October 28, 2004

Ghost World

Utah ghost hunters break on through to the other side.
by Kelly Ashkettle

Todd Vincze owns a hospital building in Lehi that he converted into a haunted house. And recently, he caught sight of what he believed was a real ghost among the high school cast members of his Haunted Hospital.
Vincze was just about to open his doors to the public. He called out to his cast members. “Everybody get in your positions!”
Then, catching sight of something—or someone—Vincze had never seen before, he said, “Who’s that at the top of the stairs?”
For a fleeting moment, he saw the face of an old man peering at him through an old wooden grate that used to be the door to the hospital’s elevator. Vincze looked away, and when he looked back, the man was gone. Later, Vincze realized that the man looked like a friend’s grandfather, whom, he was told, had died in the hospital’s elevator.

A few days later, Nancy and Chris Peterson of the Utah Ghost Hunters’ Society (UGHS) investigated for evidence that Vincze’s Haunted Hospital was, in fact, haunted. They investigated on the premise that ghosts might not reveal themselves to the human eye but just might show up on the recording mechanism of a video camera, still camera, or tape recorder.
The Petersons brought friends Brian Whitesides, who has a video camera, and April Greenawalt to the Haunted Hospital. Once inside they pointed the camera’s lens at a mirror hanging inside the hospital’s “Bloody Mary” room. Call for Mary three times, legend has it, and her mangled reflection will appear.
“There’s a face in the mirror,” Whitesides says, peering at the mirror through the LCD screen while he films in nightshot. “Right up above that white lettering in the plastic.”
“Oh, yeah,” says Greenawalt. “Ooh. My eyes are tearing.”
“Well, don’t let it scare you too bad,” Whitesides says.
“It doesn’t scare me,” she says. “It’s neat that we’re actually seeing it.”
Skeptics would say that a commercial spook alley or haunted house would have the room rigged to show Mary’s reflection. But Whitesides detects a strong reading on an electromagnetic field reader near the mirror. That’s sign of an unusual energy field often associated with ghosts. Vincze, also present, says there is no electrical wiring in that wall.
“It’s hard to tell because the plastic is moving around,” Whitesides says, pointing to a tarp rippling in the breeze from the windows against the wall, “but it looks like somebody’s pushing through it.”

At least one member of the investigative team wants to see something make an appearance outside of reflections in a mirror. “Let us see you,” Nancy Peterson calls out. “If you want to be seen, let us see you.”
No spook materializes, but Greenawalt’s sister, Courtney Ward, finds herself unable to stay in the building. Like Greenawalt, Ward is a “sensitive,” and says she feels sick to her stomach in the presence of the supernatural.
Vincze says the “Bloody Mary” room housed the intensive-care recovery rooms back when the building was a functioning hospital from 1924 to 1968. The activity in this room is just one example of phenomena recorded in the building. There are others.
Vincze says he’s losing more of his frightened cast all the time as they hear voices and see figures. People have been coming up to the door to tell him he’s crazy for hosting a “Haunted Hospital” in a hospital that’s truly haunted. Vincze just wanted to draw on the legend of the historical site as a fund-raiser for its renovation. When he bought the building, he had plans to turn it into a bed and breakfast. Now, he’s thinking that it might make more sense to make the building into a medical center again.

Despite the fact that Chris Peterson is here tonight because of a tip from Greenawalt, who had an intuitive sense ghosts resided in the hospital, he says the UGHS doesn’t use psychics. “If you’re trying to give evidence of the paranormal, you can’t do it with the paranormal,” he says. “‘My spirit guide telling me there’s a ghost here’ means nothing. We need to get physical evidence, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Later, when he plays back his cassette tapes from the evening, he says that he did record an electronic voice phenomenon (EVP) in the “Bloody Mary” room. An EVP occurs when you record onto a cassette tape, and then upon playback hear ghostly voices not audible at the time of the recording.
“The wind was blowing and the plastic was flapping,” Chris Peterson says, “And there were so many people there that it’s hard to distinguish what was going on. But someone said, ‘That’s really weird,’ and right after that, a man’s voice said, ‘Yeah.’ It sounded like an EVP. EVP has a quality to it that doesn’t sound like a human voice.”

