-
-
- John DuMaurier pulls a flashlight out of his briefcase
and points to the blue plastic lens. If a yellow fog-like trail shows up
in the blue beam, a ghost has been here, he says.
-
- "That indicates ectoplasm, the spiritual residue
of a ghost," he says to the home's new tenant, Lisa Alexander, KDKA
Radio's morning news anchor.
-
- Turns out, the flashlight is something of a formality.
Though he'd been in the 130-year-old house barely 15 minutes yesterday
morning, he'd already gotten a "very positive feeling" about
some sort of spirit. He's picturing a gray-haired, elderly woman.
-
- "This place is incredibly rich with vibration,"
he says.
-
- When Alexander and roommate Lisa Rutter exchange quizzical
glances, DuMaurier quickly assures them.
-
- "It's nothing negative," he says. "I have
a hot feeling you're going to have a grandmother around taking care of
you."
-
- As one of Pittsburgh's best-known ghost hunters, it's
DuMaurier's job to track the source of bumps in the night. On "serious"
psychic investigations, DuMaurier will bring along an entire team, including
Lisa Tack, president of the Pittsburgh Ghost Hunters Club, local college
students and optometrist (and skeptic) Bob Manoli, whom DuMaurier affectionately
refers to as his "doubting Thomas."
-
- Yesterday, however, the only one along to help determine
if Alexander's North Side home is really haunted was longtime friend and
fellow psychic Jude Pohl of Scott. Alexander invited them in to hunt and
to try to identify any ghosts in her Allegheny West home. They obliged
with three, including the elderly woman.
-
- In the second-floor living room, DuMaurier glances into
the dark stairwell leading up to the third floor.
-
- "I'm picturing a small child in the corner with
brownish hair," he says.
-
- Alexander's friend Gracilynn Cloud, who says she, too,
is somewhat psychic, nods in agreement.
-
- "He's about 5. His pants are too short," she
says.
-
- An exploration of the basement boiler room later turns
up yet another entity, most likely that of a maid or cook.
-
- "Did this used to be a kitchen?" DuMaurier
asks John Wojtyna, landlord of the house built in 1863 by Thomas Nevin.
-
- Indeed, most houses in the late 1880s had kitchens in
the basement. Is this all a bunch of hooey? Not to Ghost Hunters.
-
- "I've never been on a investigation where something
incredible hasn't happened," says Pohl, 54, a theatrical producer
who has gone on dozens of ghost hunts with DuMaurier over the past 15 years.
-
- Sometimes, that "something" takes place after
the visit. Pohl produces a photograph of a woman sitting at her kitchen
table. The photographer, a relative, didn't see anything out of the ordinary
when he snapped the picture. When the film was developed, however, the
translucent outline of a man is clearly visible in the background. A double
exposure perhaps? After all, only the "ghost" (the woman's recently
departed husband, according to Pohl) is perfectly in focus. Everything
else, most notably the wife, is slightly blurred. Yet Pohl insists the
picture, taken with an old-fashioned Instamatic, hasn't been doctored.
-
- "If you gave me a picture of a ghost, I wouldn't
believe you either," he says with a shrug.
-
- That doesn't stop him, however, from roaming from room
to room with a cigarette lighter, which he lights and then runs up and
down the walls and in the corners. If an entity if present, he explains,
the flame will jump or even float.
-
- "But I'm not the expert," he says with a laugh.
"I'm just go along for the ride."
-
- Not so with 53-year-old DuMaurier. Though an optician
and stress therapist by trade, ghost hunting is something of a passion
if not an out-and-out obsession for the talkative Monongahela native. He
has written a book on the subject and at one time penned a weekly newspaper
column on psychic phenomena. In the early '70s, he hosted a radio program
devoted to the supernatural on WTRA-Latrobe. More recently, DuMaurier has
become a frequent guest on Pittsburgh talk radio.
-
- Born to parents of Eastern European descent, he grew
up hearing stories of ghosts and vampires. But it wasn't until he was 20
and a student at University College in Dublin that DuMaurier had a personal
experience with a spirit -- the ghost of Nullamore, a priest who had died
at the residence in an accidental fall. That sighting piqued a lifelong
interest in paranormal activity.
