Video by Vianka Villa | Multimedia Producer
Halloween is a time of spookiness, joy and, of course, bad attempts to scare the people around you, and it is with that sentiment that I welcome you to this edition of "Ghost Hunting with The State Press."
Arriving at the Matthews Center basement at 10 p.m. on the night of Tuesday, Oct. 28, I was joined by State Press photographer Samantha Battaglini as well as multimedia reporters Vianka Villa and E.J. Hernandez in my search for the lost souls of MCENT.
We encountered our first ghost as we stood outside the doors of The State Press newsroom. As Vianka and E.J. set up their camera equipment, Samantha and I decided to test out our spooky detection app, ghostobserver. It immediately lit up as we turned behind us to encounter a friendly spirit by the name of Luis floating near a poster on the wall.
Luis' EMF frequency was fairly low, which is understandable based on the fact that we were still quite a ways away from the area on the staircase that allegedly held the most paranormal activity. Still, we attempted to communicate with him, but the low frequency made his words few and difficult to understand.
One thing we were able to pick out from the noise, however, was a repetition of the name "Sean." Due to the spirit's proximity to the newsroom, as well as the fact that State Press multimedia editor Sean Logan was originally planned to accompany us on our hunt, we assumed that this was Luis expressing his disappointment that Sean had been unable to join our evening.
Once the camera equipment was set up, we moved on to the rest of the building. After encountering what appeared to be an old, rickety metal utility staircase, we decided to try our luck with the higher floors. The stairs are full of bumps coming from the walls, cold gusts and strange whines, but the EMF frequency remained fairly low, so we decided to enter the second floor.
Finding nothing but a few low frequency, non-communicative ghosts on the second floor, we go back to the staircase and go up to the third. Here, we found a darkened photography storage room. The second we walked into the room, it was clear that the temperature had dropped a few degrees from the hallway we had just been in.
After looking around with my flashlight for a few seconds, my ghost hunting companion, Samantha, reported feeling a chill. I turned our EMF detection device (my cell phone) to find a specter of considerably higher frequency than what we found in the basement firmly attached to Samantha's side. As specters are primarily haunting ghosts, it was difficult to detach the spirit from Samantha. I tried to coax it off of her by speaking to it, but the specter stayed firmly in place and repeated the phrases "so much anger" and "I envy."
Although initially reluctant to have Samantha move while the ghost was near her, it appeared to be the only option left. She stepped out of the way, and the ghost's frequency dropped. It whispered one last phrase, "to the study," before the EMF signal was lost and the spirit disappeared.
After this upsetting experience, we decided to return to the basement to get another one of our phones so that we would have a second opinion on the EMF detection.
Immediately upon re-entering the staircase, we began to hear mysterious noises behind a locked door on the ground level of the stairs. We attempted to jiggle it open and weren't able to, so we decided to hold our EMF detectors up to the door. There was definitely a presence behind it, which was listed as a vengeful spirit. The spirit's frequency was fairly low as it attempted to communicate with us. It began to move, and we attempted to follow it but lost the signal and, therefore, the spirit as well. Spooked by the untracked presence of a vengeful spirit, we continued up the stairs in the hopes that continuing to move would help the situation.
We walked up the stairs to the landing between the fifth and sixth floors. It was in this section of stairs that the most hauntings have been reported, as it was here that a librarian allegedly burned to death after being trapped in a stairwell. We found a ladder leading to a door higher up the wall and I decided to climb up to it and investigate.
I scaled the small metal ladder, opened the door and climbed into what appeared to be a long-neglected boiler closet. I took our large LED light from Samantha, who was still on the landing, and shined it around the closet, finding nothing out of the ordinary.
I brought out my EMF detector and turned it into the back corner of the closet along with the LED light to find the vengeful spirit we had previously encountered lurking in the dark. I attempted to communicate with it, and this time its frequency is much higher than before. At first it said nothing, but then its frequency began to go up, peaking at .5074 and its presence began to glow on my phone screen.
When I approached the spirit, it finally began to speak to me, at first repeating the words "burn" and "fisherman." I assumed that "burn" was in reference to what transpired years ago in the staircase and that this spirit must be that of the librarian who perished in the staircase. I took a step closer, and the frequency dropped down again as the spirit whispered "get out." The signal was lost. Afraid to be in a confined space after this warning, I scrambled out of the closet and back down the ladder. We ran up the stairs to the sixth floor in an attempt to get out and away from the stairwell.
On the sixth floor we found an old, rusting elevator that didn't appear to have been used in a long, long time. Its green paint was rusting and flaking away, and after we called it up to our floor we could hear it pumping and creaking all the way up the shaft. Once it reached the sixth floor, we got in. However, the door seemed all too eager to shut and Samantha had to place her arm in front of it in order to let E.J. and Vianka on. Once in, we pressed the button for floor one and began our rickety journey back to the first floor.
When we reached the first floor, the elevator dropped dramatically before eventually stopping. We exited, thankful to finally be out of the enclosed space which can only be described as positively "The Shining"-esque. We followed the sign that said "Basement" and entered a small staircase, rushing down it until we finally returned to the lowest part of the building in the hopes of once again encountering lower frequencies and fewer presences.
We kept our EMF detectors on as we walked down the hallway toward the door from which we entered the building, but something seemed off. The volume of the noise heightened and the frequency seemed to go up, but there were no ghosts in sight. Writing this off as an equipment malfunction, Samantha and I continued down the hallway until the app finally confirmed our fears: "Ghost detected." I rotated in a circle until I finally encountered what it was referring to: the vengeful spirit from the fifth floor boiler closet had followed us. We attempted to remain calm, but it began to move closer.
The spirit began to speak to us as it moved, and a chill took over the place where we stood. Our ghostobserver app was finally able to translate what the spirit was trying to say, and the message popped up on our screens: "Get out." We dropped our phones and ran for it, leaving out the back door and heeding his warning, vowing never to come back (at least after dark).
Reach the reporter at ezentner@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @emilymzentner
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