'Anybody down there?'
http://www.eveningsun.com/localnews/ci_6050276

'Anybody down there?'
By TIM PRATT
Evening Sun Reporter
Evening SunArticle

Three men walked slowly through the musty basement of a Gettysburg
apartment building. They used flashlights to navigate through the
pitch-black maze of low-hanging pipes and wires.
Water dripped somewhere nearby and a TV sounded from the apartment
above. The group's camera flashes illuminated Civil War-era stone walls.
Traffic passed outside on West High Street.

The men walked together into one of the basement's back rooms and stood
in silence.
They were members of the North Codorus Paranormal Society, a Spring
Grove-based group that formed in 2002 to search for ghosts in the area.
"Is there anybody down here?" asked lead investigator Tim Stump.
The group stood quiet. There was no audible reply.

Stump was joined in the basement by cousin and fellow investigator Ian
Stump, 15. Joining the Stumps was 21-year-old investigator Tony Kroft,
of Spring Grove.
"Are you a male or female?" Stump asked.
Again, no reply.
When a ghost manifests, the group says, it attracts energy and can cause
a fluctuation in temperature. So the team carried with them sensors that
monitored electro-magnetic fields, temperatures and noise.

Behind the team sat a digital video camera equipped with night vision.
The camera sent images of the group to a digital video recorder and
computer screen in a van parked outside.
Three more investigators sat in the van and monitored the group's
activities on-screen. They were Tim Stump's fiance, Keri Kroft, 26, and
his parents, Pat and Diana Stump.
Tim Stump, 30, has been intrigued by the paranormal since he was a child
and formed the Society because he wanted to take part in his own ghost
hunts. Stump's family and friends have since jumped on board and nearly
a dozen people now make up the group.

The six team members at the Gettysburg case, though serious about their
investigations, are not full-time ghost hunters.
Tim Stump is a plumber by day and Tony Kroft is a student at the York
Technical Institute. Keri Kroft is a nursing student and Ian Stump is in
high school.
"Is there a resident you are not happy with?" Tim Stump asked, then
waited in silence.
Though the team heard no reply, Stump would later listen to a digital
audio recorder he carried with him. Oftentimes, the video and
audio-recording equipment pick up more sights and sounds than a person
does.

The mystery of exactly what was down in that Gettysburg basement would
just have to wait.
A rational explanation
Ghost sightings at the Gettysburg apartment building date back at least
10 years, landlord Paul Moschette said. Moschette said in the decade he
has owned the building, tenants have reported ghost encounters and he
has seen apparitions with his own eyes. But Moschette preferred not to
give any details.
He did give the details to Stump, though, when the plumber worked on the
building's pipes. Through conversation, Moschette learned that Stump was
also a ghost hunter and agreed to let the team investigate.

Some residents of Moschette's building were leery to let the team into
their apartments. Some feared the investigators might stir up paranormal
activity. So team members spent their time testing temperatures and
magnetic fields in the building's basement.
Team members believe the Civil War-era home could have been used as a
stop on the Underground Railroad and spirits might still linger. A
section of brick wall does not match the stone walls found throughout
the rest of the basement, and the team thinks it could have been the
entrance to a secret room, passage or tunnel.

Stump ducked into one of the basement's back rooms.
"Did you know Robert E. Lee?" he asked.
His question was greeted by silence.
"Did you know Ulysses S. Grant?"
The only sound came from the apartments above.
In the van, Diana Stump intently watched her son on the computer screen.
When something unusual appeared, she wrote down the time and room. The
group later studies the video and tries to determine what the apparition
might be.

About 30 minutes after investigators left cameras filming in the
basement and returned to their van, a small bright orb flashed briefly
on screen then darted toward the ceiling. The orb was about the size of
a softball and appeared momentarily. The bright light then shot toward
the basement ceiling and disappeared nearly as soon as it was noticed.
"Did you see that?" Diana Stump asked excitedly and scribbled in her
notebook.
Tim Stump would look at footage later and could not determine what the
orb might have been.

But the orb wasn't the first unusual occurrence of the night for the
eager investigators. About an hour earlier, a photographer's camera lit
up mysteriously as he stood in the basement.
"You have to push the button on top of the camera for it to light up
like that," said the photographer, whose hands were near his head.
The investigators made a note in their digital audio recorders to check
footage for apparitions near the photographer.
They would then come up with theories to attempt to rebut the
occurrence.

