Ghost-Hunting at the Grim
A week ago I had an opportunity to accompany the Texarkana Paranormal Investigation group on a ghost hunt at the historic old Hotel Grim in the old downtown area. Although I didn't have any supernatural experiences there, I did have a feeling of awe at being in the place where my Dad attended his high school prom up in the 8th floor ballroom. A reporter from the Texarkana Gazette was there as well, and this is the story that she filed:
texarkanagazette.com/articles/2005/12/23/local_news/
features/features06.txt
"Spirited career - Ghost hunters say their focus is solving mysteries"
12/23/05
By BECKY BELL
Texarkana Gazette
People in Texarkana may not yet know who they're gonna call if they have a problem of the supernatural kind.
The Texarkana Paranormal Investigators are hoping to change that.
For this group, ghost busting is more than the basis of a popular movie of the 1980s. It is a lifestyle that led to the formation of a group seeking answers to questionable appearances that neither logic nor science alone can explain.
It took founder Sharon Howe four years of effort to finally put together a group of 16 members, half of whom are hard core enough to rearrange their schedules if the right ghost hunting opportunity presents itself. The result is an eclectic bunch that shares the most important fact in common—ghosts are a matter of excitement and enchantment, not fear. And unlike the movie, the purpose of finding the ghosts is not to capture them and get rid of them. The point is to embrace them wherever they are and hope to stumble upon clues from history to explain why they continue to inhabit an area.
A common thread between the members is an interest in ghosts early in life. But at 50, people may not think much about her tromping through cemeteries, old houses and businesses with sometimes strange pasts, Howe said.
"If I was in my 20s they might say I'm crazy, but now that I'm in my 50s, I'm charmingly eccentric. Age can work for you. If I can wear red and purple, I can ghost hunt," she said.
She and her friend Melba Long are members of a Red Hat Society in Redwater. But they feel just as comfortable talking about EVPs--electronic voice phenomenons—as they do sipping ice tea and socializing with other women their age who have pledged to have fun and be silly after 50.
They don't care what people think of them wearing red and purple any more than wearing an infrared light strapped around their head to help illuminate their paths where they tread with the hope of their next big find.
Although Hollywood has presented a variety of tactics in ghost hunting over the years, the paranormal investigators do not chant or hold a seance in an attempt to will the ghosts to appear. Instead, Howe often makes a soft-spoken plea for the ghosts to allow their picture to be made as she snaps away on her digital camera. If the spirit is agreeable, the most common evidence will be orbs—spheres of electromagnetic energy produced by a ghost. In more rare cases, the hunters will actually capture an apparition—a disembodied spirit that may appear either fully or partially visible to the human eye may appear. The ghost may even appear likely in clothing reflecting the time period when they lived.
But not every photograph taken will reveal unusual images. Long, 57, who is psychic said a person's frequency determines whether or not people can see them or not. A person's emotional makeup holds a great bearing on the frequency vibration, she said. This is how she explains people who are grieving making contact with a person who has passed on. In those cases the energy between the living and dead somehow resonates,
she said. She is currently working on a book about ghost hunting from a psychic's experience that she will call "The Ghost Seer," which she hopes can provide more insight into what it is like to see things from
her perspective.
Hearing ghosts speak and feeling their presence is nothing new to Long who had her first experience at 5 years old. She was sitting on the porch with her grandmother as they shelled peas and suddenly noticed a man who looked like Jesus standing in the watermelon patch watching her.
She next noticed multiple shaped orbs floating in the woods when she was on a deer hunt with her father. When she asked him what the images were, he calmly replied, "ghosts." Long said her entire family experiences varying levels of clairvoyance.
As a woman, she has had multiple experiences.
One of them seemed to put things into perspective during the busy shopping and errand time of the Christmas season. At the end of a day of constant errand running and bad luck with sales clerks, Long suddenly found herself lost on a path she hadn't intended to go down. She noticed a cemetery nearby and was drawn to a large statue of a male angel. When she went to get a closer look she was astounded to see that the tombstone echoed the thought she'd been having all day.
"It said there was never enough time," she said. "That changed my perspective on things."
But despite the stories she and other members have experienced—including even more invasive situations such as batteries fully charged suddenly drained, steep drops in temperature in only certain spots and car doors locking and unlocking—there will still be many people who will not believe what they did not or cannot see with their own eyes.
Long said true skeptics are not moved by hard evidence captured in photographs or sound recordings and find reasons to explain anything they are shown. But the average person is at the very least intrigued when they are shown a picture, say, of a figure with a handlebar mustache and visor behind the bar at Union Station. Long and the other members didn't see the figure when they went through a walk through, but they now know he was there. A tape recording they have from Union Station has the general background noise of the ghost hunters investigating the facility and the sounds of something else. The tape has a man's voice saying "get her," with the sounds of a woman screaming making them believe it is someone being raped. The group knows they were the only ones at the train station during the investigation so the only way they can possibly explain it is to call it a residual haunting.
This kind of find leads them to other history filled spots downtown such as the Grim Hotel. They trekked through to the eighth floor of the circa 1928 building recently and eagerly await the findings of that search as they review the images they gathered on their digital cameras. One room on the second floor of the structure had an eerieness about it Howe could just not explain but felt as soon as she walked through. She was later informed that a woman had died there. No other details were given but of course, it peaks the group's curiosity.
