Thrill of ghost hunt leaves room for chills: Believers in spirit world chase after proof
By John
Wolfson
Seattle Times staff reporter
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LAKEWOOD — Carole Robb sat alone in the room, her right hand closed in a fist so tight it quivered. The rest of her small group continued exploring Thornewood Castle. They videotaped vacant rooms and scoured hallways with electromagnetic field meters, searching for the slightest trace of paranormal activity.
But this was Robb's first investigation and she had decided to rest, overwhelmed by the intensity and, in truth, her own fear.
Everyone else in the Washington State Ghost Society buzzed through the 30,000-square-foot bed and breakfast south of Tacoma, energized by the reports of spirits, of spontaneously bursting glass. They sought evidence of a haunting, proof of a ghost world, and the hunt excited them.
Robb had joined the group just two weeks before, motivated not by the thrill of the chase nor curiosity but by a broken heart.
In 1994, her son, Luke, was killed in an accident just two days after his 7th birthday. Since then, she said, her husband has seen a small child pass through the walls in their home, and she has twice been alone and heard the word "Mama" and twice "Carole." The couple had their house blessed.
Robb knew that this night was going to be frightening. She had brought along her pink blanket, the one she's had for 13 years and that always makes her feel safe. And buried within the squeeze of her right fist, a beaded necklace wrapped twice around her wrist, was a tiny crucifix.
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Before the night was over, Robb's crucifix would get plenty of use. She and the other amateur ghostbusters would stumble onto something so strange that even a skeptic would spend several minutes wondering.
Monthly investigations
The Ghost Society started a year ago and now has 30 members who do about three investigations a month in the Seattle area.
In their professional lives, they are office workers and Boeing engineers, business owners and military employees. But when tracking ghosts, they are detectives and digital photographers, psychics and sound recorders. They pay for their own equipment and travel, and accept no compensation.
Most people find the group through its Web site, www.washingtonstateghostsociety.org, co-founder and President Henry Bailey said, but they've been around long enough now to start getting referrals as well.
Sure, it's exciting: the investigating, the running around with electronic equipment in the night. But they really do believe. For some it's a quest for God, for others a search to understand strange occurrences from childhood; some hope to connect with lost loved ones and others simply want to confirm vague suspicions.
Whatever the reason, groups like the Ghost Society are popping up everywhere. At least three others are in Washington state, and the Virginia-based Spellfyre's Ghosts maintains a Web site that links to nearly 200 investigation teams across the country.
The Parapsychology Foundation, created a half-century ago in New York City to promote scientific ghost investigations, has seen a "huge" increase in inquiries it receives.
"It's not just around Halloween," executive director Lisette Coly said. "People are constantly on this quest to prove the paranormal."
She said the rise of the Internet may be responsible, since people now have an easier time meeting and organizing. But she suspects another reason: "Aging baby boomers. All of a sudden, mortality is approaching, and (they're asking themselves) 'What does it mean?' "
Weird things have been going on at Thornewood Castle since Wayne and Deanna Robinson bought the 54-room mansion 2-˝ years ago.
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She says her own daughter and some staff members refuse to enter Thornewood alone. They've been spooked, she said, by glass bowls that shatter while sitting untouched, and by the stories of several guests who have reported seeing the ghost of Anna Thorne, wife of the man who built the mansion.
This night marked the third time since March the mansion's owners had called in the Ghost Society to investigate the hauntings. This time a video camera would pick up the kind of image that inspires nightmares for normal people ... and dreams for ghostbusters.
As the group investigated, one of the psychics felt herself pulled into a downstairs sitting room. Suddenly, she grabbed a tambourine that lay on an end table. She closed her eyes for a moment and gently shook the instrument, listening, it seemed, for something in the soft clanging of the bells. "Somebody likes this tambourine," she said, opening her eyes. She meant a ghost.
