They see dead people

By Griffin Pritchard
Progress staff writer

When the term "paranor­mal investigators" is heard, many people conjure the co­medic images of Bill Mur­ray, Dan Akroyd and Har­old Ramis as the characters of Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz and Egon Spengler from the 1984 movie "Ghost­busters," cracking wise and shooting atomic beams at the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

Ask local residents who are members of the South­ern Paranormal Research­ers, and they'll tell you par­anormal investigation is nothing like that.

"We hang out in New Or­leans. We've been to Charleston," said Leslie Kirk, a member of the Southern Paranormal Re­searchers located in Pratt­ville. "We went to Robinson Springs last week and we've been to the Wetumpka area schools to investigate."

According to the group's founder, Shawn Sellers, while at Robinson Springs Methodist Church, they had an interesting experi­ence.

"We had an instance where we heard someone walking above us and a door opened and closed," said Sellers. "But we haven't been able to go through all of the audio yet to see what else we could find."

"We heard what sounded like a television turning on and we couldn't find the television set," said Kirk.

For Sellers, the investiga­tion of the unexplained started in his childhood.

"We have about 20 mem­bers and most are college-educated with professional jobs," said Sellers. "But a majority of us were Old Clo­verdale kids. We would get on our bikes and ride to Huntingdon College to look for the Red Lady."

The Red Lady is the mythical ghost that resides on the campus of Huntingdon.

"When we got older, we'd get in our cars and drive to different places that we heard were haunt­ed," said Sellers. "Even when I got married, my wife and I would go and stay in some of the haunt­ed hotels."

After partnering with a group from north Alabama for a brief stint, Sellers decided to form his own group of ghost hunters. And so, the Southern Paranormal Re­searchers were established.

According to Kirk, the group has members ranging in ages from 22 years old to about 60 years old.

"It's the thrill of it," said Mi­chael Burnett, associate director of Southern Paranormal Re­searchers. "Everyone has some type of interest in it. People will open up once they find out what we do. But they feel that people are going to think they are crazy. But really it's the excitement of it once you get involved. It's the adrenaline of it."

Unlike the paranormal inves­tigators in the movie "Ghostbus­ters," Seller's crew is armed not with proton packs but with EMF meters, cameras, audio record­ers and pens and paper.

"We use an old cassette re­corder and a 35mm camera," said Sellers. "The EMF measures electromagnetic frequencies and one of the best tools we have is an old Boy Scout compass that helps us detect changes in the EMF."

Sellers also points out the group uses a temperature gauge purchased at Wal-Mart to help measure fluctuations in temper­atures inside the site that they are investigating.

"We are getting more and more of these hotels that want us to come investigate them," said Sellers. "But we tell them that we may not find anything there."

The Southern Paranormal Re­searchers, according to both Sell­ers and Kirk, have investigated disturbances in and around the capital city, as well as Bear Creek in Autaugaville and the ceme­tery where Davy Crockett's sis­ter is buried in Chilton County.

"This cemetery was an older one, so it was spread out in the woods," said Sellers. "We had a microphone set atop one of the tombstones with no one near it. This was one of the times that I got a little scared. The micro­phone came flying off the tomb­stone and hit me in the chest. We have audio of that happening."

According to Jake Bell, the group's audio manager, electro­magnetic pulses have been found on some of the audio recording. According to Bell, EMPs register lower than 600 hertz. The human voice range measures in the 15,000-hz range.

"It goes as far back as the 1960s," said Bell. "It originated in Germany. It was thought of as the tape, but since we are using digital microphones, you can get an audio signature. We got chil­dren laughing and an old guy laughing too in Enterprise. And we got something at the 1891 House in New Orleans; those two stick out. It can be eerie. Proba­bly one of the eeriest things is that we get a lot of children in places."

The group says it doesn't come down to just one person's word when analyzing the group's findings.

"We all look at what we find," said Burnett. "So you've got nine or 10 sets of eyes looking at things. I can tell you that I've seen pictures that as soon as I laid eyes on them, the hair on my arm stood up."

The group has also investigat­ed a few local homes in Montgom­ery, as well as Fort Morgan, Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham, a hotel in Oneonta, an abandoned men­tal hospital in the Northport area and is planning trips to the Shorter House in Eufaula this weekend. Other future investiga­tion sites include the old city jail in Charlotte, N.C., Aug. 18 and the old city jail in Mobile Oct. 20.

The group also has trips to Carrollton, New Orleans and St. Augustine, Fla., planned over the upcoming months.

Many are skeptical, and that includes even some of the group members' families.

"My wife is one of the biggest skeptics I've ever been around. She never really gets convinced," said Sellers. "But we did the mid­night tour of the Charleston City Jail and one of the old jail doors shut on its on. Ever since then, she's been a believer."

Kristen, Shawn's wife, said when that event occurred, the two had originally seen the door close and then open.

"We went back down and the door was opened," said Kristen. "We were on a different floor and when we heard the door shut, we knew it couldn't have been any of us. I'm a believer ever since."

While investigating areas in North Alabama, Sellers experi­enced two events that cemented his beliefs.

