Ghostly Pursuits
The Wichita Paranormal Research Society seeks out the supernatural
In the bowels of a two-story office building in College Hill, the Wichita Paranormal Research Society gathers amid a maze of wires. It’s 10:30 p.m. Saturday, July 12. Days before, a woman working after hours reported seeing a man’s reflection in a mirror. The intimation spooked her—she was the only person in the building. Frightened but curious, she summoned the ghost hunters to investigate.
Shane Elliott and brother-in-law Darin Klein founded the Wichita Paranormal Research Society in 2007. Since then membership has swelled, buoyed by the group’s lively website, wichitaparanormal.com, which carries the society’s investigations live. Investigators range from real-estate agents to mechanics, high school students to 40-somethings, all connected by a burning obsession with the great beyond.
But their get-togethers are far from séances. The scene in College Hill is more CSI than Practical Magic. Elliott is out to find the facts behind the mysterious reflection in the mirror. He grips a handheld device for measuring electromagnetic fields. A digital voice recorder for capturing electronic voice phenomena dangles from his neck. At his feet, wires snake to infrared cameras that cast the action onto computer screens in the control room, where Klein huddles, his face bathed in the white light of the monitor. Elliott directs the group to break into pairs.
“Alright, we’re ready to go here,” he says. “Lights out.”
Someone throws a switch, and the room goes pitch black. Slowly, flashlights blink awake.
Elliott pairs up with Sherrie Curry, another member of the society. The two climb the stairs to a large second-story room. “Please don’t whisper—just talk in normal voices,” Elliott says. “It’s too hard to decipher on the recordings.”
The two creep through the quiet room. “Is anyone here?” Sherrie says. “Is anyone here?”
Shane Elliott traces his interest in the paranormal to a night in 2005. The 34-year-old Hawker Beechcraft mechanic had just settled into bed in his home near Wichita Mid-Continent Airport, when he was startled awake by the sound of his son’s moans coming through the baby monitor on the nightstand. He sat up, ready to walk down the hall to comfort the boy, when he heard another sound coming from the room. He leaned closer to the monitor. A woman’s faint voice was singing a lullaby. Elliott’s wife lay in bed beside him asleep. He straightened up to bound for the door, when he felt a gentle hand coaxing him back to bed. “It patted me on my knee, like ‘Everything is OK,” he says. “I know it sounds strange, but I just got this overwhelming feeling that it was my grandmother.”
The feeling was so strong that Elliott returned to bed without checking on his son. In the morning, the boy lay in his crib sleeping soundly. Elliott told his wife what happened. She recoiled at first but sensed the sincerity of his story and believed him. Elliott wondered if he’d dreamed it all, but he’d never had a dream so vivid.
Unable to shake the experience, he started searching for answers online. On Meetup.com, he found posts from Wichitans who’d lived through unexplainable occurrences. Elliott posted the details of his experience. He was hooked. Some members of the group were into investigating strange phenomena, and Elliott decided to give it a try. Later, he began leading his own investigations with Klein, who had moved back to Wichita from Minnesota, where he’d been part of a similar group. Their wives got involved, too. In July 2007, the Wichita Paranormal Research Society was born.
Since then, the society has conducted about two investigations a month. Their services are free—the payment is the thrill of the search. “Clients will see all of the equipment and ask if they can pay us anything for our help,” says Klein. “We always tell clients, ‘No, we’re just in it to help people.’”
Elliott has led investigations at the Orpheum Theatre and the Beaumont Hotel. The group has visited private residences at the request of homeowners. On the group’s website, dozens of friends and family members watch the society’s investigations remotely and offer responses via a chat room and Instant Messenger. The site hosts forums about everything from cameras to cryptozoology, UFO’s to Bigfoot. Membership in the society is free of charge; all it requires is chiming in on the group’s website.
By 11:30 p.m., after an hour spent combing the College Hill building for clues, the investigation has come up empty. On the ground floor, Jeremiah Norwood, a tall soft-spoken man who works in a local nursing home, snaps a picture near a winding stairwell. “Flash,” he says, alerting his colleagues so that they don’t mistake the bright burst for a ghost. Examining the viewfinder, he sees nothing abnormal. He calls out in the dark, asking questions of the spirits, then rewinds the digital voice recorder and plays it back to check for electronic voice phenomena. He holds the machine close to his ear, then shakes his head in disappointment. He hears nothing but silence.
In the basement, Jeremiah Norwood’s wife, Jamie, and society member Robin Greenwood walk side by side, checking their electromagnetic field detectors. Suddenly, the meters go wild. The two exult, hurrying across the room to the corner where the device’s green light detects a strong signal. They smell an odd, urine-like odor. They ask the spirit to reveal itself. There’s no reply, but the detectors keep beeping. Suddenly, as quickly as the commotion started, the monitors go silent.
The women catch their breaths. “Thank you for that,” Jamie says. In breathless gasps, they recap the experience as other society members rush into the room. The group savors the moment.
Only later does an explanation emerge. “It was the air conditioning,” explains Elliott. “The A/C was kicking on. And the urine smell was coming from an upstairs office where someone had obviously had a pet.” As with most of their cases, the group’s investigation turns up a rational, scientific reason to explain the mysterious.
“What I like to say is we’re finding normal situations for what people think is paranormal,” says Elliott. “We just want to explain the situation.”
On this night, Elliott and the society are unable to find the truth behind the man in the mirror. But it’s clear the search was worth their while. In just a year, the society has evolved into a dedicated band of enthusiasts. Friendships have formed. The list of equipment continues to grow. But what’s most rewarding to society members is providing peace of mind to clients.
“It’s strange because when we started the group I thought the rewarding part would be learning about the paranormal,” says Elliott. “Instead, it really has turned into helping people feel comfortable in their homes.” ❖
