Stage Fright

Who's got two thumbs and gets to investigate a haunted theater? This guy!
It loses a little something without the visual, but you get what I mean.
"We've done this sort of thing before," I said to the guy at Millbrook Playhouse. "The Lock Haven Paranormal Seekers have done plenty of fundraisers before. Usually it consists of a seminar, about an hour, on how to investigate. Then we split into groups and do an actual run, give people a chance to use what they've learned."
Millie and Ashlin, two of the LHPS team members, were standing in the office doorway behind me. The theater guy nodded. "My mom is coming in from California at that time. She's excited about this."
"That's great. Give her a discount," I said. "You should also know that you might get a call from a woman who owns a haunted attraction in the area. I've had problems with her before; she calls up nonprofits claiming to be an inspector from Harrisburg, and telling them that they can't do their fundraiser. She's just trying to prevent people from cutting into her profits; all calls of that sort should be referred to me. I will also accept 'Go screw yourself' as a correct answer."
The guy laughed. Millie said,"Let's do a walk-through."
We went upstairs. We were all wearing our team uniforms---Black, with the LHPS symbol on them: A stylized ghost. Millie turned on the lights, and we walked into the stage area.
"Well," I said. "Enter stage right. This looks good."
Millie is on the board of Millbrook, a local theater in Mill Hall. She said,"This place has a history to it."
I nodded. "Built in 1850. In 1915, Sedgewick Kistler bought the place and used it as a dairy farm. We've dealt with the Kistlers before---Little Gertrude is thought to still be haunting her place after drowning at age twelve in 1920. Doing the math, she would have been seven when her dad bought this farm, which means she might have had fond memories here." I stepped up into the seats. "All of this means that this theater might just be haunted by our old friend Gertrude Kistler."

LHPS was formed ten years ago, in October 2007. We've investigated haunted houses and businesses, cemeteries, and curses. We've done classes and fundraisers for nonprofits. We've been in the newspapers and magazines. And, with all that, we've wound up becoming Clinton County's most well-known ghost-hunting team.
Lock Haven Paranormal Seekers.
Haunters gonna haunt.

We meet once a month, usually either at the Piper Museum or Millie's house. We spend about twenty percent of the meeting talking paranormal business, and the rest discussing movies. It's worked for us for ten years. Don't judge.
This time, it was at Millie's house. We sat around the kitchen table: Team manager Theresa, Millie, me, Kara, Ashlin, and Charlie.
"What do we have?" Theresa asked, looking down at her notepad.
"Millbrook," I said. "The Millbrook Theater fundraiser is coming along pretty well. Me, Millie, and Ashlin did a walk-through the other day, and it looks like we have a lot to work with."
"We'll be on the main stage," said Millie, "When we break into groups, we'll have the green room and the kitchen to investigate. There should be plenty of space. There will be another play down in the cabaret while we do this. A murder mystery."
"Are we going to get contamination?" asked Charlie.
"I doubt it," I said. "The rooms are pretty well soundproofed, and set far enough apart. I wouldn't worry about it. That's an old barn, built in 1850 and used as a dairy farm. Bootlegger Prince Farrington hid his whiskey in there. It's where they first genetically bred Holsteins."
"I think that sort of history is what the audience will like," said Theresa.
"I'll work something up."
"I won't be able to make it to the seminar," Theresa said.
"No problem," I said. "I'll do the introductions, and we'll handle it about the way we did last time, at Piper. Kara on EMFs, Millie on basic rules, Charlie as local color. It'll be good."

