Bob Flaherty: Ghostly mysteries of Room 23
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CHARLEMONT - Ghosts are hard to pin down. Those who haunt dwellings particularly. When they do make themselves known, an occurrence reported a lot more often than one might think, they are seemingly stuck at the moment of their death and reliving it like an endless psychic loop. Or more likely, they just WANT YOU OUT!
"Elizabeth," a ghost said to reside in Room 23 of the Charlemont Inn, has been known to disturb guests, both mentally and physically, for 150 years.
Psychics visiting the inn have determined that Elizabeth died of consumption in 1846, around the age of 14, supposedly in the big wooden bed in Room 23.
So she hangs onto that room because she enjoyed it ever so much and dying of consumption is so grand - and don't you even think about turning down those sheets? The mischievous lass swipes guests' hair dryers; housekeepers find them in another part of the hotel.
That's the thing about ghosts. What point are they trying to make?
"I hope to have them make their point," said ghosthunter Curt McGuire, director of Easthampton's Seeking the Dead Paranormal, who, along with fellow investigator Tim Riley of Easthampton and Tim's girlfriend and trainee Laura Gruszka of Holyoke, were at the Charlemont the other night to attempt to document paranormal activity there.
To do this, they come armed with infrared cameras and digital audio equipment and handheld devices that ping like Geiger counters, none more important that the handheld K2 meter, which measures electrical fields in milligauss. If a spirit is in the area, the lights on the K2 should dance like mad, goes the theory. The digital recorders grab swatches of conversation not within the range of human vocal cords, and deliver, via playback, the EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena.)
You may sit alone in a dark room in complete silence until dawn; play back the audio later and you may find out how alone you actually were.
Listen to an apparent recording of the ghost "Gerald" from the Charlemont Inn
Download other brief examples (right-click on the links to save):
"Pain" in Room 23 | Two voices: "Come back Eric" | Unknown singing
Ghosts, eager to converse though some may be, can't always be heard by the naked ear. Theoretically. Unless you're a dog. McGuire's dog Daliah has been spooked on a few of these adventures, bolting all the way back to the car without him. Daliah doesn't need EVPs to know what's what.
During previous dead-of-night visits the team has made to the place in recent weeks, much supposed evidence has been captured. A woman faintly singing by the armoire on the main floor at 2:30 in the morning. Pretty cool, but not what the team is after. Someone trilling the same faint little tra-la-las over and over is known as "residual" haunting. STDP is looking for an "intelligent" encounter, a conversation, preferably of the two-way variety.
"I need interaction," said McGuire, "signs of intelligence."
Fellow travelers
They have come close with a spirit named Gerald, who told them what his name was plain as all day, and also has a connection to 23, among other rooms in the house.
On the tapes Gerald is heard asking, in a gruff voice, "Can I get help?"
"Gerald's talkative, he'll answer questions," said McGuire. "He's experiencing pain, there's no doubt of that."
Thermometers, meanwhile, measure ambient temp. The theory behind cold spots sending chills up your spine is that the ghosts drain nearby energy to manifest themselves. Mere mortals are loaded with energy.
"My name is Gerald," comes the voice from 23. At least that's what it sounds like on the tape.
"I'm long since past the point of proving there are ghosts here," said the hotel's co-owner, Charlotte Dewey. "It's a gathering place, both living and past. We've had a wide variety of sightings ... both photographed and described."
It would have been nice to have had a camera that day some 18 or 19 years ago, when Dewey saw the bag of State Farm potato chips hovering in the hotel's kitchen. "Put them down, Elizabeth," said Dewey to the bag, and to the floor it fell.
"The kitchen is why we're here," said McGuire, whose team is setting up cameras and recorders at a number of locations throughout the building.
The potato chip story gets the Charlemont Inn into "Ghost Stories of New England," and on the Haunted Places of New England website which mentions no fewer than 350 hot spots in the state, including the aquatic-loving spooks who splash into the pool at the Boys and Girls Club of Allston; the ghosts who flit through the hallways of Boston's opulent Parker House, and the woman named Jeshua who's been waiting 200 years for her love to return to the Wayside Inn in Sudbury and will coo in your ear at 3 a.m. if you're studly enough.
There are hotels that don't like to be associated with ghosts, and those who do. The Charlemont Inn is plenty OK with it. "Some people don't want ghosts in their rooms, others come for that reason," said Dewey.
The Inn, which rents 14 rooms and has eight under renovation, wouldn't mind otherworldly attention. The recession pushed the place into foreclosure a while back; Dewey and co-owner Linda Shimandle have since applied for nonprofit status for the building and the Charlemont Preservation Society is in the process of gaining control of the facility in an attempt to save it, according to Dewey.
Room 23 at the top of the stairs is a small, plain, nondescript unit with drab wallpaper and long, lace curtains at the only window. There's a sink, a day bed and a large wooden bed, the bed in question, by the door.
The probe begins
It is 10:15 p.m. Lights out. Digital devices on. The paranormal investigation is under way.
Skeptics say that voices on these devices are just all that white noise that's ground into our everyday DNA like the Transcontinental Railroad. That a digital recorder with its increased gain could very well be picking up some guy placing a bet in the hotel's bar and not some wailing waif from the 19th century. Skeptics.
"We're here basically to debunk," said McGuire. "Traffic causes flickering. Anytime you can explain it you gotta throw it out."
On STDP's last trip here, Riley got scratched while he was sitting in the dark on the daybed in 23. "I felt a burning cold at my back, then #Whoa, what was that?'" He ran to his colleagues and pulled up his shirt and sure enough, they say they found a big red mark. "It's obvious she doesn't like us."
"We come as friends," says Riley to the pitch dark air around him. "We mean no harm. You might remember me - my name is Tim."
There are other rooms with suspected activity # 17, 16, 19. To reach them you need to go down a creaking narrow passageway worthy of Stephen King.
McGuire, 32, a Florida native raised in North Carolina, started seriously seeking the dead about four years ago, when he moved north, and started looking for like-minded people at the same time. He has six paranormal investigators, with another four in training; they all have day jobs. STDP does not charge for its services, but is planning a series of videos of their investigations.
"We do this because we want to help people and we want to see stuff," said Riley. Aside from all of this taking place in the dark, it's a little like fishing. Sit there quietly hour upon hour and keep checking for bites. Restlessness sets in. "I like when it's kickin,'" said Riley, 20, of his excursions into the Hoosac Tunnel in North Adams, where the anguished dead are said to hurl rocks at investigators and unseen canines wail in torment.
The ghosts at the Charlemont are much sneakier.
It is 11:46 p.m. Back in Room 19. Temperature has dropped dramatically. The half moon's light plays off the wall by the bed like the black and white credits to "Frankenstein." McGuire's EMF chatters. At first he dismisses it as just wiring in the walls wreaking havoc with the dials. But the K2's blinking wildly at the window, too. McGuire snaps hundreds of pictures during the night. An unexplained form shows up on one taken in 23. All in all, a quiet night, but there's plenty of audio from the week before.
In terms of disclosure, it must be said that, during all this creeping around from 16 to 17 to 19 to the armoire downstairs, the columnist's wife, who accompanied him here, slept blissfully in the pitch dark in Room 23 in the very bed where Elizabeth supposedly wheezed her last.
"Does your wife snore?" asked McGuire, upon returning to the room.
"On occasion," said the columnist.
"Note:" said the ghost hunter into his mic. "Unexplained noises may actually be Mrs. Flaherty snoring."
The group's website is: www.stdparanormal.webs.com.
