The Christian Specht Building

A historic building was slated for destruction as part of an $11 million downtown land deal. But the building is still standing, thanks, it would seem, not to preservationists, but to ghosts.

The Christian Specht Building

The 1884-built Christian Specht Building is Omaha, Nebraska’s only cast-iron structure and it would have potentially been razed to expand Omaha Performing Arts – a nonprofit that runs two local theaters — if it wasn’t for the help of some paranormal activity.

That attracted some 1,500 preservation-minded locals to sign a petition. But it wasn’t just rallies an petitions that saved the building: locals say there are “lingering spirits” in the Specht building, according to the New York Post.

“We feel there is definitely something there,” Lupe Buckingham, lead investigator of Rural Investigators of the Paranormal (RIP), a local ghost-hunting outfit, who brought her team through the building told the New York Post. “We were getting feelings, but it wasn’t anything that seemed like it was demonic … It was more a sense of something was there just hanging around, maybe as protection.”

The ghost news was picked up by the local press and kept the building in the news, which created enough awareness, it would seem, to save the building. [NYP] –Christopher Cameron