Haunted happenings

On the job with Tennessee’s own “ghost hunters”

By Amy Petulla

With the explosion in the popularity of shows like Ghost Hunters, I thought it would be appropriate, for my annual Halloween story, to share with you some tales told to me by some of Chattanooga’s very own ghost hunters, the folks at Tennessee Paranormal Investigative Team.

For those few of you out there not familiar with the genre, “ghost hunters” investigate allegations of supernatural activity. Some want to believe just about anything is a ghost; others are very skeptical and seek to disprove all allegations, so that those they can’t disprove have the ring of truth. TPIT takes a skeptical approach. They seek to recreate “evidence” of ghosts, because if they can recreate it, it’s not supernatural. (Almost all the “ghost” photos I’ve sent them, they tell me are dust or other natural occurrences.) Still, they’ve encountered several incidents in the Chattanooga area that they couldn’t recreate or disprove. Those are the ones I’d like to share with you today.

Ghost hunters use several tools, including digital cameras, recording devices (for capturing electronic voice phenomena, or EVPs), electromagnetic field detectors (as ghosts are thought to increase electromagnetic activity in the air), and temperature gauges (as temperatures are thought to drop in the presence of ghosts).

In preparation for this article I met with Joe McKeel, who heads up TPIT. He came with photos, video and EVPs. One of the first things he showed me was a tape of them checking out a well-known downtown location that’s said to be haunted. (I can’t use the name, but there are trains there.) The video was made at 2:30 a.m., so things were pretty dead at the time. (Pardon the pun.) Only one other person was shown on the video, some distance away. Nevertheless, a person not visible to the camera can be heard whistling as they go by—a sound not heard at the time of recording, according to Joe.

Then he told me about one of the TPIT’s very first investigations, in Catoosa County, Ga. They were in a field and saw a man wearing a grey coat and pants, a confederate cap, and a rifle. They got a little nervous, not because they suspected a ghost, but because there were some dangerous characters known to patrol the area, and the rifle was not something they had been hoping to see. When they challenged the man and told him to stop, the figure stopped, looked at them, and faded away before their eyes.

During another investigation, the team left a video camera recording near the arch in a local cemetery, where a dark figure has been reported to hang out. When they first reviewed the film, the investigators got quite excited; the camera was actually moving around! A review of a tape made with a second camera revealed what had really happened: a dog was attacking the first camera. But the second film was good for more than a laugh. It shows the dog startle and look at the arch. Right at that moment, a mist shoots across the screen. When the dog looks away, the mist occurs again; the dog looks at it again, startled, and clearly having decided it wants no part of whatever is causing the mist, wanders off. The mist appears on the screen exactly 13 frames in each occurrence—less than half a second.

The most popular piece of evidence for ghosts these days seems to be EVPs, or words that aren’t heard aloud when a recording is being made, but which can be heard when the tape is played back. This is not when it is played at an altered speed or backwards (like the hidden messages created by “backmasking” in some songs by the Beatles and other groups), but rather, when it is played normally. The thinking is that these ghostly communications are done at a frequency our ears can’t hear, although the recorder can pick them up. If the recording is something that is heard by the human ear at the time it is being made, rather than just on playback, it is considered “voice phenomena,” rather than electronic voice phenomena. Joe told me about some excellent examples of EVPs.

In November of 2008, he says, TPIT did an investigation of an abandoned hospital in South Pittsburg, Tenn. At one point, a group of three females, with no men in the area, was recording in one room. They heard nothing unusual while recording, but on playback, you can clearly hear two male voices. The first says, “He can follow them,” and the second responds, “Can he?” Later, examining photos taken that night, they discovered a photo that appeared to show a child’s face and hand on the door. The photo was taken at the same moment of the EVP recording.
On the third-floor psych ward a few rooms down, investigators again heard nothing unusual while recording—but on playback, you can clearly hear a very loud male scream. How loud? The chart showing the sound wave for this portion of the recording, which typically has a line with some peaks and valleys, was totally blacked out, top to bottom, for some width.

That same night, Joe recalls, one of the investigators asked, “Are you lonely?”  Someone with a slow, Southern drawl, who was not seen or heard in the room at the time, answers, “Yeah, lonely.” When the group returned for a future investigation, they brought paranormal author Paul Browning and the Clarksville Ghost Hunters along with them. One of the group, a skeptical fellow who does not spook easily, looked in that same room during this second investigation and reported seeing an old man sitting on a bed. Again they asked, “Are you lonely?” And again, the audio reveals an answer, “Yeah, I’m lonely.” When the Clarksville group says, “We just thought we’d drop in to say hello,” the answering “OK” can be clearly heard.

Ghost hunters like the TPIT believe not all of the unusual occurrences that people often attribute to ghosts are actually caused by one. Many think an event or memory that stirs strong emotions can actually “record” itself on its location. A good example of this is thought to have taken place at a commercial haunted house in Chattanooga, where one young visitor apparently got so spooked that she screamed, “I’m scared!”  Later, during an investigation in that same room, the investigators got an EVP of the girl (who is still alive and well, but who wasn’t present during the investigation) saying, “I’m scared.” Someone who had been with the young lady the night she screamed confirmed those were her words.
The TPIT offer their services for free, but Joe says they prefer to do their investigations on weekends because they all have real jobs. (Unfortunately, ghosts aren’t much inclined to help pay the bills.) You can contact them at TPIT@comcast.net or visit their website at MySpace.com/tnpit. They do emphasize, however, that the paranormal is not something to play around with, especially in your own home, and they strongly discourage parents from letting their kids play with Ouija boards; you don’t want to go issuing invitations for trouble. So be safe, and happy haunting this Halloween!