The practice of ghost hunting has become increasingly popular in recent years, especially since the release of The Sixth Sense with its catch phrase—“I see dead people”—now part of the popular lexicon. Early this month the Sci-Fi Channel even launched the reality series Ghost Hunters, about two plumbers who hunt paranormal beings in their spare time.
Utah has its fair share of such groups. Brendan Cook of the Layton-based Ghost Investigators Society (GIS) estimates there are about 13 in the state. A disproportionate number are based in Ogden, a former major railroad town with a colorful and violent past.
Ghost hunters seek physical proof of the existence of ghosts. If they are in the right place at the right time, and especially if they are using an infrared camera, they can often film “orbs”—moving balls of light that some say are the souls of dead people. Other tools of the trade include a tape recorder for capturing EVPs, EMF readers for measuring electromagnetic fields, and air thermometers for measuring sudden changes in temperature. The theory is that ghosts need energy to materialize and will draw it from the physical world.
Investigators claim there are many different kinds of ghosts, all of whom want different things. “If you’re happy-go-lucky in life, that’s how you’ll be in death,” says Chris Peterson. “If you’re rude and nasty in life, that’s how you’ll be in death.”
Michele Buck, who teaches a community education ghost-hunting class through Taylorsville High School each summer, was willing to share one of her more unnerving experiences.

Buck believes one particular bed and breakfast in northern Utah to be haunted by several spirits, including that of “Mr. Murphy,” a traveling salesman who died there in the 1930s or ’40s. Buck says he is usually nice, but when she took her class there in 2003, he got angry because some of her students were being disrespectful and mocking the idea of ghosts. When Buck took three other students into the room inhabited by Mr. Murphy, she says he expressed his anger by pushing her into one of her students.
“I felt an energy just push me right into her,” Buck recalls, who believes that the spirit then jumped into her student’s body.
The student, Juli Gordon says, “I felt something so cold go right through into me. The next thing I knew, I was screaming bloody murder.”
Buck did her best to calm Gordon down. As she was talking to Gordon, however, the two other students were recording EVPs. “As I was talking to Juli,” Buck recalls, “[the ghost] was answering me back. I said, ‘You’re going to be OK, he won’t hurt you anymore,’ and he said, ‘Yes, I will.’”
Gordon says an emergency medical technician in the class treated her for shock, but she felt sick for days. Buck believes Mr. Murphy wanted to express his anger at her group, and chose Gordon because she was particularly open to the experience. Buck says ghosts never stay inside people for more than a few days. She doesn’t believe the spirits of beings that were once alive can possess people. She says she’s careful to always tell her students to travel in pairs for physical and emotional safety, to say some sort of prayer beforehand, and to envision themselves encircled in white light for protection.
Chris Peterson of the UGHS thinks that most ghosts still haunt the earthly plane because they’re stuck for one reason or another, whether by addiction to alcohol, tobacco, or drugs; by their love for a person or place; or by their fear of what may await them after they pass on. “It’s easy to understand how someone who’s not a good person in this life could be worried about God’s revenge, so that they stay attached to this plane because they don’t know what’s coming,” he says.

The UGHS, which has been featured on Discovery Channel, tries to use as scientific an approach as possible when documenting its findings. After all, even such rigorously scientific minds as inventor Thomas Edison have tried to develop a machine able to contact the dead. UGHS’s Website, www.ghostwave.com, features video clips of orbs and a large number of EVPs.
The GIS Website, www.ghostpix.com, contains a large gallery of photos showing orbs, streaks of light and mists. UPER, based in Ogden, also has photos of orbs and mists on its Website, http://uper1.tripod.com. UPER is careful to explain why they believe each anomaly may be evidence of the paranormal and not a naturally occurring phenomenon.
Warren Braegger, who specializes in EVP for UPER, says that many groups on the Internet post photos of “orbs” that are actually no more than dust caught in the camera’s flash. “The only time I would consider an orb is if it’s got a trail to it, which means it’s moving at a high rate of speed, which dust doesn’t do,” he says.

