2003-05-20

SEEKING CENTRAL CITY SPIRITS

by Pam North

Last month members of S.P.O.O.K.S. Inc. (Society for the Prevention of
Ostracization and Obliteration of Kindred Spirits)
met in Central City with the goal of contacting any local spirit
entities who wished to be seen or heard.  The results were fascinating.

The Masonic cemetery was the first site visited.  Historically, on April
5th of each year, a ghostly maiden wearing black and bearing columbines
reputedly makes a sunset pilgrimage to the grave of John Cameron, who
died in 1887.  About thirty to forty people assembled there last April
5th, seventeen of whom were brought up on a Harvey's bus as part of the
S.P.O.O.K.S. tour.  At 6:15 p.m. meter readings began to assess any
energy in the area, which initially was only that of the spectators
themselves.  At 6:20 everyone seemed to unconsciously gravitate toward
John Cameron's grave, the center one of three family markers, and the
energy seemed to isolated itself in that one spot.  At 6:28, as the sun
set, the metal dowsing rods also used to detect energy began rotating
back and forth in their sleeves, even crossing; this activity continued
for a few minutes, finally ceasing by about 6:34, and when they stopped
they were pointing in a westerly direction toward a knoll the lady is
said to traverse as she leaves.

Later that evening, a group of 14 people toured a building on Eureka
Street.  Dowsing rods and meters detected energy in a back room
upstairs.  An apparition was seen by seven in the group; it was a
barefooted black man wearing an open- collared flannel shirt and pants
with a rope belt, and he had been hanged from a high ceiling beam, oddly
with leather straps rather than a rope.  A feeling was perceived that
the leather was reins associated with horses, and that the time period
was perhaps the late 1800s.  A side room also seemed to be occupied by a
presence that registered on the meter.  As the spirit moved out of the
room and turned left just out of the doorway, the meter tracked its
progress.  The group returned downstairs and viewed a painting, executed
in bright shades of red and orange, that portrayed a London mine fire in
which miners were trapped in the shaft.  Dowsing rods and meters
registered a large amount of energy emanating from the painting.  One of
the researchers, intending to return to the second floor, encountered a
resistant pressure as she was about halfway up the stairs, as if the
resident spirits were protesting being disturbed firther.

The downtown tour concluded with a building on Main Street that once had
been a bakery in an earlier era.  While the first floor seemed normal,
the second story yielded some surprises.  Part of the tour group headed
toward the rear portion of that level, whereupon one researcher glimpsed
a ghostly of two men bursting through the back door, one in pursuit of
the other.  The first was overtaken and stabbed by his pursuer.  The
researcher also perceived another man standing on the stairway, perhaps
a witness to the violence.  Meanwhile, the meters and dowsing rods were
indicating a high level of energy at the front center section of the
second floor.  This lasted only a few minutes, then dissipated.  Upon
their return to the main level, the tour group members related their
findings to a man who had historical knowledge of the building.  His
research had uncovered the fact that the bakery owner's body had been
discovered in a cistern that was shared by the bakery and the building
next door.  A drifter was suspected to have committed the murder, and he
subsequently was found, stabbed and with his throat cut, his body lying
under some bags in the same spot where the energy levels had registered.

And you thought Central City was quiet.