Ghost hunter shadows Aycock Auditorium
By Jim Schlosser
Staff Writer

"I believe in ghosts, although I don't believe everything I hear from
people is a ghostly phenomenon." Al Proffit, a Western Carolina University professor who is a ghost hunter in his spare time.

GREENSBORO -- The professor listened intently as Julian Cheek, costume shop supervisor at Aycock Auditorium, told of the figure in the hall below the stage. Cheek was distracted, he said, and didn't notice if it was a man or woman. He said the figure "continued into the voltage panel over there and disappeared. I shrugged it off and told myself, 'You haven't had your morning coffee yet.''
"Absolutely fascinating,' declared professor Al Proffit of Western Carolina University, tape recorder running and his camera aimed at the panel.

Later, Proffit said the photos he shot at different spots in the auditorium contained "orbs."
He says many camera experts dismiss orbs as dust particles, but ghost hunters like himself believe orbs are "spirits, or souls or psychic energy of some sort and are in a perfect form, a circle, to travel through this dimension." "I believe in ghosts, although I don't believe everything I hear from
people is a ghostly phenomenon," he told the UNCG group. Proffit was here recently at the invitation of Anita Gill, owner of Twin Lakes Bed & Breakfast, the former home of the late John Harden. He wrote "Tar Heel Ghosts" and "The Devil's Tramping Ground."

Gill wanted Proffit to inspect the B&B for ghosts. Gill also called UNCG for Proffit to meet people at Aycock. They also visited Greensboro College's Main Building, also said to be haunted.
Legend says the figure seen in Aycock Auditorium is "Jane Aycock,' who allegedly has haunted the building since it opened in 1927. The group with Proffit told of lights and radios coming on mysteriously, of sewing machines spinning without anyone operating them, of hands on
shoulders but no one there, of steps on an empty stage that stop and don't resume.
Student Jenifer Root, Aycock's assistant technical manager, says she and others were alone late one night when a trumpet began playing in the otherwise empty building.

Reports of scary happenings in Aycock go way back. The late, highly regarded drama professor Raymond Taylor told of removing and stacking clothing on hot summer days when the building lacked air conditioning. He'd later find the garments scattered. Proffit said auditoriums, colleges and churches are "fertile ground for ghostly happenings" -- anywhere "that has experienced serious emotional involvement."

Proffit teaches education leadership at Western. His ghost-hunting sideline takes him afar to inspect reported haunted haunts. He recently slept on the USS North Carolina, the World War II battleship in Wilmington. A caretaker told of a ghost four decks below where four sailors were killed by a torpedo. "He said it appears to be a man with his head on fire, and if you see him once you never want to see him again."

Proffit saw no burning head, but heard footsteps and moving objects. In the dark fourth deck, his fully-charged flashlight quit, but shined again when he reached topside. A similar happening occurred in Aycock's attic. While trying to photograph a bird skeleton -- Jane's pet, it's said -- his camera failed and stayed on the blink as he followed Jan Hullihan, assistant director for event production, up spooky spiral staircases to dark, unused creepy spaces.

Once he returned to the lobby, the camera worked. A West Virginia native, Proffit says he grew up in a haunted house. His family never was afraid. "That's not to say ghosts can't be scary and have a prankster spirit,' he says. "But ghosts have never been responsible for a death that I know
of. Most people get hurt trying to run away from them.'

He says he's never seen an apparition, but while alone in a Virginia church, a door opened and a light appeared. He hollered to ask the spirit to knock once for Proffit to leave, twice to stay.
A loud single knock sent Proffit fleeing. He hunts ghosts on his own time. But, he says, Western Carolina recently gave him the go-ahead for a research project on the paranormal.

Proffit says the biggest skeptics are his fellow ghost hunters. Their tests find that many weird occurrences have scientific explanations, but others don't. Before concluding that Ayock has ghosts, he says, testing with such devices as electro-magnetic meters would be needed.
He says intelligent people such as the UNCG group can't be dismissed as loony.
Erin Doll Stevie, Aycock's technical crew manager as a student in 2001, told Proffit of working there late on a design project. When she dropped her T-square, radiators hissed. But Stevie wonders if it was Jane Aycock. "Jane' was said to be an elderly woman who hanged herself in the attic of a house torn down for Aycock.

Stevie met the woman's granddaughter. She said her granny died happily and naturally after a long life.

People always chuckle at Proffit's doings, "but then they say, 'Tell me more. Can I go along with you.' They are really fascinated with it."