As he did whenever the psychic sensed a ghost, which was fairly often, Neil McNeill switched on his electromagnetic field meter. He raised the instrument, which resembled a skinny cellphone, over his head, checking for responder impulses, the trails said to be left by ghosts.
"I'm getting a low-level reading here," he said, watching the meter's flashing lights. "There doesn't seem to be any wiring in this area that would give a false reading."
Searching for proof
Recording all this, a digital video camera strapped to his chest, was Michael Kundu. He's a civilian employee of the Navy and a bit of a skeptic. He said a spiritual world seems logical but he wants proof.
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The psychic and McNeill continued their investigation. Upstairs, Carole Robb sat on a corner of the bed in the Rose Red Room, still grasping her crucifix. Patricia Cowan walked in and picked up a video camera that had been recording the room. A minute into reviewing the tape, she let out a cry.
A brilliantly yellow ball of light appeared in the lower right corner of the screen then dropped delicately out of sight. Spirits are often said to manifest themselves in "orbs" of energy, such as the one that kept showing up on Cowan's tape.
Could this be it? The evidence the team has been chasing for a year?
Other members rushed to the room.
Kundu, in particular, was fascinated. "I'm still not convinced it's not an anomaly of light," he said after several reviews, "but I don't have an explanation for this." He ran off for cables to link the video camera to a television in the room.
The excitement mounted and the mood began to shift. Everything suddenly seemed possible. Robb sat on the bed, looking nervous.
Someone yelled from a bathroom that the sink had started running on its own. "You're kidding me!" McNeill exclaimed, sprinting off to check. It turned out a person, not a ghost, was responsible.
Back in the Rose Red Room, Cowan noticed a bedside clock flashing. "Did someone reset this clock?" she asked excitedly, thinking it might have been the work of a ghost. McNeill thought for a moment then started flicking light switches.
He found one that turned the clock off and on. "Oh," Cowan said with a blush.
Kundu returned with the video cables and hooked the camera up to the television.
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"There it is!" McNeill yelled, springing to his feet, his finger thrusting toward the television.
They erupted in cheers and laughter, replaying the tape again and again. They noticed still more orbs and they yelled with each new discovery. They know about the skeptics, the people who think they're crazy, but here it was, after a year of searching; proof, vindication. This room, the castle itself, was surely the apparitional mother lode.
But Kundu's face grew more serious with each replay. "You know what," he finally said. "It's dust. The light is doing what's called back-scatter."
Deflated moment
Everyone sunk back down to the bed as Kundu explained the camera's light source simply had caught floating dusk particles, giving them a luminous glow.
It was quiet for a moment.
"The ghosts are all hovering around laughing at us," Cowan said.
One by one, they acknowledged it may never be possible to prove ghosts exist. "Maybe none of these means are useful to record something that's so inherently ethereal," Kundu said. "Frankly, I'm even skeptical of the power of the psychics."
The exhilaration began to fade, but not entirely. For a few moments it had felt real, and maybe that was all that mattered. More important, perhaps, than proof and validation were a few minutes when it was at least possible.
But what, really, would proving the existence of a spirit world accomplish? By this time, Carole Robb was on the floor, her back resting against the bed, her hand still wrapped around the crucifix. Perhaps she was thinking of her Luke.
"I want to be able to prove that love survives the grave," she said.
The Ghost Society hasn't finished its Thornewood report. Bailey, the group's president, said there is evidence of hauntings, including certain readings from the electromagnetic field meters and some unexplained photographs. Most interesting, he said, were the "electronic voice phenomena" captured on a tape recorder.
"You could definitely hear a child's voice, kind of singing," he said. "You could hear a 'la, la, la,' a little child."
The group often recommends cleansing a haunted home by having it blessed, or by finding a psychic to commune with the ghosts, encouraging them to move on from this world and "into the light."
Deanna Robinson wouldn't hear of that. "We don't want anything changed here," she said. "Whatever energy is here, we want it just the way it is."
John Wolfson: 206-464-2061 or jwolfson@seattletimes.com
Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company