By Ann Marie Bush and Anthony S. Bush
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
LAWRENCE — "I keep seeing a hand wearing a wedding band," Vicky Millard whispers into the darkness.
She and four other members of the Kansas Paranormal Research Society, all of Topeka, are crammed into a small room on the third floor of the Sigma Nu fraternity house northwest of The University of Kansas campus.
They check the temperature in the room. Member Brenda Mason asks Millard, who is the psychic of the group, if she feels anything.
"I feel something on the back of my neck," Millard says softly.
Mason uses a full-spectrum digital camera to take a photograph. The flash bounces off the women in the room.
Riley Mays and Brandon Mason are one floor below, watching the women via a camera placed in the room. One floor below Mays and Mason, Larry Mason and Steve Millard quietly watch for spirits.
For more than five hours, the group documents movements, orbs and other signs of paranormal activity in the said-to-be-haunted fraternity, which is home to more than 70 KU men.
KPRS members focus their work on the third floor, but they search the whole house in hopes of finding clues to support stories that the frat house is haunted by a spirit named Virginia, a mistress of former Gov. Walter Stubbs, who served as governor from 1909 to 1913 and lived in the house before it was turned into a fraternity.
An undocumented story suggests Virginia, who also was a servant in the house, hanged herself in a third-floor room in 1911 after the governor's wife found out about the affair.
Fraternity brothers have speculated about Virginia's spirit for decades, and some tell stories about women being scratched in the house and furniture being moved.
"We came in really, really cold," Millard explained before the investigation began March 26.
The group tries to avoid stories about the locations they research, which allows Millard to develop her own theories.
"On the way here, I saw fire, two hawks and something about witchcraft," Millard said.
The idea of a woman committing suicide in the house entered Millard's mind, too.
She can't explain how the information comes to her.
"I thought I had a vivid imagination," Millard said. "It's hard for me to believe. I'm a skeptic. But I consider it a gift. I feel like it's helping people."
But the thoughts and whispers that come to Millard — in the shower, while driving and on investigations — have proven useful to several people who have lost loved ones.
"She's the real deal," Mason said.
Mason founded KPRS about a year ago and is the empath of the group. To date, the group has had about 18 investigations throughout northeast Kansas, including the Moose Lodge, North Star, The Break Room and Mount Hope in Topeka.
Millard joined the group shortly after Mason formed it. However, she wasn't sure she could take part in the ghost hunts at the beginning.
"I can't even go into haunted houses at Halloween," Millard said with a laugh.
The Millards, Brenda and Larry Mason, and Pam Currie, all of Topeka, are the five core members of the group.
"It's so social," Vicky Millard said. "The five us are such good friends."
Mays and Brandon Mason work as technical specialists for KPRS, which also has three in-training investigators, Terry Dubbs, Chris Hertel and Christy Schmidt.
KPRS members take money they would spend on going out to restaurants and movies, and spend it on equipment. So far, they have motion detectors, infrared cameras, full-spectrum cameras, video monitoring equipment and five electromagnetic field detectors.
The ghost hunters provide their services free of charge for businesses and individuals. For more information, visit www.ksparanormalresearchsociety.com or check out the group's Facebook page.
It will take KPRS members several hours to go through investigative material collected from the Sigma Nu house. But Millard's initial reaction, posted on the Facebook page hours after the hunt, said it all.
"It was a great time, and what may seem to be a story passed down through the years, in my opinion, is a close to accurate account of what might of happened," she wrote.
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