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One of their ringtones is of “The Exorcist” theme song. A skeleton is printed on their business cards. No, they’re not Satan worshippers. They’re the Society of Paranormal Research & Education – a crew of ghost investigators who’ll appear in an upcoming episode of FOX’s “Ghost Detectives.”
SPRE is slated to be filmed this summer during a ghost investigation at the Augustine Inn in Port Penn. The date of the episode is to be announced.
Haunted hotel
Built between the late 1700s and early 1800s, the Augustine Inn, currently under renovations, has long held the reputation of being a haunted hotel.
Matt Tierney of Pennsylvania, co-director of SPRE, says rival gangs are rumored to have murdered their foes in the Inn’s basement. Darlene Link of Dover, co-director of SPRE, and her team (who conducted two overnight investigations at the Inn under minimal electricity, in which with their most recent was in January) say the rumor is no joke.
“We discovered obviously that there was good and evil,” Link said. “It appeared that some of these spirits had been there for a significant amount of years.”
Tierney believes you can estimate the age of a disembodied voice by its vocabulary. For instance, after SPRE’s first investigation of the Inn in 2010, Link played back her tape recorder and discovered a strange message from a woman who she believes was speaking old English.
“I heard a woman say: ‘Thems are evil,’ said Link, who was referring to her crew as the “evil” ones.
More startling than the audio clip, Link recalls feeling overwhelmed after making her way towards a gray stain in the Inn’s basement.
“I felt like somebody had been murdered,” she said. “I had the feeling that something really horrific happened at that particular spot.”
Around 4:45 a.m. of the group’s last investigation at the Inn, SPRE investigator Jon “Smoke” Smolka – nearly tuckered out around that time, along with his teammates who had also set up camp in the Inn’s lobby – nearly jumped out of his skin.
“When it came time to laying down, and we were lying down, we kept hearing things,” said Smoke of Wilmington. “There was a point when we heard this ‘bang.’ At that point I decided I wasn’t going to sleep.”
Haunted or not, Albert Rossi, owner of the Inn, said he plans to open the restaurant and bar portion of the Inn by Memorial Day, while the grand opening of the hotel rooms is up in the air.
One of their ringtones is of “The Exorcist” theme song. A skeleton is printed on their business cards. No, they’re not Satan worshippers. They’re the Society of Paranormal Research & Education – a crew of ghost investigators who’ll appear in an upcoming episode of FOX’s “Ghost Detectives.”
SPRE is slated to be filmed this summer during a ghost investigation at the Augustine Inn in Port Penn. The date of the episode is to be announced.
Haunted hotel
Built between the late 1700s and early 1800s, the Augustine Inn, currently under renovations, has long held the reputation of being a haunted hotel.
Matt Tierney of Pennsylvania, co-director of SPRE, says rival gangs are rumored to have murdered their foes in the Inn’s basement. Darlene Link of Dover, co-director of SPRE, and her team (who conducted two overnight investigations at the Inn under minimal electricity, in which with their most recent was in January) say the rumor is no joke.
“We discovered obviously that there was good and evil,” Link said. “It appeared that some of these spirits had been there for a significant amount of years.”
Tierney believes you can estimate the age of a disembodied voice by its vocabulary. For instance, after SPRE’s first investigation of the Inn in 2010, Link played back her tape recorder and discovered a strange message from a woman who she believes was speaking old English.
“I heard a woman say: ‘Thems are evil,’ said Link, who was referring to her crew as the “evil” ones.
More startling than the audio clip, Link recalls feeling overwhelmed after making her way towards a gray stain in the Inn’s basement.
“I felt like somebody had been murdered,” she said. “I had the feeling that something really horrific happened at that particular spot.”
Around 4:45 a.m. of the group’s last investigation at the Inn, SPRE investigator Jon “Smoke” Smolka – nearly tuckered out around that time, along with his teammates who had also set up camp in the Inn’s lobby – nearly jumped out of his skin.
“When it came time to laying down, and we were lying down, we kept hearing things,” said Smoke of Wilmington. “There was a point when we heard this ‘bang.’ At that point I decided I wasn’t going to sleep.”
Haunted or not, Albert Rossi, owner of the Inn, said he plans to open the restaurant and bar portion of the Inn by Memorial Day, while the grand opening of the hotel rooms is up in the air.
Ghost hunting 101
In addition to audio recorders, the crew investigates with a toy box of fun gadgets and tools including: a stealth camera (a motion censored device that’s triggered by movement) and a full-spectrum camera (specializes in capturing visible and near infrared light).
The group also stays strapped with several KII Meters (an electromagnetic field detector that locates and tracks energy sources and picks up on instability in electromagnetic fields in a surrounding environment. The meter is designed with the following colors: dark green, light green, yellow, orange and red. Dark green represents the weakest EMF signal, while red represents the strongest). Moreover, SPRE also keeps plenty of Mel Meters (a device that’s more precise than the KII Meter and has the ability to measure temperature) handy.
Considering the KII Meter is sensitive to devices like cell phones, the team usually asks spirits close ended questions to help eliminate the possibility of mistaking an electrical signal from a cell phone for a ghost. For example, someone from the group would typically ask an alleged ghost if it’s a man or woman. If the alleged ghost confesses to be a man, most of the colors on the KII Meter, if not all, would simultaneously flash.
Professional ghostbusters
SPRE is a non-profit organization (comprised of a half dozen members throughout Delaware and Pennsylvania) who investigate if ghosts are present at a given location such as a business or home. Together the group combines for 45 accumulative years of experience in the paranormal field.
The group also educates the public on various topics like ghost hunting devices. SPRE has conducted investigations in Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York. Group meetings are held in members’ homes and at restaurants throughout the state.
