Shelley J. Thompson
DERRY | Doors whipping open and slamming shut without reason. A popcorn machine with a life of its own. Strange tales about what happened in the old bell tower.
Those are the things that caused Bonnie Hall to call in the ghost hunters.
Hall and her husband, Bob, bought Derry's century-old downtown fire station in 2005 to turn it into a restaurant. She said some people chuckled when they made the purchase and said the couple would find out why later.
It wasn't long before they discovered the place might be haunted.
In the year since the FireHall Pub & Grille opened, Bonnie Hall and manager Cathy Simpson said, staff, family, friends and patrons have told of hearing noises they can't explain, seeing people who aren't there or feeling something brush by when no one's around. Then there's the popcorn maker that one night started up again after being turned off.
Bonnie's dad, Bob Fleming, who helped rehabilitate the firehouse and does maintenance work in the building, said tools he put down in one place disappeared and turned up in another.
"I thought it was amusing," he said.
Bonnie Hall wanted answers.
Last night, with the restaurant closed, she brought in a group called Ghost Hunters Unlimited in an attempt to document the presence of a ghost. They planned to spend the night waiting, listening and watching.
Some people have connected the strange happenings to a long-ago Derry firefighter named Frank, who some say took his own life in the station's bell tower, though others say the story is fiction.
Retired fire Capt. Bob Taylor is a skeptic. He said he experienced nothing unusual in his 14 years in the downtown station.
But Hall recalled a chat she had with Simpson and a couple of firefighters at the bar shortly after the restaurant opened. While they talked, one of the garage bay doors sprung open | twice. Finally, they jammed the door shut with a knife, she said.
Hall's goal last night was to find out whether Frank is still around pulling harmless pranks.
"We don't want to get rid of you, Frank," she said to the air.
When the four members of Ghost Hunters Unlimited arrived, Hall took them for a top-to-basement tour of the building, pointing out original windows, fixtures, walls and ceiling.
The ghost hunters brought a laptop, video and still cameras, audio recorders, thermometers, a barometer, and other ghost-detectors.
Catherine and Harry Brown of Hudson and Kuri and Tsuyoshi Tsuchia of Haverhill, Mass., teamed up more than a year ago to start their organization, which does not charge for its investigations. They say they've documented ghosts in several locations, including the Boothbay, Maine, Opera House.
Some might say the strange sights and sounds they record are coincidence or the result of a puff of wind or a passing truck, and sometimes even the ghost hunters can't agree which is which.
"We can get into heated discussions," Harry Brown said.
http://www.eagletribune.com/punewsnh/lo ... d=topstory
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