Troy Wood, a Salt Lake County animal control officer who runs the Utah Ghost Organization (UGO), is a state-certified crime-scene technician who has taken many photography classes. “You can get orbs just randomly taking pictures anywhere,” he says. Outdoor photos often contain pollen, he explains, which can be easily distinguished because of its yellow color and uneven diameter. Indoor photos often contain dust, especially within the range of a flash. “Just going by photography alone, there is no proof if an orb is spiritual in nature,” he says. The UGO posts photos of orbs on its site if EVPs, or a change in magnetic fields or temperature, accompany them.
There’s debate about the nature and meaning of orbs. Wood says, “Most people say these are spirit orbs, that this is the form your soul takes after you die. I don’t follow that belief. I don’t think they’re actual ghosts. Whether it’s some way of the spirits checking us out, or whether it’s a byproduct they produce, I don’t know, but I’m not 100 percent sold on the idea that the orbs are spirits.”
Many ghost-hunting sites also include EVPs. “You will find that the voice of a ghost has a little different quality,” Nancy Peterson says. “It generally talks over people. There’s a little old house in Alpine, and we were all talking at the end of the evening, and I still had my recorder on, and [a ghost] just yelled, ‘Listen to me!’”

Wood comments, “A lot of EVPs are whispers that have a certain tone to them that sounds like they might not be here with us. Some of them sound like they might be in a small room where it has a little bit of echo to their voice.”
As UPER’s EVP specialist, Braegger has done extensive research on the phenomenon. “They have a unique signature to them,” he says. “It’s tinny, almost metallic.”

The technical aspects of how an EVP is recorded fascinate Braegger. “There’s a bunch of theories on how EVP actually gets on the tape,” he says. “One is that it’s through electromagnetic fields, which makes sense to me, because that’s what a tape is. You’re moving magnetic strips on the tape to make a sound. We’re doing some experiments right now to see if digital recorders pick it up, but we haven’t had any luck, so that may support the theory. Also, I was wondering what would happen if we just killed the mic completely.”
UPER has conducted two major investigations in Ogden: one a study of a now-closed pizza restaurant, where a UPER member photographed the apparition of a small boy; another the Dead Haven project, a study of a former commercial haunted house that stood empty for most of the year.
There often seems to be a correlation between commercial “haunted houses” and places purportedly inhabited by real ghosts. “The theory is that people throw out massive amounts of energy when they’re scared,” Braegger says, “and we’ve noticed that it takes energy for paranormal things to happen.”
Ghost hunting is gaining in popularity. During a free presentation at the Weber Country Library Oct. 11 and 12, the GIS displayed video clips of orbs and played EVPs before a packed auditorium of more than 100 people, with hundreds more turned away. GIS member Brendan Cook says they’ll get a bigger space next year. He thinks people are so interested in ghosts because the topic is taboo. “It’s human nature to delve deeper into things that are taboo but not tell anybody,” he says. “You’ll find that at presentations like this. When they hear everyone else talking about it, people will just open up.”
Cook expects the GIS to start getting three times as many e-mails after the January release of White Noise, a Universal film about EVP, which incorporates some of the GIS’s EVPs in the trailer.

