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Exit stage left, through wall

This theater has a ghost, some say. Paranormal investigators try to track him, or her.

By BARBARA L. FREDRICKSEN
Published October 31, 2006

NEW PORT RICHEY - Goblins, pirates and no small number of 18th century-style "tarts" set a Halloween atmosphere around Richey Suncoast Theatre on Saturday night as John Sullivan and his band of Haunted Hunters Paranormal Scientific Investigators gathered to check out rumors that the old theater houses a ghost.

The revelers were at noisy costume parties at the Karl Reef and Downtown Lounge across the street.

Inside the theater, the only audible voices were those of the hunters and a dozen or so guests who showed up to wait for the spirits to manifest themselves.

Haunted Hunters from Valrico, Tarpon Springs, Brandon, Largo and Hudson had arrived shortly after the Saturday night performance of the comedy Lend Me a Tenor to set up infrared cameras, videotape recorders and digital recorders that are calibrated to pick up and track paranormal events. They've recently done similar hunts at the 110-year-old Belleview Biltmore Hotel in Belleair and at a cemetery in Hernando County.

The members, all in their 30s and 40s, record about eight hours of video and audiotape, then spend the next few days going through it, looking and listening for anything that might not have been apparent to the naked eye or ear.

Throughout the evening, they download still camera images to a laptop computer set up in the theater lobby "to see if we have anything," Sullivan said.

By 2 a.m., only Jessica McGuire felt she had had some kind of contact with something otherworldly. At the time, she was in an upstairs equipment area with her camera and the theater was in almost complete darkness.

"It moaned, a deep moan," she told her fellow spirit searchers. "It was soft, sort of like a growl."

McGuire, who lives in Brandon, also held the dowsing rods: two L-shaped wires held loosely in her hands that swing wildly when they encounter something unusual.

Later, she sat in the theater chair (seat BB-1 in the balcony) where a ghost has reportedly been seen several times, paper on lap, pencil in hand, waiting for her hand to be guided in "automatic writing," the procedure used by the blind spiritualist in the Nicole Kidman thriller The Others.

"This is the closest thing to the psychic thing we get," group co-founder Sullivan said. "We go with scientific methods."

As the infrared cameras ran, Haunted Hunter Jorge Chavez led one try at contact in a backstage dressing room where Richey Suncoast actor Susan Nichols had reported personal items being moved or placed in strange positions during a period when the theater was supposedly empty.

Holding a small digital recorder, he asked a series of questions and allowed 15 to 20 seconds between them in case a spirit responded:

"What is your name?" "Why are you here?" "Do you know the name of anyone in this room?" "Do you want us to go away?"

Strangely, the Haunted Hunters have had the best success in private homes, not cemeteries or public places, Sullivan said.

"That's where people were the happiest or had the most unresolved issues," he said. "That's where they'll return."

The verdict was still out for Richey Suncoast on Monday afternoon.

"It was a very loud night, so it messed up the EVP (electronic voice phenomena) part of it," Sullivan said.

Besides, the play was over, so there was no reason for a ghost to be sitting in the audience.

[Last modified October 31, 2006, 11:29:23]