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By Scott Nicholson
About 100 people drifted into the Green Park Inn in Blowing
Rock over the weekend, hoping to catch a glimpse of the unseen
during the first-ever Green Park Paranormal Conference.
The conference brought ghost hunters out of the woodwork from
across the South, featuring panels on equipment and techniques
used by those seeking out the supernatural.
Chris Wright of Paranormal
Scene Investigators and Olivia Church look at photographs
taken during ghost hunts at the Green Park Inn. Photo
by Scott Nicholson |
Joe Clemmer, an Appalachian State University student from Boone,
had a casual interest in the paranormal, mostly due to television
shows on the subject. He ended up renting Room 318, one of the
most legendary haunted rooms at the inn.
“We just wanted to give it a shot and see what would happen
this weekend,” Clemmer said.
“When we first started hunting, nothing much happened.
We had an anonymous call from nowhere.”
In the early-morning hours, Clemmer and his group had simultaneous
experiences that they believe added up to a supernatural encounter
with a young child.
“At the end of the night, around two-thirty or three o’clock,
we had responses on a thermal-imaging camera, and the group
before us had a medium who said there was definitely something
in there. There were two people who heard a voice say ‘Daddy.’
We got a response by starting to ask questions like ‘Is
there a little girl here?’ and ‘How old are you?’”
Clemmer said the group began recording electromagnetic-field
fluctuations, and the group politely asked the entity to jump
on the bed. About 10 seconds later, a thermal-imaging device
showed a cool spot in the bed. One man, who couldn’t see
the imaging device, felt a vibration and said “She’s
here.”
A couple of minutes later, the cool thermal image reportedly
dissipated over a five-second period, and the man said, “She’s
gone.” Several of the group members also reported ringing
of the ears just before the entity made its appearance.
Although such readings garner excitement among ghost hunters,
some paranormal investigators are skeptical.
In previously published reports, Joe Nickell, senior research
fellow with the Amherst, New York-based Committee for Skeptical
Inquiry, said he has investigated several alleged hauntings
since 1969 and has yet to turn up evidence of ghosts. He points
out that any measurements should be subject to critical thinking.
“The uncomfortable reality that ghost hunters carefully
avoid — the elephant in the tiny, haunted room — is
of course that no one has ever shown that any of this equipment
actually detects ghosts,” Nickell stated on the CSI Web
site.
“The supposed links between ghosts and electromagnetic
fields, low temperatures, radiation, odd photographic images,
and so on are based on nothing more than guesses, unproven theories,
and wild conjecture. If a device could reliably determine the
presence or absence of ghosts, then by definition, ghosts would
be proven to exist.”
After seeing the recording of the thermal image and discussing
the experience with the others in the group, Clemmer said, “You
can’t say there’s nothing there. I believe there’s
something out there.”
Shannon Marie Krasel, who was with the group in 318 at the time,
said the ringing in her ears were of a frequency she had never
heard before.
“The little girl started communicating with us, and I said,
‘Could you touch me?’ and I got a tingling running
up one arm. Tears were just coming out of my eyes and I wanted
to feel the vibrations, so I sat on the floor. I asked if she
would touch me and I felt like hands were touching my face,”
Krasel said.
Three people took photographs at the same time, and as the flashes
went off, Krasel saw the “see-through, light-colored”
image of a girl with long hair looking at her. Krasel had the
impression of a girl between the ages of 4 and 5 about three
feet in front of her. “We were excited,” Krasel said.
“The energy around all of us was incredible. She’d
come back and I’d say ‘Hi, sweetheart.’”
One group who hunted 318 had an audio recording of what sounded
like a young girl’s cry or laugh, though no young children
were in the hotel at the time. According to the inn’s “ghost
register” where guests record their experiences, laughing
and running children are one of the most common phenomena experienced
in the halls.
Olivia Church of Boone, a member of Ghostly Appalachian Paranormal
Society, made her fifth visit to the inn. She has been interested
in the paranormal since she was 12 and though she found little
new evidence, she enjoyed the opportunity to explore the metaphysical
frontiers with like-minded people.
“It’s wonderful having this many people want to study
the paranormal here, because it (paranormal activity) is here,”
Church said, noting she believed the inn had supernatural activity.
She didn’t discover anything she would consider “evidence,”
but she planned to review her video footage, digital information
on three audio recorders, and images on two digital cameras
and a 35 mm camera. She expects it will take about four days
to review all the material.
“I’m looking for shadowy figures,” Church said.
“I’ll just be looking for something out of the ordinary.”
Sarah T. Harrison, the founder and lead investigator of Asheville
Paranormal Society, said her group attends many paranormal conferences.
“I’ve just always been interested in it,” she
said. “I was raised in South Carolina and I grew up on
ghost stories. There are a lot of ghost stories in Asheville.
“It’s a new place and a chance to learn new stories
and maybe get some great photographs,” Harrison said. She
rated the inn at about “medium” on the scale of supernatural
activity, based on other supposedly haunted locations she has
investigated.
Tina McSwain, founder of the Charlotte Area Paranormal Society,
said it was her first conference.
“We actually got a good bit of paranormal evidence and
we’ll definitely be back next year,” She said. She
considers electromagnetic levels, thermometer readings, images
and other material to be corroborating evidence of the supernatural.
McSwain said her roommate had the bed covers yanked off in the
night, so they decided to investigate their room as well as
the more notorious rooms at the inn. She said the dining room
was where her group experienced the most phenomena, with visual
and personal experiences as well as impressions of an entity
the group dubbed “The Waiter,” though she felt there
was another, smaller shadow present as well.
She said her camera turned on and off by itself twice while
in Room 318, and she also experienced unusual electromagnetic
readings in the room. “I can’t wait to come back,”
she said.
Joe Wright, head of Paranormal Scene Investigators, had 16 video
cameras recording non-stop during the conference and scheduled
the hunting groups, said. PSI brought nine people to serve as
crew, organizing the attendees into different hunting groups.
He said it wasn’t an ideal hunting environment because
of too much foot traffic and noise, but said solid evidence
could appear in any situation.
Wright said it would be takes his crew weeks to sift through
all of the video footage for anomalies or mysterious lights.
“Class A evidence always stands out,” he said.
Like many investigators, he’s not necessarily seeking proof
of spirits or the afterlife. Rather, he tries to scientifically
explain the phenomena that some people may consider unusual.
“It’s more pieces to the puzzle,” Wright said.
“Not that the puzzle will ever be complete, but the puzzle
keeps getting bigger. It’s like working from the inside
of a puzzle and you work out from the middle, but it never gets
finished,” Wright said.
Chris Meeks, who drove from Gainesville, Fla. To attend the
conference, said he’d conducted numerous investigations
and was part of the Room 318 experiment. “I love ghost-hunting,
obviously,” he said. “The inn’s definitely active,
at least from the stuff I’ve captured. A couple of rooms,
for certain.”
Meeks said he looked for any type of encounter, seeking out
unusual places and pursuing the supernatural as a pastime and
passion.
“I consider myself a skeptic, but I’m an open-minded
skeptic,” he said. “If I never see it, how can I believe
it? If I do see it, then I believe it.”
The Green Park Paranormal Conference is being planned as an
annual event taking place each November.
Stories, images, and links to recordings from the conference
will be posted at www.hauntedcomputer.com and www.paranormalsceneinvestigators.com.
Editor’s Note: In the interest of full disclosure, staff
writer Scott Nicholson served as the organizer of this event.
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