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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

There’s so much ghosts could teach us

Doug Clark The Spokesman-Review

Some ghost hunter.

You’d think at a place like Spokane Community College, Washington’s No. 1 spook detector would be able to make contact with at least one of the many students who died of boredom.

Yet after striking out in the basement bowling alley and coming up emptier than a broken beaker in the biology department, Ross Allison suspended our Tuesday night ghost search and declared the campus spirit-free.

On the positive side, I did meet two young North Side women who told me they once heard a horrifying female voice coming out of their TV set.

Joan Rivers, I’m guessing.

Allison, 31, is president and founder of AGHOST. That stands for Amateur Ghost Hunters Organization of Seattle Tacoma.

He was here to take part in the school’s Winter Carnival Week. About 45 people besides me came to the Sasquatch auditorium to hear Allison’s “Ghost Hunting 101” lecture. After the speech, about 18 of us went with Allison to the aforementioned sites in a failed attempt to discern the presence of the unexplained via a digital camera, a compass, a thermometer and a meter that registers electromagnetic frequencies.

Tools of the ghost-hunting trade.

I did, however, encounter something that made my skin crawl. In a biology lab, I opened a cupboard to find clear plastic bags containing pickled fetal pigs.

“Night of the Fetal Pigs,” observed Sandra Journey, who was standing next to me.

During his presentation, Allison gave a historical and technical overview of creepy research and revealed some of the spine-tingling evidence AGHOST has collected during actual investigations of supposedly haunted places.

Apparently I’m one of those close-minded skeptics Allison kept referring to.

But why must the spirits always manifest themselves as a foggy smudge on a photograph or some unintelligible whisper on a tape recording?

Have all the ghosts signed some After Life Agreement that prevents them from simply showing up on Letterman and giving the mortal world a clear, understandable statement?

I’d love to meet a poltergeist. There are things I’m dying to know.

Is Ashlee Simpson as annoying and talent-impaired to the dead as she is to the living?

Is Dr. Atkins still on that stupid diet?

What does Howard Hughes think of the “The Aviator.” (I’m betting he can’t sit through the whole three hours without a bathroom break, either.)

And can the dearly departed see into the future?

If so, I’d like to know. There’s still time to place a Super Bowl bet.

I can’t say I’m all that impressed with Allison. If I were running a Seattle ghost hunting group, I’d be using all my resources to contact those King County dead people who voted in the governor’s election.

Yet not one of AGHOST’s 100-plus forays into The Unknown has been on this vital endeavor.

The group does have a nifty Web site. The computer-owning public can take a gander at the club’s activities at www.AGHOST.us.

The site features a number of photographs that show absolute and incontrovertible proof of AGHOST members actually eating breakfast and standing around in rooms holding probes and microphones.

“We, the ghost hunters, have made it our quest to provide substantial evidence that we are not alone in the dark,” declares the site’s home page.

“What is it that goes bump in the night and gives you the feeling of being watched when you’re all alone? With the work of ghost hunters today the truth will be found.”

I hope AGHOST does find answers to some of life’s most nagging questions.

Like, is it all over when we die? Or do we go somewhere else only to occasionally come back to vote in a really tight governor’s race?

And by the way, what issues would bring the dead out to the polls?

Probably not health care.