Ghost hunting offered at Haverhill college

From Sunday’s Globe

January 29, 2012|By Taryn Plumb

Paranormal investigator JimStonier takes infrared photos in a building… (LISA POOLE FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE)

On a bone-cold night, with Venus hanging in the sky and the moon not having yet made its appearance, a building high on a hill in Groveland sits completely dark.

Dark, but not empty.

Navigating its dusky passages, cavernous halls, and rooms cluttered with shadowy hulks of furniture, a team of investigators has come to seek out the unknown. Outfitted with cameras, voice recorders, and various types of meters, as well as metaphysical tools, they hope to connect with the dead that are believed to haunt this 100-year-old building that serves as the centerpiece of Veasey Memorial Park.

“You have no idea what to expect,’’ says Ron Kolek, executive director of the New England Ghost Project, before the crew heads out in pursuit of the paranormal. “You just go in being open, and whatever happens, you react to it.’’

Ghost hunting - regardless of whether you’re a believer, a skeptic, or indifferent - has its own unique methodology, requiring both sophisticated technology and otherworldly tools, along with analysis, deduction, calculations, and the ability to discern when something is merely a fluke, rather than a brush with the spirit world.

It’s a practice Kolek, of Dracut, has been honing for years, and now he’s sharing his tactics in “Paranormal CSI - Ghost Hunting 101.’’ Offered for the first time through Northern Essex Community College’s noncredit personal enrichment program, the six-week course begins Thursday at Veasey. Kolek’s recent investigation of its grounds was meant to acquaint himself with the former estate’s unseen inhabitants.

In particular, he’s curious about two women - one big, one little - who have reportedly been seen walking right through a wall or hovering in the kitchen.

Then there have been less tangible specters. When the park’s events manager, Dorna Caskie, stayed over one night, she and her two kids were startled awake at 3 a.m. by something “absolutely electric and very profound,’’ she says. “I felt like I was in a room full of very excited and very happy children.’’

The rich amount of activity seems to correspond with the rich amount of history: Built between 1909 and 1910, the building was at first a summer home for wealthy mill owner Arthur D. Veasey. His three-building operation, lost with time, was the once thriving Groveland Mills. Workers there produced fabric and wool, some for Henry Ford’s car seats, according to Caskie.