Friday, October 25, 2002

Local ghost hunters dare to make contact with things that go bump in the night

By KRISTIN DIZON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Their T-shirts feature a headstone with the slogan, "Wanted dead, not alive." They carry mysterious silver briefcases in the dark of night.

Last week, eight of these brave souls gathered at the Seattle Underground in Pioneer Square on a mission: to meet the dead.

I went along for the hunt.

With his spiky dyed hair and leather jacket, Ross Allison looks more like a member of the latest boy band than the president and founder of A.G.H.O.S.T. -- Amateur Ghost Hunters of Seattle Tacoma. Always fascinated by ghost tales, Allison started the group a year ago to prove that life after death exists.

But don't think he or the group's 30 members are the hallelujah choir preaching a ghoulish gospel.

"I can't say that I've seen a ghost," says Allison, for whom ghost hunting and running the group's Web site is like a full-time job. "I would like to."

Until there's concrete evidence of the paranormal, Allison, 29, will sit on the fence. He pays the bills by working at the photoelectronics department of the Fred Meyer store in Covington.

Using modern technology, he and his fellow hunters "investigate" locations that are haunted, meeting five or six times a month.

"I've had really weird things that I can't explain happen to me," Allison says. "I've felt somebody tap me on the shoulder and turn around and there's nobody there."

Laugh at your own peril. A Gallup poll last year found that 38 percent of Americans believe in ghosts (only slightly less than the 41 percent who believe in demon possession).

With permission from the owners of the Underground Tour, we descend near First and Yesler to an underworld of fallen plaster, stairways leading nowhere, cobwebs and thick dust.

We hope to go bump with spirits in the night, though the odds are better that we'll face scurrying rats, which are large and plentiful here.

If ever there was a good place for specters to congregate, these ruins of early Seattle -- a ghostly city below a city -- would be it.

Unpacking their shiny cases, Allison and company take out the tools of the trade: digital cameras, infrared video recorders, temperature gauges, electromagnetic field readers and audio recorders. They use walkie-talkies to keep in touch and flashlights to navigate the dark.

We start by walking through rooms and corridors with two psychics, Skip Leingang, a computer systems guy who works for the state, and Terry Farden, a fence and deck contractor.

Together with Leingang's wife, they run Psychic Spectrum, a store and learning center on the paranormal and more.

Farden says he was born with "the gift." Leingang says he has had it since a near-death experience in 1976, when he was run over on his motorcycle by a pickup truck.

"I was able to see dead people and communicate with them," says Leingang. "I can't shut it off. It's always there."

Actually, he visits only with dead people who want to be seen. Leingang says they resemble a heat wave silhouette, a shadow, a filmy see-through version of a normal person.

"I know people say we're crazy and doing the devil's work, but it's a gift and we're using it to help people," he says. "People will say, 'You're going to hell.' We say, 'Fine, we'll meet you for lunch.' "

Leingang says the ghosts are souls in limbo. "They don't realize they're dead," he says. "They're not ready to go."

When psychics meet otherworldly friends, they tell them to seek "the light" and go toward it.

I tromp off with Farden, a friendly, balding man who gnaws on a toothpick as we walk into the musty remains of the Bijou Theater.

"I felt one pass by us a minute ago," he tells me. "Can you feel the difference in temperature?"

The thinking is that ghostly presences create cold spots or a noticeable fluctuation in temperature.

Sorry, I say, but I don't feel it.

Soon Allison joins us and it's not long before his walkie-talkie crackles in the dark, cavernous room. "You rang?" he intones dramatically.

Leingang sounds excited; he's found a "hot spot." "I got a good picture. You've got to come see this!"

When we find him near a brick pile, Leingang asks if we can feel heavy breathing. "Look at the hair on my arms," he says. "It's standing up. She's right here."

He tells the assembled that "she" is a 16-year-old prostitute, who is Asian and possibly Chinese. He believes that the year is 1906 and that "Amy" was hit in the back of the head before being finished off and left to bleed to death on the floor by killers who wanted her drugs.

