It was a dark and stormy night for Nicholls State University’s paranormal class on-campus ghost hunting session.
“This is the best weather,” said Professor Cally Hebert as she, her six students and several other locals set up infrared cameras near the bookstore, food court sitting area and Greek Hall in the Bollinger student union.
“This is the type of weather we hope for,” Hebert said. “The electromagnetic field from the lightning is strong and increases the chance that we will pick up something. This will be a fun night for the investigation.”
Indeed it was.
As the class was setting up for the investigation, a camera fell off its tri-pod.
“We are already having paranormal activity and we haven’t even started,” Hebert said excitedly.
This is the third year Hebert has been teaching the class and, in those years, she and her students have come to find paranormal activity in several buildings at the university.
“Polk, Talbot and the student union are the most active buildings on campus,” Hebert said. “Last time we did an investigation on campus, a shadow passed between a trash can and camera we had set up in Polk. We got it all on video and you can see right through the shadow. A skeptic in the class captured it, no less. We also get a lot of electric voice phenomenon in Polk Hall.”
The last investigation on campus also revealed Electric Voice Phenomenon of a little girl giggling in the student union as well as other laughter, footsteps and humming.
“Talbot Hall, that’s where a lot of people say they get a feeling, a heaviness, when they are in that building,” Hebert said. “We’ve got four or five different, good quality EVPs from the last investigation there. One of them said, ‘Call Katie,’ but there was no Katie in the room.”
According to Hebert, the EVPs in Talbot Hall range from older males and females to younger females and males.
Shamas Belo, senior culinary student from LaPlace, said he has experienced paranormal activity in room 117 of Peltier Hall.
“I was the only one in a classroom and a computer turned on by itself,” Belo said as he checked to make sure all the cameras in the union were properly set up and recording. “You need a key to turn on the server and the professor, who has the key, was not in the classroom.”
Belo had great expectations for his first paranormal investigation.
“I’ve always been fascinated by the paranormal,” Belo said. “This is a favorite class for me. We had a presentation in the last meeting, sort of an introductory into the paranormal about how to identify orbs and EVPs. I’m hoping for some strong signs tonight, maybe a cold breeze on my arm. I can’t wait to listen to the EVP sessions and see what the entities have to say.”
Once the cameras were properly set up, flashes began to appear in front of the camera in Greek Hall.
“It could just be a dust particle,” Hebert said as she headed off to check the area near the camera with a K-II meter that measures electro-magnetic emissions. “Most orbs move faster than a dust particle would move.”
Hebert quickly returned with brief news.
“It was nothing, probably just electrical stuff in the building,” Hebert said. “If there is a steady read on the K-II, it’s something man-made making it do that.”
Students soon broke into three groups and manned themselves with K-II meters, thermal leak detectors, which measure hot and cold spots, digital voice recorders, cameras and flashlights.
“Each group will spend about 45 minutes in each location before moving on to the next one,” Hebert said as the students prepared to leave the building.
“I know I’m going to be crying by the end of the night,” said student Suzanna Cavallo of Raceland as she joined Joseph Hubble of Port Allen, Derek Foret of Houma and Hebert and headed out into the night toward Polk Hall. “I’m so excited.”
The hunt begins
“Janitors have reportedly seen shadows pass through walls in this room,” Hebert said as the group entered a dark computer lab on the first floor. “Janitors are a good source of information for us. They let us know of any commotion they hear in buildings so that we know where to come for future investigations.”
Once the group arrived in the room, everyone turned on their voice recorders and while Hubble and Foret began moving about the room, Hebert began pinpointing cold spots in the room and debunking drafts while Cavallo took a few photographs from different angles in the room.
“A spirit gives off a lot of energy,” Hebert said as she scanned the room with the thermal leak detector. “This device is just one way for them to communicate, to let us know they are there. Blue means a cold spot below room temperature, a good sign of an entity, green signals room temperature and red means an above-room-temperature reading.”
As the group moved around the room, each posed several questions into the air of the dark room: “Why are you here?” “Are you sad?”
“Are you there?” Hebert asked as her thermal leak detector changed from green to blue. “Wow, already getting something!”
Through a series of yes or no questions answered by making the light blink – blink meaning yes – Hebert determined that the entity was female.
“Were you a student here?” Cavallo asked.
“Are you still here?” Hebert posed. “Can you make the light blink again?”
“Why are you here?” Foret questioned as Hebert’s thermal leak detector blinked from green to blue again. “Were you a teacher here? A construction worker on this building? Are you alone?”
Foret’s K-II lit up near a chair.
“Are you a spirit that needs help?” Hebert asked. “Can we help you?”
The spirit responded in the positive by making Hebert’s light blink again and both Foret and Hubble’s K-II readers began to blink.
