Paranormal Activity

Real-life, non-profit ghost hunters target a spooky Houston house: This 1950s bungalow shocks

Angela Rhodes doesn't care if you believe in ghosts or not . . . There's no way you'll get her to stay alone in the 1,300-square-foot house she recently inherited from her parents.

"It's an odd feeling," she tells KHOU reporter Sherry Williams. "If I come in here I can be doing something and it's like something's just following me."

"It's like something's just following me."

Neighbors and relatives long have agreed that all is not right in the small 1950s bungalow near Wayside and the North Loop. "When my sister moved out she said she always heard kids running in this hallway," Rhodes explains, adding that no children lived in or near the house at the time.

In the den, an unknown entity seems to draw people's attention to a particular window. In the bathroom, odd flames have been spotted. They leave an odor but do not appear to burn anything in the room. Recent visitors have reported seeing a tea cup fly from the kitchen microwave to a nearby sink.

After a series of blessings from a local preacher, the unexplained phenomena persisted.

Ghostbusters Jump In

Enter area ghost hunters John O'Dell and Yvonne Tallman, who respectively operate the non-profits groups Other Side Paranormal Investigations and Pasadena Ghost Research Society. The current tenants were asked to leave the home for an evening, while the pair attempted to capture hard evidence or debunk the claims.

O'Dell and Tallman's free-of-charge investigations are meant to help families better understand their home environments and quell any fears.

"We had 23 EVP recordings [mysterious disembodied voices] after just three hours," O'Dell tells CultureMap. "It was such an active site and there was absolutely no one else around except us."

He says the night's most memorable event happened as they stepped out of the house to take pictures of an adjacent vacant lot, which neighborhood residents also suspect to be haunted.

"All of a sudden, inside the house we heard those noisy springs of the attic door — and then thump-thump-thump-thump. The ladder had come down and it really sounded like someone was climbing on it. We were lucky enough to capture it on two different audio recorders."

Rhodes says she still feels uncomfortable in the home, but remains optimistic that the strange activity will slow or stop. O'Dell notes that he and Tallman remain committed to the project.

Whether you believe in ghosts or not, check out the full KHOU Ch. 11 report . . . It's awesome:

Homeowner Angela Rhodes

Angela Rhodes haunted house July 2013 RUN FLAT

Photo courtesy of KHOU Houston Channel 11

Homeowner Angela Rhodes

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Will Houston get a shuttle?

Debate continues over moving space shuttle from D.C. to Houston

Johnson Space Center/Facebook

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Texas’ two U.S. senators, Republicans John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, have called for the Space Shuttle Discovery to be relocated from the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington, D.C., to the visitors center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. They say Houston is Discovery’s “rightful home” and note that provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act call for the shuttle to be moved to Houston.

Moving the shuttle to Houston would reverse a decision made in 2011, when NASA awarded shuttles to museums in California, Florida, and New York instead of Space Center Houston. At the time, Houston Mayor Annise Parker blamed "political calculations" for not including the home of the Johnson Space Center as a shuttle home, even though the astronauts who flew the shuttle lived and trained in Houston.

But four Democratic U.S. senators — including U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, who is a retired NASA astronaut and a one-time Discovery commander — hope to block the shuttle’s relocation from Chantilly, Virginia, to Houston. They claim the move would waste taxpayer dollars and endanger the shuttle.

The latest development in the Discovery debate came last week in a letter written by Cornyn and Cruz. In the letter, the senators accuse the Smithsonian Institution, which runs the National Air and Space Museum, of inflating the estimated cost of relocating the shuttle to Houston.

The Smithsonian says the tab for relocating the shuttle could be $300 million to $400 million, with transportation alone totaling $50 million to $55 million. Legislation passed earlier this year allocates $85 million for the shuttle’s move.

In their letter to leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Cornyn and Cruz state that the Smithsonian’s and NASA’s cost estimates are 10 times higher than those obtained from private-sector logistics companies. Furthermore, they accuse the Smithsonian of falsely claiming the shuttle’s wings would need to be taken off ahead of the spacecraft’s trip to Houston.

“This relocation honors both the intent of Congress and the legacy of America’s space program. It is time for the Space Shuttle Discovery [to] return to the community that helped make its missions possible,” wrote Cornyn and Cruz, referring to Johnson Space Center’s Mission Control operations and astronaut training program.

In their own letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee, the Smithsonian and NASA say they believe the shuttle would need to “undergo significant disassembly to be moved. Discovery is the most intact shuttle orbiter of the NASA program, and we remain concerned that disassembling the vehicle will destroy its historical value.” A lengthy article in Scientific American cites academics who support The Smithsonian’s view that the costs are higher than a private firm might estimate, diving into the logistical challenges of moving the large, relatively fragile spacecraft across the country.

In a letter dated September 26, Kelly — along with U.S. Sens. Mark Warner of Virginia, Tim Kaine of Virginia and Dick Durbin of Illinois — urge the Senate Appropriations Committee to block federal funding for Discovery’s relocation. They warn that the move would waste taxpayer dollars, risk permanent damage to Discovery, and lead to fewer people visiting the spacecraft.

In their letter, the four lawmakers peg the cost of bringing Discovery to Houston at over $375 million. That number includes more than $50 million for the move itself, and another $325 million for planning, new facilities, and exhibit reconstruction.

“Dedicating hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to move an artifact that is already housed, displayed, and preserved in a world-class facility is both inefficient and unjustifiable,” the four senators wrote.

According to the Smithsonian, Discovery spent 365 days in space — the longest period of any NASA shuttle. Discovery entered service in 1984 and was retired in 2011. It’s been housed at the Smithsonian facility in Virginia since 2012.

Space Center Houston, the Smithsonian affiliate that serves as the visitors center for the Johnson Space Center, would likely be the future home of Discovery.

In a statement issued this summer, Space Center Houston said it had not commissioned independent estimates of relocation costs, according to Roll Call. Rather, Space Center Houston is merely focused on “planning a world-class home for Discovery.”

“This opportunity aligns naturally with our long-term plans,” Keesha Bullock, a spokeswoman for Space Center Houston, told Roll Call.

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