"It was a long, slow death," Leingang adds. After a bit,Leingang remembers that he wanted to show the group a photo. "Whoa, look at that. What is that?" he says, displaying the camera screen.

"I've never seen that," Farden says with awe.

In the frame is a white see-through wave pattern, almost like a watery column.

Quite curious. None of us have seen a photo like it, but Allison wonders if Leingang accidentally shot the camera strap in front of the lens.

A minute later, Leingang calls out, "You guys aren't going to believe this!"

A throng rushes to inspect his latest digital image. It's a picture of me, but surrounding my left shoulder are seven to eight "orbs."

Though it's much debated, some ghost hunters believe that bright circles of light are orbs, or the energy of a ghost illuminated by flash and captured in photos. Many think orbs are just dust particles magnified by the bright light in a dark setting.

Apparently, the Underground is spook central, because soon Leingang has found another orb circling above Crystal Hillin's head.

"Yay! Finally," deadpans Hillin, a 30-year-old ghost hunter from Burien with a cheerfully cynical tone. "I never feel anything."

Other searchers bring an electromagnetic field reader and scan the area around Hillin. At first, the needle is still. Then, it gives off a series of quick, high-pitched beeps, indicating a field of energy. That, according to some ghost enthusiasts, is a spirit. The meter hits 0.7, 0.8 and 0.9, near the top of the scale.

Is this the ghost called Stanley that Farden and Leingang see laughing and darting around Hillin? Or is the old power box on the wall still emitting a charge?

"Hi, Stanley," Hillin says merrily.

"Stanley was the seaman with a brown dog," Leingang chimes in. Then, excitedly, "Did you just hear a dog bark?"

"That was me," Hillin says.

We leave that room and wander down a hallway. Suddenly, Leingang is pinned down and even pushed by what he says is the ghost of Hua, a white-jacketed Chinese man whom he says resembles Hop Sing from the classic TV show "Bonanza."

The funny, happy-go-lucky Hua, Leingang tells us, ran a flophouse on First Avenue. "He died in a fire but he thinks he has to stay here to protect the place," he says.

The psychics encounter many more ghosts down here, and the pop, pop, pop of camera flash becomes blinding after a while.

As we finish the walkthrough and prepare for phase two of the investigation, Allison stops in amazement.

"As I turned this way, I saw a streak of light," he says. "I could actually see the lines in it and that was the first time I've experienced anything like that."

Most of A.G.H.O.S.T.'s members joined because of a lifelong fascination with the supernatural.

Vice president Patricia Woolard, manager of a liquidation store, has a love of cemeteries. "I've always been interested in strange things and horror movies and stuff like that," she says.

Charles Gardner, a nurse at the University of Washington Medical Center, says it's a dream come true to pursue poltergeists.

"I think there are some people who are a little jealous," says Gardner, wearing his A.G.H.O.S.T. picture ID badge. "It's like they want to do it, too."

It's time for the humans to go and the technology to do its job. Allison, with a flair for marketing, pulls out his baby, S.P.E.C.T.R.E., or special paranormal energy computer tracking research equipment.

S.P.E.C.T.R.E. is a group of sensors whose readings are simultaneously recorded by a laptop computer. There's a sonar-based motion sensor, a barometer, a temperature probe, a magnetic field sensor and a voltage probe.

Allison and his team set it to collect data for an hour in the room where we met Amy, along with an infrared camera, which records in the dark. We leave the area and come back in an hour. The colored graphs on the S.P.E.C.T.R.E. system are all flatlines, except for the motion sensor, which shows a steady stream of movement. But it seems explained by the booming hip-hop music from the Bohemian Lounge above us.

Oh, well. Ghost hunters are used to such results.

We pack up and end the night holding hands in a prayer circle. Leingang asks the spirits to keep working toward the light. And, more importantly, to stay here and not follow any of us home.

"Amen to that," says ghost hunter Dutch Jackson. "I don't want you coming home with me and moving all the furniture around."

P-I reporter Kristin Dizon can be reached at 206-448-8118 or kristindizon@seattlepi.com.