He's Baaaaaack!

The Return Of The Ghost Catcher

By John Littell

At 3 in the afternoon, the skies open up and belch forth a mixture of freezing rain and whirling sleet. Not an auspicious beginning for Gary S. Hawkins and Paul Robinson, who are at Kemper Military School in Boonville to continue their hunt for haints.

Slippery Spooks
The last time they were here (Inside Columbia, October 2007), the ghost hunters found Kemper to be an extremely active supernatural site. Hawkins, aka the Ghost Catcher, grabbed one of the slippery spooks with his bare hands and held it immobile while the crew with him swore they could feel it too. Hawkins also spotted the full-body apparition of a cadet calmly striding across the campus — only the second such sighting in his 14-year career as a professional paranormal investigator.

Robinson, a documentary filmmaker, was impressed with last fall's results as well.

"I got a lot of orbs on tape," he says. "Many of them were the usual semitransparent bubbles, but one was a very, very solid white ball. It looked almost like a snowball and that's unusual."

He also heard what sounded like a chair or table being dragged across the floor.

"I said, 'What the hell was that?' And I was glad I didn't curse because I got it on tape. When the five of us went to locate the source, we found absolutely nothing,"

Spirit Skaters
The main quadrangle, surrounded by red brick buildings faced with white stone, looks more like a skating rink than a parade ground. It wouldn't be surprising to see the ghost of Sonja Henie, dressed in a scandalously short skirt, doing an axel or two between spins and jumps. But Hawkins and Robinson are more worried about their gear than spirit skaters. One slip could destroy thousands of dollars worth of electronic equipment as well as the odd tibia or fibula.

"Let's do a walk around, and see what's changed," says the 35-five-year-old Robinson, treading gingerly on the ice. With him are two sound technicians he met on a residential investigation in St. Louis a few weeks earlier.

"I got talking with them and immediately thought — Kemper," he says. He had found the school rich with Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVPs), which are disembodied voices unheard at the time, but when caught on a digital recorder, sound eerily human. "With so many of them, it was common sense to get these guys with their high-tech equipment to pick up as much as we can."

Terror On The Fourth Floor
The target for tonight is the four-story building that once housed the infirmary, cafeteria, auditorium, administrative offices, and cadet quarters upstairs. The infamous D block on the fourth floor especially intrigues the investigators. It is rumored that students were so fearful of bunking there, the entire floor was eventually abandoned and left to the ghosts.

One former cadet swears the bravest guy he ever knew ran down the stairs, sweating and mumbling to himself, and refused to talk about what he had seen — ever.

Hawkins and fellow investigator Larry Wilson push through the double glass doors and immediately encounter the unexpected. Somebody's been here: somebody human, unless ghosts have suddenly taken to drinking beer. On the floor of the cafeteria is a bare mattress with two neatly folded blankets on top. Beside the makeshift bed is a half-empty can of Bud Light.

"Someone's been crashing here," Hawkins, 49, says, shaking his head. The pristine paranormal paradise has been compromised, but there's more to follow.

Inexplicably, there is a long roll of white paper hanging in the stairwell all the way from the third floor to the basement. What it's doing there defies reason, but the team descends to the bottom of the stairs to check it out. At the base, pieces have been torn off and litter the floor in a random pattern. The paper is totally blank. The ghost national flag?

"More likely kids fooling around," Hawkins says.

Then, as long as they are in the basement, they decide to scout out a room that was once used as a clubhouse by the cadets.

The door creaks open with a satisfying horror-movie sound, revealing ... not much in particular. Robinson swivels the camera around the room hoping to catch some orbs napping and Hawkins puts his hands out in front of him like a sleepwalker, sweeping the space for errant entities. They are about to head for a more productive part of the building when the Ghost Catcher says quietly, "Did you see that?"

"What?" Robinson asks.

"A shadow," Hawkins says. "It moved from behind me and went out the door."

Shadowing the shade, the team follows it into the hallway, but there is nothing unearthly to be seen.

Hawkins peers down the dingy corridor and says, "Ghosts are energy, so what form they take depends on how much energy they have available. Orbs are the weakest, followed by misty shadows, then dark shadows like I just saw, then full-blown apparitions."

Fortunately, there seems to be no energy shortage at Kemper.

The five men trudge up the narrow gray stairs, alert to anything unusual. They find it almost immediately. On the third floor, mattresses line the halls with military precision. Poltergeist? Bedding for an army of squatters? Or more punk kids just messing around? It is impossible to know for sure. The ascent continues.

