Ghost hunters prowl the city, looking to document supernatural occurrences.

By LUCIA ANDERSON

Date published: 10/31/2005

By LUCIA ANDERSON

DAWN POWELL and Patience Trochelman are looking for ghosts.

They haven't found anybody rattling any chains yet, but they have run into some eerie things. There's the raspy voice the tape recorder picked up one steamy night in Hagerstown, Md., and the streaking lights captured on the video camera in the back dining room at Smythe's Cottage and Tavern in Fredericksburg.

"It began as a hobby," Trochelman said. "Then we started to find stuff, and we said, 'Wow, this is really cool.'"

Powell, who lives in Garrisonville, and Trochelman, who lives in Spotsylvania County, have been hunting ghosts for three years. They call themselves Virginia Area Paranormal On-site Researchers, or V.A.P.O.R., and they're hoping to find scientific proof that there really are supernatural beings among us.

"We just want to see for ourselves," Trochelman said. "We're not psychics, we're not sensitives. We're out to prove yes or no."

Earlier this month the pair focused their attention on Smythe's Cottage and Tavern on Fauquier Street in Fredericksburg.

Owner Jim Frakes happily regales customers with tales of the resident ghost, a woman named Elizabeth who is supposed to have hanged herself in the stairwell after her husband accused her of giving secret information to Union troops.

"I've never seen her, but she blows candles out and moves the silverware around," Frakes said cheerfully.

To aid in their investigations, Powell and Trochelman have amassed an array of high-tech devices, just like the ones on the SciFi channel's "Ghost Hunters." The big black equipment bag they toted to Smythe's Cottage yielded two digital cameras, a digital infrared video camera, a voice-activated tape recorder, an infrared digital thermometer, an electromagnetic field detector and a laptop computer with imaging software.

The hunt got exciting early on when Frakes reported that a diner in the back of the restaurant had seen Elizabeth pass his table and go out into the garden.

Paul Ledford, up from Newport News on an antiquing trip, said he was unaware that there was a ghost associated with the restaurant until Frakes told him about the party of ghost hunters in the other room. Ledford told Frakes he'd seen a short woman dressed in old-fashioned clothing go past his table and out the back door.

"She was in a hurry; she had a goal," Ledford told Powell and Trochelman.

Sadly, by the time they got out to the garden, there wasn't any sign of a short, hefty woman in a long, dark skirt and white apron.

"A full-body apparition, that's the pot of gold for ghost hunters," Trochelman said. "There's an offer of $1 million if you can show scientific proof ghosts exist."

Too energized to return to her table, Trochelman went upstairs to the small second-floor room.

Patrick Herring, Frakes' 11-year-old son, had told her he'd seen the closet doors up there start to open when he was the only person in the room.

"I just got out of there," Patrick said. "I'm allergic to ghosts."

He also told Trochelman that his 9-year-old brother, Nate, swears he once saw white mist coming out of the closet.

Trochelman moved about the room snapping pictures with her digital camera and calling for the ghost to show herself.

"Are you up here, Elizabeth?" she asked. "We don't mean you any harm. Let us know you're here. If you want us to leave, give us a sign."

Nothing. No sounds. No signs.

She and Powell ranged all over the house, the garden and the street out front, snapping pictures and carrying the tape recorder.

While they were both elsewhere, a glass bowl containing sugar and sweetener packets ended up on the floor of the back room, scattering the packets and breaking the bowl.

Nobody was in the room when the bowl fell, Patrick said.

That's when Trochelman set up the video camera, focused on the table where the bowl had been, with the door into the garden in the background.

"This is the room where she's supposed to have been twice tonight," Trochelman said. "I'm going to let the camera run for a little while."

That video tape shows some unexplained lights moving through the back corner of the room. There doesn't appear to be anything that would cause a reflection, and each swoop of light moves in a different direction.

The tape also appears to show the upstairs closet door moving. It wasn't noticeable to the naked eye, but on tape the door appears to shift in relationship to the picture frame on the wall behind it.

The ghost hunters spent nearly three hours at the restaurant, prowling the premises with their electronic gadgets and getting the staff to tell their stories, but they never found any irrefutable evidence.

Most of the time Powell and Trochelman live fairly ordinary lives. Both are married. Trochelman's husband, Bert, is a heating and air conditioning expert and is a useful resource for telling where air currents originate, Trochelman said.

She's a computer specialist for the Department of Defense; Powell is a cashier at Hardee's.

They spend their spare time researching the paranormal online and reading everything they can find about the subject.

They say they watch all the television shows about ghosts, including "Ghost Hunters" and "Most Haunted" and "Haunted Town" on the Travel channel.

The women even talk like the ghost hunters on television, throwing around expressions like "EVP" (electronic voice phenomena recorded on tape) and "floating orb" (spherical images that show up on film and videotape).

Trochelman said the orbs are a gathering of energy in preparation for an apparition.

The electromagnetic field detector tracks electrical charges, another indication of possible paranormal activity, Trochelman said.

Cold spots are another sign to look for, Powell said, citing several inexplicably cold areas they found in the West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville.

Trochelman has been interested in the paranormal since she was a little girl growing up in Partlow. A series of inexplicable incidents led her to want to investigate.

One day, when she was quite small, she was trying to ride a pony, but the beast refused to move.

"I saw a man dressed up in Sunday clothes, older-looking clothes, and a top hat. He told me to get down off the pony, pick up a piece of straw and whip the pony with it."

When she did, the pony bucked her right off.

"I got up off the ground, meaning to tell him a thing or two, but he was all gone."

She asked the pony's owner where the man was, but he didn't know anything about any man.

Another time she was visiting her father, heard pots rattling in the vacant kitchen and went in to find them all on the floor.

Powell, too, said she'd had a variety of inexplicable occurrences during her life. There's the smell of baby powder and bread baking at her house, for instance. There are no babies there, nor does anyone bake bread.

The pair have visited a number of spots around Fredericksburg with a reputation for ghosts, including the Confederate Cemetery. Besides going to the prison in West Virginia, they traveled to a reportedly haunted house near Hagerstown, where they photographed some vapor in the air and recorded the spooky voice on tape.

They're looking for more evidence.

"If anybody tells you they think they have ghosts, give us a call," Powell told Frakes as she handed him her V.A.P.O.R. card.