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LIFE
Tri-State offers a variety of paranormal activity
A painting by Dr. William Grimes Thursday, October 23, 2008, at Dr. William Grimes Denistry on 20th Street. The painting is of a young girl which roams the stairs at Gimes' office.
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HUNTINGTON -- Melissa Stanley was sitting in her bedroom thinking about her dying friend when a neighbor's unused, rusty dinner bell rang loudly, echoing and echoing until it rang right through her.
She knew immediately for whom the bell tolled.
Just a few minutes later, her mom walked into her room, handed her the phone -- her good friend had passed away.
"As long as I lived there I had never heard that bell," said the 28-year-old Huntington resident. "Then, one day -- bang -- the sound emanated through the room and I just stopped, and I knew at that moment that was when he passed. You always heard of the old wives tales of the death bell, and it was somebody I was really close to."
That odd experience two years ago prompted Stanley to rekindle a fascination with life's unexplained, mysterious encounters.
What began as a Yahoo group and chats online, has turned into the two-year-old group, Huntington Paranormal, a band of a dozen or so members who have conducted paranormal investigations at private homes around the Tri-State as well as such area sites as the Keith Albee Theater, the Old Marshall University dorms, the Emmitt House Restaurant (Waverly, Ohio), the historic State Theater (Point Pleasant), cemeteries in Huntington, Barboursville and Guyandotte, and a couple fruitful visits to Dr. William Grimes' dental office, 1125 20th St., Huntington.
"I have been interested in this stuff for a long time, probably since I was 12 or 13," Stanley said. "I got out of it for a while. Life gets in the way, but when I had that happen a couple of summers ago, it revived my interest and made me wonder, hmmm, are there other people looking to do the same thing?"
Ghost hunters gather
Stanley said that like her, people responded to the group for the same reasons.
They either have had a life-long interest in ghosts and paranormal activities, or have had something happen unexplained that made them want to search for more answers.
"We have one of the guys in the group that when his grandfather passed away he was visited by him," Stanley said. "We all have a story, and most of it starts with close friends or family or someone that grew up in a haunted house."
Not unlike shows on television, such as "Paranormal State" that airs on A&E, the Huntington Paranormal group holes up and sometimes even camps out armed with video recorders, audio recorders and electromagnetic field detectors to see if they can detect anything at a site where a ghost, spirit or odd occurrences have been reported.
"The biggest misconception is that everyone calls us ghostbusters," Stanley said. "We are not ghostbusters. We don't go in and scare out the ghosts like they did in the movie. We go in and take a scientific approach. We take in the equipment and just try and find some kind of proof of something we can't explain."
Going in to investigate
From Gettysburg, Pa., to Guyandotte, the group has taken its equipment to many places looking for evidence of paranormal activity.
A hot-spot for ghost stories is old theaters from Chillicothe's Majestic Theatre that served as a morgue during the flu epidemic during World War I to the Paramount Arts Center in Ashland, long inhabited by Paramount Joe, who even has the coffeehouse named after him.
Here in Huntington, the group checked out the Keith-Albee Performing Arts Center, the historic theater built in 1928.
"There are always stories about the Keith-Albee," Stanley said. "We were really disappointed that we didn't find anything. But, while we were setting up the equipment, we hadn't pushed record and something passed in front of the camera, but it wasn't caught on tape. That is the kind of stuff that happens. You can't make it happen, and you can't predict when it will happen. We have to go back to the Keith because we couldn't confirm any of the stories about the ladies bathroom and that feeling that somebody is standing over your shoulder."
Stanley said they often find some kind of natural cause to explain what has been happening.
"A lot of people's imaginations tend to run away with them," Stanley said. "They don't understand that it could be high EMF readings from unshielded wires that cause them to have experiences. We try and give them some idea of what is going on. We've really only hit on one place that we can really say that we've got consistent things we can't explain."
The doctor's friends are in
While the alleged spirits of the Keith have been elusive, the group hit the paranormal jackpot of sorts at the office of dentist Dr. William Grimes' where there have been countless experiences in this Huntington building on 20th Street.
Grimes said he bought the building -- built about 1901 -- in November 1973.
He and his father began renovating the then duplex into an office and soon realized they weren't alone.
"I bought it in November of 1973, and by December of that year we were pretty convinced that something was going on there that was strange," Grimes said. "My father and I spent hours remodeling, we did everything except for what licensed plumbers and electricians had to do, and we kept hearing loud, very loud noises, like someone absolutely tearing the place apart. We would go to where that happened and nothing would be moved."
