In Appalachia, ghost hunters keep the state’s past alive—and are an essential part of its society.

For the past year, Countere has had the privilege of shadowing some of West Virginia’s most elite ghost hunters, the Spectral Research and Investigation (SRI) team. We hopped around a West Virginia-shaped bingo board of horror movie tropes: a haunted house, a former insane asylum, and a family which claimed demonic possession of their young daughter. We discovered that in West Virginia, a paranormal investigator plays many roles: an amateur scientist, a tourist draw, an Appalachian historian, and even a social worker and family counselor. We’re pleased to present our dispatches below.

SRI is not the only elite ghost hunting team in Appalachia—there’s West Virginia Paranormal Investigations, Paranormal Quest, Paranormal Investigation Team, and a multitude of other Facebook pages and YouTube channels. In fact, the state’s paranormal scene is arguably the most vibrant in the country. It’s an essential part of West Virginia’s tourism industry: two of the biggest landmarks in the state are the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum and West Virginia Penitentiary; the West Virginia Bigfoot Museum opened in 2021, joining the ranks of the Mothman Museum, the Flatwoods Monster Museum, and the Archive of the Afterlife (also known as “The National Museum of the Paranormal”); and the state held its first-ever Paranormal Tourism Conference this year.

“15 years ago, it was a lot harder to open people up to the idea of paranormal West Virginia,” says Brian Clary, the founder of SRI. “Television has softened that up.” Yet while ghost-hunting TV shows provide plenty of exposure to haunted West Virginia, Brian has guided his SRI team in a different direction. “Many TV shows are more into the entertainment side than the scientific side,” Brian states. “I want to take it into the curiosity side. We don’t know with certainty that we can prove ghosts exist, and in many cases we try to disprove paranormal claims. But we’re using tech that has been proven reliable—detecting electromagnetic frequencies, heat anomalies, motion detectors—and trying to create a new kind of group, combining science with history and folklore.”

In 2020, Brian created SRI with co-founder Theresa Racer-Cheshire. Both in their 30s, they have over 40 years of combined experience doing paranormal investigations. What they lack in lights, budget, and cameras, they make up for in devotion. Theresa runs a “Haunted History of the Tri-State” blog which details, painstakingly, the lore of hundreds of haunted sites. Brian is a high school social studies & special education teacher studying for his PhD in History. SRI conducts on average one paranormal investigation a month, into former hospitals, banks, hotels, and other long-dead businesses in West Virginia. In an abandoned state where folklore reigns supreme and “history lives big alongside you,” as Brian says, they are not just chasing ghosts, but keeping the spirits of West Virginia’s past alive.

The William Edgar Haymond House

Countere first accompanied the Spectral Research and Investigation team to their overnight visit at the William Edgar Haymond House in Sutton, WV. Darkness fell as we arrived. Brian, Theresa, and James Ward, a 21-year-old former student of Brian’s, were deep in conversation with the house’s current owner, who opened the place in 2019 to paranormal investigators & public events. “She’s just letting us know what happened last night,” Theresa says pleasantly. “They had a few ghost hunters leave in the middle of the night, they got intimidated by Mr. Haymond.”

Mr. Haymond, born 1855, was an affluent lawyer and Democratic politician, one of the richest and most influential men in town. His megalithic house is rife with lore, such as a secret passageway from the maid’s quarters to his private bathtub (ahem) and a creepy “Blue Room” in which his presumably unhappy first wife, Emma, slept. It also stands amidst the site of a fiery Civil War skirmish.

SRI runs a tight ship. Theresa brings the archives, scouring local libraries for newspaper records and house deeds, and also serves as the resident psychic. She gives context to what we might encounter tonight: “Emma possibly passed away in the house,” she says, riffling through her notes. “And there’s been sightings of a grey-haired old lady, in addition to the very masculine presence of who we presume to be Mr. Haymond.”

James and Theresa’s husband, JR, strap up with recording equipment. Brian coordinates logistics, lays out the tools on the table, and directs the investigation for the night. “We’re going to put the Tesla coil in Mr. Haymond’s house, turn on all the cameras,” he orders. “We’ll put motion detectors—one on the stairs, one on the second floor where Emma was known to walk back and forth, one in the attic. We’ll keep voice recorders and EMF detectors on us all night.”

