With Halloween approaching, television, print media and the UW-Platteville campus have had the paranormal creep into our daily lives. On Oct. 16, real-life ghost hunter Ross Allison, treated over 60 people to a paranormal pursuit and presentation.

Allison has been interested in the paranormal since a very young age, having ghost stories read at bedtime rather than Mother Goose. He hunted ghosts for 15 years, is the founder and president of Advanced Ghost Hunters of Seattle Tacoma and has appeared on shows such as Sci-Fi’s “Ghost Hunters.” The group, which is the largest in the Washington area, has performed over 300 ghost hunts in the last six years, much like the one the students participated in last Tuesday.

There were two ghost hunts scheduled and because of the heightened interest, a third was added. A little over 20 students gathered for the first hunt in the Pioneer Crossing and were led to the Center for the Arts with the help of a chilling fall breeze. Along the way, it was apparent that the students were brewing with anticipation of hunting down specters, spirits and the supernatural.
Once at the CFA, students who were given the various ghost-hunting tools, walked through the stage area, took readings and reported their findings. The tools used were dowsing rods, electromagnetic field detectors, compasses and temperature gauges.

At stage right of the auditorium, the levels of all the instruments jumped. The dowsing rods moved back and forth, and the EMF detector sounded off. We were then told about the possible haunting of the CFA by two spirits: Top Hat Joe and a female spirit who is said to favor the choral room.

Tianna Conway, UW-P alumnus, recalled a story about a night when she was alone in the CFA and began hearing doors slam around her. After checking on them, she found that they were all open.

The next group went to the graveyard adjacent to Greenway Drive. They performed similar tests as were done in the CFA. A group of students checking on a particular grave noticed a giant leap on the sensory detectors. The grave they were taking readings on read “Speak our names and we shall live again.”

During the presentation, recordings from ghost hunts were listened to where questions by Allison were asked and directed at any possible spirits that were in the room. Voices from an unknown origin came over the speakers and a hush fell over the crowd. During the hunts, there was a lot of giggling. After the presentation, some of the students that had already been on one ghost hunt signed up for another.