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News
Article from:
The Ledger, Lakeland, FL
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Bartow Site Some Say Is Haunted Is Site of Lecture, Exhibit on
Paranormal
By
Gary White
The Ledger
This illustration, by
Tom Muir, shows The Lady in White. Is she really Marjorie
Chillingworth, the wife of a judge who, along with her husband,
was murdered? (Photos provided to The Ledger)
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Scenes of death - and
murder in particular - often generate tales of unexplained sights,
sounds and other sensations embraced by some as evidence of apparitions.
The silver-domed building that houses the Polk County Historical Museum
may not be the actual site of any tragic deaths, but many murderers have
passed through its marble hallways. The building in downtown Bartow
served for some eight decades as the Polk County Courthouse, and its
rooms saw many Floridians convicted of killings, some of them condemned
to their own premature deaths.
It's probably inevitable, then, that some regard the Old Courthouse as a
haunted place.
Doug Kelley, leader of a team that has twice prowled the building in
search of ghosts in recent months, will share his findings and discuss
the paranormal realm Thursday at 6 p.m. in a free presentation at the
museum, "How Ghost Hunters Find Ghosts."
The talk supplements a museum exhibit running through November,
"Apparitions: Ghostly Trials in the Old Courthouse."
Curator Tom Muir researched the building after joining the museum six
months ago, and he soon found several Internet sites suggesting the
presence of lingering spirits in the 1908 structure. The folklore
prompted Muir to organize the current exhibit and also spurred him to
call Kelley, who heads SPIRITeam, a squad of unpaid investigators of the
paranormal based in Punta Gorda.
Kelley's team visited the museum in August and again in September,
deploying detection instruments and taking part in a séance.
An author, lecturer and leadership coach, Kelley said he has been
interested in paranormal activity - that which eludes scientific
explanation - all his life. He devised a fictional group of ghost
hunters called SPIRITeam for a novel he is writing, and last year he
decided to duplicate the outfit in reality.
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This
illustration by Ryan Bailey shows the accused, Herman Barwicks, and
Sheriff Pat Gordon, circa 1954. (Provided to The Ledger)
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Kelley said
his group seeks out the truth, even if that means dispelling claims of
supernatural activity. He sums up his approach with the phrase,
"Open-mindedness tempered by healthy skepticism tempered by
open-mindedness."
"What I do is, I like to call it the true scientific method, because
mainstream science is restrained by the tides of current thinking and
the political stuff within the scientific community," Kelley said. "A
lot of what limits people are their beliefs. That's what I'm trying to
get past."
Kelley uses an array of tools he said can detect evidence of mysterious
presences. An electromagnetic field meter, available for $10 or so,
measures waves emitted by life forces, as well as microwave ovens and
other power sources, and laser thermometers discern odd temperature
changes. Digital recorders help capture unexplained speech, known to
ghost hunters as electronic voice phenomena, or EVPs.
Kelley recorded what he said is a one-second voice phenomenon during a
séance at the Old Courthouse in September - a voice he said didn't
belong to anyone present and seemed to say, "That is me" or "That was
me." Kelley said the mysterious fragment (posted on his Web site,
www.spiriteam.org),
was the only empirical evidence of possible paranormal activity his team
found in the Bartow building.
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An
exhibit at the courthouse in Bartow tells of several notorious
trials held there, including that Avon Elwood North, convicted in
1951 of killing a wealthy widow near Fort Meade. (Provided to The
Ledger)
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The exhibit
"Apparitions" reflects Muir's wish to add freshness to the Historical
Museum with more short-term displays. The two-month exhibit explores
several notorious trials from the former courthouse, including those of
Avon Elwood North, convicted in 1951 of killing a wealthy widow near
Fort Meade; Johnny Franks, a Lakeland man found guilty of a double
murder in 1954; and a corrupt West Palm Beach judge convicted in 1961 of
plotting the deaths of another judge and his wife.
With little visual record of those cases available, Muir commissioned
Winter Haven artist Ryan Bailey, a former court sketch artist, to
recreate the trials through paintings that are part of the exhibit.
Gary White can be reached at
gary.white@theledger.com
or at 863-802-7518.
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