Deborah Howard
Jeff Holder

LAFAYETTE, Ga. — There are some things that cannot be explained.

Mary Smitherman with the Marsh House in LaFayette said she can’t explain how prints from a bare left foot got on a dusty floor of the antebellum mansion in 2004 or why a single right footprint materialized recently.

“It is a big foot and it is a right foot,” Mrs. Smitherman said. “It looked like somebody had stepped in wax. It was shiny.”

The home’s doors are locked and there is an alarm system. No one had been inside in bare feet, Mrs. Smitherman said.

She also can’t explain why members of the Marsh House Task Force hear footsteps around the old home when no one else is in the building.

Members of Ghosts and History of Southeast Tennessee (G.H.O.S.T.) stayed overnight in the Marsh House on Saturday in an attempt to explain the seemingly unexplainable and perhaps detect the paranormal.

“The goal is to make sure the property owner is not crazy,” G.H.O.S.T. President Deborah Howard said.

Armed with flashlights, digital video and audio recorders, electromagnetic field monitors, digital thermometers and other tools, they attempted to debunk ghost stories about the Marsh House or find evidence of something else lurking — ghosts or spirits.

Goals of G.H.O.S.T.

The group formed about two years ago, springing from Deborah and Rick Howard’s interest in genealogy. Mr. Howard has family in Southeast Tennessee and North Georgia.

“When we would talk to people about different family members and ancestry, inevitably it would end in a ghost story,” Mrs. Howard said.

She said her husband had encountered the unexplainable and wanted to search for answers.

Many small towns have these sorts of stories: the Bell Witch in Adams, Tenn.; Green Eyes, the specter that supposedly roams the Chickamauga Battlefield, and countless other tales of the unexplained.

Members of G.H.O.S.T. said they have captured photos of the paranormal at the Cleveland, Tenn., railroad tracks and in Cave Spring, Ga.

“It’s just kind of part of the romanticism of the local community to have these ghost stories,” Mrs. Howard said.

The couple began looking at other ghost groups to see how they work. Mrs. Howard, who has a business background and works on process improvement, wanted to organize the search methods to give her group more credibility than others.

“There are a lot of things out there that are just normal things,” she said. “A squeaky floorboard is not a ghost.”

She hopes to create and refine search methods to increase accuracy among all ghost groups. She also hopes her group’s work can support tourism, by either substantiating or debunking the ghost stories.

methods

Saturday night G.H.O.S.T. members, dressed in black, hauled their equipment into the Marsh House dining room “command center.” They set up video cameras in each room and took readings throughout the house, measuring temperature and the electromagnetic field.

“The theory behind that is that ghosts manipulate the electromagnetic field to manifest,” said Jeff Holder, G.H.O.S.T. vice president.

For example, if temperature jumps in one area unexpectedly, that may be a sign of the paranormal, investigators said.

“It goes back to ghosts or energy,” Mr. Holder said. “When they try to manifest, they will take energy out of the air and there will be a cold spot.”

As two teams divided up to sit in separate parts of the old home, they carried handheld digital video and still cameras. Members also used audio recorders that can detect the faintest noises, such as a fly buzzing in the room.

“We use audio recorders to catch EVPs,” Mr. Holder said. “That’s electronic voice phenomena — voices that you do not hear with your own ears but gets picked up on the recording device.”

Mr. Holder’s team started out on the lower level of the Marsh House. Mrs. Howard tried to provoke paranormal interactions by asking questions and talking.

“Is there anyone with us?”

“Can you move the curtains if you are here?”

“Did you love this house?”

Members of each team rotated in shifts from one room to another. Sitting in the dark attic, someone thought he felt someone — a ghost. One team member heard a woman’s voice humming. Mrs. Howard said she felt someone touch her hand twice.

At the end of the evening — around 3 a.m. — G.H.O.S.T. members broke down their equipment. Mrs. Howard logged some of the data. Members will review all the evidence this week and try to determine if there was any proof of the paranormal.

ghost hunting trend

G.H.O.S.T. works in Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia. There are similar groups across the nation.

According to The Associated Press, membership in these groups is growing and ghost-hunting television shows are gaining viewers. An AP survey conducted in October, 2007, showed that 34 percent of Americans say they believe in ghosts.

The AP reported that viewership of “Ghost Hunters," a reality show on the Sci-Fi Channel that chronicles investigations by The Atlantic Paranormal Society, or TAPS, has grown from 1.3 million to 2.6 million since it debuted in 2004.

Mr. Holder said ghost-hunting is about questions. He said he has seen evidence of the paranormal, such as a face hanging in midair in front of his face.

“How come they are here?” he said. “Did they love the place so much that they don’t want to leave? Did they have an untimely death?”

He hopes to someday find answers.