http://ledger.southofboston.com/articles/2008/02/01/news/news07.txt

‘Yes, the town hall of Cohasset is haunted’

By BARRY SMITH
The Patriot Ledger

COHASSET - Is old Cohasset Town Hall haunted?

That question brought a team of paranormal investigators to the lofty white mid-19th century building on Cohasset Common last weekend.

Matt Kondracki of Enfield, Conn., founder of the Enfield Paranormal Society, said the study affirmed paranormal activity that, he believes, is caused by a male ghost - ‘‘and yes, the town hall of Cohasset is haunted.’’

The team worked well into the night last Friday and Saturday, he said.

Researchers brought in a variety of surveillance and monitoring equipment to pick-up paranormal phenomena, he said. That included infrared night vision cameras, digital voice recorder, an electro-magnetic field sensing detector, a meter to detect spectral energy, digital cameras and a large monitor screen.

A second floor door leading to the attic stairs was caught on video recording slowly closing before slamming shut at the end, he said.

‘‘We heard some banging and heavy breathing in the basement,’’ he also said.

Saturday night, Kondracki said, one of the doors in a set of double-doors leading out of the auditorium opened about halfway and stayed open, again for no apparent reason.

David Wadsworth, local historian and town archivist, said when he stopped by town hall about mid-day Sunday he was shown a videotape of the attic stairway door in motion.

‘‘I’m a skeptic about the existence of paranormal activity,’’ Wadsworth said Thursday night.

‘‘There has been a ghost story, about a ghost in the cellar - an 1857 cellar - which is kind of a spooky place,’’ Wadsworth said, citing the year the New England Italianate-style town hall was built. An addition was put on in the late 1980s.

‘‘There’s an old jail cell that used to be the town lockup,’’ Wadsworth said, adding that one of three original cells remains intact.

Kondracki said one day he was perusing a Web site for paranormal activity called The Shadowlands that listed Cohasset town hall as a possible location of poltergeist activity and that raised his interest.

A one-hour program on the paranormal weekend probe will air sometime in April on Cohasset’s ‘‘Our Town’’ show on Channel 10, producer Pat Martin said.

Kondracki said he’d like to come back to town hall for more research and to check if ghostly evidence can still be detected.

Meanwhile, it’s on to Torrington, Conn., this weekend to conduct an investigation at the Yankee Pedlar Inn, he said.

Your Views

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Barry Smith may be reached at bsmith@ledger.com .

Copyright 2008 The Patriot Ledger