Ogden has an especially high number of ghost hunters and sightings, perhaps because of its past. Ogden’s 25th Street, once known nationally for its brothels, bars, opium dens and murders, is home to lots of activity. Union Station, a transfer hub for the bodies of World War II soldiers, has been the site of many investigations, and other businesses along the street have experienced activity as well.
Some in businesses with reported ghost sightings say they’ve never experienced anything. But others are full of stories. Like Ward, Greenawalt and Gordon, they often describe themselves as “sensitives.”
Marilyn Goff, a copy editor for a publishing company along 25th Street, offers a personal account. “Just last week, I was here by myself for at least an hour. I was coming out of the restroom, and peripherally, to my left side, I could see somebody walking in the hall, so I turned. And just as I turned, I could see that person walking into this divider rather than up or down the stairs. It was a female. You know, the way they just vanish. There was no real detail. Just grayish, no color.”
That was the first time she’d seen an apparition, but when she’s alone in the mornings, she often hears them noisy clumping up and down the stairs. “It’s definitely people who lived here when it was a hotel,” she says. “This is their home, and they used to live in these rooms, and they just make themselves at home.”

The most famous haunted location in Salt Lake City is probably the Capitol Theatre, believed by many to be haunted by the ghost of “George,” an usher who died there during a fire in the 1940s. UGO’s Wood says that the usher’s name was actually Patrick Duffin, but retired theater manager Doug Morgan gave him the nickname George.
Wood says the UGO has recorded EVP inside the theater of a man saying both, “I’m George now,” and “I’m not George.” He says they’ve also recorded other voices. “I think some of them were theatrical artists, and the stage was their life, and they didn’t want to leave it,” he says. “On our Website [www.utahghost.org], there is EVP of a man and woman saying, ‘Out, get out. Out of my house.’ When you listen to that voice, there’s so much drama, like an actor has.”

Another well-known Salt Lake City ghost is the Lady in Purple at the Rio Grande Depot. Legend has it she was meeting her fiancé there as he returned home from World War II. Upon his arrival, they quarreled. He threw the engagement ring onto the tracks, and when she jumped down to get it, she was hit by a train and killed. But, Wood says, the UGO has recorded EVP there of a woman’s voice saying, “My boyfriend pushed me.” He believes the Lady in Purple may be hanging around to get word out that she was murdered.
Another downtown building supposedly haunted is the Salt Lake City & County Building, which the UGO and the UGHS have investigated jointly. It’s said you can sometimes hear the “step, clump” of a former judge with a wooden leg, the “click, whoosh” of a woman in high heels wearing a long skirt, and the sounds of two children playing.

The only fully formed apparition Wood’s ever seen with his own eyes is “Clem,” a ghost dressed in a military uniform who hangs out at Fort Douglas museum. Wood says “Clem” had everything but feet.
Another well-known story in Salt Lake City is that a local dance club called Area 51 is haunted by the ghost of a woman who died of a cocaine overdose in the middle stall of the upstairs bathroom. Angel Woodrow, who has worked at the club for two years, says a security staff member heard crying coming from that bathroom just two weeks ago. He sent her to check it out.
Woodrow saw two girls standing at the mirror fixing their hair, and asked them who was crying. The girls replied, “There’s no one in here but us,” but Woodrow saw a pair of black shoes under the middle stall. The three of them knocked on the door and tried to open it, but it was stuck. Finally, one of the girls was able to push it open—but nobody was there.
Nolan Kelly, a DJ and maintenance person for the club, has his own theory about the nature of the ghost. “It’s possibly the same woman who hangs out on the upstairs dance floor, who we call the dance floor stalker. Late at night, when security is doing their walk-through, she’ll come up and blow in people’s ears or tickle their necks.”

Kelly’s seen other ghosts in the building, which once housed a fur shop. He claims to have seen a ghostly man hanging out near the pool tables in the bar; a mischief-maker who likes to move things around the basement and a girl of about 10 years old who hangs out in the downstairs bar by the stairs. Most bizarrely, he’s seen a pair of disembodied feet. The feet are bare, partially transparent and cut off perfectly flat at mid-shin. They walk the same path: from the front door, through the bar, up the stairs, behind the bar upstairs and then back down again. Kelly recalls, “I was hanging the Christmas lights upstairs at about 4:30 in the morning on top of this ladder, and these two feet come up the stairs behind the bar. I nearly fell off.”