“I’m getting the chills now,” Cavallo said. “Do you want us to contact your family? What is your name?”
“My temperature gun turned itself off,” Hebert said. “It takes lots of energy for them to turn something off and they sometimes take the energy from our batteries to turn things off.”
The group soon moved further into another corner of the room and Foret rapped on the wall to check for a possible response. If there was one, it was not audible. After spending about 20 minutes in the room, the group traveled to the second floor of the building.
“I feel like nothing is here,” Cavallo said.
It seemed that Cavallo’s premonition was right and neither the K-II readers nor the thermal leak detector picked up any readings as the group walked down one of the building’s hallways before moving toward a staircase to the outside of the building. As the team made its way toward the door, Hebert’s thermal leak detector flickered from red to green to blue.
“Do you want some more company?” Hebert asked as the lights stopped changing color. “We’re leaving but others are coming to visit you.”
From the library, the team made their way to Talbot Hall, the university’s art building.
“If we cross one of the other groups, don’t tell them anything about what we saw,” Hebert said. “We want to know what they see without them knowing where we saw activity.”
After running into several locked doors, the group found one unlocked door that lead to several open doors of the instrument and singing practice rooms.
“Is anyone here?” Hebert asked as Cavallo sat at a piano in the first room and Hebert’s thermal leak detector quickly changed to blue. Foret and Hubble began to check each room with their K-II sensors but turned up nothing as Cavallo and Hebert moved from room to room as the light continued to blink from green to blue.
“It seems to be moving to the bigger pianos,” Hebert said, laughing. “We have heard EVP requests for help in this building in some of our other investigations.”
After 15 minutes of room hopping, the entity seemed to move back to the first room before completely disappearing from the thermal leak detector’s radar. From there, the group began to search for other unlocked doors along the hallway, finally hitting pay-dirt with the door to the building’s theater.
While Foret, Hubble and Hebert worked the room with their ghost hunting devices, Cavallo made her way to the back of the stage to take several photographs of the area.
“I’ve got two possible orbs,” Cavallo said. “In each shot, the orb is in a different place.”
With no readings on K-II readers or the thermal leak detector, the team made its way to a hallway outside of the ceramics room.
“I’ve got something on my K-II,” Foret said as he made his way past shelves of student artwork on display.
“Me, too,” Hubble said as he scanned the far end of the hallway.
“I’ve got blue,” Hebert said. “Can you please make the color go to red? We’ve only got a few minutes left in this building before we have to leave.”
Activity in the area continued for about 10 minutes, but after several minutes with no activity on the K-II readers or the thermal leak detector, the group made its way back to the union for its final session, settling in a hallway in front of the doors to the bookstore.
Hebert’s thermal leak detector immediately began to flip through all three temperature colors and soon the K-II readers also began going off.
“This is a nice entity,” Hebert said. “It has lots of energy and is really interacting with us.
“It really seems to like the guys and their K-II readers.”
For a solid 10 minutes, the K-II readers and the thermal leak detector continued to blink, with the group determining through questioning that the entity was male.
“Do you want us to leave?” Hebert asked after several moments went by with no movement on any of the readers. Foret and Hubble’s K-II readers immediately went off.
“I’m going to leave my tape recorder here in case you have something to tell us,” Hebert said as the group moved on to Greek Hall and upstairs to classrooms on the union’s second floor.
“We’ve had reports of paranormal activity in these classrooms from the janitors,” Hebert said. “On one occasion, the doorknob was jiggling on the room divider door and no one was in the other room.”
After no readings popped up on the K-II readers, the group made their way back downstairs to check in with the returning groups.
“Everybody be in the next class so we can discuss everything from tonight and talk about what we find on our EVPs,” Hebert said. “Class dismissed.”
EVP sessions reveal voices
“We got a bunch of EVPs in response to our questions,” Hebert said following the class’ session to discuss what was seen, heard and felt during the campus investigation. “We got lots of ‘Help me’ requests from each building.”
The majority of the students’ EVPs were from Talbot and Polk halls and very few were heard in the student union.
“When we walked into the computer lab in Polk, you could hear five or six other people whispering in the room,” Hebert said. “None of us were whispering when we walked in. It’s really cool to hear all our voices and the other voices that you know weren’t there.”
Other hotspots for that night’s EVPs were the music practice rooms in Talbot Hall.
“A single note was played on a piano and in another piano room, we got a long, drawn-out ‘No,’” Hebert said. “One teacher asked us not to tell her if anything showed up around the door to her office and as I was saying that in front of her door during the investigation, there was a very sinister voice on my EVP recording saying ‘I’ve got your back. I’m in back of you.’”
Hebert also reported a recording of knock-back when students knocked on the floor of the Talbot Hall auditorium.
“It was a very successful investigation,” Hebert said. “Three students want to take the class again and some students even brought friends and spouses to the EVP listening session.”
