STAFFORD, Conn. - With all the talk about the future of the vacant Borough School, there are a few who haven't had their say -- the spirits that may still live there.
Tony Diana, a local ghost investigator, claims there are at least two spiritual entities, believed to be children, haunting the former school. He says there may be another entity, possibly a female teacher from the 1930s and 1940s, who haunts the building as well.
Diana, co-founder of Insight Paranormal Investigations, has investigated the school on several occasions and claims a lot of spiritual activity has taken place.
He calls the building a wonderfully "controlled environment for ghost hunting."
In one incident, in Room 205, an investigator for another ghost hunting group that was working with Insight Paranormal Investigations had his digital thermometer inexplicably fly out of his hand and his camera went next. The incident was caught on video.
Diana says one can see the camera strap lift up before it left the man's hands.
Also, a light in one of the rooms has gone and off by itself during an investigation, he says.
Diana also claims that knocking has been heard and electronic voice phenomena, or EVPs, have been captured on recorded audio throughout the school.
According to Diana, recorders generate a lot of white noise and spirits can modulate this noise to communicate.
Essentially, a ghost investigator asks a question while the recorder is running and waits for a response. Sometimes a human-sounding voice can be heard following a question.
The recorder is kept rolling through many investigations and sometimes a voice will inexplicably appear.
Diana says that was the case during one investigation earlier this year. Some investigators were having a conversation about wine and an inexplicable voice -- that the investigators didn't hear while they were speaking -- can be heard on the audio recording.
Diana says that a little boy can be heard on the recorded audio saying, "It's mine! See you should have brought me some wine."
He also says the sound of what sounds like chopping wood with an ax can be heard on audio. Diana says the area where the school is located was once farmland.
On subsequent investigations, investigators brought wine, but nothing ever happened to it.
Diana says that ghosts are "us" and keep some human behaviors after death. He says the majority of spirits aren't of an angry nature.
Occasionally, there is a possibility that a place can become haunted with a lost or angry spirit.
He also says that conversations can be effective in drawing spiritual entities' voices into speaking.
Some spirits may not like the question and answer format to prove that they exist.
"Who wants to interrogated?" Diana asks.
In other experiences of EVP activity, Diana says an unknown voice can be heard saying "stop coming here" in Room 103.
He says another EVP sounds like it came from a child that says "see me in the corner" and an adult voice follows with "hey!"
The Borough and Witt school buildings closed in 2007 to make way for the new Stafford Elementary School.
Officials are determining what to do with the Borough building. Among the options include turning it to a home for deaf people and even leveling it.
Diana says research shows that two children died of pneumonia near the location before the school was built in 1921.
Diana and a reporter visited the empty school on a recent day.
The reporter explained the building's precarious future and asked any possible spiritual entities what they thought should happen.
There was no audible response in the electronic recording.
But, in other instances, other sounds were captured while Diana and the reporter were talking. In one instance, a high-pitched voice can be heard. In another, there is what sounds like grunting sounds.
In another instance, a possible low-sounding voice seems audible.
Diana also says he seemed to be answered with a faint "hello" and a "no" at different points during the investigation.
But the sounds are not the most conclusive of EVPs. The best EVPs are classified in the Class-A, or crystal clear, quality.
Ghost investigators also use other types of tools to assist them during their "haunting" expedition. Besides digital voice recorders, digital thermometers, digital cameras and an electromagnetic field, or EMF detector, can be helpful.
Investigators use the tools in a variety of ways to detect possible spirits. For example, an EMF can supposedly pick up on possible spirit energy.
Diana says that when a spirit manifests itself, it draws on the energy around it to form. The sudden jump in the electromagnetic field will cause a spike on the detector, and investigators can follow the energy to take a picture and talk into the recorder more accurately.
Pictures can show other things like mist, which is believed to possibly be the coalescing of energy to form an apparition.
Diana recently used a k-2 meter, which is more sensitive than his EMF meter. But, unfortunately, he didn't receive any unexplained spikes at the school.
He says the building seems to come alive with spiritual activity during the night hours.
Diana says people who worked and live near the school have told him about weird things that have been spotted or happened inside the building. Among these stories, people told him of unexplained shadows moving in front of doors and kitchenware rattling.
Doug Minich, the town's data control manager, says he has heard rumors of spirits at the school as well.
He also says a motion sensor sounded an alarm for code 19 -- or Room 204 -- on numerous times.
Minich says during his trips to visit the school after the alarm, he found the structure secured.
He adds that an animal like a rat wouldn't be big enough to trip the alarm.
"This room seems to be a hotspot," Diana says of Room 204. "A lot of stuff seems to happen here."
Diana says a fellow investigator knows a remote viewer from California who guided him to Room 204 via a telephone conversation. A remote viewer is a psychic who can connect with a location via a photograph or a physical connection like a telephone and with that connection they can obtain psychic impressions of a place and its past, Diana says.
The remote viewer said an image of a woman dressed in garb from the 1930s or 40s came to mind with respect to that room in the school.
Diana says that an older adult voice has showed up on EVPs.
He also says that investigators once followed an unexplained cold spot for 10 minutes in the room.
Diana says that entities suck up energy as they move and the area where they've been is cold. Diana likens cold sports to the tails of comets.
Room 204 was where the lights inexplicably went on and off by themselves.
Diana says he would like to continue investigating the school, but access has been restricted to the building due to a neighbor's complaint.
For now, it seems the doings of any possible spiritual beings, much like the future of the school, remains unknown.