Ghosts come in all sorts of varieties, Wood says. Some are angry and tell him to leave. Some are curious about him, and seem to know that they’re dead and are content with it. Others seem confused, and ask for help. Hearing EVPs that say, “Help me” is common among ghost hunters. Wood thinks they’re asking for “Either a direction to go, or just help with the feeling they’re having. They’re probably lost and confused, and just don’t know where to go.” Trouble is, ghost hunters don’t hear the pleas until they go home and play their tapes. “We tell [the ghosts] if there’s a light, to go toward the light,” Wood says.
With all their exposure to the paranormal, ghost hunters sometimes find spirits clinging to them. Wood believes he’s brought spirits home. When his family moved into a new house, shortly after he and his wife began ghost hunting, they saw the handle of the basement door turn. The door swung open, but no one was there. Then his wife’s earring went flying across the room and landed in a container of fry sauce—while the back of her earring was still stuck to her ear.
Why would a ghost follow him? “I think it’s just being recognized,” he says. “Ghosts are like in a police lineup, where there’s a two-way mirror. They can see you, but you can’t see them. And all of a sudden, a person comes along that can see them and acknowledges their existence. Here’s somebody that’s alone, and they’re either trapped or confused in another dimension, and here’s somebody that’s actually recognized their existence, so they’re probably going to want to stick to this person for some comfort.”

Ghost-hunting groups often get requests to investigate both public buildings and private residences. The most common reason they hear is, “I just want you to tell me I’m not crazy.” Generally, people just want ghost hunters to verify the existence of their ghosts, and don’t expect them to do anything about it.
“I’ve only heard a few people asking to get rid of them,” Wood says, “and I say, ‘No, we’re not ghostbusters.’”
Cook, of the GIS, says he’s usually contractually prohibited from revealing identifying details of stories involving private homeowners, who wish to avoid embarrassment. Often, he’s not even allowed to mention the name of the state in which a haunting occurred, as in the case of a 13-year-old girl who saw a dead man every time she was alone in a room of the house. As Braegger said, business owners often feel the same way, because they don’t want their business associated with the paranormal.

GIS makes no claims to get rid of ghosts, Cook says, but sometimes ghosts do go away as a result of the group’s visit. “By being there,” he says, “doing what we’re doing, they suddenly realize, ‘I’m dead. These people are looking for me. I shouldn’t be here.’”
Wood offers people advice on how to live in harmony with their ghosts. “Set boundaries, such as ‘Don’t materialize in the bathroom,’ and ‘Leave the children alone.’” He suggests telling the ghost, “I will respect you, and you’re welcome in my home, and we’ll live in harmony, and we’ll both look after the house.”
There seem to be a wide variety of religious beliefs among Utah ghost hunters. Chris and Nancy Peterson are LDS. “Within the LDS faith, there are different kingdoms of heaven. It would seem reasonable that there are different planes of existence here on this earth and one of them could be a spirit plane. There are different degrees of being alive. There could be different degrees of being dead,” Nancy explains. “I believe in spirits,” says Vincze, who is also LDS. “And what’s the difference between a spirit and a ghost?”

He’s had people come through the Haunted Hospital who say they don’t believe in ghosts. He asks them if they’re baptized. If they are, he replies, “Well, then you have the Holy Ghost inside you, right?” They don’t have an answer for that, he says.
The GIS’ attitude toward ghosts seems quite positive. In their video clips, McBeath’s voice can usually be heard welcoming the orbs when they show up on her infrared video camera. She tells the orbs they’re beautiful, and thanks them for visiting. Cook says, “Hollywood teaches people to demonize ghosts, but they’re just people. They’re your mother. They’re your daughter.”
For his part, Wood says he’s not a particularly religious person. His motivation for ghost hunting is to get a better understanding of life after death. “We’re just trying to find answers to what lies beyond,” he emphasizes.
“I just do it so when it’s my turn to be there, I won’t be freaked out or anything, and I’ll know what to expect. And maybe I’ll hang around and scare some people on this side.”
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