When it comes to science, modern paranormal theory often concerns electromagnetic fields (EMF). The supposition is that spirits are manifestations of energy, and detecting energy anomalies can help validate the presence of ghosts. High EMF caused by faulty wiring or power lines can also lead to symptoms that can be mistaken for the supernatural, such as fear, hallucinations, hostility, and the feeling of “someone else being in the room.” EMF-related equipment allow ghost hunters to sift through paranormal claims—seeing if the source is manmade or not—and also find any hoax devices planted by a business owner eager to draw in some tourists, which does happen occasionally.

While there exists an entire market of high-tech, ghost-hunting equipment as-seen-on-TV, the SRI team takes a more DIY approach. They build most of their equipment from scratch or borrow it from other fields. “We don’t have the big fancy budgets,” Brian says. “If somebody throws out these new pieces of equipment, that’s great and dandy, but I don’t know if that’ll fit into what we’re doing. This equipment here has been around for years, and it’s reliable.” He beckons to the table, strewn with tools:

• EMF Detector — Checks for rogue electromagnetic fields in the house which might indicate that a spirit is nearby.

• Ovilus X — Takes electromagnetic field signals and translates them into words, supposedly. The theory is that an entity can manipulate the EMF fields to communicate with the living.

• Kestrel Weather Detector — Measures ambient environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, the moon, barometric pressure, gravitational anomalies, and more. The intention is to check for temperature variations: cold spots are associated with paranormal activity, as spirits will consume heat and energy.

• Parabolic Microphone — Tracks the direction of sound and amplifies it.

• RF Detector — Detects hidden electronics and see “if someone’s trying to pull a fast one on us,” as Theresa says.

• Tesla Coil — Increases the amount of electromagnetic radiation in the room; the theory is that raising the amount of energy can help spirits manifest themselves. Hand-built by Brian.

• “Radio Shack Hack” — Rigged radio that cycles quickly between stations and hopes to pick up words or phrases communicated by a spirit.

• Simple Noise Machine — Produces white noise as a baseline sound. The theory is that a consistent source of noise will charge up any entities that are present.

• Motion detectors — Tracks all motion within 15 ft.

• Walkie-Talkies — Walking alone in abandoned buildings at night can be psychologically terrifying. Walkie-talkies maintain communication when cell phone service fails.

For the rest of the night and into the morning, SRI investigates the house using their tools, purposefully placing themselves in the creepiest situations possible: recreating Emma’s journey from the “Blue Room” to the “Pink Room” where her children stayed, turning on the Tesla coil and asking Mr. Haymond if he was in the room with us, sitting in pitch black in the attic.

To fill the darkness and quiet, Brian and Theresa elaborate on bits of paranormal theory. For example, Haymond’s wife Emma has frequently been spotted crossing the hall to the children’s room. “That could be a residual haunting,” Theresa says. “Some people think the soil stores energy, and batteries drain energy over time. The idea is that the ground, the wood, the running water, they store energy and play it back over a long amount of time, and that is what we are seeing.” Reasonable enough, but what about the minutiae of “shadow people?” “When most people think of them, they think of a tall man. But there’s also a class of shadow people that are 2-4 feet tall.”

As creepy as that sounds, Brian is careful to spell out the differences between entities. The first types of hauntings are residual, like a record being played over and over again. The second type are what he calls “benevolent spirits.” These will often go out of the way to make themselves known: slamming a door, opening a door. They want your attention, apparently, but won’t go so far as to harm you, and generally lack mean-spiritedness.

“The third,” Brian says more gravely, “are the malevolent spirits. These are the most controversial. These deal with demonic possessions, the inhuman. They were called ‘Elementals’ in ancient Ireland. These are more willing to make themselves known by harm—the poltergeist route.”

Luckily, malevolent spirits are few and far between. The most scares we’ll encounter that night involve suspicious bangs, a footstep overhead, the inexplicable gust of wind. While SRI does take steps to stay tempered—they will first offer a rational explanation for the burps and creaks of an old house—many ghost-hunting tools in general are designed to produce results. The Ovilus will always emit words, and a parabolic microphone can make a distant peep sound like demon breath.

However, Brian and Theresa are true believers in their work, and they seem a little disappointed by the ghostly inactivity this time around. Before bed, Brian fiddles with the cameras; he will pore over a dozen hours of footage in the coming weeks, hoping to have documented something. Theresa has been seeing ghosts since childhood—she recounts once asking a spirit to follow her home because it was bothering people at a restaurant. “I’ve never felt threatened enough or had a negative experience,” she says. “Fear is a powerful emotion, and if you show fear, then they can feed off that. I just didn’t give into it. I’ve always been drawn to the weird and macabre, which helps me teach people to not be afraid of what they’re experiencing.”

