Ghostly guests in Prosser home

By Elena Olmstead, Herald staff writer

PROSSER -- Debora Jennings knows just how many times the closet door in her guest room has opened on its own -- 27.

She doesn't just find the door ajar. She actually hears the doorknob jiggle and the latch release.

She also has come downstairs and found all of the pictures on the living room wall hanging at a 45-degree slant, and several months ago she found a footprint emblazoned in her bedroom floor.

At first, Jennings, the pastor at Prosser's St. Matthew's Episcopal Church, chalked the strange noises up to the moaning and creaking of an old home.

Jennings said she first began to ask questions after hearing footsteps in her hallway and children crying in her study. "I began to talk to people in my congregation about the haunted vicarage," she said.

She learned the house, provided for her by the church, was built sometime around 1928. Her research also found it was built partially on top of the remains of a previous vicarage that had burned to the ground.

Jennings said younger members of her 75-member congregation urged her to submit her story to Ghost Hunters. So she did a little research about the show, then sent an e-mail detailing her tale.

She didn't expect to hear anything, but just 21/2 months since sending that e-mail, Jennings has found herself face-to-face with the well-known group of ghost hunters known as The Atlantic Paranormal Society.

The show's publicist, Adrienne D'Amato, describes the group as skeptics who investigate claims of the paranormal. She said the group is typically out to explain away the strange sightings and noises, but sometimes they come across evidence to the contrary.

The Ghost Hunters cast and crew have been at Jennings' home since Wednesday. She said they stayed in the home Thursday night and did another round of nighttime filming Friday. The group then spent a few days analyzing the footage and other recordings and plan to give Jennings its verdict this morning.

Jennings said she isn't worried about what the findings are. She said the experience has helped her open lines of communication between her and her congregation, giving her a chance to talk to them about ghosts, angels and other great mysteries.

"For me the important piece of all of this was to be able to engage in a conversation with our young people," she said. "Whatever (the show) finds out is secondary."

D'Amato said the episode featuring the Prosser vicarage will possibly run during the show's new fall season, which begins Sept. 26.