Art Attack – Contribution

02/13/2011: Thanks to Ricky Vacha for sending in this story about a haunting at the art gallery he had owned in Cleveland. Ricky began feeling a heavy presence in the store and had seen the figure of a man in a brown suit. He contacted a mother-daughter team of paranormal investigators who could communicate with earthbound spirits. It turned out that the haunting was linked to a death that had occurred years prior at his aunt’s business.

My name is Ricky Vacha. I opened an art gallery called Art Attack in 1998. Soon after I began to feel a heavy presence inside the store. I could feel somebody around me and saw a figure of a man in a brown suit. I finally called a lady known as Mary Ann. Mary Ann can see and communicate with earthbound spirits. She told be over the phone that she could tell that there were actually more than one spirit in there. Mary Ann’s daughter Tara can also see and communicate with these earthbound spirits. So she made an appointment with me to come and investigate. in the meantime, Mary Ann told me I could capture a ghost on film if I sat in one location and took an entire roll of film. That I would be able to capture the spirit/spirits on camera. I followed Mary Ann’s instructions and when the film was developed, the results were more than shocking. I could not believe my eyes. This story takes a turn that would surprise even Mary Ann and her daughter, both expert paranormal investigators.

This is a very long and complicated story with many twists and turns. When it boils down, i was being haunted by a man named Dan who died of a heart attack at his desk at work in 1978. Dan worked as T&S Lumber Company in North Randall. When Tara had told me this information, I was blown away because my aunt owned this company and I worked at it. But I worked there from 1992-1994. In 1994, the company was relocated from Miles Road to another location. Not only did I work there, I worked in the same small office as Dan and sat in the exact chair as he had many years prior and at the very desk that he had collapsed and died at, at the early age of 48. During the move of the company, most of the old office furniture was either thrown or moved. Wooden captain chairs in my office were going to be thrown out, so I took them home. THere were three or four of them, including the one Dan died in. At the time of the haunting, I still had these chairs. It was only when we realized that the chairs had been stored in the basement of my new art gallery did it help in putting all of the pieces together.

See, Tara had come to investigate the haunting. The second she walked into the art gallery, she saw three spirits. One left right away. One was Dan, she said, who likes to bother Rick. The other was a lady named Adalie. When Tara had mentioned the name Dan, it sounded familiar to me. Then she said when he died and where he worked. When she said he worked at T&S Lumber and was vice president, I stopped her right away. Meanwhile, this whole time, there were about five other people in the room, the whole time witnessing what was going on. I stopped her because I worked there, my aunt owned it and for all I knew, this Dan person could still be alive. At that point, for a minute, I thought the whole thing was a hoax. So I did what anyone would do, I called my aunt on the telephone. At this point, I had not seen her in about a year. Needless to say, she was surprised to hear what was going on, but not shocked. So for several minutes, it was back and forth between the spirit of Dan, Tara, and my aunt. It turned out that at the time of his death, my aunt had made funeral arrangements for him for his family. He in fact did die of a heart attack at his desk in 1978.

At one point my aunt asked me to ask Tara if she sees anything wrong with him as he appears to her. Tara replied that he is walking with a limp. At this point the whole night had turned into something I thought was going to be fun and exciting into complete and utter disbelief. The pictures I had taken show a black funnel in the middle of the room from floor to ceiling on three out of twenty-four. One of the three has a huge white ball of light in the foreground. I had shown these pictures to a spirit medium where I live now in southwest Florida and he said that they were some of the most amazing he had ever seen. The spooky thing is, I asked my aunt before I had hung up the phone with her what kind of clothes was Dan buried in. She replied a brown suit.