Millbrook Playhouse used to be a dairy farm. Inside, it's a wonderful little theater, but on the exterior, nobody has wasted a lot of time making it look like not a barn. What gives it away is the big orange sign on the roof: MILLBROOK PLAYHOUSE.
We all arrived at close to the same time; I'd ridden in with Millie. We were all wearing our team uniforms, the black sweatshirt with the LHPS symbol on the back. We carried in the equipment and set it down on the stage.
"I brought pizza," said Millie.
"Is there an outlet?" Charlie asked, unspooling the camera cords. We glanced around.
"One right there, at the front of the stage," said Millie.
Kara looked up. "There's one up on top of that pole."
"That's ten feet high," said Millie.
"I can climb that," I said, looking up.
"Don't."
"As long as you stipulate that I totally could."
"Check the camera feed," said Charlie. "Let's see if it's coming in okay."
Kara and I leaned toward the screen----We have a black and white flat screen that catches the feed from the infrared cameras once they're hooked up. It was showing our table, where Kara and I stood. Kara said,"It looks fine to me, Charlie."
"Is that what my hair looks like from the back?" I said.
"Do we have any painters' tape?" Kara asked. "How about extra batteries?"
I did a walk through the building, the way I always did. Checking for hiding places, hot spots, vulnerable points. When I got back, Charlie and Kara were sitting at the table, changing over batteries in the equipment.
"We're talking about trying out dowsing rods," Kara told me.
"The hell," I said.
She laughed. "See, I told you he'd react that way."
"They could work, Lou," said Charlie.
"They're bullshit," I said. "You find me one that's freestanding, without a human holding it, and then maybe."
"They're old-school," said Kara. "It's the way they used to do it."
"So are leeches."
I looked out over the stage. The empty seats waited in the audience.
"Guys," I said,"Welcome to show business."

Much like the movie For The Love Of Helen, our opening night had about twelve people in the audience. At seven PM, I stood up and faced the audience. I tend to be the one who opens the programs and makes the introductions, because I'm almost completely shameless.
"Everyone, thank you for being here and supporting the Millbrook Playhouse," I said. "We're the Lock Haven Paranormal Seekers, and this month is special to us. This October, our team has been together for ten years."
The lights were on us.
"Our seminar consists of two parts. First, we're going to do the lesson on how to investigate, and then we're going to do an actual investigation. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time this has ever been done in Millbrook. So get ready. We're going to have a good night."

The lesson took about an hour. We've all done it a million times. We took a short intermission, and then gathered and organized the investigation portion of the night.
I pulled on my vest, a black tactical vest with all my investigative equipment in the pockets. Kara smiled. "I like how you have to get all dressed up like Batman."
"It's got all the pockets for my equipment," I said. "Plus, I look awesome in it, and I think we can all agree that's the important thing here."
"How are we gonna do this?" Charlie asked.
I turned to Millie. "It's your event; you're the major player tonight. What do you think?"
"With this small a group, no need to split up," she said. "There are performances downstairs, so we'll stay up here on the stage. We've had activity in here. Let's set up here and do a run-through."
"Let's pull the chairs up," I said. We dragged the chairs closer to the audience, and got out the recorders and EMF detectors. I held up a couple of them. "Who wants to use an EMF detector?"
Several hands went up. We handed out the detectors, and I killed the stage lights, and we sat down and turned on the recorders. And we began our first onstage EVP session.
"Can you tell us your name?"
"When did you die?"
"Is there a message you'd like us to pass on?"
"This," I said to the audience,"Is why I hate the ghost-hunting TV shows. They never show this part, the part where you guys paid ten bucks to sit quietly in the dark. They always show drama, action, and it's not really like that. I'm always getting people asking me,'What's the scariest thing you've ever seen?' That'd be my sister-in-law. It's not really like that."
There was a noise from the corner of the room, near the door. We all turned, Charlie got up to go and look. I took out my laser thermometer and got some readings.
"Guys, six-degree temperature drop over here," I said. "Could be nothing, but...."
"Let's get photos," said Kara.
"Guys?" Charlie called over. "There's a drawer open over here."
There was a cabinet near the door, in a sort of lobby-like entrance. One drawer was hanging open. Millie said,"We had a hard time prying that one open the other day."
"Let's move the investigation over a little," I suggested. "We'll gather over here and try another session."

