The Claremont Town Hall was formerly a school where a girl died; some say her


ghost is visible in the second-fl oor window of a 1919 photograph.


began outlining the plan for the eve- ning: First, perform a sweep of the building with electromagnetic fi eld (EMF) detectors, to fi nd the sources of electricity. Spirits don’t have bod- ies, he said, “so they need a source of energy, like an electrical storm or the full moon.” An EMF reading might, theoretically, spike in the presence of a ghost, but it also could spike in the presence of a refrigerator on the other side of a wall. Next, he would set up his cameras, and the team would move from room to room with its voice re- corders, attempting to make contact. Warfi eld had brought what he called trigger objects — a tattered doll and some chocolate bars, given the ghost’s apparent fondness for sweets — that he thought the spirit might respond to. Warfi eld, whose work as a Navy


medic often involved rescuing people by helicopter, has an unfl appable, prag- matic mien that seems slightly at odds with his fascination for the paranormal. He was optimistic about the investiga- tion, but his expectations were modest. He has investigated plenty of places where he is confi dent he has encoun- tered paranormal activity, but he says that “for me, to say a place is haunted, you have to have a smoking gun, like a full-bodied apparition,” which he has never seen. The data he relies on most are EVPs, or electronic voice phenom- ena, unexplained sounds that turn up on the hours of recordings he and his investigators make, some of which he interprets as attempts at communica- tion from spirits. He played us a few of the sort he hoped to collect that night, short clips in which he had located an


“This place is mad spirits around


here,” said Labenz from the kitchen. Labenz said that local hauntings in- cluded the houses around the town hall and possibly his own property, which he said was the site of an old Native Ameri- can burial ground. At the town hall, locals had long reported unusual oc- currences, like the sound of footsteps in other rooms and someone calling their name in an empty building. Recently, the town’s vice mayor had reported hearing, in the mayor’s offi ce, the voice of a little girl asking for candy. Warfi eld, a compact, red-haired man,


identifi able phrase: “hey, you,” “get out of here,” “whore.” On one, which Warfi eld said was from a “demonic investigation” (and then corrected himself, as though the phrase sounded a little hysterical — “They don’t use the word ‘demonic’ anymore; it’s ‘malevolent spirit’ ”), I could make out something like footsteps on a wood fl oor, and then an electronic whooshing noise, like an e-mail being sent. It was admit- tedly creepy, but on the whole, even the clearest of the recordings sounded only like the crackling of heavy static at the end of an LP. Warfi eld nodded when I said I couldn’t really hear the words. “When I fi rst started doing this, I couldn’t hear them,” he said, “but then they just started popping out.”


Paranormal investigating is the latest incarnation of the movement called spiritualism that began about 160 years ago in Upstate New York. Pro- pelled by the phenomenon of Maggie and Kate Fox, two young sisters who said that the dead spoke to them by knocking or rapping on walls, the movement grew into a nationwide craze. It became trendy in Victorian households to host


JUNE 20, 2010 | THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE 13


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