By Chasity M. Capasso
FOR THE TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, September 30, 2007
In October, haunted houses and other spooky festivities will become weekend attractions for many as Halloween approaches.
California University of Pennsylvania professor and avid ghost hunter Rene Kruse will be holding Ghost Walk tours through downtown California and the campus on Friday nights in October.
Kruse will lead tour-goers to various homes, businesses and other haunted sites while telling a 15-year collection of ghost stories relating to each location. The tour will begin at the last intersection on Third Street on campus. Visitors can park in the Hamer Gymnasium parking lot.
The tour will continue with a walk down Third Street to the community cemetery at Third and Mechanic streets, then continue down Second Street through the back side of campus.
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"While on this walk, we will stop at particular buildings and sites that have ghost stories associated with them, some very old, some fairly new and others that have been demolished," Kruse said. "Many are public buildings, but there will also be private homes and businesses included. I will also be telling the history of many of these buildings as they relate to the stories.
"I don't want to give away any of the goodies," she said, "but I will say that there will be stories of hauntings in dorms that have been torn down that continue on in the new dorms, and one very special ghost who spent several decades in Binns Hall and was experienced recently by two contractors who were stripping the building prior to demolition."
An Applied Engineering and Technology Education professor and California resident since 1989, Kruse believes California is a "very" haunted town.
"Many people believe that certain geographical elements increase the strength of ghosts and hauntings, including bodies of water, especially moving water, large underground cavities and deposits of sedimentary stone," she said. "California has all of these in abundance.
"I don't know if that explains why California has so many hauntings of such a long time, or if it is just because of Cal's long and rich history, but we have ghosts and hauntings to spare."
Kruse said she had been interested in ghosts as a child, but it wasn't until she was 16 that she saw her first ghost, when a young man she knew who was killed in a car accident visited her one night in her home.
After that experience, Kruse said she began collecting true ghost stories and writing to authors she saw on television who researched and investigated hauntings.
"Many people responded to me, and I learned the techniques they used to detect the presence of ghosts or hauntings," she said. "I did my first investigation in the fall of 1977 in Kansas and have continued investigating ever since."
Kruse has investigated haunted sites in more than 32 states with other researchers from around the country and has been working locally with the Mon Valley Ghost Research Society for the past eight years.
Two Ghost Walk tours will be held from 7:30 to 10 p.m. every Friday in October. Ticket price is $7 for adults and $5 for children; all proceeds benefit the Technology Education Faculty Scholarship Fund.
Admission is first come, first served, and will be limited to 25 to 30 people.
"One thing that people won't see is a chain-saw wielding 'Leatherface' or a bloody, fang-baring maniac jumping out at them," Kruse said. "I can't guarantee that anyone will see, feel, hear or smell a ghost, but you just never know what might happen along the way."
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune ... 29700.html
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