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Go Ninja, Go Ninja Go!!
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Ghost Trackers!!!!
LINKY!!!!
Quote:
GOING ON A GHOST HUNT
The Indiana Ghost Trackers investigate a purportedly haunted old jail in Columbia City.
By Carol Tannehill
of The News-Sentinel
I wasn't afraid of the ghosts. The Allen County police officers, however, made me a little nervous.
They had pulled into Greenlawn Memorial Park off Covington Road to find out what two dozen people were doing strolling through a cemetery at 9 p.m. with flashlights, cameras and walkie-talkies. I had wondered that myself a few times already.
I thought we had a pretty good answer until I heard our fearless leader, Jennifer Zamaites, tell it to the officers: "We're the Indiana Ghost Trackers and we're conducting an investigation."
The officers let us off with a warning that Indiana cemeteries are technically closed after sunset.
"Well . . . um, have fun," one of them said as he got back into the patrol car.
Several of the amateur paranormalists assured him they would. Indiana Ghost Trackers, after all, love nothing better than to load up their trunks with equipment and go someplace haunted. If you believe the trackers, that would be just about everywhere. Since the 30 local members began meeting in November, they've wasted no time in scheduling investigations.
Intrepid reporter that I am, I practically invited myself to the Fort Wayne chapter's Sept. 27 meeting, which was to include an overnight ghost hunt at the old Columbia City jail.
The dinner meeting -- held in the Arabian Room restaurant in the Mizpah Shrine on Berry Street -- seemed relatively normal at first. But once the administrative preliminaries were taken care of, Zamaites invited members and guests to discuss their most recent brushes with the spirit world. There were tales of exploding light bulbs, stinky closets, opened kitchen drawers, looming figures at the foot of the bed and unseen entities that smelled like cinnamon rolls and cigars. While we ate, the members pored over snapshots and viewed videotape that might contain evidence of ghosts among us.
Then we car-pooled to the cemetery to rev up our psychic senses before making our way to the jail.
The creepy former penitentiary at Market and Washington streets is one of the ghost trackers' favorite haunts. I had to agree that it seemed an ideal place to stage a spirit safari. For one thing, Paul Harrington's historic building had been converted, as it is every fall, into a Halloween attraction designed to gross out youngsters and raise money for the local high school hockey team. Filled with gruesome tableaus involving surgeries gone wrong, electrocutions and bathtub murders, it was enough to spawn nightmares, even if the real ghosts were no-shows.
For another thing, plenty of weird stuff has happened at the jail over the years. Harrington, who kindly opens his mind and his jail for IGT's field trips, told the ghost hunters about unexplainable drafts, disembodied voices and banging noises he and his volunteers have noticed from time to time.
"Normal-type haunting stuff," Zamaites observed. Only a ghost hunter would call that normal, I thought.
We waited on the jail's front lawn for the spook house to serve its last customers. Ghost trackers took deep drags on their cigarettes, clutched their hooded sweatshirts around them and fended off pesky teenage volunteers wearing latex zombie masks and wielding plastic machetes.
Tamy Smith, an accountants-payable clerk and mother, held her homemade dowsing rods -- a simple spirit-detecting device made from drinking straws and copper wire -- at the ready. Shelly Stump fingered the Native American medicine bag around her neck. And Zamaites gave "final instructions" to the investigation team leaders.
She had already warned that, "When we were there last year, we had some people get really scared and leave in tears. So . . . be prepared!"
Prepared indeed. The 10 members who signed on to spend the night were laden down with flashlights, cameras, tape recorders, compasses, electromagnetic field meters, digital thermometers, candles, homemade baked goods, caffeinated soft drinks and sleeping bags. Sleeping bags? Who's going to be sleeping? I wondered.
Mike Weides, a South Bend contractor who moonlights as a paranormalist, was on hand to assist. He's known as a "floater" for Indiana Ghost Trackers, which means he makes the rounds among chapters and helps the 300 state members during investigations. Weides has serious eyes, wears a baseball cap with a mini-flashlight clipped on it and carries business cards that read, "Got ghosts?"
He investigates about 200 paranormal complaints a year, some of which yield exciting results. It's those occasional successes -- and the possibility of getting "pants-wetting scared," he said -- that keep him interested in spite of all the false alarms.
"A lot of ghosts come out of the medicine chest and the liquor cabinet," he conceded. "So you just listen to (the clients') stories, spend a while going through the motions and leave."
Twenty minutes after midnight, our investigation got under way. The ghost trackers split up into teams -- a mistake, I thought, if "Friday the 13th" and its sequels have taught us anything.
One team headed upstairs. Another descended into the dungeon area. Our team -- Zamaites, Weides, South Bend ghost hunter Steve Driver, News-Sentinel photographers Ellie Bogue and Steve Linsenmayer and I -- stayed on the first floor, where most of the jail cells were located.
Zamaites quickly noticed major equipment failures. "My camera just cut out on me," she announced. "The lithium battery had 58 minutes of power when I came in."
From what I understand, this could mean that ghosts, which are basically big energy-sucking blobs, are nearby. The ghost hunters use new batteries every time, but "they drained within five minutes of being near the building," Zamaites said.
Then, suddenly, we heard groaning and scratching coming from the front vestibule. We quickly realized it was Harrington having a little fun at our expense.
The walkie-talkie roared to life: "Team One, we just heard moaning coming from the lower floor. Over." The comic timing couldn't have been better.
Our team inched down the narrow passages. Zamaites led the way, her digital thermometer probing the urine-scented air around the cells for temperature spikes or plummets. Weides shot photos incessantly, hoping to catch mists or orbs on film.
"Here's a trick," he said. "What you need to do is turn around quickly and shoot. That way, you can (photograph) whatever's following you."
Zamaites took a few minutes to interview the spirits with her tape recorder rolling. The electronic voice phenomena, if any, would be analyzed later.
"Do you mind us being here?" Zamaites asked the air.
When she replayed the tape, I heard nothing but the loud clicking of Bogue's camera. It was then that I suspected Weides was beginning to think of us, the journalists, as paranormal wet blankets. Whether our presence was irritating the ghosts or the ghost hunters, I'm not sure. Regardless, we shot a few more pictures and asked a few more questions, then excused ourselves.
Wouldn't you know it? The jail's spiritual plane started jumping about 2 a.m., shortly after we left.
"This was honestly the most active building I've ever been in," Zamaites told me a few days after the ghost hunt. "We stayed until 7 the next morning and it was still active as could be as we were walking out the door."
The group got major readings on their electromagnetic field meters and digital thermometers, she said. They also thought they detected traveling cold spots, knocking from walls, a hollow-sounding man's voice and footsteps on the floor above. A few lucky people even got touched by unseen hands.
"It was a great night," Zamaites said, "but I can tell you this, not one person slept."
Except me. I was safe and snoring in my own bed by 3 a.m. -- with the lights on, of course.
Join the team
Got ghosts? Hoping to find some? The Fort Wayne chapter of Indiana Ghost Trackers, a nonprofit organization, welcomes new members and guests. You'll find more information about the local group and its upcoming activities by logging on to their Web site at www.fwigt.org. You can contact the group by e-mail at fwigtinfo@aol.com.
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Seeing how this was in my paper, and I do live in Fort Wayne... I'm rather intrigued  Oh, for the linky to their site, here it is.
http://www.fwigt.org/
__________________
RoboBlaster:
Welcome to the club! Not that I'm in the club. And there really isn'a a club in the first place. But if there was a club and if I was in it, I would definitely welcome you to it.
Last edited by GakFace; 10-08-2003 at 10:23 PM..
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