return Home

The wrap-up for the documentary was complete.

Brad nodded his approval – filming at the Sallie House was finished. Brad and Samantha packed up all the film equipment and hauled it out to the van. It was cold and dark as Deb and Tony went home, and the RIDDIA team and production crew went out to eat. As promised, Brad took them to a bar and grill where Joe and Michael could watch the football game.

While everyone else dined at a table, Michael and Joe sat at the bar. They ordered cheeseburgers, steak fries and a couple of cokes and watched the game, too hungry and engrossed with the game to converse much.

"We finally had a chance to relax, but it was rough watching the Colts come back and beat the Pats," Joe says. "But I'm sure Tony, who was a Colts fan, was happy about that."

"The weekend went by so fast," Michael says. "But it was memorable, an event we would never forget. We had footage and proper evidence. We had something special."

Before they headed back to the Glick Mansion, Brad, Michael and Joe made a last stop at the Pickmans. No cameras this time, they just wanted to thank the Pickmans for being a part of the investigation, pray with them, and wish them well.

As they drove away from the Pickman house, Joe reflected for a moment. RIDDIA validated the activity in the Sallie House, he and Michael prayed in the house and prayed with the Pickmans. What the Pickmans did now was up to them. He knew Deb and Tony were pleased with RIDDIA's investigation, and besides, Tony's Colts had won! At the time, it seemed like a victory for everyone.

Breakfast at the Glick Mansion the following morning was a quiet affair, the members of RIDDIA wrapped up in thoughts of the investigation, while Brad and Samantha talked about the hours of film footage that they needed to view and piece together. Joe vacillated between being excited to get back home and wishing the experience wasn't over. He had bonded with Brad and Samantha, but knew that he wouldn't see them as much back in Rhode Island. A wave of sadness washed over him as he ate.

Deb Pickman phoned to wish them goodbye, and then they all piled in the van. Gray clouds hung low in the sky and a drizzle chilled them as they left for the airport.

Fog blanketed the trees and hovered over the landscape as they drove the long winding back roads to Kansas City. Fields with barbed wired fences passed by, reminding Joe of the Wizard of Oz.

They arrived at the airport without incident, dropped the van off at the rental return and headed inside the airport. Brad, Samantha and Chad proceeded through the security check without incident. Then Michael tried to bring his bag through security. When security opened his bag they noticed a small medicine bottle filled with dirt that Michael had collected from the crawl space in the basement of the Sallie House.

Mark flipped out. "Dude, are you stupid? Why would you take something from the house onto the plane?"

"I figured we would take something back for further examination," Michael said.

"There's something wrong with you, man," Mark fumed. "I say you leave it here."

Michael ignored Mark, put the bottle back in his bag, and headed off to the plane.

Mark still seethed. "This guy needs help, Joe. He's going to get us killed by doing these crazy things. How do we know that dirt isn't cursed? This whole case is suspicious. These spirits may have been setting us up all the time, and now we're taking this back to Rhode Island."

After all that had transpired over the weekend, Joe couldn't help but think Mark was right. He understood Michael's reasoning to an extent, but this time he sided with Mark.

"Mike," Joe said. "I don’t think we should take anything back with us."

"I don't see why he's freaking out," Michael replied angrily. "He's way too uptight about this. He doesn't understand that when you investigate you need to research things. He's been too aggressive with his faith on this trip. Even Brad agreed, with the way he's trying to preach to people."

"Mark's been intense," Joe said, "but you know he means well. And he has a good point."

But Michael was not dissuaded and the bottle stayed in his bag.

On the flight from Kansas to North Carolina, Mark read his Bible, and showed Joe a passage from the Book of Joshua pertaining to bringing a cursed thing into the land:

Joshua 7:11
For they have even taken some of the accursed things and have both stolen and deceived; and they have also put it among their own stuff.

Joshua 7:15
Then it shall be that he who is taken with the accursed thing shall be burned with fire, he and all that he has, because he has transgressed against the Lord.

Joe's heart thudded in his chest as he read the passage. The words certainly seemed to fit what Mark was saying.

Clouds and heavy rain greeted them when they touched down in North Carolina. They made their connecting flight, but once up above the clouds the plane hit extreme turbulence. Mark had brought a portable DVD player and he and Joe were watching The Passion of the Christ, but Joe couldn't quite focus due to the turbulence.

Mark turned to him and asked, "Are you ready?"

"What do you mean?"

"If anything happens to us, are you ready?" To die, was the unspoken end of the sentence.

"Yeah," Joe said.

Mark wasn't finished. "Michael wants to play games and bring stuff from the Sallie House on a plane. That'll teach us next time to do the right thing."

Joe nodded as he gripped the armrests.

"Call it paranoia, call it what you want," Joe says. "But when you've just left an investigation like ours and now you're thirty thousand feet in the air in a plane that's rocking, you couldn't help but feel Mark was right. Even Michael was looking at me as if to say, 'Oh boy what have I done?' "

The plane eventually descended through the clouds and landed safely. Joe's wife was at work, so Joe's mother met them at the airport. Joe and Michael made arrangements with Brad and Samantha to work on the documentary project at a later time, then said their goodbyes. Back at Joe's house, Michael, Mark and Joe described their weekend with Gloria for a bit. All three felt the investigation was successful, but so much had transpired, it was difficult to relate their adventure.