Real-life ghostbusters

Just a week after moving into the rental house on East First Avenue, Carmen Jett started hearing noises.

A muffled thump here. A bump there.

Before long, the sounds became more intense and frequent: a banging from within the walls, a clatter in the kitchen, the staccato beat of footsteps as if someone – or something – were scurrying up and down the room upstairs.

But each time they turned on the lights to check on the noise, no one was there.

“It scared everybody,” said Jett, who lives in the 1907 house along with her two children, three dogs and a roommate. “Then it got worse – it was starting to attack my kids.”

Terrified, Jett searched the Internet for help. On meetup.org, a Web site that connects people with others who share similar hobbies and interests, the 31-year-old discovered a Spokane group dedicated to exploring the paranormal: a ghost investigation team called “SpiritWhispers.”

Established earlier this year by a Spokane couple with a shared interest in the supernatural, SpiritWhispers describes itself as a “paranormal investigative team” that takes both a scientific and psychic approach to ghost hunting.

“Our goal is to assist people who are concerned about perceived paranormal occurrences in their environment,” according to the SpiritWhispers Web site. “In addition, we offer counseling to empower our clients in how to effectively cope with and handle any unexplainable activity. We are not here to judge, and we will not think you are crazy.”

The team not only uses up-to-date equipment and research into the history of the place that’s haunted, according to lead investigator Gene Rathbun, they also have members who are “psy-sensitives” – people so attuned to spirits and the paranormal that their revelations can give you goosebumps. During their ghost hunts, the psy-sensitives are given no information about the activities at the house in order for their perception to remain unbiased.

So the entire service – which is free, although SpiritWhispers accepts donations – includes many hours of work: pre- and post-investigation interviews; on- and off-site readings by the psy-sensitives; the actual investigation, which can take as long as three to four hours; documentation; education and counseling. And, if the client desires, SpiritWhispers also offers clergy services since Rathbun and his wife, Danielle Rathbun, are both ordained ministers. In addition to ghost investigations, SpiritWhispers also assists pagans and others with weddings, funerals, rituals and Reiki healings.

The Rathbuns, who live in Spokane, first delved into the paranormal about five years ago, when a spirit haunting their old house started bothering their 5-year-old son. They did some research, watched films and TV shows about the paranormal and soon discovered that they had a knack for ghost hunting.

“People started asking us for help,” said Gene Rathbun, who earns a living as a phlebotomist.

After getting together with others interested in the supernatural, the couple assembled a team of people who wanted to help folks claiming to have ghosts in their home.

Not every house, of course, is haunted, according to Gene Rathbun. After investigating a report about a disembodied hand appearing in the third-floor apartment of an old Spokane home this summer, the SpiritWhispers team found nothing related to the paranormal. In the end, they concluded that their client’s experiences were caused by the side effects of medication.

Still, ghosts do exist, insist the Rathbuns. And it’s always best to acknowledge them. “Be firm, as though you’re dealing with a bully,” Gene Rathbun advised. “They won’t necessarily leave the house, but tell them you want to be left alone.”

When Jett contacted SpiritWhispers this fall, she was relieved to be taken seriously by others who also believed in the paranormal.

The ghost in her home wasn’t a nice one, she told the SpiritWhispers team. In fact, it was upsetting her entire family.

Jett’s children, 11-year-old Katelyn and 10-year-old Boyd, refused to sleep in the second-floor bedroom. They told their mom they had seen the zippers on their tents moving on their own. Her daughter claimed she saw a hairy man with a knife appear in the room one night while her brother was sleeping.

Weird things continued to happen from the time they moved into the three-level, four-bedroom house in June. One of Jett’s dogs – Thor, a boxer with a gentle demeanor – began growling and barking at a wall, as though someone was standing right in front of him. Jett and her roommate also claimed to have caught glimpses of a man “with a lot of hair” standing in the kitchen.

Then there were the strange smells of raw meat and other odors that wafted in and out of the home – even when the garbage was taken out and no one was cooking.

On a Friday night last month, a team of five from SpiritWhispers arrived at Jett’s home, armed with flashlights, a laptop used as a recording device, a digital and video camera, and an electromagnetic field detector for measuring electromagnetic radiation. At least two of the investigators also brought along carved pieces of hematite and other crystals that served as pendulums.

“My main concern is that nobody goes anywhere alone, especially in a house this big,” Gene Rathbun warned the team earlier in the evening.

The first thing they did after introducing the team to Jett was to walk through the home with recording equipment – from the basement, where her roommate has a bedroom, through the main floor, all the way upstairs, where the residents refused to go.

During their three-hour investigation, which took place mostly in the dark, SpiritWhispers members reported the following information: Although nothing creepy was found in the basement, they, too, heard the footsteps and bumping sounds upstairs. The noises, however, quieted down when Jett’s roommate came home at about 10:30 p.m. One of the women on the team told the others she felt something “heavy” in the corner of the living room. She and another team member also claimed they smelled raw hamburger in the house and that they heard the sound of breathing in the kitchen.

Although Jett’s landlord had never received any complaints of a ghost in the house, the team concluded that the old East Central home was indeed haunted – in fact, by at least four or five spirits, although not all were considered menacing.

“They’re not particularly interested in you guys,” one of the investigators who only wanted to be identified as Heather told Jett. “My experience is that if you don’t let them bother you, they don’t bother you.”

A few weeks after the investigation at East First Avenue, Gene and Danielle Rathbun returned to perform a “cleansing” at the home by burning sage and sweet grass “to take out the negative energy.” They also placed glass containers of holy water in the four corners of Jett’s home.

Since SpiritWhispers came to her house, things have quieted down significantly, according to Jett, who received a DVD of the team’s findings. The sound of footsteps has disappeared and the children have begun sleeping upstairs again. But they still hear occasional noises and the dogs have started playing a running game with someone that no one can see.

“They’re not messing with us like they were,” Jett said. “We still have some ghosts – one in the kitchen and another upstairs – but they’re not bothering us anymore.”

Reach reporter Virginia de Leon at (509) 459-5312 or virginiad@spokesman.com.