The battery might be draining, Tim Stump said.
Or the photographer might have accidentally bumped against a button,
which could have caused the camera to illuminate, they said.
The investigators, always on the lookout for paranormal happenings,
spend much of their time rebutting alleged sightings.
What might appear to be an apparition on camera could just be dust
kicked up by roaming investigators. Stump also has computer programs for
enhancing photos, and for cleaning up audio and video.

"Basically what we're trying to do every time we go out is pull as much
evidence, as much information, as we can and then we try to find a
rational explanation for each and every one of them," said Jerry Knight,
a flooring salesman by day. Knight wasn't at the Gettysburg
investigation, but has gone out on previous cases.
"It's the ones that we can't explain that really pique our interest,"
Knight said.

Haunted house?
The team acknowledged during their investigation that sounds from
apartments above caused unwanted noise pollution, as did water flowing
in pipes and cars passing on the street outside.
Still, after studying hours of audio and video footage from "The
Moschette Case," the investigators believe something paranormal is in
the building.

They're just not sure what.
"You can hear a grunt at one point, a moan, someone clearing their
throat, talking, and a see strange light in the workshop area," Stump
said.
Since Moschette is an entertainer on a cruise ship and this is his busy
time of year, Stump said the investigators will not return to the
building until this fall for further studies.
"Maybe we can catch something next time," Stump said. "The times we had
the noises is when no one was down there, so next time we will have no
one down there for two to three hours and see what happens."

The team does not charge a fee to investigate a case. Their reward is
finding paranormal activity, Knight said.
On the group's Web site, www.ncpsparanormal.com, Stump posts photos of
apparitions the team has spotted over the years. Some of the photos show
blurred faces, others show bright orbs passing in the darkness.
There are also audio clips of sighs and moans from ghostly voices that
were taken during investigations. The group believes the photos and
audio recordings are evidence of paranormal activity and lend
credibility to their investigations.

Some people laugh and make jokes, Stump said. But most are genuinely
interested in the investigative process, he said.
The team is often stopped at gas stations and convenience stores by
curious people who see "North Codorus Paranormal Society" emblazoned on
the sides of the team's Ford Explorer.
Stump and his team have traveled from New York to Virginia to
investigate cases, but they prefer not to venture too far. And the group
does not investigate cases that might involve demons or poltergeists,
Stump said. For that, he would suggest a homeowner contact a church.

Stump typically takes investigators-in-training for ghost hunts at
Gettysburg National Military Park to teach the person how to use
equipment and get familiar with hunting protocol. Stump says a good
ghost hunter knows when to stay quiet and when to relax.
Stump also needs to know that a potential ghost hunter is not going
"freak out" if the group comes across something paranormal, he said.
"We have to know they aren't going to go running out of there," he said.

The right bait
The group says its close proximity to Gettysburg ? a town known for
alleged ghost sightings ? has been a blessing. One of their first
paranormal encounters happened on Sach's Bridge a few years ago.
Stump was at the bridge with Kroft. The couple watched as a group of
strangers held a seance in the middle of the bridge. Stump and Kroft
opted not to take part in the seance, but instead had their own
paranormal experience.
As the couple talked near the side of the bridge, they heard heavy
splashing in the water below.
"It sounded like horses," Stump said. "I had my flashlight next to me
and actually saw the water splashing, and yet, there was nothing in the
water."

He then shined his flashlight on the banks and bridge because he thought
a person was throwing rocks or splashing in the water to play a trick on
him. But he saw nobody.
"That's one thing I can't explain," Stump said. "It was like the cavalry
was going across the creek and then it was silent."
Another hot spot is the Codorus Furnace, located along Codorus Creek
near the Susquehanna River.

In 2005, Stump was using his usual question-and-answer technique to see
if he could contact the ghost of a woman who was allegedly spotted
walking in the area. The woman was rumored to frequent the rear of the
furnace, so Stump took his digital voice recorder there. He thought the
ghost could possibly be the wife of the iron master who used to live
nearby.
"So I asked, 'Are you the wife of the iron master?'" Stump said. "About
20 seconds later you hear this whisper, 'yes.'"

The group gets excited talking about their Codorus Furnace experience
and equates ghost hunting to fishing.
"Sometimes you have luck and get a really decent picture and some
audio," Stump said.
"The problem is we just haven't figured out the bait," Knight chimed in.

Contact Tim Pratt at tpratt@eveningsun.com.