LOUISVILLE, Ky. (January 2004) – They don’t like
to talk about it much with strangers or “nonbelievers”
for fear of ridicule. Most people just don’t understand
their curiosity. In fact, many of their own family members
and friends think they’re nuts.
But they persevere.
Some like it that way. It makes the challenge of finding
tangible proof of their cause even more exciting. In doing
so, they find camaraderie among their group members and
enjoy sharing their experiences through photos, videos and
regular social outings at restaurants or in group members’
homes. They communicate via newsgroups, email and message
boards on the Internet.
They are ghost hunters, and their numbers are growing throughout
Kentuckiana. There are about a half-dozen clubs in Louisville
alone. Some belong to more than one club, but more groups
continue to sprout up because it is better to keep them
small in number, explains ghost hunter Carrie Galloway,
34.
She teaches a how-to class on ghost hunting at the University
of Louisville. An office administrator by trade, she became
interested in the hobby after attending a seminar at Lexington
(Ky.) Community College taught by certified ghost hunter
and author Patti Starr, president of Ghost Chasers International
Inc. Galloway came away from that seminar two years ago
thinking, “I can do this.”
She wrote a curriculum for a continuing education course
called “Ghost Hunting 101” and submitted it to
U of L. The college accepted her proposal, and the next
thing she knew, she was signing up students who yearned
to chase ghosts in the night. Her next class session –
the third of its kind – begins in March 2004. It meets
on Tuesday nights for five sessions and costs $99.
“A lot of people come into the class thinking we’re
going to sit around and tell ghost stories, but it’s
more hands on than that,” said Galloway, a Kentucky
representative of the American Ghost Society who says she
saw her first ghost at age 14. “It’s an instructional
class that teaches you what tools to use and how to go about
documenting what you see during an on-site visit.”
Or perhaps what you’d like to see. Or thought you saw.
Galloway’s 27 students come from all walks of life
– warehouse workers, a psychologist, an office
administrator, a computer technician, a mailman. The list
goes on.
Galloway teaches them how to approach property owners about
gaining permission to visit a home or building or cemetery.
They take with them cameras, video equipment, tape recorders
and other electronic gadgets in hopes of capturing something
– anything – that may hint at the existence of
a ghost, or “orb,” as they like to call them.
At parties, they share their photos and recordings with
each other and plan their next trip to a supposedly haunted
location.
Sometimes they must get in line. Rumors of such locations
are often inundated with calls from other ghost-hunting
groups wanting to visit. Some property owners refuse; others
make quiet arrangements with the promise that their location
won’t be advertised to other such groups, or – eghad!
– the press.
That’s apparently what happened last Halloween when
Louisville Courier-Journal columnist Byron Crawford published
a story and large photo of a Carrollton, Ky., couple who
live along the Ohio River in a supposedly haunted house.
The couple received so much attention from ghost-hunters
that they refused to participate in our report for this
issue of RoundAbout.
You can’t blame them. But the ordeal further illustrates
the growing popularity of this hobby in the area.
One of the better-known locations among Louisville ghost
hunters is Waverly Hills, a former sanitarium in Pleasure
Ridge Park in the southern end of Louisville. Though its
entrance is protected by security guards, ghost hunters
often find a way to get in. In fact, the guards have gotten
good over the years of playing tricks on the ghost-hunting
intruders so that they go away with stories to tell, further
propagating the myths that ghosts in fact lurk in the midst
of the now-empty sanitarium wards.
Galloway has been there and says that the organized trips
that allow the ghost hunters in usually attracts so many
people that no ghost would be caught dead there that night.
“You need to have a small group when you go on a visit;
you don’t want a bunch of people tromping around,”
she says.
That was part of the reason Galloway broke away from a previous
ghost hunters group and formed her own – it became
too large and unwieldy to function. Now Galloway’s
group, Kentucky Paranormal Research, operates as a separate
society of like-minded folks investigating paranormal activities
wherever they can find it. Their most recent trip was to
a well-known cemetery in Louisville.
“It was awesome,” said group member Tanya Okes.
“Just being there in the middle of the night gave you
goose bumps.”
Okes, who runs a landscape firm with her husband in Bullitt
County, just south of Louisville, and her mother, Pam Rogers,
took Galloway’s class at U of L after seeing it in
the class listings. “I’ve always been curious
about the spirit world, and this was something we could
do together,” Okes said. “It’s fun, and you
meet a lot of interesting people.”
But what about meeting ghosts?
“I believe they are there,” she says as she flips
through a binder of photographs she has taken on ghost hunting
trips that reveal faint balls of light, or orbs. “This
is a good one. And you can see one there if you look real
hard.”
The search for tangible evidence of the spirit world has
been practiced by people on this planet for centuries. And
if the old adage, “Seeing is believing,” still
rings true, then rest assured that these ghost hunters are
on the job.
If you want to learn how to become one yourself, then you
can take Galloway’s class. Passing the course does
not require seeing – or even believing –
in ghosts. But I’m sure it helps.
• To learn more about Galloway’s club, visit:
www.kyghosts.com. To learn more about Patti Starr’s
Ghostchasers International, visit: http://ghosthunter.com.
To inquire about Galloway’s class, call U of L at (502)
853-6456 or visit: http://delphi.louisville.edu/enrichment/recreation.html.
