First Look Inside the Hoover House: What We Found Before the Investigation Even Started
“Old houses like this have their own personalities — and part of my job on a walkthrough is to start cataloging the things that could naturally explain reported activity before I ever consider anything else. The smallest detail during a tour can become the most important data point once you're in the middle of a full investigation at two in the morning.”
— Jason Hawes
Before you can investigate a location, you have to understand it. That's something I've believed since the earliest days of TAPS, and it's a principle I've never walked away from. The Hoover House is one of those places that demands your full attention before the lights go out — and what we discovered just walking through it in the daylight told us a lot about what we might be dealing with.
Every investigation starts the same way for me: I walk in as a skeptic. I'm not there to confirm a haunting. I'm there to find out what's actually happening — and more often than not, there's a rational explanation waiting to be uncovered if you're willing to look for it. The Hoover House is no different. Before we set up a single piece of equipment or spent a single minute in the dark, I wanted to get a feel for the layout, the history, and the environment itself. That's not optional. That's the job.
Walking through the Hoover House for the first time, a few things immediately stood out to me. The structure itself carries the weight of its history — you can feel it in the way the rooms are arranged, the materials used, the way sound travels through the space. Old houses like this have their own personalities, and part of my job on a pre-investigation walkthrough is to start cataloging the things that could naturally explain reported activity. Drafts from aging windows and doors, settling sounds from the foundation, unusual acoustics in certain rooms — these are the kinds of details that get misinterpreted as paranormal when there's usually a far simpler answer. I always want to rule those things out first.
There were also a few specific items inside the house that have apparently drawn attention over the years — things that witnesses and previous visitors have pointed to as focal points for the reported activity. I don't dismiss those accounts outright. People experience what they experience, and it's my job to take that seriously while also investigating it rigorously. Understanding the context of those items, where they're located in the house, and how the environment around them might be contributing to what people are perceiving is critical before any real investigation begins. The smallest detail during a walkthrough can become the most important data point once you're in the middle of a full investigation at two in the morning.
What this pre-investigation tour gave us was a foundation. We know the layout now. We know where the reported hotspots are. We've identified some areas that are going to need close attention from an environmental standpoint, and we've flagged a few things that I want to examine more carefully once we're set up and running. I'm not going into the Hoover House expecting to find a ghost. I'm going in expecting to find answers — and whether those answers turn out to be paranormal or perfectly explainable, that's what this process is built to uncover. The tour is where the real investigation begins.
The Hoover House has a history worth taking seriously, and this walkthrough confirmed that it deserves a thorough, methodical investigation. As always, my approach doesn't change — we look for every possible natural explanation before we consider anything else. Whatever is happening inside this house, we're going to find out.