-
- Pohl, on the other hand, attributes his penchant for
ghost hunting to his lifelong psychic ability. For as long as he can remember,
he has been able to sense when something is about to happen without knowing
why. He says he'll decide, on the spur of the moment, to take a different
route to work and miss an accident. Or he'll feel the unexplainable urge
to cross the street, then run into a friend.
-
- As spirited believers, DuMaurier and Pohl are in good
company. According to a 1999 Gallup poll, a third of people surveyed believe
in ghosts -- three times the number who admitted to it two decades ago.
Witness the phenomenal success of films such as "The Sixth Sense"
as well as TV shows like "The X -Files" and the recently launched
"The Others."
-
- Alexander approached Ghost Hunters after learning that
the apartment's prior tenants had experienced strange goings-on: Children's
shoes had been lined up in a row when no one was home; someone had whispered
"Help me" in the wife's ear at night; videotapes had suddenly
fallen off the shelf just as a cold breeze swept through.
-
- "I thought it would be a kick to see who else might
be living here," she says.
-
- So why does the pair hear, see and occasionally feel
what others do not?
-
- "I think I'm a catalyst for this," DuMaurier
says matter-of-factly.
-
- Though the only equipment he brought to Alexander's apartment
were a few flashlights, a Polaroid camera and a lighter, DuMaurier often
brings along a tape recorder (to pick up sounds no one can hear), a magnetometer,
which measures changes in magnetic pull, and thermal sensors. In addition,
the metal crucifix he found along the side of road when he was 18 is always
close to his heart.
-
- "It can be dangerous out there," he says.
-
- He is also careful not to learn too much about a particular
house before he starts an investigation because stories, he maintains,
are almost always embellished by the imagination.
-
- DuMaurier, who goes on about 20 hunts a year, recounts
the time he and Pohl visited an old house in Freeport where the owners
would wake to find historical documents on the kitchen table. When they
investigated, a shadowy figure materialized at the top of the stairs. And
it wasn't happy -- it tried to push them down the stairs. DuMaurier eventually
ended up exorcising the house, he says, but not before the couple had moved
out and divorced.
-
- "I guess you'd say we lost that one," he says.
-
- Another time, they visited the old Scioscia mansion in
Bellevue to try to verify the presence of the ghost of a child who had
been murdered in the attic. They were snacking off a buffet when someone
noticed a mist at the top of the stairs.
-
- "It was so prominent, we thought someone had put
up a fog maker," DuMaurier says.
-
- After someone felt a cold draft in the room, Pohl ventured
up the stairs and looked into a bedroom, only to have a face suddenly flash
on like a light.
-
- "I never came down a flight of stairs so fast in
my life," he exclaims.
-
- Most people who experience paranormal activity want the
being out as quickly as possible, says DuMaurier. His solution: To create
an environment that doesn't permit the spirit to live there. That could
be something as simple as blessing the house, holding a seance or engaging
in a full-blown exorcism.
-
- Sometimes, the simple act of bringing in a ghost hunter
is enough to purge a house of unwanted spirits, he says.
-
- "We're exposing it and weakening it, and changing
it."
-
- After yesterday's hunt, in fact, Alexander may never
hear from "her" ghost again. His hunch, however, is that the
newscaster will have a lot of interesting experiences.
-
- "You've got a number of people who've lived here
who still come and go," DuMaurier says at the end of the hour-long
investigation. And that's OK with Alexander.
-
- "Whether this is real or not, it's nice to know
what's making these things happen," she says. Otherwise, "it's
the fear of the unknown, you know?"
-
- That fear, and a lively imagination, is the only real
thing about ghosts, says Richard Busch, a Pittsburgh hypnotherapist and
member of the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.
He doesn't believe DuMaurier and Co. are finding anything but what they
want to find.
-
- "If your grandfather could come back from the dead,
do you believe for even one second that he could contact a total stranger
and not you?" he asks. "How preposterous! We don't need a middle
man."
-
- Busch has a simple explanation for why so many people
are willing to believe in ghosts: It's exciting. And never underestimate
the power of suggestion.
-
- "People are quick to jump on the bandwagon,"
says Busch.
-
- Skeptics don't bother DuMaurier. In fact, he says he
rather enjoys them.
-
- "They bring you back down to earth."
-
- If you believe your house is haunted or have other paranormal
activity to report, John DuMaurier may be interested in talking with you.
You can e-mail him at <ghostpower@webtv.net
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