Strange things occur at inn
BARABOO  
June 21, 2005

While it will take a week or two to analyze their data, a group of
paranormal investigators left the Old Baraboo Inn early Sunday morning
convinced that something unusual is going on at the old building some
believe is haunted.
Members of the Southern Wisconsin Paranormal Research Group traveled to
Baraboo late Saturday night to check out the inn, and left with work yet
to do checking out movement caught on tape, and unusually high
electromagnetic readings in certain areas of the building.

"It could be natural," said founder Jennifer Lauer of the group's early
findings. "But we can't explain it."
Lead investigator Rob Johnson, a 15-year veteran of paranormal research,
said the group had been looking forward to the visit since Lauer first
visited the inn a year ago, and were not disappointed. The six-person
group worked from about 10:30 p.m. until about 4 a.m., taking baseline
readings and setting up cameras throughout the building.

An automated data collection system logged
electromagnetic field readings, radiation, humidity and temperature into
a laptop computer, checking for fluctuations. Johnson said the
electromagnetic field detectors are the group's primary tool.
"We use them to pick up sprits, and in our opinion, that is how they
manifest  they have to get the energy from somewhere," Johnson said.
"Emotions are made of energy, the base principle of energy."

He described buildings as "batteries," where energy and emotion is
somehow stored.
"My opinion is the majority of the spirits we deal with don't know they
have died," Johnson said. "One of our biggest keys is dramatic events
untimely deaths."
The Old Baraboo Inn is a perfect setting, Johnson said.

"This was a brothel and a bar there was all kinds of joy, laughter,
sorrow, pain, death, and these give out a certain amount of energy a
building will store up. Occasionally it will give out those little small
jolts to let you know there is something here you have no control over."
Haunted inn?

Apparently they don't just serve spirits at the Old Baraboo Inn, they
are part of the action. B.C. Farr bought the building on 135 Walnut St.
in 1998 after it had fallen into disrepair after sitting vacant for 14
years from fire damage.
Built in 1864, the building previously served as a brewery/winery,
tavern, and a brothel. A skeptic by nature, Farr said he did not know
what to think when he began to notice strange happenings while
remodeling the building.

He hired a man to help him, and the two soon noticed lights would be on
when they came in after they shut them off the night before. After
several days, Farr finally let him in on what he had been thinking for
months the place was haunted.
"Then he started telling me all this stuff that he saw going on but
didn't want to tell anyone because he thought I'd think he was nuts,"
Farr chuckled. "That was kind of a relief."

The two are not the only ones who have seen, heard or felt something
they could not explain during the last three years the inn has been
open. Farr said he has lost several employees and tenants who rent the
two apartments above the inn because of ghost complaints.
Finally, he decided to contact paranormal researchers, to see if they
could help figure out what was going on.
Don't call them "Ghostbusters"

The group is made up of people in a variety of fields who are genuinely
interested in peeking into the unknown.
"I'm a construction worker," Johnson said. "We've got a guy in
pharmaceutical sales, one is a book publisher, one is an electrical
engineer, one is a computer science whiz kid. We've got people from all
over."
They have been all over the state and elsewhere, from Alcatraz to
Gettysburg even to Mansfield, Ohio to investigate the prison featured in
"The Shawshank Redemption." He said real estate companies have called
for their services.

"In Illinois, disclosure laws state if the house is known to be haunted
you've got to disclose that," Johnson said.
Johnson said he has learned not to judge when a story sounds like a tall
tale, since one of his best sightings came at the house of a woman whose
sanity he seriously doubted.
"I got there that night and (an apparition) walked right through a wall
at me, straight through four stalls with horses, and each time it got to
a stall the horse reared up," Johnson said. "It looked like a person
without legs, just gliding through thick white, like a fog you couldn't
see through."

One of the group's best cases was at the Mantino State Mental Hospital
in Illinois, which was closed in 1984.
"There is not a single stitch of power in the place, and the (EMT) meter
all of a sudden is spiking, jumping 0 to 15," Johnson said. "Then we all
hear in our ears now this is rare a nurse over a cracking, non-existent
P.A., calling a doctor, almost plain as day. We researched his name and
he was actually a doctor there."

He said hospitals, theaters, mental health care facilities, prisons, and
people's homes tend to be the best places to find ghosts, not cemeteries
or spooky old houses.
"You can have the creepiest on-the-hill Gothic cathedral and I'll bet
that place isn't haunted," Johnson said. "You go to a local trailer park
to one of these little 20-footers, and there are probably more ghosts in
there."

The researchers are not in it for the money  while they often travel
hundreds of miles, they do not charge for their service. Johnson said
the group bases its investigation around finding proof, not speculation.
"If you get something with equipment, you start there, and hopefully
someone gets something on film or video," Johnson said." It's always
very quick, sometimes it's just two seconds, but unfortunately people
think of movies like Poltergeist. Loved the movie, but pretty much a
pile of crap."

Johnson said the group is used to taunts and sneers from disbelievers.
"We don't have proton packs and traps I don't have a particle ionizer on
my back," Johnson chuckled. "I'm not coming in to find a ghost I go in ,
collect the evidence and either prove or disprove it."

After several hours of investigation, Farr was impressed by the
researchers' dedication and serious approach.

"(Johnson) told me right off the bat, 'My job is to disprove everything
that is going on,' but at the end of the night he was shaking his head,"
Farr said. "He said he had trouble explaining anything."