“This is the best weather,” said Professor Cally Hebert as she, her six students and several other locals set up infrared cameras near the bookstore, food court sitting area and Greek Hall in the Bollinger student union.
“This is the type of weather we hope for,” Hebert said. “The electromagnetic field from the lightning is strong and increases the chance that we will pick up something. This will be a fun night for the investigation.”
Indeed it was.
As the class was setting up for the investigation, a camera fell off its tri-pod.
“We are already having paranormal activity and we haven’t even started,” Hebert said excitedly.
This is the third year Hebert has been teaching the class and, in those years, she and her students have come to find paranormal activity in several buildings at the university.
“Polk, Talbot and the student union are the most active buildings on campus,” Hebert said. “Last time we did an investigation on campus, a shadow passed between a trash can and camera we had set up in Polk. We got it all on video and you can see right through the shadow. A skeptic in the class captured it, no less. We also get a lot of electric voice phenomenon in Polk Hall.”
The last investigation on campus also revealed Electric Voice Phenomenon of a little girl giggling in the student union as well as other laughter, footsteps and humming.
“Talbot Hall, that’s where a lot of people say they get a feeling, a heaviness, when they are in that building,” Hebert said. “We’ve got four or five different, good quality EVPs from the last investigation there. One of them said, ‘Call Katie,’ but there was no Katie in the room.”
According to Hebert, the EVPs in Talbot Hall range from older males and females to younger females and males.
Shamas Belo, senior culinary student from LaPlace, said he has experienced paranormal activity in room 117 of Peltier Hall.
“I was the only one in a classroom and a computer turned on by itself,” Belo said as he checked to make sure all the cameras in the union were properly set up and recording. “You need a key to turn on the server and the professor, who has the key, was not in the classroom.”
Belo had great expectations for his first paranormal investigation.
“I’ve always been fascinated by the paranormal,” Belo said. “This is a favorite class for me. We had a presentation in the last meeting, sort of an introductory into the paranormal about how to identify orbs and EVPs. I’m hoping for some strong signs tonight, maybe a cold breeze on my arm. I can’t wait to listen to the EVP sessions and see what the entities have to say.”
Once the cameras were properly set up, flashes began to appear in front of the camera in Greek Hall.
“It could just be a dust particle,” Hebert said as she headed off to check the area near the camera with a K-II meter that measures electro-magnetic emissions. “Most orbs move faster than a dust particle would move.”
Hebert quickly returned with brief news.
“It was nothing, probably just electrical stuff in the building,” Hebert said. “If there is a steady read on the K-II, it’s something man-made making it do that.”
Students soon broke into three groups and manned themselves with K-II meters, thermal leak detectors, which measure hot and cold spots, digital voice recorders, cameras and flashlights.
“Each group will spend about 45 minutes in each location before moving on to the next one,” Hebert said as the students prepared to leave the building.
“I know I’m going to be crying by the end of the night,” said student Suzanna Cavallo of Raceland as she joined Joseph Hubble of Port Allen, Derek Foret of Houma and Hebert and headed out into the night toward Polk Hall. “I’m so excited.”
The hunt begins
“Janitors have reportedly seen shadows pass through walls in this room,” Hebert said as the group entered a dark computer lab on the first floor. “Janitors are a good source of information for us. They let us know of any commotion they hear in buildings so that we know where to come for future investigations.”
Once the group arrived in the room, everyone turned on their voice recorders and while Hubble and Foret began moving about the room, Hebert began pinpointing cold spots in the room and debunking drafts while Cavallo took a few photographs from different angles in the room.
“A spirit gives off a lot of energy,” Hebert said as she scanned the room with the thermal leak detector. “This device is just one way for them to communicate, to let us know they are there. Blue means a cold spot below room temperature, a good sign of an entity, green signals room temperature and red means an above-room-temperature reading.”
As the group moved around the room, each posed several questions into the air of the dark room: “Why are you here?” “Are you sad?”
“Are you there?” Hebert asked as her thermal leak detector changed from green to blue. “Wow, already getting something!”
Through a series of yes or no questions answered by making the light blink – blink meaning yes – Hebert determined that the entity was female.
“Were you a student here?” Cavallo asked.
“Are you still here?” Hebert posed. “Can you make the light blink again?”
“Why are you here?” Foret questioned as Hebert’s thermal leak detector blinked from green to blue again. “Were you a teacher here? A construction worker on this building? Are you alone?”
Foret’s K-II lit up near a chair.
“Are you a spirit that needs help?” Hebert asked. “Can we help you?”
The spirit responded in the positive by making Hebert’s light blink again and both Foret and Hubble’s K-II readers began to blink.
“I’m getting the chills now,” Cavallo said. “Do you want us to contact your family? What is your name?”
