Ghost hunter to seek Homer

A Fresno crime-scene investigator to spend 24 hours in old Raymond firehouse.

By Charles McCarthy / The Fresno Bee
02/10/08 23:09:08

MADERA -- A Fresno ghost hunter has Madera County's blessing to spend 24 hours in the old Raymond fire station, the reputed home of a mischievous spirit named Homer.

Mickey Burrow -- whose regular job is Fresno Police Department crime-scene investigator -- asked county officials for permission to visit the station along with as many as seven fellow hobbyists operating under the name Pacific Haunting Investigations.

Sometime in the next few months, depending on everyone's schedule, they will hunker down for a nightlong effort to capture evidence of ghosts with cameras and equipment that can detect changes in electromagnetic fields.

County officials didn't appear startled by the request. In fact, Supervisor Tom Wheeler of North Fork put on a white sheet just before he and fellow board members voted unanimously last week to give the OK.

But they're not taking any chances. They required Burrow to sign an agreement not to sue the county for any "injury, property damage or death" that might happen while the ghost hunters are at the fire station.

That didn't scare Burrow away.

"If we feel like there's a threat of danger, we wouldn't go there," Burrow said. "This is not a do-or-die situation."

Since the 1950s, firefighters in the old adobe brick station have traded spooky tales about unexplained thumps, shadowy night visitors, lights that go on and off when no one's around -- and Homer.

According to Raymond folklore, Homer is the last name of a young couple who lived on the site in the 1930s. In a jealous rage after learning that his 17-year-old wife had a gentleman visitor, the husband stabbed her to death with a Bowie knife. He then hanged himself, with barbed wire, from a large oak tree that still stands near the old station's front gate.

Cal Fire crews moved last spring to a new station, and Madera County in June paid the private property owner $91,000 for the 1950 barracks, kitchen and garage on 1.69 acres along Road 600. The county plans to locate a community senior center there while keeping a volunteer fire engine in the garage.

All but inviting Homer to join them in their move to a new station a half-mile down the road, the firefighters pried a granite cemetery grave marker from the old station's concrete floor and took it with them to the new station. The marker reads: "'RIP Homer."

Apparently Homer didn't follow. Madera County Fire Department Division Chief Roscoe Rowney said there have been no reports of Homer's presence in the new station.

At the old station, however, alleged Homer activity continues.

Burrow and two associates last month paid a preliminary visit to the site. He turned on an "electronic voice phenomenon" recorder in front of the office area but heard nothing unusual.

When he returned to Fresno and turned on the recorder, there was a faint voice advising him to "turn around."

Burrow, 34, and his fellow hobbyists are relatively new to the hunt. They formed their group in October, he said. But they've already been active.

Last weekend, for example, Burrow and his fellow ghost hunters went to Channel Street, also known as "Snake Road," near Sanger, where the ghost of a mother killed in a car accident with her two daughters is said to roam.

In that case, he said, they found more evidence of coyotes than ghosts.

This won't be the first time a ghost hunter has visited the Raymond fire station.

Jackie Meador of Fresno said that in her own unpublicized investigations there in 2003 and 2004, she and her associates heard a lot of unexplained noises inside -- doors closing and opening, scuffling noises and footsteps.

Meador focuses on ghosts and haunting in two six-week "Paranormal Studies 101" classes she teaches yearly at Cesar Chavez Community Education Center in Fresno. She "absolutely believes" in the paranormal.

"There's something going on out there," she said about Raymond.