Ghosts help buoy spirits
By Cathy Free
Deseret News columnist   

  Dinner by candlelight or a night at the opera might be many couples' idea of a romantic night out, but it's not for Troy and Kris Wood. While grandma's watching the kids, they'd rather stroll through a dark cemetery to converse with the spirits.
      As founders of the Utah Ghost Organization, the Woods spend most of their Saturday nights on ghost patrol, looking for orbs of light — a ghost's preferred mode of travel — or listening for the voices of spirits trapped between dimensions.
      "You really should try this sometime," says Troy, 38, who works as an animal control officer for Salt Lake County when he isn't investigating the paranormal. "Take a tape recorder into the cemetery, hit the record button, then play it back. You'll pick up the voices of ghosts almost every time."
      A former skeptic about "Sixth Sense" stories, Troy has been a believer for six years, ever since he and three guys from work stopped at a cemetery late one night to try the tape recorder technique.
      "We were walking toward a mausoleum," he says, "and my friend asked, 'Are these the above-ground graves?' A few seconds later, I played back the tape and you could hear a man say, 'This is my house.' Then, a woman said, 'What do you want?' "
      Some might have taken that as a clue to scramble back to the car. Not Troy. "Right then, I was hooked," he says. "I couldn't wait to tell my wife about it."

      Kris rolled over in bed when her husband came home and said, "Yeah, right."
      "I thought he was up in the night," she says. "But then, he talked me into seeing for myself, and now, it's our date night."
      Hoping to share some of their spooky exploits for Halloween, the Woods joined me for a Free Lunch of beef chimichangas at the Rio Grande Cafe, one of Salt Lake City's legendary haunting spots.
      This weekend, they plan to take their ghost-finding equipment to the restaurant and adjoining museum after hours in hopes of seeing the famous "Purple Lady." Named for her purple-tinted aura, the ghost is supposedly that of a woman who was killed after jumping in front of a train at the depot more than 100 years ago.
      "We'll take in our camcorders and a laser scanner to pick up changes in temperature," says Troy. "Whenever there's a change, we'll start taking pictures. Usually, what you'll see is a floating ball of light."
      The Woods and seven others who belong to the Utah Ghost Organization have no desire to suck ghosts into backpacks like Bill Murray in the movie, "Ghostbusters."
      "We just want to study them," says Kris, 35, a nail technician who has helped her husband investigate dozens of sightings and post them on the club's Web site, (utahghost.org). "If somebody is experiencing something unexplainable, they'll call us to come take a look."
      One woman called because she and her husband had seen the image of an old man, peering into their windows at night. "It turned out to be the ghost of a man who'd died in the house when he was 78," says Troy. "We caught his face on film."
      Others, like a frightened man in Provo, wonder why pots and pans keep flying from their cupboards. "Some ghosts are just mischievous and like to have a little fun," says Kris.
      Sometimes, ghosts follow the Woods home, but it "doesn't bother me at all," says Troy. "When they're messing with you, you just have to say, 'Go away, you're not welcome here.' "
      And if that doesn't work? "There are worse things in life than having a ghost in the house," he says. "Either move or learn to live with it."