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Local paranormal
team hunts for the haunting - 20081103
Rachel Gallegos
Iowa City Press-Citizen
Down at a Civil War battleground in Missouri,
the four-member Johnson County Paranormal Team took multiple
pictures of one of the houses on site.
Inexplicably, it appears in each picture like
there was a human figure in the building.
“We kept getting the same thing,”
team member Greg Reisner said. “It boggles us.”
“You can really see a figure,” fellow
team member Sean Haussman said. “That threw me for a
loop.”
It is experiences like this that excite the
four team members and have them hoping for more opportunities
to try and explain the haunting unknowns.
The team formed in May thanks to a shared
interest of finding and understanding paranormal activity
between the four friends and University of Iowa food service
coworkers. They average one investigation a month, using equipment
such as a night vision camera, digital cameras, a voice recorder
and thermal meter to collect data.
“I just think deep down it’s a quest
for the afterlife, really,” said team member John Mihm,
48, of Iowa City.
So far, the group has done investigations
in an Iowa City house, the Civil War battle site, an 1800s
jail in Solon and multiple trips to Iowa City’s Oakland
Cemetery.
Mihm said the Iowa City house investigation
affected him the most. He was alone in the basement and “ran
into a lot of action,” hearing sounds he described as
“swishing” or “paper scraping.”
Mihm said the sounds moved around the room,
and as he and his brother stood probably two feet apart, they
heard the swishing sound right between them.
“The hair stood up on both my arms,”
he said. “I kind of want to get that feeling again.”
Often, they learn more about the investigated site after their
time there because things pop up on the audio recorders or
are captured in a picture, he said.
“So much of this stuff isn’t in
your face,” Mihm said. “It’s subtle.”
John’s brother, Joe Mihm, another team
member, said it is equally exciting the day after the investigation
when they go over the photographs and audio.
They think they’ve captured some electronic
voice phenomena, but Joe Mihm, 46, of Iowa City, admitted,
“you end up listening to a lot of crickets, I’ll
tell you that.”
Group members said their work is professional
and respectful, with members saying a prayer when they enter
and leave the property. All work is free of charge.
As a group just starting out, many of their
investigations have been things they are interested in. For
the Iowa City home, the owner approached them because he and
his daughter experienced unexplainable sounds and shadows.
John Mihm said in the future, ideally, people
will come to them for investigations.
The group also turns their investigations
into a TV show called “Soul Seekers” on Iowa City
Public Access Television Channel 18. The group also has a
Web site, http://jcpt8.tripod.com.
Although the group encounters a few skeptical
people, “it seems like everybody’s got kind of a
ghost story,” team member Greg Reisner said.
“I think a lot of people are interested
because it is more in the mainstream.”
Reisner, 43, of Coralville, said the group
has a trip planned to the Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville,
Ky., an abandoned tuberculosis hospital — “the ultimate
for any kind of ghost hunting team,” Reisner said.
Waverly Hills “is one of the most haunted
places in the world,” according to its official Web site
and hosts overnight ghost hunting tours. Paranormal photos
and electronic voice phenomena clips are available on the
site.
“We want to see what all the hoo-hah
was about,” Reisner said. “Really see something.”
Haussman, 25, of Oxford, said he often takes
the role of the guy behind the camera because he doesn’t
know if he is as “tuned in” as the others, but he
said he has been seeing things he’d never seen before.
“I’m not good with this, but it’s
a new experience,” he said. “I’m not going
to not give it a chance.”
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