Grimes said several members of his family would hear and see things as they were doing the renovations -- things from boards moving to the continued noises.
Initially, Grimes had an alarm system set up at night. It was tripped by microphones and would set off sensors alerting authorities to "someone" on the premise.
"Maybe two times a month on the average they would call me down there thinking someone was down there," Grimes said. "We would come in with a police officer, and nothing would be disturbed. It was such a common occurrence between about 2 and 4 in the morning that finally the police said stop doing this, too many dry runs."
Grimes said they changed the alarm system to a sensor that detects heat and motion and doesn't detect the sounds that continued in the night.
While completing an extensive wallpaper job in the hall and stairwells, Grimes kept sensing someone watching him from outside a bedroom at the top of the stairs.
"I would see things in the stairwell, and I came to the realization that it was a young girl looking at me," Grimes said. "She would step out of the bedroom and stand and look at me. She was raven-haired, had eyes sunken into their sockets, very pale skin and hair matted like she had laid and had been sweating. She would just be quietly staring at me."
Grimes found out from a patient who was related to a former owner of the home, that indeed a child had died in the upstairs bedroom in the 1920s with an acute appendicitis. Her name was Lavina Wall.
She is not the only spirit dressed in period clothes that has shown up at the office.
Grimes has a logbook with dozens of incidents recorded by people, most of which have been his dental assistants, a cleaning lady, and many others, who have from time to time spotted men and women in early 1900s-era clothes hanging around the office then disappearing.
"We just have lots and lots of incidents, and finally I started a log that counted all the major incidents and then try to keep them as up to date as possible and have them write it down in their own words what they saw or heard," Grimes said. "These are not all the incidents, just the few that really seemed to affect people. There's been lots of minor incidents, and there never has been anybody hurt or felt like they were being attacked. It has always been a benevolent type of experience."
Grimes said that while some of his assistants have felt the incidents disconcerting, most have been very open minded about the experiences and they do not try to hide them from anybody.
Grimes even ended up painting a portrait of little Lavina Wall and hanging it at the office.
"Everyone seems to be afraid of the subject," Grimes said. "But once you get past that, everybody started talking about things in their own homes. None of our patients have said, 'You are all a bunch of nuts.' "
Other historic places to explore
While Huntington Paranormal gets a couple calls a month about people wanting them to check out local homes, and or other sites, they have a good, long list of places they want to go check out.
They, of course, want to go back to Dr. Grimes office for a visit.
Most other places on the list are historic places such as the famous Underground Railroad home, The Z.D. Ramsdell House in Ceredo, The Frederick Hotel in downtown Huntington and the Jenkins Plantation in Greenbottom.
All have their host of ghost stories, like the Jenkins Plantation where people have sworn to have seen children playing in the yard, an old, wiry-haired man standing in the doorway, or suddenly smell pipe tobacco or the smell of fresh bread wafting out of the empty house.
While the group does investigations, it is also out in the community giving some talks.
The group did a presentation before a packed house in March at the Cabell County Public Library downtown, and on Saturday did a presentation about true ghost stories of Huntington, at the Guyandotte Public Library.
In addition to searching for proof of our existence after death, the group also has a mission to help recognize the history of the region.
In fact, the group will be dressed in period costume next weekend as it leads candle-lit walking tours of historic downtown Guyandotte, during the historic Huntington neighborhood's Civil War Days.
Stanley, who grew up in Guyandotte, said the free, 45-minute-long tours that will talk about historical homes, ghost sightings and lots of history, is a way to spark interest in new generations about the rich history in the area.
Stanley said that doing the history walks and the talks at the libraries helps folks know they are not alone.
"I think that a lot of people really are interested in the paranormal and always have been," Stanley said. "I have grown up with even my older family members who felt like they saw a ghost or saw something. With shows on television, really everywhere you look it is mainstream and hopefully it helps people just to talk about it more, instead of just having a stigma that they are strange, weird or crazy."
"Snapshot" 
Blake Shelton - Well Lit and Amplified Tour 2012 
First United Methodist Church Dinner Theater: "Bitsy and Boots in the Tropics" 
ARTS presents "Love Letters" 
BASKETBALL: Marshall vs. East Carolina 
26th Annual Bill Morris Bluegrass Band Competition 
Someone to Watch Over Me 
Mountain Stage: Fountains of Wayne 
Keller Williams 
"In The Heights" 
