Daniel M. Darrow and Joshua C. Butterworth sat one night recently on the dark third floor of the Newport Elks Lodge on Pelham Street, trying to make contact with the paranormal presence or spirits that reportedly haunt the place.It's not easy being ghost hunters though. The guys in the first-floor bar were loud and boisterous into the early-morning hours. How were the paranormal investigators supposed to filter out sounds from the afterlife with all this earthly noise reverberating around them?
Darrow and Butterworth don't give up easily though. They will request a repeat visit, at a time when they can be alone with whatever presences are part of the building.
The duo formed New England Apparition Research about a year ago. But this is not a moneymaking proposition. They undertake their research at the request of owners of buildings where strange things were alleged to have happened, at no charge. Or, if they hear of a building like the Elks Lodge, they request to come in.
"We sought this place out, because it interested us," said Darrow, a Portsmouth resident.
They have spent thousands of dollars on sophisticated equipment such an infrared video recorder that can film in the dark, analog and digital recorders, electromagnetic field meters and other devices. Their next purchase will be a thermal imaging camera.
Darrow and Butterworth, a Providence resident, say the recorders pick up sound wavelengths not heard by the human ear, and allow white noise to be analyzed. They say there are "electronic voice phenomena," which are disembodied voices that people might not hear, but their recorders do. The sound is recorded onto a DVD, so the investigators can use a computer to minimize ambient noise.There is a history of paranormal investigators trying to record otherworldly voices.
Swedish filmmaker Friedrich Jorgensen, known as the "Father of EVP" (electronic voice phenomena), was credited with the field's first findings, in 1959, according to an article by Jeremy Pippin that is posted on the San Diego Paranormal Research Project's Web site, www.sdparanormal.com.
Jorgensen was alone in a forest recording bird song for an upcoming movie. After returning home to playback what he had recorded, he noticed two very-faint-but-distinct voices in the background of the recording. One voice was that of his mother calling out to him "Friedel, my little Friedel." She told him he was being watched.
"Of course this amazed and startled Jorgenson because he had been skeptical of life after death," Pippin wrote. "After this, he became obsessed with EVP and went on to record thousands of these ghostly voices until his death on October 21, 1987."
Who you going to call?
Darrow and Butterworth said they have done about 15 paranormal investigations so far, about a half-dozen in private residences.
At one private residence, as they were alone in the dark, Darrow said he asked, "Are you here?" and did not hear an answer. Then he asked, "Do you want us to leave?" and again he did not hear a response.
But when he listened to the recording on a computer after filtering out ambient noise and magnifying the recorded sound, Darrow said he could hear the answer to those questions: "Yes" to the first and "No" to the second.
One other time, they picked up a groaning sound.
The investigators would not say where these occurrences happened, at the request of the homeowners.
"The people don't want it known," Darrow said. "We respect their requests to keep it confidential."
During their investigations, they also use EMF meters. The meters spike around electrical appliances and fuse boxes, but Darrow and Butterworth say the meters also will spike at times for no apparent reason. They believe that is when the device is picking up some unseen presence.
"We've had spikes in cemeteries," Butterworth said.
"We let the equipment do the talking," Darrow said. "We don't go through any kind of psychic process."
Last month, they were in a large building in Newport used by an organization that does not want its name publicized in this context.
Darrow and Butterworth said they were in the basement and not picking up anything unusual, but as they were going up the stairs, they heard a loud bang as they hit the fourth step. They went back down into the basement and again could not pick anything up with their meters, recorders or infrared camera. But as they went back up the stairs, as soon as they hit the fourth step, they heard an even louder bang, they said.
"It was a distinct sound meant for us," Darrow said. "We went back down and took the elevator up."
The sound is on tape, but Butterworth said a loud bang would not convince a skeptic.
"It's a personal experience," he said.
At other sites, they have had their batteries run out, although the batteries were fresh when they began their investigation.
"Paranormal apparitions drain energy sources," Darrow said. "We've had our equipment batteries drained several times."
