On the nights of April 4 and 5, a paranormal investigation team conducted a search into UTC's well-documented haunted history, to see if evidence could be found to support the ghostly sightings in Hooper Hall and Patten Chapel.
Tennessee Paranormal Investigation Team is a group of private citizens, one of which is a UTC student, that has conducted several searches around various possible haunted locations in Tennessee, according to Joe McKeel, founder of the team.
According to McKeel, the team uses several devices to search for the paranormal: digital cameras, night-vision video cameras, digital voice recorders, infrared illuminators and an Electromagnetic Field Detector. He said they set up a command center where someone can monitor the video cameras during the investigation, and DVD recorders capture the video data from each camera.
"We are a debunking style team," McKeel said. "We are not out to prove a place is haunted. We are out to disprove."
According to Georgiana Kotarski, author of "Ghosts of the Southern Tennessee Valley," there have been several reports of strange happenings in Hooper Hall. She said faculty, custodians and campus police have witnessed abnormal activity in the empty building at night such as doors slamming, footsteps, elevators ascending to the top floor for no reason and strange drops in temperature in certain spots.
For further investigation, Chuck Cantrell, assistant vice chancellor of university relations, said he gave a psychic a piece of paper with "615 McCallie Ave." written on it. Cantrell said the psychic told him a man named John had committed suicide in a room in the building that was filled with chemicals. After looking through some old newspapers, Cantrell discovered that indeed on January 7, 1924, a grounds keeper named John Hockings had gassed himself in a chemical store room in Hooper Hall, which at that time was the science building.
According to Kotarski, there have also been reports in Patten Chapel of people hearing organ music coming from the chapel in the middle of the night, slamming doors, footsteps and a woman in white seen at the chapel.
On the first night of the investigation, the team set up their equipment in Patten Chapel. McKeel said he felt something push him in the bell tower, and Jeremy Wagner, investigator, said he felt something tug on his shirt. McKeel and Wagner, as well as other members of the team, said they saw about a 3-foot dark object running around the chapel on different occasions.
On the following night, the team moved to Hooper Hall. McKeel said he heard a loud bang while up in the top floor. He said everyone was accounted for and no one was in the area between Hooper and Race where the bang occurred.
Wagner said he heard footsteps and banging inside of Patten while sitting outside, but could not go into the building to investigate the second night because it was locked.
McKeel said after reviewing the data, the main thing they could not explain on the evidence was the loud bang in Hooper on the second night. He said the microphones on two cameras picked up the bang, and it sounded as if it happened right next to a camera set up in the middle of the hallway. He said the other camera down the hall clearly shows no one was near the other camera, and everyone in attendance turned and looked when it occurred.
"There was not sufficient evidence to prove or disprove that either place is haunted," McKeel said.
Marcus Ellsworth, lead investigator of the team and a Murfreesboro, Tenn., junior, said quiet, dark places can sometimes psychologically make people see things that are not there, but cameras provide more reliable evidence."A camera is not going to make up what it sees," Ellsworth said. Both McKeel and Ellsworth said the team would be willing to do a follow up investigation.
