Published Friday, October 19th, 2007
ELENA OLMSTEAD, HERALD VALLEY BUREAU
PROSSER -- There have been a lot of strange things happening at Debora Jennings' house on Sheridan Avenue in Prosser.
And it isn't all unexplained footsteps up the stairs, the way the doorknob jiggles and the latch releases on the closet door in her guest room when no one is around, or the sound of children crying that seems to come from the basement.
Instead, it's strangers showing up on her doorstep at 9:45 p.m. asking for a tour of her haunted vicarage.
Jennings is the pastor at Prosser's St. Matthew's Episcopal Church and lives in the vicarage next to the sanctuary. A vicarage that might -- according to the Sci Fi Channel's ghost hunters -- be haunted.
Jennings and her house, built in 1928, were the focus of the Ghost Hunters episode that aired Wednesday night. The episode, titled Houses of the Holy, showed members of the group of ghost hunters known as The Atlantic Paranormal Society studying the happenings in the vicarage.
The group shot about 14 hours of footage at the house in late July, and Wednesday, Jennings got to see most of the footage for the first time.
The episode showed the ghost hunters going into the closet in the guest room, with all of them reporting they heard things or felt a strange presence in there.
At one point, when one of the hunters asked for a sign to show if there was someone in the closet with her, the response was the sound of three short taps.
Jennings said the crew also recorded what sounded like the voice of a little girl humming in the guest room closet, but that segment did not air.
Since the episode was recorded three months ago, Jennings hasn't been able to tell anyone what the ghost hunters found. Not until last night.
To celebrate, Jennings had about 40 people over to watch the show. The living room and her upstairs guest bedrooms were filled with people from her congregation and the community.
"We just watched it and had some interesting conversations," she said.
Jennings said being involved in the television show has opened a line of communication for her congregation to talk about things like ghosts and the paranormal. She said in talking to friends and members of her congregation about her haunted vicarage, she found a lot of people have similar stories to share -- stories that don't come out during the course of daily conversation.
She said the show also prompted several of the younger members of her congregation to poke around in the haunted closet themselves.
"I have to laugh about all of this in a way," she said. "I just know there's a lot of stuff out there I don't understand."
All of this might be too much for most people to handle, but Jennings said she lives with it.
"I can choose to be totally afraid," she said. "Or say, 'OK, this is the house in which I live, and go on with my life and my ministry.' "
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local ... 3487c.html
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