"In Oneonta, I saw something with my own eyes that just scared me," said Sellers. "I saw someone in the hallway, a shad­ow. At first I thought it may have been someone from the other team standing in the hall, but the figure bent over to do something and I could see through it. I kept sitting there, looking at it out of the corner of my eye. I made a noise, but it was gone.

"In Northport, there was a shadow at least six feet tall that walked around the old building. I had taken a photo of two of the people in our group, and one of them turned ghost white because when I turned around. This thing was standing behind me. At one point, the figure started running and then just vanished."

Sellers wasn't the only one to see the specter.

"We tried to chase the thing," said Burnett. "There was some­thing there. It was moving up and down the hallways. That was the most frightened I've been."

Sellers said that without a doubt, the old mental hospital in Northport and the 1891 House in New Orleans were the most ac­tive places that his group has in­vestigated.

During an investigation, the group will meet with the resi­dents of the home to get a feel for them and to hear their stories.

"One thing we do is try to go in with everyone not knowing what we are looking to find," said Burnett. "You've got to find something. Not that you are going to find something or not find something, but one of the things that drives me is trying to disprove things. If we get a pic­ture, I'll look at it and try to see why it isn't possible."

Investigations aren't just done on the spur of the moment, either. Sellers says those claim­ing to have had a paranormal ex­perience must first tell their ex­periences to Kirk and Patti Davis, two of the group's re­searchers. If those two find the story credible, the home or busi­ness owner will have a meeting with Burnett. The group will then meet and set up a time to in­vestigate the premises.

"I think if you go into a place and it's in your mind that you are going to see a ghost," said Sellers, "your mind will play tricks on you. The way we set things up, we've got game plans before we ever go into a home."

The group then will conduct a few more visits before actually going in with the equipment. Once inside, the investigation goes from the late hours of the night until nearly dawn.

"One thing we'll do is investi­gate in two or three teams and then switch areas without com­municating with the other team," said Burnett. "That way, when we do our logs we can look back and see that this group saw some of the same things we saw or they had a different experi­ence then we had. At the same time, we can also look to see noth­ing happened."

They were able to investigate the mental hospital from 7 p.m. until nearly 3 a.m., with the per­mission of the Northport Police Department.

"We will take around five hours of audio and more than 600 photos," said Sellers. "Then we will take into account our own personal experiences while pro­cessing the investigation."

"I'm the one that looks at our investigation and try to disprove it," said James Kirkley, the video manager for the group. "I want to know if that orb is a camera flash or if that shadow is from some­one standing too close to the light source."

Sellers, who's group is non-profit, says that the homeowners will be presented a packet follow­ing the investigations with all of the groups findings.

While investigating the Rich­ards-DAR House Museum in Mo­bile, the group invited a photog­rapher from Mobile Bay Magazine to tag along.

Dennis Holt, the photogra­pher from the magazine, using a Nikon D2X camera was able to capture an image, shadowy and standing near a window.

"We never had an opportuni­ty to take a look at the original photo," said Sellers. "He got it copyrighted and it belongs to the magazine. We never had the op­portunity to check out the photo. But he's a very credible photog­rapher. Though we didn't get anything with our equipment, for them to publish it in their magazine, something has to be there."

Sellers says he's being cau­tious.

"We can tell in our logs that nobody in our group was in that room at that time, so we know that nobody was up there to re­flect any shadows," said Sellers. "I'm just very hesitant about things like that until I know that all of the I's are dotted and the T's have been crossed."

"He got the picture and ran with it," said Burnett. "That's good for him. But until I've actu­ally go the picture in my hand, I don't think many of us could say anything about it."

While the shadowed image in the Mobile Bay Mag photo was a near clean image, some photos produce orbs, which could be a number of things.

"You've got to look at the loca­tion, where you're at when you take the photo," said Burnett. "I run a nursing home and I can tell you there is no dust in the dining room. I won't allow. We had a little family get-together and they took a photo. Low and be­hold there was an orb in the pho­to that was pretty good sized. I could tell you that's not dust. But when you go on a dusty road and take a photo and there are hun­dreds of orbs, that's more than likely dust."

One of the more interesting features about the group is that they have a chaplain.

"You can't go into these places scared or afraid," said Jer­emy Cromblin, who handles the chaplain duties for the group. "You can't go into these places scared and afraid. Your mind will start creating things. I haven't seen anything that makes me question my faith."

Burnett says the group pro­claims their beliefs on its myspa­ce.com page (http://www.myspace.com/spit_ghosthunters) and it is list­ed as Christianity.

"I haven't encountered any­thing that goes against my reli­gion," said Burnett. "And to be honest, if I did I would want to re­search it."

Sellers, who is a self-pro­claimed history buff, could see the state of Alabama using the paranormal as an untapped mar­ket.

"You've got places like New Orleans, Savannah and Charles­ton tapping into their historical roots and offering paranormal tours," said Sellers. "I think that with as much history as this state possesses, it's an untapped market and would a very suc­cessful one for the state to ex­plore."