David Higdon heard the two loud knocks while scouting the children’s section of the Tallassee Public Library that night. He was in this area of the library because his group, the Tuscaloosa Paranormal Research Group (TPRG), had been requested to investigate the strange occurrences that had been going on there. The noise was distinct, knuckles banging on wood. He spent months in Iraq and usually handles his emotions well but in the library, among Dr. Seuss and The Hungry Caterpillar, he was pale from fright. After the noise, there was a deafening silence. “I listened for someone running away or a car outside. There was nothing,” said David, “the sound had to have come from the room we were in.” Only minutes after the knocks, a huge bang echoed throughout the library, stunning David and his team. The large grating that covered the fireplace had fallen, or had been knocked off. “There was no wind in that library,” reiterated David, “and it wasn’t the house settling in, either.” Surely someone was trying to scare them, but, again, no car or footsteps. The team searched for the source of the noises, but it left them with no answers. They had no earthly explanations for the knocks and the grating, so they kept on into the night, hoping to find answers.
Later that night, the librarian told the group about some of the things she witnessed, particularly the three rocking horses. She swore she had seen them move on their own in the past. The team, eager to investigate, set up motion sensors that emitted hundreds of green laser dots in front of the device, dotting the horses like a firing squad equipped with laser sights. The team waited anxiously for movement. Suddenly, the alarms break the silence. David and Scott McCloud, TPRG’s lead investigator, look to the trio of rocking horses to see a horse rocking gently back and forth, as if a child were playing on it. “I had to take a step back, I was stunned,” said David. The isolated nature of this occurrence ruled out wind and trickery; the team was beside the horses when it happened. To this day, the events remain unexplained. Could it have been the spirit of a child still lingering in that old library? David and Scott still remain skeptical after leaving Tallassee. “It is possible that ghosts could exist, but we treat it like a judge and jury. We pick apart any evidence and throw it out at the slightest hesitation,” said Scott. In this case, phantom noises and moving toy horses were not enough to convince them of a haunting.
A ghost is defined by the TPRG as the spirit, soul or personality of someone who died and remained here, trapped between planes of existence. Scott breaks it down into two definitions: religious and scientific. He believes the ghost or entity is something left behind by someone, perhaps even a soul. He has read the story of a scientist who actually weighed a dying patient during his last breath, and seeing the weight on the scale drop after death, believes the soul is measurable. Einstein said that all energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only change from one form to another. The human body consists of electrical energy that pulses throughout the body, giving life and movement. The spirit that lingers behind after we die could be this energy. Groups such as the TPRG use equipment that measures these electromagnetic waves that could be the wandering spirits of the dead. Much is still unknown about the world of paranormal investigations. The TPRG formed to find out more about the paranormal and to answer the question, “What’s out there?”
The idea to form the group came from the SyFy show, Ghost Hunters. The show features a group that formed a society known as The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS), to handle the wave of requests that followed the show’s popularity. The group, which is based in Rhode Island, received these requests for investigations from places outside their reach. To handle the amount of requests, they began branching out across the nation, accepting groups in different regions to become part of the paranormal investigation network. David, whose interest in ghosts was sparked at an early age, requested an invite to the network for the central Alabama region.
Once the group recruited members and gained notoriety, the number of requests grew rapidly. Some of them came from infamous locations such as the Sloss Furnace in Birmingham, the abandoned hospital in Reform, and the Jemison Mansion in Tuscaloosa. “We get our fair share of crazies though.” said Scott. One incidence involved a man from Oneonta that claimed demons were living in his house with him, his wife and their child. “He answered the door, and his pupils were dilated like crazy,” said Scott. “He had to be on something.” The bedroom doors had padlocks on the outside of them. Scott admits, “Something didn’t seem right about this guy.” What he failed to mention to the team was that he was on a cocktail of prescribed medications, including Xanax and other drugs. Since that incident, the team created a lengthy questionnaire for those who request the services of the TPRG. The questionnaire asks about religious beliefs, alcohol use, if the location is blessed, and if the occupants have an interest in the occult, such as séances or Ouija boards.
