TV's ghoul-crazy ghost busters hit some old haunts
It's a little past midnight on a cool, moonless evening in the Rhode Island countryside.
An otherwise perfect night for waking the dead.
Standing in the darkness, armed with flashlights and hi-tech video equipment, paranormal investigators Steve Gonsalves and Brian Harnois have picked the perfect place to do just that. No, it's not the Bates home or the Amityville house. But it's just as scary - a private cemetery on the grounds of a 340-year-old inn said to be infested with ghosts.
While Harnois peers into the monitor of a thermal-imaging device, hoping to capture the image of an otherworldly entity, Gonsalves attempts to rouse the people buried in the cemetery - a Revolutionary War-era officer and his family.
"Gen. Stanton, are you here?" says Gonsalves in a loud whisper. "If you can hear me, give us a sign. Show us that you're here."
As Gonsalves continues to call the general, Harnois suddenly stops in his tracks.
"You hear that?" asks Harnois, eyes wide with excitement.
The men go silent, listening to the darkness. Something - or is it some thing? - makes a rustling sound in the brush nearby. Then another, closer this time.
Gonsalves and Harnois trade looks. Could it be the spirit of Gen. Joseph Stanton, who some say haunts his old house in Charlestown, R.I., that's now known as the General Stanton Inn?
Gonsalves and Harnois are out of luck tonight, though several of the inn's workers swear they have had face-to-face encounters with an apparition over the years.
The source of the noise turns out to be from this world - though perhaps no less creepier than a ghost.
"It's bats," says a disappointed Harnois.
Maybe Gen. Stanton, or whoever else may haunt the inn, is just being camera shy. Gonsalves and Harnois are cast members of "Ghost Hunters," the Sci Fi channel's popular reality series about a team of Rhode Island-based investigators who travel the country to capture evidence of paranormal activity.
On this crisp October night, the investigation in the cemetery is being filmed for an upcoming episode of the hour-long show, which airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m.
Besides a cameraman, there's a producer and sound technician watching Gonsalves and Harnois work. A few hundred feet away at the inn, another two camera crews and several show staffers are running around in the dark, filming the rest of the team's attempts to gather evidence of paranormal activity.
Using such equipment as digital photo cameras, audio recorders, night-vision video, thermal scanners and electromagnetic field detectors, the 10 or so members of The Atlantic Paranormal Society, or TAPS, have visited museums, theaters, prisons, lighthouses, hotels, homes and wherever else ghosts are said to roam.
While skeptics would scoff at the "evidence" they uncover or claim to witness every week - voices, strange shadows and other weird phenomena - there's no disputing that "Ghost Hunters," which began its third season this month, has been scaring up strong ratings.
On Halloween night, the show will conduct a live, six-hour investigation at the Stanley Hotel in Colorado, the inspiration for Stephen King's "The Shining."
Though the public's never-ending fascination with things that go bump in the night is a big reason for the show's success, the TAPS team is actually the first to try to debunk the evidence they gather before proclaiming a place is legitimately haunted.
"We always try to disprove [a haunting], as opposed to thinking a place is already haunted," says Gonsalves.
Though he and Harnois struck out in the cemetery, the night wasn't a total bust. Back at the inn, investigator David Tango, sitting alone in the darkened second-floor hallway, claims to have heard a door to one of the rooms open - and then a succession of footsteps coming toward him.
Turns out that no one - at least no one alive - was in the hallway at the time.
"I heard someone walk near me, but when I looked up, no one was there," says Tango.
"We're going to check the infrared camera to see if we got it on audio. Whatever it was, it was pretty weird."
http://www.nydailynews.com/city_life/st ... 1076c.html
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