That, again, is not convincing proof, they said. Batteries can be quirky.
Elks Lodge activities
With this background, Darrow and Butterworth sought out the Elks Lodge, where the talk of hauntings has been ongoing for decades. The location has a rich history. It was the site of the U.S. Naval Academy during the Civil War, but the academy building was torn down in the late 1800s to make way for the building that now is the lodge.
Maureen Coffey is the current exalted ruler of the Elks Lodge, the first woman to hold the position.
She said Countess O'Leary built the home.
Local historian Patrick Murphy knows of an Ann Leary who lived in the building around the turn of the century, and was made a countess by the pope in 1902 for her services to the church. He said she might have been an O'Leary, but dropped the "O" at some point. Although Murphy found multiple references in contemporary newspapers to "Ann Leary," lodge members just know her as Countess O'Leary.
On the main staircase, there is a picture of O'Leary and her daughter seated next to her. Coffey said there is a faint grandson and dog in the background of the photo, but they are hard to see. Some visitors don't see them at all.
"At times, the child's image is very faint and you can hear footsteps on the second floor," she said. "I've been here when the lights go on and off. I've heard chairs moving around on the floor above when no one is supposed to be up there. I've seen adding machines go on that are not plugged in."
Coffey said she is only talking about a period in the late 1980s, when she was often alone in the basement of the lodge late Saturday and Sunday nights after tending the bar there. Since then, she has not experienced anything unusual.
A Web site called Shadowlands, which lists haunted buildings, includes the Newport Elks Lodge on its list, for reasons similar to what Coffey narrated.
She knows people will be skeptical.
"I'll get so busted," she said. "I work at Barry Pontiac."
There are other people at the lodge who will back up her story, people such as Ronald J. Cudworth. He was the exalted ruler of the lodge in 1989-90.
"We'd be down in the basement and we could hear the sofas moving around above us," he said.
Someone once died in what now is the treasurer's office, and the small rooms on the third floor used to be rented out to transient men, Cudworth said.
But Butterworth and Darrow are not interested in anecdotal stories, although they can tell some themselves.
"We once went into a room known for residual haunting," Darrow said. "We heard voices, but it was not positive proof. It was personal experience."
They want to pick up some hard evidence of the paranormal on their electronic equipment.
"If we can't convince a skeptic, we throw it out," Butterworth said. "We approach this from a scientific viewpoint. We try to disprove it."
Sometimes there are unexplained "orbs" in the infrared photos they take. These orbs are undefined circles.
Dust, bugs, or some electrical energy source can cause these orbs, Darrow said.
"It's easy to debunk an orb," he said. "Still, a lot of people associate orbs with paranormal phenomena."
"On still photography, I've had questionable images," Butterworth said. "Some say it is light fragmentation, but I thought the images looked too textured for that."
But, "I believe there are paranormal experiences we don't know about," he added.
Not every site gets results, though, and it was one of those nights at the Elks Lodge recently.
"We might spend eight hours during the night at a site and get nothing," Butterworth said. "It happens a lot. You have to be patient. It's a waiting game. The less people we have around, the more activity we are likely to get."
Lack of other people in the vicinity doesn't mean results, though.
"We've stayed in old houses," Darrow said. "The houses creak, boilers are old, pipes wiggle. People hear things, but they turn out to be nothing. We can debunk about 98 percent of what people think might be paranormal activity."
There is that intriguing 2 percent though.
"We sit and absorb the environment," Butterworth said. "We can get a sense of heaviness and have a sense of being watched."
"We talk respectfully to what's out there," Darrow said. "Some investigators try to provoke activity. It's our thinking it's not a good idea to do that."
They leave their recorders on, and later they carefully listen to the recordings to see if any sounds were picked up.
"Most of the time we get nothing," Darrow admitted. "But on the rare instance we do, it's quite exciting."
"For that one time, it's worth it," Butterworth said. "Absolutely."
Rhode Island Ghost Hunters
Rhode Island Ghost Hunters
