Oklahoma ghost hunter says curiosity drives search

NewsOK: Oklahoma ghost hunter says curiosity drives search

EL RENO — Turns out, hardly anything that goes bump in the night is a ghost, Tonya Hacker said.

Ghostlahoma conference
Where: Centre Theatre, 108 S Bickford, El Reno

When: 10:30 a.m. Saturday

Admission: $25

More information: Go to www.ghouli.org or blog.NewsOK.com/paranormaleyes.
More “ghost hunters” are arriving at that realization, “smartening up,” as Hacker, puts it. “Being skeptical is getting kind of cool.”

Hacker, a longtime investigator in Oklahoma of haunting and other unexplained oddities, will host many evermore skeptical fans at her annual paranormal conference Saturday in El Reno. Hacker expects up to 250 fans of the supernatural from across Oklahoma and surrounding states to appear, or rather show up, at the historic Centre Theatre.

Now called Ghostlahoma because the old name, “ParaCon,” was so overused it sounded like “a franchise,” Hacker said, the event will feature several speakers from Oklahoma, including paranormal researchers and writers Teri White, of Broken Arrow, Tammy Wilson, of Enid, and Cullan Hudson, of Norman. Also expected to attend is Ken Gerhard, a “cryptozoologist” who has searched for Bigfoot, the chupacabra and other legendary creatures.

Curiosity, nostalgia
Hacker said more people these days are spurred by curiosity and nostalgia, rather than close encounters of the otherworldly kind, and are taking a skeptical approach.

“They're sort of steering away from the ‘We're scientists and we know everything and we're going to prove it,'” she said. “They're seeing the field as more of ‘Let's go have fun and have adventures.'”

They're interested in the real stories behind the legends that swirl around old hotels, hospitals, prisons, theaters, cemeteries and other locations said to be haunted. They're realizing that without history, she said, “ghost stories don't mean anything.”

Still, the field of paranormal searching and researching continues to have its mixed nuts driven by a desire for attention and the hope of landing a reality show, she said.

“There are still a lot of idiots out there,” she said.

Finding unexplained
Hacker, who works in purchasing for an oil and gas company, said she receives many inquiries from people consumed by the feeling their homes or other properties might be haunted. She explains to them “the difference between a story and reality” and describes how the mind can play tricks.

However, Hacker believes in the unexplained. For instance, her experience at the abandoned Baker Hotel in Mineral Wells, Texas. While she stood in a hallway rolling her eyes at ghostly claims being exchanged by other visitors, who often expect spirits of prostitutes or Bonnie and Clyde, she and another friend noticed a little boy.

“We watched him cross the hall, and he went into the elevator shaft,” she said.

The next day they asked the caretaker if a little boy had been in the hotel.

“She just kind of smiled at us,” Hacker said. “She was like, ‘Did you see him?'”

Then the caretaker told a little-known story of the son of a hotel worker who had been playing hide-and-seek when he pried the elevator doors open and fell down the shaft to his death.

“Of all the places I have been probably in my whole life, that place I would say I'm 100 percent sure is haunted,” Hacker said.

Just when she's ready to give up ghost hunting in frustration, she said, something amazingly unexplainable comes along.

“There are things out there,” she said.