Haunted Huskies
ESPN’s College GameDay goes ghost hunting in Jim Mora’s 82-year-old home
In August UConn football coach Jim Mora told ESPN’s Pete Thamel that his house, six minutes walking distance from campus, might be haunted. Mora said he’d been hearing strange noises, seeing shadows dancing across the walls, doors opening and closing on their own.
“I’m convinced it’s haunted,” Mora said. “I just warn everyone who stays that it’s haunted, but they’re good ghosts.”
So, ESPN sent College GameDay reporter Gene Wojciechowski with a production crew to Storrs. And they brought a team of paranormal investigators.
The results of the investigation done by the Greater Boston Paranormal Associates were revealed during Saturday’s GameDay show hosted at Jackson State on Halloween weekend, ahead of the Huskies’ homecoming matchup against Boston College.
“When Jim Mora took the UConn job late last year, he knew that program was in a scary proposition,” Wojciechowski opened, “what he didn’t know is when he moved into his new house in Storrs, Connecticut, that it was scary too — so scary that he won’t even stay in it alone.”
The house is 82 years old and sits on 4.5 acres with eight bedrooms and fourand-a-half bathrooms — and a few “friendly ghosts,” the investigation revealed.
“My daughter Lilia has heard voices in the middle of the night, doors open and then slam shut. She will swear that she heard someone whispering in her ear,” Mora said.
Dalton Hilliard, defensive backs coach concurred: “We were staying upstairs. And we have the baby monitor in the other room. And at about two in the morning, my daughter she woke back up and was just talking. Very calm, very cool, collected, like there was someone sitting there. I felt like there was maybe a ghost, maybe a spirit.
The paranormal crew placed electronic equipment throughout the house, starting with dousing rods. The investigator asked: “If there’s anybody in this room on the other side that would like to speak to us, will you please straighten out the rods? Please point them directly away from me.”
The rods straightened and pointed directly away. Then, using a pendulum to answer yes or no questions, the investigator found that there was a ghost standing in the corner of the room.
“Is there more than one of you here in the room?” an investigator asked.
“I think so,” she said after observing the movement of the pendulum. “There’s friendly spirits. Some of them might be cranky, but that doesn’t mean that they’re bad.”
Mora responded, “Cranky? That’s good because (Kathy, his wife) is always telling me that I’m the only cranky one around here.”
The group moved upstairs, where the technology showed two figures in a bedroom.
The investigation took 90 minutes, and the conclusion was clear: Mora’s house is haunted.
“There’s clearly something here,” the investigator said. “Something that was here before the house and they seem to be very happy coexisting with the Moras.”