"How many people have actually died at the haunted house you're going to?" asked Kimm Andersen, a co-founder of Asylum 49. "This is one of the biggest hotspots in Utah for paranormal activity."
That's what brought a band of 12, associated with The Utah Ghost Organization, to this venue that Saturday night in late September. They sipped large coffees and sodas, took drags on cigarettes, waiting for the haunted house crowd - mostly teens - to clear out so their work could begin. The team of paranormal pursuers, first organized in the mid-1990s by Troy Wood and Brian Beck, were setting out for a long night of investigation. It was a return visit to a site they've frequented every few months this year.
On a hallway table, they unpacked their gear - night-vision video cameras, audio recorders, electromagnetic-field and thermal detectors. Some clamped equipment onto their fanny packs, while others pulled out infrared camera extenders or dowsing rods. Due to all the decorations and obstructions, they decided to forgo the surveillance cameras, which they usually rig onto walls.
"Last time the cameras were set up, we got lots of orb activity," Wood said, describing the circles of light that are believed to represent spirits or types of energy.
The members split up to venture down different dark corridors, with only flashlights to guide them past skulls, "RIP" headstones, coffins and other haunted house accoutrements. There were rooms they knew to visit and individuals they knew to expect.
In the old nursery, the light on one of Wood's detectors began to blink. "We know you're here," he said, before peppering the empty space with questions. "Can you tell us your name?" Pause. "How old are you?" Pause. "Where did you work?"
He, and the others, carried audio recorders which would be studied later. Though they didn't hear answers to questions then, by playing back sound later, they said - thanks to electronic voice phenomenon, or EVP - they expected plenty.
Several days later, sitting around a computer at Trudy Roberts' West Valley City home, she and Wood played some of the voices they said they'd discovered. Most were indecipherable, but others were clear, including a man's whisper of "You'll be mine," which Roberts said she captured while alone in a hallway. They also shared images, revealing orbs.
Back at the hospital, Jill Parker sat on the floor of the old X-ray room, holding a pair of dowsing rods straight out in front of her. She, Devin Jones and Julie Caldwell were out to make connections. The rods, simple extended wire hangers with straws slipped over the bent wire grips, provided a way to get yes-no answers. If the wires crossed, that was a yes. If they spread apart, that was a no, they explained.
"Peter, are you here with us tonight?" one of them asked. The rods crossed. Turned out Ned was there, too.
The rods told them that Peter had died at the hospital and that Ned had worked as an X-ray technician. The two had been friends, the rods said. The group wanted further proof that the ghosts were there. A tapping sound came seconds later.
Jones, who insisted he'd been a skeptic, asked the visiting reporter to hold the dowsing rods. The questions continued, and the wires seemed to answer.
Next the threesome visited with Amy and Andrew, sister-and-brother ghosts. They asked, several times, which bed Andrew died in. Each time, the dowsing rods pointed the same way. When they asked if the siblings liked the haunted house and all the visitors, the rods instantly split apart.
Not so for Jessica, believed to be the ghost of a 3-year-old, who another set of investigators said likes company. She's held their hands or tugged on their pant legs during previous hospital visits, they said. On this night, maybe she was shy?
A guitar tuner rested in the middle of the floor. They said its blinking lights, which seemed impossible to follow, helped Jessica communicate. But it was the pinwheel propped up in a vase, the one they insisted had moved on its own minutes earlier, that provided proof she was with them, they said. The toy didn't budge when Salt Lake Tribune staffers were there, although people said it rotated slightly minutes after the journalists wandered off.
Not every visit turns out equal amounts of material, the spirit seekers say. But that doesn't hamper their enthusiasm. As they headed out into the night, they looked forward to their next meeting - with ghosts in an unnamed school, perhaps near you.
jravitz@sltrib.com
