Paranormal society explores unknown

CHARLESTON— You can believe what you want about the possibility of ghosts or other spirits haunting homes and buildings, but sometimes there are things that are worth looking into.

That’s the message paranormal investigation groups said they wanted to pass along during an event Oct. 15 at the Charleston Moose Lodge. Often, there’s a logical explanation for things that some might think are spooky, they said, but sometimes there isn’t.

Becky Guymon of the Mattoon-based Illinois Metaphysical & Paranormal Society, which hosted the event, described the work as dealing with an “unknown science.”

“I do believe there are ghosts,” she said. “There are definitely spirits around.”

Guymon said her group formed a few months ago and provides a team to investigate “if somebody thinks they have something weird going on.”

She said she and others in the group once worked at a Charleston business, which she didn’t want to identify, where doors opened and closed by themselves and a tapping noise would follow people as they walked along a wall. There were enough odd things that happened to make them think it might be haunted, she said.

“Coles County has a lot of activity,” Guymon said, adding that locations such as the Ashmore Estates building and some county cemeteries are thought by some people to be haunted. Still, she also said, the vast majority of cases end up being something else, so she understands why some people would be skeptical.

“We try to find a natural case for it so someone can have peace of mind,” she said. “A lot of stuff we find is explainable by something else.”

As for the skeptics, Guymon said: “They don’t have to believe it. I won’t argue with them.”

Saturday’s event also featured other investigation groups, tarot card readings and what Guymon described as “energy healing.” Local author Michael Kleen was also on hand and later conducted a tour of sites he features in his writings about places in Coles County that are thought to be haunted.

Linda Gay Tooley of Charleston said she attended the event because she was curious and because she’d heard Kleen speak before. She said she’s had first-hand experiences with the types of events the groups investigate, such as knowing how to get to an address in a town she’d never been to before.

“It’s more than a possibility,” Tooley said.

Investigating possible paranormal activity doesn’t mean a person automatically believes in it, though. Katie White of the Mattoon Investigations of Paranormal Activity admitted that she’s one of the skeptics.

She said her group has used recording devices to find odd voices and sounds in houses. But while that was “exciting,” White said it was “still a little bit unbelievable to me.”

“People are going to believe what they feel they should believe,” she said. “You never know until you see it for yourself.”