BATTLE GROUND A ghost, or the rumor of one, can be good for business, at least.
"It's a fun thing. It's kind of interesting," said Battle Ground bar owner Bobbi Halleaux of Buzz's Sports Bar and Grill at 705 S.E. First St. "I don't want to say I'm not a believer, but nothing supernatural has ever happened to me."
Bartender Erica Lincoln says otherwise, though she's squeamish about admitting it.
"I hate doing this, it makes me seem like a kook," is how she begins a telephone interview.
After that disclaimer, Lincoln describes what she experienced after leaving Buzz' downstairs bathroom and starting to climb the stairs back up to the main floor.
"As the door was closing I looked over and saw a woman standing there. Probably about five feet tall, not very tall. She had a hat on with a feather. The thing is, it didn't take very long. It was as the door was closing.
"I just remember the image of a woman who wasn't very tall, with a wide-brimmed hat with a feather," she said.
Apparently the place is listed somewhere on the Internet as a "paranormal spot," said Halleaux. Since the occasional customer has come in brandishing the spooky listing and saying "Hey, your place is haunted," she wasn't surprised to be contacted eventually by a group of spook sleuths who call themselves Southwest Washington Paranormal Research.
Group member Donna Forrest had already done some preliminary investigating at Buzz's with a tape recorder; she asked the empty lavatory if anybody was there and came away with the breathy voice of a woman saying yes.
So a few weeks back the SWPR group (good luck with www.swpr.org, which always crashes my Internet connection) brought its recorders and cameras and super-sensitive souls to see what's buzzing at Buzz's.
Yes, a super-sensitive soul does appear to be standard ghost-hunting equipment, according to SWPR founder Kimberlie Travis of Kelso.
"It requires a special person to do what we do," said Travis, who tells of receiving some mind-blowing communications from her brother after he died in a car wreck.
Bartender Lincoln, too, said she's the kind of person who's predisposed to "catch things out of the corner of my eye. Maybe I'm clued into it a little more than most." Lincoln said she frequently gets "chills" at Buzz's, even in summertime.
Still, if paranormal sensitivity is inborn, evidence also suggests it can be nurtured (or conjured, if you prefer) by everything from campfire stories to the big screen.
Travis said her father used to spin family ghost stories he swore were true. That's the same father a Nazarene preacher, she said who treated his fledgling ghostbuster to drive-in horror flicks when she was all of 2 years old.
"Ghost books, psychics, near-death stories, occult stuff, religious stuff" was her childhood reading regimen, she said.
D&D in B.G.?
Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you feel about hauntings the ghostbusters didn't find much at Buzz's (formerly Pete's Sports Barn and Schnitzel House).
For one thing, the place doesn't close until very late, and even then it proved hard to chase off the curious and calm down the (psychic) atmosphere. There was precious little quiet time left until sunup, and quiet time is what you need to spot the normally unspottable.
But even if visiting hours are unlimited, Travis said, spirits can be fickle. "We can go through hours and hours or evidence and not see a darned thing," she said.
Just sensing a presence isn't good enough for her group of skeptical investigators, she said. They need proof that holds up under scrutiny. They don't want to be identified with the fly-by-night faddists currently flooding the paranormal field the "thrill seekers and guys who play too much Dungeons and Dragons," as SWPR member Desi Coss put it.
Anyway, the buzz about Buzz's ghost, according to Halleaux, is that the place was originally a brothel, and the figure Lincoln glimpsed behind the bathroom door was the madam.
Her name, legend has it, was Mary.
Source: http://www.columbian.com/lifeHome/lifeH ... s18623.cfm
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