The prize ghost-hunting location in the building, the fourth floor, is more soggy than spooky.

"Look," Robinson says. "The ceiling at both ends of the hall is soaked through." The roof must be leaking because the gray linoleum floor is studded with puddles.

"Between us, Paul and I must have 500 feet of extension cords to get power up here," Hawkins says. But after a short conference, they decide it is too wet and too dangerous to set up their cameras and electronics.

"It's running a real risk with that much water on the floor," Robinson says.

The audio guys from St. Louis grasp their state-of-the-art equipment to their chests and look grateful for the decision.

It's a disappointment, but the unrelenting cold is getting to everybody, so they decide to beat feet for more salubrious climes.

Swamp Food
The Isle of Capri Casino, with its warm pastel colors and bright variegated carpet, makes a startling contrast to the institutional gray that relentlessly shrouds Kemper. The last time Hawkins and Robinson were here at Calypso's Buffet, they decided that $18.99 for the all-you-can-eat crappie dinner was a bit extravagant and ate elsewhere. However, they are in luck today; lunch prices are still in effect and for 10 bucks less they can feast on all the tilapia they can scarf down.

"Wait a minute," Hawkins says scanning the menu. "Frog's legs? That's not seafood, that's swamp food. Catfish? That's river food!"

He decides on the poultry, which is definitely not chicken of the sea, swamp, or river. It's fried.

Robinson contents himself with a mound of mashed potatoes reminiscent of Mount Snowdon in his native Wales.

If they see ghosts tonight, there may be more of the gravy than the grave about what they find.

Although the sea nymph Calypso held Odysseus and his crew captive for seven years, the buffet named after her kept the ghost hunters occupied for less than 40 minutes. Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night nor the daily special can stay these investigators from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. And it's a good thing, too, because the roads, which were treacherous before, are now a suitable venue for Wayne Gretzky, and it's darker than a sports agent's heart, once out of range of the casino's blazing halogen lights. A hand of poker and a glass or two of Chivas sound mighty tempting at the moment.

Salt Of The Earth
"I don't know about you, but I don't feel like doing figure eights on the ice," Hawkins says to Wilson when they re-examine the quadrangle. Short of some supernatural solution to the problem, there's only one thing for it: rock salt. A few minutes later, they return with 25 pounds of the stuff, which they sprinkle liberally over the ramp leading to the building under investigation.

Sure of foot, if not of what awaits them inside, Hawkins and Wilson get to work. Because the fourth floor is a death trap for sensitive electronics, they decide to set up in the cafeteria. With Wilson handling the digital night-vision video and Hawkins the audio, they barely get started when they hear a female voice talking and laughing. The sound is as clear as a bell, echoing through the cavernous canteen. The two men look at each other and smile. Robinson must have invited a woman out here to observe the festivities, they are thinking.

The Lady Vanishes
"What woman?" Robinson asks, puzzled. "There's only the three of us here."

"We definitely heard her," Hawkins says. "Perhaps it was a ruminant of kitchen workers laughing and having a conversation. Unfortunately, we weren't ready to record."

That's the thing about ghosts, they don't appear on a regular schedule, and they won't wait until you are ready to capture their presence.

Somewhat discouraged, they finish rigging the room with their cameras and recorders. Then they join Robinson reconnoitering the rest of the building.

Unaccountably, the paper roll hanging in the stairwell begins to sway and undulate. Wilson notices it first, and gathers everyone to the scene.

"It must be a draft," Robinson says. "Let's find it."

The crew spreads out looking for a cracked window, an open door, or some other rational explanation for the suddenly animated ghost national flag. They find a broken window, but it's at the other end of the building, and it has been boarded up.

"It's stopped," Wilson says. Sure enough, the paper is standing stock still, showing no sign that it had ever moved at all.

"There it goes again," Wilson says.

"This is weird," Robinson says. "If there's a draft, the movement would be constant."

As if to prove his words, the paper stops again, just hanging there, still as a corpse.

"Maybe there's someone in the basement pulling on it," Hawkins says, galvanizing the crew to pound down the stairs looking for pranksters. But the basement is as quiet as a tomb. Not a creature is stirring, not even a ghost.

One odd thing, though: The paper that had been torn off the roll and left at the bottom of the stairwell seems to have migrated. There's a pile of it surrounding the door to the cadets' clubhouse.

"Where did this come from?" Robinson asks.

