Kentucky: Hotel Metropolitan Ghost Hunt

From Public Broadcasting: Hotel Metropolitan Ghost Hunt
MURRAY, KY (wkms) - Just about any city, town, or hamlet you can think of has at least one place everyone thinks is haunted.

People are drawn to these places, and they come for a variety of reasons. Maybe it's for thrills, or the chance to experience the supernatural. But there's often a degree of curiosity about the question: are there such things as ghosts? Todd Hatton gets his chance when a Fulton County paranormal group comes to Paducah's historic Hotel Metropolitan to see if any of its former occupants are still there.

With the proliferation of paranormal programming on practically every television channel and online, some are taking their curiosity about the supernatural to the next level. They're using meters, cameras and recorders to do something others think impossible: document the doings of the unquiet dead.

That's why I'm standing in front of the Hotel Metropolitan on a sunny October afternoon. The slightest hint of autumn coolness sharpens the air as members of Fulton County Paranormal Investigations haul equipment cases onto the century-old building's front porch. The Metropolitan opened in 1909 to serve African-American visitors to Jim Crow-era Paducah. Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Satchel Paige, and possibly even Thurgood Marshall stayed there. Some of those guests may linger there today.

"...I don't have a ghost of a chance with you..."

And of course, that's why we're here.

"We" are myself, Hotel Metropolitan director and curator Betty Dobson, a handful of guests, and four Fulton County Paranormal Investigation team members. The FCPI members course through the building, setting up infrared cameras, prepping digital voice recorders, and running cables. Great care is taken to ensure that all the equipment's doing what it's supposed to do and that all possible controls are in place.

While that's going on, Mrs. Dobson tells me a piano sitting by the hotel's staircase. It used to belong to her late sister, who was very involved in the Metropolitan's restoration. After she passed, the piano was installed as a kind of tribute. Later on, a photographer took pictures of the outside of the building. Mrs. Dobson noticed something, or rather, someone in one of them.

Right about now, I get a chill. FCPI co-founder Leslie Woods announces she's ready, and we file into the main room for an orientation, and an interruption.

A placard hanging on the wall behind Woods falls to the floor. As to why it fell, your guess is as good as mine. The pin holding it up was still in the wall, and the string on the back of the exhibit was still intact.

Undeterred, Woods continues.

There isn't a fire, nor is there any apparent reason for the alarms to go off. In fact, they'll go on and off all night. As the group breaks up, some go to check on gear, others step outside for a moment. The anticipation rises. The investigation is about to begin.

And when it does, we're outdoors on the north side of the hotel. The sun has finally set, and it is dark.

We cluster around FCPI Lead Investigator Carmen Henderson. She's holding a electronic device not much bigger than an iPod called an Ovilus. Put simply, it's a voice box for ghosts.

The theory behind the Ovilus is that spirits can manipulate the local electromagnetic fields, the device's E-M-F meter picks it up and either interprets the fluctuations into words in an on-board dictionary, or simply translates them into syllables. Scientifically, it shouldn't work, but when Carmen asks a question, she usually gets an answer. "The red light, when it lights up, it's picking up something. "Cycle."

It's tough to determine which is the more unsettling; the Ovilus' mechanical "voice," or its response to Carmen's question.

Back inside, it's time to head upstairs, to the Metropolitan's hotel rooms, where the bulk of the investigation will take place.

We pile into one of them and out comes the Ovilus again, along with a EMF detector and an infrared thermometer. Contact comes quickly.

"Were you an owner?"

"Were you a guest?"

"Afterlife."

"Now that one, I've never heard that one come out of this box. I got chills on that one. That was pretty cool."

In case you didn't catch that, the word was "afterlife." After a break, we're upstairs again, in another room. After a few moments, the Ovilus starts speaking again. This time, whoever's coming through has a bit of an attitude.

"Yeah, I'm not even gonna guess what, what it sounded like to me, I'm not gonna say."

"Honky."

"You shoulda heard what it said us a while ago."

Since the belief is that ghosts are largely the spirits of the once-living, the social dynamics can be similar to dealing with someone who's got a pulse. So, it comes as no surprise a few minutes later when the Ovilus spits out a colorful metaphor or two aimed at one of the female investigators. At one point, we're even given a pointed piece of advice as to what we could go do with ourselves. At another, the apparent apparition calls Carmen Henderson a couple of not-so-nice names.

"Really?"

"What'd he say?"

"Sounds like he said 'floozy."

"Honky."

"Honky? You calling me a honky? Is that what he said?"

"Sounds like it."

"And we're trying to be nice!"

You really haven't lived until you've been insulted by the dead. Skeptics will point out that ghost-hunting methods and evidence aren't strictly scientific. Paranormal experiences aren't controllable or repeatable, and they're nearly impossible to predict. So, they get labeled as pseudo-science or worse.

Then again, it's hard to dismiss a cold spot that moves from person to person in a room with no air conditioning. One moves across my hands as I record. An infrared thermometer pointed at my hands indicates a 10 degree drop from my base reading of 71 degrees. As Leslie Woods calls out the falling temperature, the Ovilus comes to life again.

I'm not sure anything I heard, saw or felt at the Hotel Metropolitan that night will turn a skeptic into a believer, and I'm not sure that was the point. You could say it represented an honest effort to explore something beyond ourselves. And if nothing else, it was a remarkable opportunity. After all, how often do you get to go on the kind of investigation you only see on T-V and see first-hand how it works? That is, of course, unless you have a supernatural guest lurking around your own home.