Ghost-hunters haunt Broadview Heights
Visitors want developmental center tour 
Saturday, May 27, 2006
V. David Sartin
Plain Dealer Reporter

Broadview Heights - Mayor Glenn Goodwin isn't the only one who doesn't
like visitors at the old Broadview Developmental Center.
There are also the ghosts.
At least three groups of paranormal investigators want permission for a
night tour of the abandoned 250-bed former hospital and home for
retarded people before it is demolished in a few weeks.

With cameras, laser-guided thermometers, voice recorders and other
instruments, they believe they would prove ghosts are in the building.
Some of the same investigators say that during an earlier visit outside
the building, they captured a voice telling them "Get out." When they
didn't scram, the voice said, "Who are you?"

Folklore, decades old, is that a ghost called the Pink Lady lives in the
building.
Goodwin, who has been approached repeatedly for permission to tour the
building, this week denied the request for a night visit.
"It's an incredible safety hazard," Goodwin said, referring to the
deteriorated condition of the building, not what may be lurking in the
hallways.

Sandy Gunvalsen of Parma and Sandy Ables of North Ridgeville want to
look for ghosts at night because they believe ghosts are most active
around midnight for five days before and after a full moon.
They said they have found evidence of ghosts during about 25 hunts they
have conducted in Ohio and West Virginia. They often invite skeptics to
join.

Some of their evidence was collected at about 11 p.m. on March 18
outside the Broadview building, a five-story brick and sandstone
structure built in 1939 as a Veterans Administration hospital.
Gunvalsen snapped a photo of windows with a digital camera and a strobe
light. Although they did not see a ghost, a ghost appears in the photo,
they say.

They acknowledge that a skeptic might call it a filmy haze.
Also, a digital recorder captured what they believe is their strongest
evidence on April 15.
Amid a conversation about an Easter basket for Ables' 3-year-old
daughter, a voice says, "Get out."

A few minutes later, the voice says, "Who are you?"
"It's unbelievable," Gunvalsen said. "It didn't want us there."
Lawrence Krauss, a Case Western Reserve University professor of physics,
is not convinced.

"There is not one shred of credible evidence of ghosts," said Krauss.
The VA hospital was converted to a state home in the 1960s. It closed in
1989. The building and 68 acres were bought by the city in 1995 for
$750,000.
City officials met this week with demolition firms seeking what could be
a $1 million contract to tear down the old building and two smaller
structures and to restore the land to an expansive lawn.

City committees are considering putting soccer and baseball fields, a
bandstand or even a recreation center on the property.
What happens to the ghosts?

"They'll be mad," said Gunvalsen. "They linger. They'll be more active."