Who you gonna call?

By Jared Duncan

Published on Thu., October 25th, 2007

Corbin Residence Hall, an all-women dormitory, is rumored to be haunted, possibly by dead Tuberculosis patients from long ago.

Photo by Mindy Ricketts

The rain is coming down hard, pounding against the windows of Corbin Residence Hall. Every few minutes lightning crashes, sending a flash of white through the dim and empty hallways. Two of the dorm’s residents are escorting me. We are making our way to the fourth floor of the south wing, which is notorious among residents for being haunted.

One legend says that the floor was a Tuberculosis ward long ago, indicating that many patients died there. Another legend tells of a girl who took her own life in a room on the floor. As a result, future residents refused to occupy the room and it was turned into a trash closet. However, historical records show no evidence of either of these claims.

We enter the south lobby on the fourth floor and take a seat to talk about the different spirits and specters who have supposedly made their way through the dorm.

Almost all the women who live in Corbin have left for the four-day fall break weekend, and in the absence of the laughter of girls returning home from bars and parties, there is only the tapping of the rain and the occasional roar of thunder. Suddenly, a muffled scream cuts through the rhythmic tapping. My escorts and I stare at each other with mixed expressions of curiosity and fright. Our shocked looks quickly fade as one explains that a resident assistant is watching a movie in her room, just feet from the lobby.

She continues with stories of girls who have heard a man singing at all hours of the night on the third floor of the north wing at GSP, which is connected to Corbin, and resident assistants who have heard toilet seats slamming in an empty bathroom.

My mind wanders back to a conversation I had with Margaret, a Lawrence resident and paranormal investigator.

Margaret, who asked that her full name be withheld for fear of being harassed, says a gift passed down through her bloodline has given her a special ability to communicate with the deceased. She and her sister experienced many paranormal happenings in the two western Kansas homes they grew up in. Though many of the experiences scared them, they decided to use their gifts to help not only those who are plagued by spirits, but the spirits themselves.

“Some of us just have a special talent to hear and care for spirits who are earthbound,” she says. “If I can be a tool to facilitate sad souls to light, so be it.”

Margaret has conducted six investigations and five séances over the past two years. The séances often involved trying to contact abducted children. At one séance, Margaret and a group contacted Nicole Brown Simpson; she said she knew who her killer was, but felt that the group was being too nosy to divulge any names.

The investigations are conducted by a group including Margaret, her husband and her sister. They usually are found by word of mouth by people who feel they are living in a bad paranormal home. The equipment the crew uses includes a gauss meter, which picks up anything with an active electrical current. Margaret says this is helpful for detecting spirits because, much like living beings, they emit a lot of electricity. They also use a 35-millimeter Canon digital camera to capture things they might have missed such as faces or orbs, which are circular traces left in photographs.

“The camera never lies,” she says. “But it also picks up a lot of dust in the air, so you can’t believe that every little thing is an orb.”

Another important piece of equipment in investigations is a tape recorder. It can pick up sounds and voices missed during recording, but which are audible during the tape playback. This process is referred to as electronic voice phenomena, or EVP. Margaret and her sister played me a tape they had left recording in the basement of a house they were investigating. Upon playing the tape back, they heard a Native American song and dance. In the short clip she played for me, I could hear the sounds of shuffling feet and various rattles.

Margaret isn’t sure why the spirits stay with us, but has a few theories. She believes that the sadness keeps them earthbound, as well as the guilt produced by the tears of the living. She also believes that some spirits might be here as punishment in the afterlife.

“What if they have to watch the enjoyment of life as their hell?” She says. “You can see it, but you can’t have it.”

As long as there are people being plagued by spirits, Margaret will be helping them. “I operate out of respect and love,” she says. “I try to usher the spirits towards vacating.”

Margaret understands why people might not believe in spirits, but she also thinks that nonbelievers could see the light.

“Just one brush of your shoulder or one breath on your back will convince you,” she says.

One person who isn’t convinced is Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and monthly columnist for Scientific American.

“Paranormal investigations are mostly a waste of time,” he says. “People never turn up anything scientifically.”

Shermer says that the investigations are done for fun and compares them to reading a Stephen King ghost novel. And while he doesn’t believe, he can understand why many people do.

“I think it taps into a deeper psychology of a need for belief in an afterlife,” Shermer says. “If you could prove a ghost or poltergeist, you could prove that afterlife. In today’s world, you’re supposed to believe in proof instead of faith.”

Another person who doesn’t believe in spirits is Raymond Higgins, professor of psychology at KU, who has organized a seminar on the psychology of the paranormal.

“People want to believe in something above and beyond material aspects,” he says. “Believing in the paranormal implies an immaterial component to us.”

Higgins says that paranormal investigations are like a search for one’s soul and sees no evidence that convinces him of paranormal phenomenon. His seminar is focused on getting people to look at what qualifies as evidence.

“What you typically see is eyewitness, ‘this happened to me,’ type things,” he says. “They had some experience they couldn’t otherwise explain.”

Before we continue the security rounds in Corbin, I ask to take a walk inside the infamous trash room where the girl supposedly committed suicide. My escorts look at each other for a minute and then agree that it would be okay. At first I thought they might be hesitating because they were trying to decide if I was allowed in the room, but I soon realized it was because they were afraid of what was inside.

As I reach for the knob, I look in the small rectangular window of the door and see a figure move past. Startled, I jump back, and then move in slowly to find that the lights are off inside and the figure is only my reflection. I open the door and feel a moment of tension walking into the empty, pitch-black room. Scared of what might be waiting for me in one of the four corners, I practically leap for the light switch. Flipping it on, I see that the room is completely empty except for the trash and recycle bins huddled against the wall. A deep closet on my left holds a large sink and a few custodial supplies. Further along the left wall are two doors. The first door is locked. The second requires some force, but does open. It doesn’t contain much more than a mop and some cardboard boxes.

Then, on the top shelf, I see a blue wooden box with the name Elizabeth written across the front in red marker. My mind begins to race. Was Elizabeth the girl who had supposedly committed suicide in this room? I look inside the box for clues, but it is empty. Taking another look, I decide that the box is too fresh-looking to have been kept here over the years, and that surely if it had belonged to the young woman in question, someone would have removed it before converting the room.

I put the box back on the shelf and head towards the door, thinking that my first ghost hunting experience has been a big bust. As I walk past the sink closet, though, something catches my eye. Inside the closet hangs a dry-erase board that had been written on in black marker. The girls, still waiting by the door, had noticed me stopping to study something and asked what I saw. I insist that they come look at what I had found, because otherwise they wouldn’t believe me. Still hesitant to enter, they demanded that I read the message aloud. So I do.

“Stop using my room. This is where I took my life. Let me be,” I read.

Horrified, the girls told me numerous times to shut up and claimed that I was lying. I tried to show them the proof, but I think they would rather believe me than step foot in the room.

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