[Florida’s Bigfoot: The Legend of the Skunk Ape]

The House Call

The life of a ghost hunter in West Virginia isn’t all haunted houses and insane asylums. It also involves acting as a paranormal social worker and making house calls. Around a third of Brian and Theresa’s investigations have been visits to private residences. Unfortunately, some of these households contained separate but related issues: drug addiction, child abuse, mental illness. The SRI team recalls calling Child Protective Services in some extreme cases: “I’ve seen heroin, I’ve seen abuse, neglect, I’ve seen all that,” Theresa says. “Some of the things you just walk in on folks over the years, it’s unreal.”

However, in West Virginia, where infrastructure is crumbling, mistrust of government runs high, and spooky stories are part of the state’s DNA, ghost hunters can sometimes feel like the only safe option to call. Ghost hunting diagnostic equipment has genuinely helped some families fix severe electrical issues, Brian says, and they can serve as an outside mediator to domestic issues. Oftentimes, they help just by “listening to the client’s story and letting them know they aren’t crazy.”

Countere accompanied SRI on one such house call, keeping the family’s identity anonymous and changing their names for this story. At a pizza shop in central West Virginia, Brian outlined the job to the team. A family believed their daughter was possessed and there was a demonic presence in the house. “She called me just this morning, told me she had been up all night. She asked me, 'Have you ever been inside a house that bleeds oil through the walls?’”

A half-hour later, we pull up to a frowning house nestled on a hill under sagging power-lines. Stacy, an emaciated blonde woman waiting in the front yard, is already a nervous wreck: “There’s things running up the stairs, things under the neighbor’s porch. There was a swinging monkey creature in the trees last week!” Stacy and her partner, George, are visibly at war—George is eyeing us suspiciously the whole time—but both agree they saw something like that in the woods. A hardened man of little words, George also no longer goes upstairs alone.

Inside the house, Amy shows us a blood spot above the corner of a door. Her 6-year-old daughter Jenny squeals into the room, cradling a pet bird. After greeting the child, the team asks for privacy and sits down with Jenny. Theresa hands her a sketch pad and some crayons.

“Show us what kind of things are going on,” Theresa says gently. “Is there anything bothering you? Does anything make you sad? Anything you think could be better?”

Jenny answers yes to every question. “Now Jenny,” Theresa says, “We hear there’s an invisible friend named Bill.” Jenny looks down. Yeah, she says sadly: “Bill is always on the back porch. But the Shadow-Man controls Bill and talks to him.”

Brian asks Jenny to draw us the Shadow-Man. She scribbles on the sketch pad for a minute and holds it up. “This is my house, and this is the Shadow-Man.”

Jenny frowns and looks like she wants to cover her ears and eyes. “I like everything in the world,” she says meekly. “But I don’t like when someone is creeping up on me.”

Brian examines the picture. “There’s something strange here,” he says after a while. “I just don’t know what it is yet.” Brian, Theresa, and James gather their equipment and begin canvassing the house. As the trio walks up the stairs, Jenny yells up after them: “We’re coming!”

The team exchange startled looks. Brian walks down the stairs, kneels besides Jenny, and asks her what she meant. She looks down and says it was an accident.

Upstairs, the attic is suffocatingly hot and crowded with junk. Almost immediately after entering, the team’s EMF detectors begin beeping, indicating the presence of harmful radiation. “This is crazy!” Brian exclaims. “40 milligauss is considered harmful. This is hitting 1000!” Throughout the rest of the house, the readings are similarly extreme. “I shouldn’t see a ceiling fan at 300. This is unhealthy.”

The team walks into the backyard. “I have never seen a house with such high EMF levels, in all my investigations. All under those,” Brian declares in disbelief. He points upwards at the big, fraying power lines which canopy the block. “Stacy said all the neighbors around here are angry and miserable,” Theresa says.

Brian calls Stacy outside. He takes his hat off, wipes his sweat, and begins to speak. “This investigation has taken a shift from what I thought it was going to be,” he says. “I’m seeing EMF numbers coming off those lines that are significantly harmful to health. Even if there’s something paranormal in this house, it’s feeding off this electromagnetism and all this negative energy. It’s got an unlimited food source.”

