BEDFORD - Go ahead and tell Sue Sereno your ghost stories - she?d love to hear them. The supernatural world has held a lifelong fascination for her, and she never tires of listening to tales of half-glimpsed faces in empty windows or mysteriously moving objects.
Just understand that as a ?ghost hunter,? she?ll have to remain a skeptic.
?A human being giving you details is the worst kind of proof,? Sereno, co-founder of the Central Virginia-based Ghostec, said recently. ?Things you see, feel and hear aren?t really of any use to us unless they can be verified, and 95 percent of the time, they can?t. We live for the 5 percent that can.?
The name of her organization emphasizes this approach. Although ?Ghostec? actually stands for ?Ghost Hunters of the Southern East Coast,? the confluence of the two words appears to meld the supernatural and the scientific.
On a Saturday evening earlier this month, a dozen human beings were up on the second floor of the historic Avenel House in downtown Bedford. The dusk outside was slowly fading to black, and group members were busily setting out various electronic devices in the upstairs bedrooms.
Sereno and her best friend and fellow ghost hunter, Sandy Ayers, love Avenel.
?I can?t count how many times we?ve been over there,? said Ayers, an amiable woman who works in retail (?Let?s just leave it at that?). ?A lot of times, I?d be over to Sue?s, and we?d be wondering what to do with ourselves, and she?d say, ?Let?s drive over to Avenel.?
?We?ve also done a lot of research. I?ll bet we know more about the place now than the tour guides do.?
They know that the graceful white two-story mansion was built in 1838 and has been visited (according to legend, at least) by Robert E. Lee and Edgar Alan Poe. And that it is said to be haunted by a serene, white-gowned specter dubbed ?The White Lady of Avenel,? who has also been seen in the company of a white-clad gentleman ghost (apparently, this couple believed in dressing well even in the afterlife). They?ve heard other people tell of witnessing an older black man and a woman wearing a bonnet, an old-fashioned dress, and a broach.
?I was walking around the property once with Peggy Maupin, the last owner,? said Ayers, ?and when I glanced back up at the house, I saw a woman?s face in one of the upstairs windows. I grabbed Peggy?s arm and pointed, and she just smiled and said, ?Oh, yes.??
Avenel is empty at the moment, undergoing restoration, and open by appointment for tours. To the members of Ghostec, it seemed like a ghostly bed and breakfast.
Besides Sereno and Ayers, the hunters included Ayers? son Jonathan, Sereno?s son Scott Zerfuss and his wife, Susie, and longtime Ghostec member Peggy Graybill.
?I saw her (the White Lady) once,? said Scott Zerfuss. ?I was working for the Bedford City Police back then, and one of the things we used to do was check on houses when the owners were out of town. I was doing that one night at Avenel when I glanced up at the windows and saw someone looking out at me.
?It was right at dusk.?
On another visit there, he said, ?I reached for a doorknob and it started to move.?
As a former cop, though, Zerfuss agrees with his mother that his experiences don?t provide enough evidence for an open-and-shut case. That?s where Jonathan Ayers comes in.
?He was ghost hunting before he was born,? said Sandy Ayers. ?I was pregnant with him when we were exploring some old houses around here.?
A self-described ?computer nerd,? Jonathan Ayers puts the ?tec? in ?Ghostec,? maintaining the group?s Web site (www.ghostec.us) and providing some of the equipment on hunting trips.
?It?s nothing real fancy,? Sereno said. ?We have digital cameras, a non-contact thermometer and an EMF meter.?
The first thing the ghost hunters do when they arrive at a place is to find out what is ?normal.?
?We test for the ambient temperature,? Sereno said, ?and identify all the places that might give us false readings, like electrical outlets and air conditioning units.?
Sandy Ayers broke in at that point.
?Does anybody here smell lavender?? she asked. ?To me, there?s a very strong smell of it here.?
I smelled it, too. I think. Or maybe it was just the power of suggestion.
The moment passed, and it was back to business.
?I?ve had drops of as much as 30 degrees in the ambient temperature, for no apparent reason,? Sereno said. ?Those ?cold spots? can be evidence of spiritual activity.?
According to Jonathan Ayers, ghosts also suck batteries dry.
?I always bring a lot of them when we go out,? he said. ?It?s really amazing how fast they get drained.?
Sereno has heard and read that ?ghosts need a certain amount of energy in order to appear, and they get it from wherever they can.?
This also explains the ?cold spots,? she added, ?because heat is a form of energy, and if heat around you dissipates, it could be that the spirit is trying to use it.?
She first became interested in ghosts because of strange happenings at her own house. Unexplained footsteps on the linoleum floor of her kitchen. A plastic covering on a kitchen light that kept falling to the floor overnight, no matter how tightly it was screwed on. Voices out in the woods in back of the house.
?I?ve heard them, too,? Sandy Ayers said. ?One time, it was a woman?s voice, very clear, calling me ?Honey.??
There?s even a phantom car, a la Stephen King?s ?Christine.?
?We?ll hear it sometimes, coming down our drive,? Sereno has said. ?You can see headlights and hear the gravel crunching, but no car.?
After this, the White Lady of Avenel must have seemed almost mundane. The group concentrated much of its efforts on the bedroom where General Lee had supposedly slept, setting up a couple of cameras and a recording device to capture sound.
?That?s the real fun part for me,? said Jonathan Ayers, ?going back and listening to what we?ve recorded and trying to hear things.?
He?s never been actively frightened on a hunt, he said, ?although I have had the kind of chill that goes all the way up your body.?
?We treat the spirits with respect,? Sereno said. ?We always ask them for permission to photograph or tape them.?
Moments later, all the lights were turned off. Sereno, Jonathan Ayers, my wife Gail and I were left sitting at a long table in a ?board room? adjacent to the Lee bedroom. Zerfuss and Susie Ayers were in the adjoining bedroom, another team member in the Lee bedroom itself, several others downstairs with Peggy Graybill (?The most intuitive member of our group, by far,? said Sereno).
The minutes crawled by. The furniture began to materialize out of the gloom as our eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light. And then, about 15 minutes into the waiting period, Zerfuss slipped into the boardroom.
?I left our room for a minute,? he said, ?and when I got back, the door was open.?
Everyone bolted for that bedroom, instruments in hand. The old door was pronounced too heavy to open on its own. There seemed to be no physical evidence, although I could have sworn I felt a cold spot.
Then Sereno, who had also been missing, walked back into the room and said: ?The door? Oh, I opened that myself.?
A communal sigh drained from the group. It was time to pack up.
?We want to come back here and spend the night one night,? said Sandy Ayers. ?This was sort of like a trial run.?
Taffy Mays, the Avenel tour guide who had opened the house for the group, came back to close it down again. The foundation that now owns Avenel is fine with the ghost stories - they?re good for business, actually.
?Almost everyone who comes through here asks about the White Lady,? Mays said.
One by one, the cars pulled around the circular drive and off into the night, leaving Avenel to its ghosts - or its solitude.
But I couldn?t help glancing up at the windows as I drove past.
Ghostec doesn?t charge for its services, and welcomes new spirits to investigate. Check the Web site for contact information.
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