By GREGOR McGAVIN
The Press-Enterprise
The grave was marked only by a splintered wooden cross jutting from the weedy grass of Colton's Agua Mansa Pioneer Cemetery.
No name, no headstone. Just two lengths of weathered wood bound by a bolt.
"No one knows your name," K.D. Foreman said from the graveside on a recent morning. "Is there anything you'd like to say?"
There was no reply from that resting place, nor from a dozen others throughout the cemetery. But that's sometimes the case for Foreman and the other members of the Inland Empire Paranormal Investigators.
Much of their work comes later, when the amateur ghost hunters painstakingly analyze the audio, visual and electromagnetic recordings they gather on their outings.
Unearthly screams.
Shadowy figures that fade from sight.
Objects moving on their own.
They say they've witnessed it all.
The Inland group is one of dozens throughout Southern California and hundreds -- if not more -- nationwide, enthusiasts estimate.
The 70 or so members met online beginning a year ago and have visited private homes, historic landmarks and graveyards throughout Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
They arrive armed with digital cameras and television remote-size devices they say capture electromagnetic fields and sounds undetectable by the naked ear.
Investigations take place weekly, said Foreman, the 43-year-old substitute teacher who organized the group and serves as its leader.
"It's a hobby and a calling," said Foreman, who says she started having visions of future events at age 10. Similarly prophetic dreams started two years later, Foreman claims, when she foresaw her brother in a car accident on his way to a concert.
As an adult, she is able to make more sense of such phenomena through her investigations, she said.
Foreman says that the spirit of an old man she believes is the former occupant haunts her Yucaipa home. He turns the television on full blast in the night and makes her golden retriever growl.
"I have had too many experiences to believe everyone departs here and goes somewhere else," she said.
Spooky Sightings
Most members of the group have had some sort of early brush with the paranormal, Foreman says. Others are just curious.
Peaches Veatch, 34, a mortgage loan consultant from Riverside, says her introduction to the supernatural came at age 10.
Her godfather, who had died several years earlier, appeared in her bedroom late one night. She says he was sitting in a chair in the corner -- a chair that did not exist.
His image disappeared seconds later.
"Why he appeared to me, I don't know," Veatch said.
The number of ghost-hunting groups has risen nationwide in recent years, largely because of television shows chronicling the exploits of amateur investigators, enthusiasts say.
Meanwhile, some question the validity of the trend.
"To be as polite as I can about it, they don't know what they're doing," said Joe Nickell, a former detective and longtime paranormal investigator.
Nickell, who has been explaining away reported supernatural activity for almost 40 years, is lead investigator for the Amherst, N.Y.-based Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
He says both amateur ghost hunters and debunkers go about it all wrong.
Ghost hunters seek to reinforce their belief in the paranormal with whatever clues they can find, while debunkers set out to bolster their view that ghosts do not exist.
"An investigator tries to actually solve something," Nickell said.
Members of the Inland group, however, have gathered what they consider good evidence.
'Help Me'
At Riverside's Evergreen Cemetery, they heard voices say "Help me" twice within a few minutes, Foreman said. On a recording from a nighttime excursion to Hermosa Cemetery in Colton, a husky voice whispers what sounds a lot like "Leave."
The Inland group gathered on a recent weekend for a midday visit to Agua Mansa. The site sits on a few acres of sloping hillside a stone's throw from the Santa Ana River, in an industrial stretch of Colton.
The cemetery, established in the 1850s, has been home to many supposed ghost sightings. Motorists on the winding, two-lane road out front have claimed to see an old man walking his dog. In some accounts, both disappear moments later; in others, they seem to walk straight through the gates.
The group's Agua Mansa investigation was anything but spooky.
It was a bright, sunlit morning. Birds chirped in the trees.
Investigators formed a circle for a "prayer for protection" before fanning out.
Inside, pepper trees shaded crumbling headstones and broken crosses. Some graves were half-hidden by weeds and grass; others were not marked at all.
"Peaches, come over here and tell me if you sense anything," Foreman called out at one point.
"I sense they just cut the grass," Veatch said.
At another grave, Veatch said her head began to buzz, as though she was standing beneath power lines.
"We sense a spirit here -- could you light up this meter?" Foreman asked.
"Nothing," Foreman declared a minute later.
The investigation was over after an hour.
A few days later, the group sent some audio recordings to an observer of the investigation. Some were indecipherable; others sounded like the wind. On one of the more promising files, a brief whisper could be heard after an investigator asked for a response from one of the graves.
It turned out to be the observer muttering under his breath after accidentally rustling his notebook.
http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stor ... ca1b7.html
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