Check.
Golden crucifix?
Check.
Digital cameras, dowsing rods and other gadgets used to gather evidence of incorporeal spirits from another century?
Check. Check. And check.
That’s exactly what investigators from the North American Paranormal Research Investigation Society, or NAPRIS, were doing a few days before Halloween at the John Wornall House — checking sitting rooms and kitchens, back bedrooms and creaky hallways as a cool rain fell outside.
It was a dark and stormy night!
What better time to come together and search for ghosts?
Only a year old, NAPRIS is the newest paranormal investigations group in town. It is one of two local groups that proprietors of the Wornall House and other historic places popular with ghost hunters say have set themselves apart.
The other is Ghost Vigil, a 3-year-old group headed by a Kansas City police sergeant who’s skeptical about the way many people collect paranormal evidence.
But on this day it was NAPRIS’ turn.
As darkness enveloped the historic house, investigators grabbed their gear. One member checked a black bag and pulled out holy water and a metal crucifix.
“The only time we’d use those is if we had a demonic presence,” assured Piper Desmond of Lee’s Summit.
Piper and her husband, Sean, founded the nonprofit group after moving to Lee’s Summit more than a year ago. The Desmonds have personal experience with the paranormal. A previous home in Jefferson City was haunted, they said.
“It was horrible,” she said. “On the mantel over our fireplace pictures would just fly off and break. When we’d lay our son down to sleep, and I’d go in to check on him later, his crib would be on the opposite side of the room. And my son started getting scratches on him, and he was too young to do that to himself.”
Unable to explain it and fearing for their son’s safety, they moved.
‘Cross the rods’
Today they try their best to help others explain the unusual.
Inside the Wornall House Sean Desmond and a group of investigators entered a sitting room and closed the door. It was dark inside, the kind of dark where you can’t see where you’re walking and tend to bang your shin against pieces of furniture.
“You got your DVR rolling?” Sean said.
“Mine’s rolling,” a voice said.
“Let’s start an EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) session,” Sean said. Investigators turned on digital tape recorders.
Soon soft voices came from all corners of the room.
“Is there anybody here with us here tonight?” Sean asked.
Moments later, others joined in.
“Can you give us a sign?”
“Did you die here?”
“Can you move something?”
Silence.
And then a loud noise echoed through the darkness!
“That was me running into a piano stool,” Sean said.
Minutes later Mike Esposito, an investigator from Chicago, broke out a pair of thin, metal dowsing rods and grabbed the bent ends in his closed fists. He aimed them forward, looking like he was holding two guns with long thin barrels. Just then he felt a spirit in the room. As he asked it questions, the rods moved back and forth.
“If you were a slave here, cross the rods,” Esposito said.
The rods made an “X.”
Then it was gone.
“Lost him,” Esposito said.
But in the next room he was on the trail again. Pulling headphones over his black curly hair, he waved a parabolic microphone around the room like a laser gun. Hearing something, he ripped off his headphones and pressed his ear against a wall. In the next room he sprawled on the floor and pointed the mic in front of him with two hands like a cop drawing a bead on a perp.
To reach feature writer James A. Fussell, call 816-234-4460 or send e-mail to jfussell @kcstar.com.
@Nyx.CommentBody@