“My temperature gun turned itself off,” Hebert said. “It takes lots of energy for them to turn something off and they sometimes take the energy from our batteries to turn things off.”
The group soon moved further into another corner of the room and Foret rapped on the wall to check for a possible response. If there was one, it was not audible. After spending about 20 minutes in the room, the group traveled to the second floor of the building.
“I feel like nothing is here,” Cavallo said.
It seemed that Cavallo’s premonition was right and neither the K-II readers nor the thermal leak detector picked up any readings as the group walked down one of the building’s hallways before moving toward a staircase to the outside of the building. As the team made its way toward the door, Hebert’s thermal leak detector flickered from red to green to blue.
“Do you want some more company?” Hebert asked as the lights stopped changing color. “We’re leaving but others are coming to visit you.”
From the library, the team made their way to Talbot Hall, the university’s art building.
“If we cross one of the other groups, don’t tell them anything about what we saw,” Hebert said. “We want to know what they see without them knowing where we saw activity.”
After running into several locked doors, the group found one unlocked door that lead to several open doors of the instrument and singing practice rooms.
“Is anyone here?” Hebert asked as Cavallo sat at a piano in the first room and Hebert’s thermal leak detector quickly changed to blue. Foret and Hubble began to check each room with their K-II sensors but turned up nothing as Cavallo and Hebert moved from room to room as the light continued to blink from green to blue.
“It seems to be moving to the bigger pianos,” Hebert said, laughing. “We have heard EVP requests for help in this building in some of our other investigations.”
After 15 minutes of room hopping, the entity seemed to move back to the first room before completely disappearing from the thermal leak detector’s radar. From there, the group began to search for other unlocked doors along the hallway, finally hitting pay-dirt with the door to the building’s theater.
While Foret, Hubble and Hebert worked the room with their ghost hunting devices, Cavallo made her way to the back of the stage to take several photographs of the area.
“I’ve got two possible orbs,” Cavallo said. “In each shot, the orb is in a different place.”
With no readings on K-II readers or the thermal leak detector, the team made its way to a hallway outside of the ceramics room.
“I’ve got something on my K-II,” Foret said as he made his way past shelves of student artwork on display.
“Me, too,” Hubble said as he scanned the far end of the hallway.
“I’ve got blue,” Hebert said. “Can you please make the color go to red? We’ve only got a few minutes left in this building before we have to leave.”
Activity in the area continued for about 10 minutes, but after several minutes with no activity on the K-II readers or the thermal leak detector, the group made its way back to the union for its final session, settling in a hallway in front of the doors to the bookstore.
Hebert’s thermal leak detector immediately began to flip through all three temperature colors and soon the K-II readers also began going off.
“This is a nice entity,” Hebert said. “It has lots of energy and is really interacting with us.
“It really seems to like the guys and their K-II readers.”
For a solid 10 minutes, the K-II readers and the thermal leak detector continued to blink, with the group determining through questioning that the entity was male.
“Do you want us to leave?” Hebert asked after several moments went by with no movement on any of the readers. Foret and Hubble’s K-II readers immediately went off.
“I’m going to leave my tape recorder here in case you have something to tell us,” Hebert said as the group moved on to Greek Hall and upstairs to classrooms on the union’s second floor.
“We’ve had reports of paranormal activity in these classrooms from the janitors,” Hebert said. “On one occasion, the doorknob was jiggling on the room divider door and no one was in the other room.”
After no readings popped up on the K-II readers, the group made their way back downstairs to check in with the returning groups.
“Everybody be in the next class so we can discuss everything from tonight and talk about what we find on our EVPs,” Hebert said. “Class dismissed.”
EVP sessions reveal voices
“We got a bunch of EVPs in response to our questions,” Hebert said following the class’ session to discuss what was seen, heard and felt during the campus investigation. “We got lots of ‘Help me’ requests from each building.”
The majority of the students’ EVPs were from Talbot and Polk halls and very few were heard in the student union.
“When we walked into the computer lab in Polk, you could hear five or six other people whispering in the room,” Hebert said. “None of us were whispering when we walked in. It’s really cool to hear all our voices and the other voices that you know weren’t there.”
Other hotspots for that night’s EVPs were the music practice rooms in Talbot Hall.
“A single note was played on a piano and in another piano room, we got a long, drawn-out ‘No,’” Hebert said. “One teacher asked us not to tell her if anything showed up around the door to her office and as I was saying that in front of her door during the investigation, there was a very sinister voice on my EVP recording saying ‘I’ve got your back. I’m in back of you.’”
Hebert also reported a recording of knock-back when students knocked on the floor of the Talbot Hall auditorium.
“It was a very successful investigation,” Hebert said. “Three students want to take the class again and some students even brought friends and spouses to the EVP listening session.”
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