After years of bangs in the night, taps turning on and doors slamming, staff at Riccarton's Racecourse Hotel believe they will soon find out whether they have a noisy ghost or fanciful imaginations.
Christchurch company Spooks Paranormal Investigations is heading to the site next month ? armed with electro-magnetic sensors, cameras, and voice detectors intended to monitor any supernatural activity, to try to confirm whether the reported ghost is myth or reality.
One of the investigators insists that they are not "loonies", but the Skeptics New Zealand group remains sceptical.
The investigation comes as interest in the paranormal grows, with several television series on the supernatural or the work of psychics. Police in Palmerston North last week followed a tip from a psychic to find items belonging to an elderly man who had been missing for over a week.
Investigations at the old Christchurch hotel, where the publican was murdered in 1933, will focus on a closed-off second floor which staff say has been the scene of ongoing strange occurrences.
Hotel manager Keith Burgess said the odd noises had recently become more noticeable.
"There are taps going on and a few other noises up there."
Burgess said he was not afraid going up to the "haunted" area, but some staff had refused to go there.
"Some of them won't go up there. There's something not quite right up there," Burgess said.
"There's been a few unexplained things going on, like lights going on, when I've had the key in my pocket all day. At first I thought it was someone playing games."
The reputed ghost at the hotel was thought to be that of licensee Donald Fraser, who was shot dead in his bed, beside his wife, in November 1933.
Spooks Paranormal Investigations director Miranda Lancaster said the hotel was one of a growing number of places requesting their services.
"We are probably getting about two a month now."
There were some homes being investigated, but hotels were becoming more common, she said.
"Many of the hotels want us because they want to say that they do have a ghost."
Miranda Lancaster said their job was simply to confirm that there was or was not a ghost at the Racecourse Hotel, and from what she had been told it could be their biggest job yet.
"We have found quite a few things in places up in Nelson ... but this is the first major job we are doing."
The team would be staying at the hotel for the night and monitoring activity.
Although the machinery used was all scientific, it was hard to be taken seriously at times, Lancaster said.
"We aren't loonies," she said. "We are in it for the science."
Skeptics New Zealand spokeswoman Vicki Hyde said there had been a considerable increase in interest about the supernatural, but she was yet to be convinced.
"There aren't any haunted houses, only haunted people," Hyde said. "We have not yet seen any evidence in terms of an honest-to-God ghost."
Hyde also queried the motives using businesses such as Spooks.
"It certainly helps some companies to trade off that reputation," she said.
Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3721499a11,00.html
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