Howe said any answers the group determines typically just lead to more questions. She will never consider her pastime a strange one.
"I love people. I love puppies and kittens. And I love ghosts," Howe said.
texarkanagazette.com/articles/2005/12/23/local_news/
features/features06.txt
"Spirited career - Ghost hunters say their focus is solving mysteries"
12/23/05
By BECKY BELL
Texarkana Gazette
People in Texarkana may not yet know who they're gonna call if they have a problem of the supernatural kind.
The Texarkana Paranormal Investigators are hoping to change that.
For this group, ghost busting is more than the basis of a popular movie of the 1980s. It is a lifestyle that led to the formation of a group seeking answers to questionable appearances that neither logic nor science alone can explain.
It took founder Sharon Howe four years of effort to finally put together a group of 16 members, half of whom are hard core enough to rearrange their schedules if the right ghost hunting opportunity presents itself. The result is an eclectic bunch that shares the most important fact in common—ghosts are a matter of excitement and enchantment, not fear. And unlike the movie, the purpose of finding the ghosts is not to capture them and get rid of them. The point is to embrace them wherever they are and hope to stumble upon clues from history to explain why they continue to inhabit an area.
A common thread between the members is an interest in ghosts early in life. But at 50, people may not think much about her tromping through cemeteries, old houses and businesses with sometimes strange pasts, Howe said.
"If I was in my 20s they might say I'm crazy, but now that I'm in my 50s, I'm charmingly eccentric. Age can work for you. If I can wear red and purple, I can ghost hunt," she said.
She and her friend Melba Long are members of a Red Hat Society in Redwater. But they feel just as comfortable talking about EVPs--electronic voice phenomenons—as they do sipping ice tea and socializing with other women their age who have pledged to have fun and be silly after 50.
They don't care what people think of them wearing red and purple any more than wearing an infrared light strapped around their head to help illuminate their paths where they tread with the hope of their next big find.
Although Hollywood has presented a variety of tactics in ghost hunting over the years, the paranormal investigators do not chant or hold a seance in an attempt to will the ghosts to appear. Instead, Howe often makes a soft-spoken plea for the ghosts to allow their picture to be made as she snaps away on her digital camera. If the spirit is agreeable, the most common evidence will be orbs—spheres of electromagnetic energy produced by a ghost. In more rare cases, the hunters will actually capture an apparition—a disembodied spirit that may appear either fully or partially visible to the human eye may appear. The ghost may even appear likely in clothing reflecting the time period when they lived.
But not every photograph taken will reveal unusual images. Long, 57, who is psychic said a person's frequency determines whether or not people can see them or not. A person's emotional makeup holds a great bearing on the frequency vibration, she said. This is how she explains people who are grieving making contact with a person who has passed on. In those cases the energy between the living and dead somehow resonates,
she said. She is currently working on a book about ghost hunting from a psychic's experience that she will call "The Ghost Seer," which she hopes can provide more insight into what it is like to see things from
her perspective.
Hearing ghosts speak and feeling their presence is nothing new to Long who had her first experience at 5 years old. She was sitting on the porch with her grandmother as they shelled peas and suddenly noticed a man who looked like Jesus standing in the watermelon patch watching her.
She next noticed multiple shaped orbs floating in the woods when she was on a deer hunt with her father. When she asked him what the images were, he calmly replied, "ghosts." Long said her entire family experiences varying levels of clairvoyance.
As a woman, she has had multiple experiences.
One of them seemed to put things into perspective during the busy shopping and errand time of the Christmas season. At the end of a day of constant errand running and bad luck with sales clerks, Long suddenly found herself lost on a path she hadn't intended to go down. She noticed a cemetery nearby and was drawn to a large statue of a male angel. When she went to get a closer look she was astounded to see that the tombstone echoed the thought she'd been having all day.
"It said there was never enough time," she said. "That changed my perspective on things."
But despite the stories she and other members have experienced—including even more invasive situations such as batteries fully charged suddenly drained, steep drops in temperature in only certain spots and car doors locking and unlocking—there will still be many people who will not believe what they did not or cannot see with their own eyes.
Long said true skeptics are not moved by hard evidence captured in photographs or sound recordings and find reasons to explain anything they are shown. But the average person is at the very least intrigued when they are shown a picture, say, of a figure with a handlebar mustache and visor behind the bar at Union Station. Long and the other members didn't see the figure when they went through a walk through, but they now know he was there. A tape recording they have from Union Station has the general background noise of the ghost hunters investigating the facility and the sounds of something else. The tape has a man's voice saying "get her," with the sounds of a woman screaming making them believe it is someone being raped. The group knows they were the only ones at the train station during the investigation so the only way they can possibly explain it is to call it a residual haunting.
This kind of find leads them to other history filled spots downtown such as the Grim Hotel. They trekked through to the eighth floor of the circa 1928 building recently and eagerly await the findings of that search as they review the images they gathered on their digital cameras. One room on the second floor of the structure had an eerieness about it Howe could just not explain but felt as soon as she walked through. She was later informed that a woman had died there. No other details were given but of course, it peaks the group's curiosity.
Howe said any answers the group determines typically just lead to more questions. She will never consider her pastime a strange one.
"I love people. I love puppies and kittens. And I love ghosts," Howe said.
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