Everyone moved over, into the lobby area. We sat down and settled, and turned the recorders back on. A woman said,"Could someone walking nearby have caused the drawer to open?"
She closed it, and tried walking past it again. Nothing happened. I jumped a couple of times, bringing down all my weight with a crash. The drawer stayed shut.
"Guess we can rule that out," said Kara.
One of the audience said,"I'm getting a reading on the EMF meter."
Millie, next to her, checked. "It's spiking at seven. Baseline is one."
"What's on the other side of that wall?" asked a participant.
I walked around and checked. "There is a microwave there, yes."
"Is it running?" Millie asked.
I shook my head. "Turned off."
"Then it shouldn't be causing this. It looks like we're getting some activity."
"Got some company tonight, folks," I said. "I hope you all feel you got your money's worth."

It was about ten PM when the whole thing let out. Breaking down always takes less time than setting up; without Theresa there to show us what to plug in, we're better at the breakdown. We had everything disassembled and packed up in fifteen minutes, and carried it all out to Millie's car.
"Hey, before we go," said Kara. "Gotta get a group picture."
"Kinda like the one we did in Highland Cemetery, ten years ago," I said. "The first walk-through we ever did."
"Let's gather here, in front of the theater," said Millie.
We all stood together, and got our photo taken.
"It's been a good ten years," I said. "We've come a long way."

The Scare Witch Project

Every October, I write a series of columns about ghosts and old legends for the local newspapers. Usually this means I have to come up with about a dozen different ideas on stories about the paranormal. The old murders, the haunted houses.
There's a reason they call it a deadline.
Generally, I wind up digging through a lot of old files and newspapers. It gets harder every year as I try not to repeat myself. It was a Tuesday afternoon when, in desperate need of another story, I found myself digging through a file cabinet just off the Sloan Museum wing on the second floor of the library.
I found a thick file labelled "Ghosts," and pulled it out. I flipped through it. A couple of stories were ones I already knew, but then I found the stack of handwritten pages at the end of the file.
"Oh, wow."

"Pat Tyson was the closest thing I had to a mentor in paranormal research," I said. "She used to call me up and tell me when she liked one of my columns. She and I worked together on a few projects, speeches and all."
"She sounds nice," said my daughter. Biz had come to visit me at the library. She drops by sometimes to make sure I haven't forgotten to eat.
"She was wonderful. She died back in 2013," I said. I picked up a manila file and opened it. "Upstairs, today, I was going through an old file cabinet. You know how this place is bigger on the inside? I found an old file from Pat. Handwritten notes that she compiled about all sorts of paranormal legends."
"Oh, wow," said Biz. She looked over the file.
"The Giantess, the K-Mart ghosts....She made connections I'd never discovered," I said. "She found the Giantess years before I did, and never told anyone about it. And she connected it with the two petrified bodies in Great Island Cemetery. She saw the Indian ghost at K-Mart."
Biz was flipping pages. "I wouldn't mind a copy of this myself."
"I'll get you a copy. She wrote about some stuff I've never stumbled onto yet. The Witch of Sugar Run. There was a witch known as Sal Kervine who lived up just outside the city limits, and was known for casting spells on people. I'm going to be months checking out all of this."
"That's awesome," said Biz. "When are you going to start?"
I smiled at her. "You coming up for dinner tomorrow?"

Dinner was ham, browned Brussels sprouts, and garlic potatoes. With Paul watching, I cooked it so it was ready when Michelle brought Biz to the house. I am not a one-trick wonder.
"Got another offer to be on a TV show," I commented. "A producer e-mailed me, asking if I'd be interested in doing a show about investigating with teenagers."
"Oh, cool," said Biz. "That sounds fun."
"Well, until you factor in that the first thing I teach the kids is that everything on TV is wrong," I said. "I get a couple of these offers every year. But they do crap investigation on television; they're really unprofessional. I wouldn't want to sell out like that."
"It would be cool to see you on TV, though," said Biz.
"You mind if we make a stop before we drop you off tonight?" I asked. "I want to check out the Flemington Cemetery."

