As part of the continuing series "Southern Illinois Paranormal Groups," here is some information about the group Little Egypt Ghost Society. LEGS is based out of Carbondale, Illinois and has more than 150 members throughout the Midwest. The core investigation team is made up of five seasonal paranormal investigators.
This group has been active since 2007 and is a non-profit research group. Bruce Kline, co-founder of the group with his wife Lisa, said the group is "dedicated to assisting those who may be experiencing paranormal activity. Our goal is to understand the paranormal and why it occurs."
The LEGS team investigates local paranormal activity using typical electronic equipment (digital recorder, EMF meter, K2 meter, infrared cameras, air temperature thermometer, etc.).
To conduct a paranormal investigation, the LEGS team will first interview the property owners to determine what paranormal experiences they have encountered at the site. The team will then set up electronic equipment in the indicated "hotspots" and will spend several hours taking readings, checking for EMF, recording for EVP and filming.
The team will try to engage any spirits present through asking questions in order to capture paranormal activity. After an investigation is complete, the LEGS team will analyze all of the data, looking for potential paranormal activity.
Kline said that LEGS does not believe that everything captured during an investigation is necessarily evidence of paranormal activity and the team will try to debunk in order to prove or dismiss coincidence and simple explanation for recorded activity.
The debunking process can including looking for drafty windows that could explain cold spots, vermin that could explain strange noises, passing vehicles that could explain phantom lights and other possible occurrences. Kline said that the team has caught phenomena that could only be explained as paranormal. "We have had several decent recordings of moving objects, mysterious lights, strange mists, and shadowy figures that manifest before the cameras," he said.
Kline talks about two investigations at the historic Rose Hotel in Elizabethtown, Illinois in February, 2010 and in October, 2009:
"We encountered some very interesting evidence of paranormal activity on our Rose Hotel overnight ghost hunt on Feb 10, 2010. While we were downstairs in the gift shop we heard sounds of a door creaking open and then shutting and sounds like logs were being dragged across the floor. No one was upstairs at the time. Motion detectors would go off with nothing visible moving near them. One remote control motion detector was disarmed by unseen forces and a few minutes later it alarmed along with another motion detector with no visible motion nearby. A spirit that we perceived as Tote, would increase or decrease the temperature on demand as measure on our Mel-8704 Meter. We detected smells such as cigar smoke, bacon cooking, and the scent of lavender. In one of the upstairs bedrooms, the motion detectors would go off with an increase of EMF as measured on our ghost meters. Equipment items such as motion detectors and digital voice recorders would go missing, only to be found later in unexplained locations. We recorded EVP voices on the camcorder while filming."
On October 5, 2009 "I was standing in the center of the McFarlan Suite in total darkness and took this photo with my digital camera and flash. I was the only living person in the room at the time. Note(d) the image of a man looking out of the far left corner of the mirror. We went back to this room Feb 11, 2010 and tried to debunk this photo. No matter what we did, we could not recapture Tote's image in the mirror. This photo is positively PARANORMAL. Sandy Vineyard, the proprietor of the Rose Hotel positively identified the man as “Tote” from a photograph in the hotel scrapbook. Toate was a servant at the hotel many years ago."
To get in touch with the Little Egypt Ghost Society, send an email to littleegyptghostsociety@yahoo.com or find the Little Egypt Ghost Society page on Facebook.
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