Investigating the 1890 House Museum in Cortland, NY: What We Found After Dark

Some buildings carry their history quietly. The 1890 House Museum in Cortland, New York, isn't one of them. From the moment Jim and I stepped inside this Gilded Age mansion — built for industrialist Chester F. Wickwire and his family over 130 years ago — it was clear this place had stories to tell. The question we came to answer was the same one we always ask: are those stories just stories, or is something still here?

I've been doing this long enough to know that the most dangerous thing you can bring into an investigation isn't a piece of equipment — it's a conclusion you've already made. That's why Jim and I spent time in the 1890 House before the sun ever went down. We walked the rooms, talked to the people who know this building best, and tried to absorb as much of its history as we could. Chester Wickwire made his fortune in wire manufacturing — window screens, wire cloth, the kind of industrial output that defined the Gilded Age — and he poured that fortune into this mansion. What he left behind is remarkable: preserved architecture, elaborate interiors, and more than a century of layered human experience embedded in every room. You can feel the weight of that history when you're standing inside it. The challenge is separating genuine feeling from suggestion. That's always the challenge.

Once the lights went out, Jim and I worked methodically through the mansion the way we always do. We're not here to perform. We're here to document, question, and investigate. We used our standard toolkit — equipment designed to detect and record environmental changes, audio anomalies, and anything else that might point toward a natural explanation for the reported activity. Before we ever call something paranormal, we need to rule out every rational cause we can think of. Old buildings like this one are full of variables: settling foundations, fluctuating temperatures, drafts that move through walls in ways that feel inexplicable until you find the source. The 1890 House, with its stone construction and elaborate Victorian-era layout, gave us plenty to work through. Some of what gets reported in a place like this has an explanation — you just have to look hard enough to find it.

There were moments during our investigation that gave us pause. I won't overstate them, and I won't dismiss them either. Jim and I documented what we experienced as carefully as we could, reviewed what our equipment captured, and weighed it honestly. That's the only approach I know how to take. A building that has housed generations of one family, that has seen births and deaths and decades of daily life within its walls — it's not unreasonable to ask whether something of that accumulated human experience might leave a trace. I'm not saying it does. But I'm not prepared to say it doesn't, either, when the evidence doesn't fully close the door. What I can say is that the 1890 House is a genuinely extraordinary location — not because of what might be haunting it, but because of what it actually preserves. The history alone is worth your attention.

At the end of every investigation, I ask myself what I can honestly say I know versus what I'm still uncertain about. That distinction matters to me. It's the whole foundation of how TAPS operates and how I've approached this work from the beginning. Just because something doesn't have an immediate explanation doesn't make it paranormal — but it also doesn't mean you close the file and walk away. The 1890 House left us with a mix of both: things we could account for, and a handful of things we couldn't fully resolve. That's a more honest result than most people expect, and it's the only kind of result I'm willing to put my name on. Watch the investigation for yourself, pay attention, and make up your own mind. That's exactly what I'd want you to do.

The 1890 House Museum is a remarkable piece of American history, and whether or not something unexplained is happening within its walls, it deserves to be experienced and preserved. Jim and I walked away with more questions than definitive answers — and in this work, that's not a failure, that's an honest result. As always, just because something is unexplained doesn't automatically make it paranormal, but that doesn't mean you stop asking the question.