"I'm sure it wasn't here before," Hawkins says. "A shadow, yes. Paper, no."

"There's so much of it, we would have remembered," Robinson confirms. "Anybody?"

The rest of the crew is 100 percent certain it wasn't there during their initial run-through.

They walk every room in the basement to make sure they are the only people in the building, but they never find a thing and never hear a noise. No one can supply a logical explanation.

Perhaps it was the ghost of a deceased janitor cleaning up his former domain, or the spirit of a cadet in the clubhouse horsing around; they'll probably never know.

Battering Ram
Because it is too cold to stand still for long, the team shoots off in different directions, more determined than ever to capture the spirits of Kemper. But nothing much seems to be about tonight. It's preternaturally quiet until ... clong!

"What the ..." Hawkins says as the sound of metal on metal reverberates through the building. It lasts three or four seconds, followed by silence. Then it starts up again, fainter this time.

"Is somebody trying to break in?" Hawkins wonders aloud. "It sounds like someone rammed the door hard once, then hit it again a little softer. Either they got in or they quit."

A new search party discovers that there are no broken windows that hadn't been repaired and that all the doors are tight and secure.

Maybe it was the squatter come to reclaim his mattress and half-finished Bud Light ... or not. Like the entire evening, it's an enigma.

A slightly blue Ghost Catcher is shivering — not with fear, but because the temperature in the building has plunged to below freezing.

"On most ghost hunts, the standard procedure is to look for cold spots. In this case, the whole place is one giant cold spot," he says with a laugh. "I'm going out to the car to warm up."

Firing up the heater of his dark gray Toyota Prius, Hawkins defrosts his digits by holding them over the hot air vent.

He is not thrilled with tonight's investigation, but he is philosophical.

"When you're dealing with a haunted location, just because you show up on one night doesn't mean all the ghosts are home. They have other things to do, too," he says, smiling. "If you want the best representation of what's going on, you need to be there multiple times. This place is definitely worth another visit."

Postmortem
"Damn," Robinson says, piling into the car and rubbing his chapped hands together.

"Are you getting anything interesting?" Hawkins asks.

"I was a little bit disappointed because it is not as active as I thought it would be," Robinson says.

"It still feels haunted to me, but the energy this time is weaker," Hawkins says.

Maybe it's just too frigid for the ghosts to come out and play. Still, the men have experienced some unfathomable phenomena — disembodied voices, swaying paper, a shadow, and crashes with no discernable source.

"We'll have to see if we turn up any EVPs or find something we missed on tape," Robinson says.

After a few moments of silence, Hawkins asks, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I don't know, Gary, you're the psychic. What am I thinking?"

Hawkins puts both forefingers to his forehead and says in a mock otherworldly voice, "I see ... I see ... wait, it's getting clearer ... I see ... anyplace with electricity and heat. Let's pack up and get the hell out of here."

As the convoy departs, red taillights slowly disappearing into gloom, lightning sizzles across the sky, illuminating roiling black clouds. A clap of thunder, like the crack of doom, soon follows. Long and low, it rumbles through the quadrangle shaking and rattling windows and doors.

The ghost hunters were welcomed with freezing precipitation and sent packing with a celestial son et lumiere. Somebody up there — down here? — seems glad to be shed of them. But all the pyrotechnics in the world won't prevent a return visit this spring, when the ghosts and the weather might be more cooperative.

Goose Bumps

The Gallup Poll says that 35 percent of Americans believe in ghosts and 12 percent claim to have seen one. But that may be a lowball figure.

Have you ever walked into a warm room with no moving air, yet suddenly goose bumps appear on one arm?

"If you're like me," says paranormal investigator Gary S. Hawkins, "when you are chilled, you get goose bumps on both sides of your body. It could have been a ghost passing on one side of your body.

"A second way you can sense a ghost is experiencing chills running up your spine and the hair on the back of your neck standing on end. Is one behind you? It could very well be and probably was."

Kemper On Screen

Kemper Military School was founded in 1844 and, for more than 150 years, produced scores of noted Army, Navy, Marine, and Air Force officers, politicians and celebrities. It closed its doors in 2002 because of a combination of financial mismanagement and kinder, gentler and more cynical times. The entire complex is for sale if you've got the yen — or the pounds, the dollars or the Swiss francs.