The group’s strategy for handling requests involved weeding out hoaxes from legitimate reports, which is difficult at times due to the plethora of ghost movies that tend to mock paranormal investigations. “We still get called ghostbusters every now and then. “Ghostbusters” is one of my favorite movies, but we are completely different,” said Scott. The group’s main mission is to gather and study evidence. They have no claims to get rid of something or to even discover something during an investigation, and they only investigate locations after given the correct written permission. The group consists of nine members with a range of day jobs, from a kindergarten teacher to a former World Wrestling Entertainment diva. Customized equipment such as infrared cameras, motion sensors, electromagnetic pumps and electromagnetic recorders are at their disposal when uncovering the truth at any given location. Each piece of equipment has its own purpose, whether it is to capture ghostly light, or to capture the voices of those still lingering. The digital voice recorder that the team uses captures phantom voices, known as electronic voice phenomena (EVP). EVP, according to TPRG’s website, are “sections of static noise on the radio or electronic recording media that are interpreted by paranormal investigators as voices speaking words usually attributed to ghosts or spirits.”
The group’s website offers many samples of these recorded pieces, but one clip in particular came straight from David’s house. During a boring day at home with his baby twin daughters, David noticed his dog’s eyes dart around, as if something were behind the couch he was sitting on. Recently, the shower radio had also been acting funny, turning on unexpectedly. He never thought about attempting to record EVP at home, but as of late with the strange things happening, he decided to give it a try. “My wife would kill me if I brought work home,” said Scott about recording EVP at home, but David’s curiosity got the best of him and he ended up recording a minute of silence at his house. He listened to the recording the following morning, and heard something completely unexpected. “The voice sounded like a child saying the words “Jesus loves” with a toy piano playing in the background,” said David, “but it was just my newborn girls and my dog with me that day.” He does not know why an entity would say this particular phrase, but since that recording, nothing out of the ordinary has happened.
EVP and sounds have a lot to do with an investigation and can produce some eerie results. Scott’s most memorable investigation, at the Lyric Theatre in Birmingham, used music to draw out whatever spirits may be dwelling there. The theatre has seen acts such as the Marx Brothers, Bob Hope and Glenn Miller. Sadly, in the 1970s, the theatre fell from grace and was abandoned. “To walk in and see the theatre in a state of disrepair is so very sad,” said Scott. The team wanted to try a new procedure that involved reintroducing the old music that once graced this theatre, into its new atmosphere. Moonlight Serenade, by Glenn Miller, was one of the songs that immediately came to Scott’s head to use with this new method. The group set up a stereo system that played the song using a laptop, and as the music radiated throughout the old rows of seats, the theatre seemed to come alive. “That place changed. The theatre’s personality or spirit had been waiting for that song,” said Scott, “The place seemed to let out a long, belated sigh.” The atmosphere a place has can also play a role in investigations. Psychics believe that, just by walking into a place, they can immediately feel negative or positive energies radiating around them. The TPRG does not have an active psychic because, although possible, the group does not believe they are legit. “The human mind is capable of more than we know, but psychics just don’t work out for us,” said Scott. Although a psychic might be a good thing to have, the team prides themselves on finding, and using nothing but physical proof and evidence.
The TPRG have been investigating for six years, attempting to find some sort of proof to the existence of unnatural phenomena. In some cases, just the group’s presence and respect given toward those who request investigations can be enough to soothe a worried individual. Scott explained that “most of the time people are grateful just to know they aren’t crazy, and this is because our team took the time to visit and listen to their story.” The group feels as though they are doing a public service by investigating, so they do not charge fees or request donations. They will not falsify any results, nor can they guarantee a place is haunted. Scott notes that “most of the time, the team finds nothing. The tenant isn’t crazy, we just didn’t see anything.” It takes more than one member for a good investigation, because the team debunks each other whenever a phantom light appears, or when someone hears a suspicious noise. One member may see a floating ghostly orb during an investigation, while another sees a floating cloud of dust caught by the camera’s light. “I would love to capture real proof,” said Scott, “but I think technology has a long way to come before we can have substantial evidence on the existence of ghosts.”
David and Scott are still investigating with the TPRG, accepting new requests daily, and are eager to find that one groundbreaking piece of evidence that could change the world of paranormal investigations forever.
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