I walked through the cemetery, looking out across the gravestones. Flemington Cemetery had been around for over a century and a half. I noted the stones, and the empty spaces in between them, and then walked back to the car.
"You find what you were looking for?" Biz asked from the back seat.
"Yeah, I think so. I can tell where the bodies I need are....Great Island Cemetery was moved in 1918. Some of the bodies were brought up here, and I'm pretty sure they're in the old empty space to the south. Two of them were female, and listed as petrified---The bodies had turned to stone. These may correlate with reports of two female ghosts, one wearing black and one wearing white, in Great Island Cemetery."
"This have to do with the file you found yesterday?"
"Yeah. Pat ties the Great Island ghosts in with the Giantess. She seems to have been working on this Grand Unified Theory of paranormal investigation in Clinton County. All of her stuff seems to connect. I'm going to look into it, and see what I can figure out. I'm making a start on the Witch of Sugar Run."
"There was really a witch?"
"There seems to have been someone, and this seems to have been some sort of family story. The witch's name, in the legend, is Sal Kervine. Pat got this story from a friend of hers named Curvan. Those are similar enough that I had to wonder if it was some sort of family connection, and I checked the 1862 map. Along Sugar Run, way back when, a property was owned by someone listed on the map as P. Crevin, which is also pretty close. Nobody had standardized spelling back then; they just wrote down whatever they thought they heard. So if I can find out about P. Crevin, I can find my witch."
"Didn't you write a column about something like this in Farrandsville, a while back? A witch casting spells on people. Your headline was Spell Check."
"Yeah, and it's a similar story, though this makes more sense. The story involves her cursing people who were riding past her house, and Farrandsville isn't on the way to anywhere. You go to Farrandsville, you have to turn around and go back; it's the end of the road. Sugar Run makes more sense."
"It does, actually."
"Millie lives up near Sugar Run. LHPS has meetings right where a witch was casting spells in the 1800s. So maybe I can interest the team in checking into this. "
"Well, you have looked into witches before."
"County's full of 'em."
"And what do you plan to do when you find her?"
"See if she weighs the same as a duck."
"I be a witch for Halloween," added Paul.
"I know, little man. I promised to make you a wand. So I'm going to see if I can figure out who the witch really was, check some obits and property records. I looked through some of the obits today at work, and found Curvans, but no connection yet. Nothing that resembles the witch."
"So what's your next step?" asked Biz.
"There's never only one way," I said. "If you can't raise the bridge, lower the river."

