Paranormal activity nothing to be spooked about

Craggy oak branches twist like bent fingers in front of the two-story 1867 brick Capt. D.S. Lee Mansion in Independence. Fallen leaves crackle beneath foot. Creaking front porch boards make you hesitate to enter.

Inside the Veterans Memorial Building, also Cedar Rapids City Hall, the cavernous emptiness left by the Flood of 2008 echoes with each footstep.

Haunted houses?

Whoooo knows.

But paranormal investigators want to find out.

“I believe,” says Joy Jager of Ryan, “that there are things on this earth seen and unseen.”

On a lark this month, Joy and long time friend, Jacqui Carpenter, a paranormal investigator from Maxwell, popped into the memorial building which Joy's husband, Mike, manages, to set up recording equipment.

“Jacqui is a psychic and she is really good,” Joy says. “She immediately picked up a presence, something.”

Jacqui, a practicing spiritual medium for 35 years who formed International Paranormal Research Association Inc., works with 1,500 volunteer investigative teams around the world.

Recordings revealed the faint voice of a singing woman, apparently warming up for a performance.

“It does not mean you have ghosts,” Jacqui says. “It means there is unexplained activity.”

Since only one in ten scientific investigations reveals such findings, Jacqui hopes to return this spring.

“Nobody is an expert in this field,” she says. “We just know these things are happening.”

At the mansion, an investigation was conducted Oct. 9-10 by the South Central Iowa Paranormal Investigative Team of Pella and the Iowa Paranormal Advanced Research Team of Des Moines.

Do ghosts haunt it?

“I have no idea,” says Tony Bengston of Littleton, on the board of the owning Buchanan County Historical Society. “I've never heard any stories that there were.”

But, the mansion seems ripe for the paranormal. After all, Daniel Lee and his wife, Fannie, died there. And, beginning in 1917, it became the cornerstone for the community's first hospital and later a nursing home. Obviously, plenty of deaths mean plenty of potential spirits.

While the historical society is more concerned about repairing the mansion - a $12,000 west wall restoration is under way - Tony says the board found no harm with a paranormal investigation.

At 10 a.m. tomorrow, on Halloween, investigators will reveal if, in fact, the Capt. D.S. Lee Mansion is a haunted house.