“The paranormal side of this is a secondary concern at this point,” Brian continues assuredly. “My concern is with all you at this point. There are levels of electricity in this house that I’ve never seen before.”

Theresa offers to refer the family to an electrician. “With the wiring this bad, this house is a fire hazard as well,” she tells Stacy. “It’s extremely unsafe. Your primary thing is to get out of your house.”

Stacy folds her arms and looks at the ground, disappointed. “Not happening anytime soon,” she spits out, jerking her head towards her partner across the yard. “Now that ole Skippy over there ran through all the money. Six thousand dollars, all my savings, he lost in Dogecoin in three weeks.” She looks down at the pet bird, peeping in a shoebox. “Your family don’t give a shit about you either.”

Brian looks defeated for a minute, then perks up. “We can still do something,” he says. “My grandmother was full-blooded Mi’kmaq Indian. There were so many Native American tribes that lived within this region, that instead of a traditional Catholic ceremony, it would be more appropriate to do something that worked in this region before Christianity.”

Brian lights a small tuft of white sage. “As time went on, I picked up bits and pieces from my grandmother,” he says. “This smoke is supposed to attach to any negative things with you and take them as it leaves toward the great Fathers, and cleanses the area of which we are now apart.” With the rest of the family assembled, Brian performs a Mi’kmaq smudging ceremony. The smoke rolls off Stacy, whose blue eyes betray a small hint of hope. It drifts beyond the power-lines and up into the sky.

[Native American Ghost Stories]

As we leave, Brian lets out a long sigh. “There could be something paranormal in this house, but the primary problem is EMF poisoning and family dynamics. I want to help these folks, but I don’t know if this is a helpable situation. At least by people on the outside.”

Old Hospital on College Hill

Editor’s Note: The Old Hospital on College Hill in Williamson, WV, is another haunted landmark that granted SRI private access for an overnight investigation. The author’s notes indicate that unlike the other two locations, a possibly genuine paranormal event was experienced.

There are a few sentences in the beginning of the author’s notes that are legible. A quote from Theresa is written down: “It’s totally unscientific, but I get the sense that someone down here is worried about a watch.” After that, it appears the team moved to an upstairs room. In an effort to be faithful to our investigation, we’ve reproduced what we could of the author’s few remaining notes:

“We all lie down. Turn of all phones. Taunting even. Won’t be scared. Then suddenly a clear mans voice ahhhh. We all freak out and clump together and scamper back. temp drop. We hear footsteps coming up the stairs, and sounds all around the walls: there’s one. There’s one. The Ovilus speaks: Innocent. Murdered.. Bat!!! flies around the room. Brian and I see the same oval shaped head, pinkish orange.”

After that, the author’s notes become garbled and illegible beyond comprehension, and he refused in no uncertain terms to discuss them. Our dispatch thus ends. However, to offer a clearer picture of the Old Hospital on College Hill, we have also provided pictures of the facility.

Epilogue

This summer, Countere concluded our fieldwork with the Spectral Research and Investigation team. We accompanied them as they performed a dual investigation of the Fairfield County Infirmary in Lancaster, OH, with West Virginia Paranormal Investigations (WVPI). WVPI brought a much more high-tech setup—think tactical vests and professional cameras—and human proxy experiments, such as chaining yourself up, covering your eyes and ears, and speaking aloud any messages received.

While much more “evidence” can be captured this way, it puts into perspective the previous experience of mine at College Hill, which I still refuse to discuss—no one would ever believe me—but was only achieved after we turned off all the technology and sat in the dark. Even then, there has to be a “rational” explanation for such events: mass hallucination, triggered by lack of sleep and sensory deprivation.

However, it can’t be missed that the experience only occurred after we turned off the phones and cameras. Perhaps that’s the whole point of paranormal phenomena: they can’t be replicable by any sort of scientific process—their very nature is un-replicable. Perhaps the very idea of a ghost hunter is antithetical, attempting to capture what by definition cannot be captured.

But there’s much more to the life of a West Virginian paranormal investigator. The SRI team has grown to eight members, and there’s always a new investigation to do, always a new family to assist, always a new place opening up in West Virginia that hopes to attract tourists, remind them of the past, and hopefully make a few dollars. And sometimes, in the dead of night and at the height of fear, something otherworldly occurs.

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