by Brandy Buchanan
November 19, 2000
Artist Ethelyn Woodlock is a vibrant and energetic woman for her 93 years of life. Ethelyn’s home, like her life, is a museum of her works. Additionally, Ethelyn is a psychic artist. She has experienced life in a haunted house in New Jersey and has interacted with ghosts through her paintings, some of which are housed, in her Largo home. The local ghost investigation team, consisting of Karen and Lee West, Shelley Provost, and Brandy Buchanan toured Ms. Woodlock’s home and examined her paintings.
Ethelyn first experienced ghosts in 1952 when she and her family, her husband and two daughters, moved into a Victorian house in New Jersey. Ethelyn researched her home and found out the house was reputed to be haunted. The most prominent ghst was that of a young girl named Rose. Rose was about 16 years old when she died. She had fallen in love with a man and had become pregnant. Her aunt, in a rage, condemned her for her indiscretion and filled the young girl with so much remorse that Rose committed suicide by jumping out of her bedroom window. Rose haunted the home from that time onward. The cruel aunt also haunted the house, an angry presence that also appeared in one of Ethelyn’s paintings.
“Rose appeared in my painting ECHOING FOOTSTEPS, but was not painted consciously. I had made the frame to look like the doorway to what used to be Rose’s room in the Victorian home. We had heard Rose walking there many times. Rose manifested in the wallpaper painting in the picture. Wanting no definite design, I had painted wallpaper in muted greens and grays and had been sloppy about it. Rose appears with deep-set eyes, bangs, golden brown hair, and a small mouth. The breasts and one arm show, her hands are hidden,” Ethelyn said. “The aunt is also in the painting as a profile in the doorway painted at the top of the stairs.”
Ethelyn enlisted the aid of the churches, who prayed for Rose, but she still remained unable to cross over to the other side. So, Ethelyn took matters into her own hands. Calling upon her intuitive side, having been coached by friends of hers, and studying on her own, Ethelyn decided to give Rose what she wanted so desperately in her life: a family. Taking brush in hand, she began to paint Rose into a family portrait with Jody, her love, and two children.
“She was the lady of the house, part of the family. This was her wish come true,” Ethelyn explained. “I had always said that if Rose went to Heaven she would let me know. And so she did. In ECHOING FOOTSTEPS, where Rose first appeared, her mouth changed. She smiled. I think she took the road to Heaven because I painted her in a happy state, with the husband and children she wished to have.”
The painting of Rose in ECHOING FOOTSTEPS presently hangs on Ethelyn’s wall at her home. The ghost investigation team was able to see this painting and scan it for traces of residue energy. Neither the Electro-Magnetic Field (EMF) meter nor the heat-sensitive sensors found any.
However, Rose was not the only ghost Ethelyn helped to cross over to the other side. A friend of hers had a ghost who, at one point, tried to attack the friend. Again, the artist took up brush and painted for a ghost.
“I painted a tunnel, and I took it to her house. I put the painting down and I said ‘There is the tunnel to the other side. You need to go now.’ I showed him the light and he left.”
Though Ethelyn had only a print of this painting two scans revealed that the print held some form of EMF energy both when it was hanging on the wall and leaning against a chair. The investigative team took it to the middle of Ethelyn’s living room to scan the painting again. Ethelyn was also out of the room. Nothing manifested for the third scan.
Could it be that since she is no longer in her Victorian home the ghosts no longer reside within her paintings? Were the images mere coincidences? Or were they real ghosts she helped cross fully to the other side? There may be more to this artist’s talents than meets the eye. The Easts
Private Residence
St. Pete Beach
June 18, 2001
We repeated the EVP test three times, to no avail. The tape continued to pick up clicking noisesin conjunction with the emf meter’s bobbing? I wonder if the two are related.