The three ghost hunters knew who to call. They just didn?t know what they?d unearth once they got there.
?We?re not here to try and find a ghost. We?re here as skeptics as well.? So said Justin Yates, paranormal investigator and co-founder of the Havelock-based North Carolina Ghost Hunting Society, speaking Monday before a panel of impromptu spirit stalkers assembled after hours in New Bern Historical Society?s administrative offices on Pollock Street.
At that gathering, Yates, along with spectral conquistadors James Moore and Russell Sharp, was prepared to detail the findings of a second, and hopefully conformational, paranormal investigation of the society?s Attmore-Oliver Civil War House Museum.
A first excursion in early June had revealed ?interesting? findings, especially in the realm of audio, Yates said. The subsequent examination, in mid-July, was proposed to expound upon those discoveries. Both jaunts had harbored the three ghost hunters, a measure of scientific equipment and a number of spectators, including members of the media.
That second expedition would prove conclusive.
The steps leading to the Attmore-Oliver Civil War House Museum?s paranormal investigation began with a mouse.
Clicking through a national database of supernatural examinations at theshadowlands.net, Yates and his partners had discovered an unverified ghost story about the circa-1790s Pollock Street home. According to that legend, a young child and her father had died in the home?s attic while under quarantine for smallpox. Today, lore says the child still can be heard playing with her toys, and her over-protective father has been supposed to push a tour guide away from his ward.
?That?s the story that drew us to the house,? Yates said.
On the heels of recent investigations at Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, Ky., and Christ Episcopal Church and Memorial Cemetery in New Bern, the Attmore-Oliver House seemed a natural progression for the investigators.
Newsom Williams agreed, but bound by board members as executive director of New Bern Historical Society, the decision to open the house-museum to ethereal investigation wasn?t his alone. Yet given the potential to advance historical research, the society acquiesced.
And so, on a truly dark and stormy night in early summer, Yates, Moore and Sharp toted audio, video and electrical equipment designed to register residual and other energy from their laboratory to the New Bern home.
The registrations they would uncover that night they called, ?significant.?
Using a night-vision camera, a device able to discern what the naked eye cannot, that first investigation discovered orbs ? small masses of floating energy encased in circles ? on the second floor over the small beds in the children?s room. Distinguishable from dust spots by shape, texture and color, Yates said the objects in the pictures were indefinable.
?There?s nothing in the Attmore-Oliver House that floats around like this,? Yates said about the 35mm film findings.
While similar orbs and ethereal mist were discovered on the third, or attic floor of the home, most convincing to the group assembled that night was an unexplainable door closing, also on the third floor, in the face of one of the investigators and a spectator.
?We tried, but we couldn?t duplicate the closing,? Sharp said about attempts to rationally explain the phenomenon.
Those events, quartered with a sound likened to furniture scrapping along a wood floor captured with audio equipment on the first floor ? while the group was assembled upstairs ? would lead to further study on a second night.
That decision for further research was an easy one for the ghost hunters to make.
?We caught this sound clear as day,? Moore said.
Williams agreed, ?I?m all for doing more research.?
Not as stormy a night, although a goodly amount of rain had fallen throughout the day, the three investigators once more assembled equipment and spectators, this time with a concentration on audio sounds.
?Can you tell us your name,? Moore asked as one of a series of dozens of questions designed to prompt hesitant spirits to make their presence known.
Although there would be no readily observable other-worldly incidents by the group of 14 people assembled that night ? no shutting doors or easily heard sounds ? the sensitive audio, video and electromagnetic field meters would later yield orbs and other still-unexplainable phenomena, as dispensed at Monday?s meeting.
That the events are not explainable is important to this type of investigation, Yates said.
?If there?s anything we see that could have been made by us, we dismiss it,? he said.
Because of this caveat, the investigators attempt to thwart manmade diversions by taking such precautions as keeping a video camera on spectators while questions are asked. That way, a noise perceived as a response by a ghost can either be explained, or not.
This is why the two clicks were significant.
Although the sounds were not audible the night of the investigation, on two separate occasions on two different floors, the second and third, two clicks were recorded by the ghost hunters? audio equipment in response to the question, ?please tell us your name.?
Not wanting to rush an analysis, Yates said that tape has been forwarded to The Atlantic Paranormal Society, or T.A.P.S. as they are more commonly known from their Sci-Fi television hit, ?Ghost Hunters.? He has reason to think T.A.P.S. will be interested.
?There may be a woman?s voice in the background,? Yates said. ?I?m going to let the experts decide on that one.?
What has been decided by the North Carolina Ghost Hunting Society is that the unexplainable is present in the house-museum.
?It is our professional opinion that the Attmore-Oliver House does hold some evidence of paranormal activity,? Yates said.
It?s a conclusion Williams, who was present on that first investigation, supported.
?I?ve been in there in the evening and gotten a creepy feeling,? Williams said. ?There may be something to it. To me, it?s unexplainable, the closing of that door.?
Along with that door, such findings also close the Havelock group?s investigation into the home.
There is no further need to research paranormal activity in the house, Yates said.
?We?re not hunting anymore,? he said. ?We found it.?
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