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Ghost hunter visits Glen Carbon
Len Adams discussed paranormal phenomena, experiences

By Marissa Vickers

Strange voices, things that go bump in the night, inexplicable energy that surrounds you and takes over all your thoughts and emotions.

These are just a few of the encounters ghost hunter Len Adams says he has witnessed during his paranormal investigations.

Adams visited the Glen Carbon Centennial Library on Wednesday to relate some of the experiences he's endured in his skeptically viewed ghost world.  One of the things Adams stresses the most is not to believe everything you see on television, noting "The Haunted," Chris Angel's "Mind Freak" and other programs are fabulously exaggerated.

"There's just so much crap that ends up on TV and we're constantly downplaying what people see. Just because it's on TV, doesn't mean it's the gospel. 'Taps' on Sci-Fi -- they're the closest," Adams said. "You kind of sell your soul to the devil because you're at the mercy of producers.

"The Discovery Channel wants to buy several of my stories and I won't sell them. I'd rather have some kind of integrity than do something like that," he said.

Adams belongs to the American Ghost Society, of which he is vice president. The American Ghost Society, founded by fellow ghost hunter and author Troy Taylor, boasts more than 800 paranormal enthusiasts throughout the United States, Canada, England and Wales.

"Our research patterns are we don't go in with the psychic or a crystal ball. We use the history of the locations to try to explain what's going on. We work for that solid evidence," Adams said.

One of Adams' favorite experiences took place in Wales at Craig-y-Nos Castle. He explained that he and his wife, Kim, had just finished dinner when he left to go check his equipment. After a while his wife became curious as to his whereabouts and began searching for him.

Kim made her way through the castle and ended up in the courtyard where she saw a little girl standing in the rain by their vehicle. Adams described the little girl as about 12 years old wearing what appeared to be turn-of-the-century clothing.

"Kim heard her say, 'Can I go with you?' At that point she heard a noise behind her, which was me, and when she turned back around the little girl was gone. She didn't tell me this until later and Kim said it didn't even dawn on her that even though it was raining, the little girl wasn't getting wet," Adams said.

Adams admitted that scariest paranormal experience he ever had was in the Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Kentucky.

"Back in the early 1900s when tuberculoses was running rampant, they built this hospital. Thousands and thousands of people died there -- many times the cures were worse the disease. It was empty for a year and then it became a mental institution. There were over 65,000 people who died there - 65,000 documented deaths," Adams said.

During a tour of the facility, Adams decided to go off on his own.

"Never leave the group," he said.

He wandered up to the fifth floor which was the floor in which the people with the worst cases of tuberculoses, and years later "the worst of the worst" mental patients, were kept.

"I wondered up to a room, room 502. It was a nurse's station. I knew something happened there but I didn't know what. So I walked into the room on my own and I'm standing with the video camera. I started to shake and started getting this feeling of dread like something was going to happen.

"I reached out toward the window and was just riveted to the spot I was at. I started to cry and this dread got worse and worse. Nobody knew I was up there then I heard my friends Luke and Matt. I don't want to say it was a spell, but whatever I was under just kind of snapped. For 10 minutes I was just shaking and crying. It took me 10 whole minutes to compose myself," Adams said.

He later found out that in the late 1920s there was an unmarried, pregnant nurse who apparently hanged herself in the very spot Adams was standing in. Years later another nurse supposedly jumped out of the window five stories to her death, but Adams said she could have very well been pushed also.

In addition to doing investigations and visiting various communities to speak about his passion, Adams also leads the Alton haunted tours.

To all the skeptics, he has simple advice.

"Come with me. That's what I tell them. Maybe something will happen, maybe it won't -- just have an open mind is all I ask. If you go in with a closed mind, just stay home," he said.