I began my morning with a committee meeting at the Piper Museum, and then I had to deal with a fuel issue with the new Comanche. I fielded a couple of ghost questions from visitors. I was wearing my Kraken t-shirt. Mondays.
I made a stop at the courthouse halfway between Piper and the library. I dropped my pack off at the radio station rather than put it through security. I have no idea how to describe what I do for a living.
"Lou! Your son's not with you today?" asked the Register and Recorder when I walked into the office.
"I'm flying solo today," I agreed. "But I'll have to bring him in here soon. He likes it. You guys all give him candy."
I hadn't found anything under obits yet that I could use, so I tried Wills. There's never only one way. I had to try as many different spellings as I could, so I checked Curvan, Cervin, Crevin, Kervine. People weren't all hysterical over spelling back in those days. I finally found a Patrick Craven, died in 1891 with no Will. I copied off his estate documents, and then checked deeds.
Patrick had owned a lot of property, all over the county. That explained the Farrandsville discrepancy---He'd owned property there, too, so the family had likely told the same story in different locations. I checked to see if he'd owned the Sugar Run property in Bald Eagle Township---At the time, anyway; these days it's part of Allison Township. I found a barely readable deed from 1859 where Patrick Craven had bought the property in Bald Eagle.
I knew where. Now I had to find out who.
I biked over to the library. It was getting cooler out---I love autumn, but so far it had been about as chilly as the 1862 town fire. Now it was beginning to cool down, and the leaves were starting to fall.
Our IT guy was in when I got to the library.
"I think I have the server fixed," he told me. "It's been down all week. We're having a bad week for the computers; I can't figure out what's wrong."
"You want me to look into curses?" I asked. "Check to see if maybe we're built on an Indian burial ground?"
He grinned. "Well, that won't hurt. I don't have better ideas."
"I do what I can."
I went to my desk, where I pulled the index file for the obits. There's a certain luxury in being able to work in the library before it actually opens. Now that I had a name, I could find out more.
"How's it going, Lou?" asked my co-worker Sue as she walked past.
"Tracking down a witch," I said.
"Because of course you are."
I found Patrick Craven's card. He had an obit in November of 1891 and he was listed as "buried in the Catholic Cemetery." There were at least three of those, but when I checked the cemetery records, I found him in Saint Mary's, buried not far from where he'd lived.
Several family members were buried with him. Including a wife, who'd outlived him. Mary.
"Any luck?" Sue asked as she walked by.
"Where there's a Will," I said,"There's a way."

"Where do I turn?" Kara was driving. I was with her, Ashlin, and Charlie---Most of the members of LHPS.
"The cemetery is on Hill Street."
"Nobody but you and the pizza guy knows where the hell Hill Street is."
"Next right. Up ahead."
"Okay. Where's the cemetery?"
"On the left, just up ahead. Right there."
"I didn't even know there was a cemetery here," commented Charlie. "How did you know?"
"I'm Lou," I said. "I know these things."
Kara turned into Saint Mary's Cemetery and parked near the path. LHPS often held our meetings at Millie's house, right near Sugar Run, and just around the corner from Saint Mary's. So I'd suggested to the team that we take a little field trip before the meeting, and go find a witch's grave.
We climbed out of the car.
"She's in this section, Section Three. Between these two paths." I pointed toward the section, the two grass paths on each side. "Shouldn't be too hard a find; she's with the family, someplace near that mausoleum."
We spread out and began walking north, through the cemetery.
"What was the name?" Charlie asked.
"Mary Craven," I said. "She's with her husband."
Kara looked around. "Teah, Over there. Is that...."
"Yeah, Teah Hospital. We investigated it a couple of years ago. And up in that corner is Luther Shaffer, the guy haunting the old jail we investigated. He was the only guy hung for his crime in Clinton County."
"I don't see---" Ashlin began.
I knelt by a stone. "Here. Over here."
They all ran over to join me. I took a couple of photos of the stone. It was a big one, a monument, with a cross broken off and lying on the top. I was kneeling beside it, running my fingers across the lettering the way I was used to, feeling the letters.
"Mary Craven," I said. "This is her."
"We could read that whole thing if we had some paper and chalk," Kara said.
"Or a mirror," I said. "Or shaving cream."
"Seriously? Shaving cream?"
"You put shaving cream on the thing, and then squeegee it off, and it leaves white letters. Or the mirror, which is better for preservation---You can reflect light and leave the letters in shadow." I looked at Mary's dates, and then her husband's, and then I crawled sideways to look at the dates on the daughters' stones. "Check out the dates. You notice anything, Ashlin?"
Ashlin look at the stones. "They all died first?"
"They did. Her husband and both daughters died before Mary. And that will tell you a lot about where the witch story came from. We tended to be very suspicious of women living alone back then, and Mary was a widow. She lived alone on a huge farm, probably telling people to get off it. The rumor spread that she was a witch."
"I'd probably be cranky, too," admitted Kara.
I stood up. "Thanks for the help, you guys. Let's get back to the meeting."
"Yeah," Ashlin said. "We got snacks.
"Found the witch's grave," I said. "Happy Halloween, you guys."