The school has been the scene of three commercial movies. The first was "Combat Academy," starring George Clooney, Jamie Farr, and Richard Moll. It was a comedy by the creators of "Police Academy," but never lived up to the box office bonanza spawned by its cousin. Released on TV in 1986, this wan clone was never even distributed as a video in the United States. Perhaps George Clooney bought up all the copies to save himself the embarrassment.

The second was "Child's Play 3," the delightful story of a demonic doll that follows its original owner, now a 16-year-old boy played by Justin Whalin, to military school where it slaughters a few dozen people before being ripped to shreds. Cadets and instructors were signed on as extras and technical advisers. Most critics and ticket buyers agreed that this was the worst of the Chucky movies. It grossed only $20 million.

Last fall, soon after the original ghost hunt, singer-actress Connie Stevens shot a movie called "Saving Grace" in Boonville. Starring Tatum O'Neal and Penelope Ann Miller, it's about a woman who is released from an insane asylum just in time for the Great Flood of 1951. Stevens, who once played the chirpy Cricket on "Hawaiian Eye," and hung out with Edd "Kookie" Burns in "77 Sunset Strip," wrote, directed, and produced the film. The town of Boonville portrayed itself; Kemper played the asylum.

Nothing To Fear But ...

"A lot of people have a fear of ghosts that stems from Hollywood movies — you know, it's going to harm you," says Gary S. Hawkins, author of Ghosts: Investigating the Other Side of Life. "I usually tell people, picture this: Suppose you want to haul off and slap a ghost in the face, what would happen? They say, 'Oh, my hand would go right through.' I just look at them. And if a ghost tries to hit you, what's going to happen? Same thing, right?"

All the stories you hear about savage spirits are mostly nonsense, he says. "If something jumps out at you, and you're scared of it, you turn and run, and boom, boom, boom, down the stairs you go. Then, you tell everybody that a ghost pushed you," Hawkins says. "If you go in with no fear, nothing is going to happen. All ghosts can do is startle you. A cat can startle you in the same way, and it could do a lot more damage with those claws."

He Sees Dead People

Like many children, Gary S. Hawkins grew up with a gang of imaginary friends, except his, he now realizes, were real.

"Probably relatives checking up on me," he says.

But slowly, inexorably his power to see dead people was sapped by a disapproving adult world.

"I can remember my parents telling me, 'You don't have imaginary friends. No one is there.' And, of course, 'There's no such thing as ghosts.'

This close-mindedness hindered his career for years.

"As a friend says, 'The mind is like a parachute — it has to be open to work.'

"I always knew I had a sixth sense, but it wasn't until I got to college, and met all kinds of people with differing views, that it began to surface again," he says. "Minor things began to happen at first, like knowing when the phone was going to ring and who was on the other end, long before caller ID was invented."

He also would find himself in a building noticing figures walking by that apparently no one else could see, and on occasion he was able to touch someone and know exactly what they were thinking.

On his first official paranormal investigation in Alton, Ill., his home base, he discovered his amazing ability to catch ghosts with his bare hands and keep them immobilized. Since then, he has captured hundreds of them, and "most of the time those around me are able to feel and sense them," he says.

The only explanation he has for this unique gift is that spirits are energy and that somehow he is able to use his sixth sense, specifically in the area of touch, to adjust his electrical field to act as a magnet, holding them in place until he lets them go.

"To date, I have not encountered anyone else who can do this," he says.

Restless Spirits

Paul Robinson's company, EZ Productions, has produced three documentaries dealing with the paranormal. The latest, "The Spirits of the Rockliffe Mansion," was shot in Hannibal during the summer of 2007.

"It was crazy," he says. "On some ghost hunts, you can sit there for four hours waiting for something, anything. But in Hannibal, things began happening in the first 30 minutes."

Accompanied by Gary S. Hawkins, Robinson says he also had three volunteers with him — "rookies that had never done this before" — so he could gauge their reactions if Hawkins caught a ghost. Within minutes, the apprentice apparition apprehenders were seeing shadows out of the corner of their eyes and hearing what sounded like someone tapping or scratching on a chandelier in the main hall.

"It was cool it all started so fast," he says.

While Robinson was filming Hawkins struggling with a prowling phantasm, suddenly the full silhouette of a person walked in front of him, against the natural light, and disappeared into the ether. That was startling enough, but later on they caught a voice, a little girl's voice, crying out, "Mama!"

See for yourself, if you dare. For a sneak preview, click on the Video of the Week to view the Rockliffe Mansion video. The complete DVD of the eerie phenomena at Rockliffe Mansion is $19.99 at www.shop.ezproductions.net.