Saturday, April 28, 2012

The High River train station ghost hunt

From the High River Times: The High River train station ghost hunt
If anyone saw lights on at the train station late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, no worries the museum wasn’t being broken into. It was just the sight of a paranormal investigation.

The not-for-profit Office of Paranormal Investigation and Research (OPIR) made the train station their home for a few hours and did a bit of poking around to see if there was any validity to the numerous claims that the station is haunted.

What they found was interesting according to Ryan Dowson, director of OPIR.

“Initial reaction it seems as though there is something there and it seems to be there is some historical facts to back that up,” said Dowson.

The team utilizes a number of various devices to record their investigations. They utilize video recorders, cameras, voice recorders, digital thermometers, and a compass during their investigations as well as some less scientific methods like feelings and a medium (who comes in blind to the building, not knowing anything beforehand).

OPIR hasn’t had a chance to fully go over their findings just yet, it takes a long time to fully go over everything, but they did have a preliminary thought on some of the things that occurred in the building. This included an interesting experiment with the office and one of the doors.

“We were all sitting in there and Krystyna [Halliwell] got up, the door opened up itself. That we haven’t debunked because you actually have to push on the door to open it,” said Patricia Dowson. “We haven’t really figured out a way to debunk that one. Playing around with it it won’t just open, you actually have to push on it.”

The door won’t even open when you jump on the floor around it, as tested by Ryan. According to Halliwell from the museum that door doesn’t just swing open on its own either.

The only other thing they saw, or at least felt, was in the ladies washroom.

Patricia went to go wash her hands at one point and felt an intense sensation to stare up at the mirror, expecting to see something there. And it wasn’t just Patricia who experienced that.

“If there is one team member that felt out of place, that doesn’t mean much. Having multiple team members at different times, that is an indication of something,” said Patricia. “None of us had talked at that point either. I thought that was a very strong indicator.”

Outside of those experiences, the OPIR thinks they may have caught a couple of other things on cameras and possibly a couple of sounds but they will know for sure after finishing looking through all their data.

This isn’t the first time the OPIR has done an investigation either. Both Ryan and Patricia are fairly seasoned at doing ghost hunts, with about a decade of experience each under their belts and said the High River area is ripe with places they would love to go and visit.

“There are lots of other places out there and High River is a perfect location,” said Ryan. “We’ve got right now, nine or ten active case files that we are pursuing; most of that is from the High River area.”

As for a summation of their findings, that should be up on OPIR’s website www.opir.ca by the end of the month.

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