Sun, Sep 07 2008
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Published June 27, 2008 02:46 pm - According to employees at Jim’s Place, there have been several unexplained incidents and a general sense of something unworldly and “spooky” at the Carthage bar. Spirited search: Ghost hunters investigate claims of paranormal activity at Carthage bar w/ video By Dustin Shipman
dshipman@joplinglobe.com CARTHAGE, Mo. — It’s closing time at Jim’s Place, 1:30 a.m. on a Sunday. The dim, neon light reflects through the whiskey bottles behind the bar, and the nasally voice of Bob Dylan plays on an old Rowe AMI jukebox. The members of the Ghost Hunters and Investigators of the Ozarks begin setting up electromagnetic field meters, video cameras and the audio equipment they’ll need to look for any signs of poltergeists, phantoms of other paranormal activity in the establishment. According to employees at Jim’s, there have been several unexplained incidents and a general sense of something unworldly and “spooky” at the bar, located at 324 W. Fourth St. Stories of supernatural encounters have been traded back and forth between the staff and customers for years, but it wasn’t until last month that a motion-sensing security camera captured something which has confirmed suspicions and made nonbelievers think twice. The video is a short, 10-second clip from the security camera. A strange light — an orb of some kind — hovers over a chair, the very seat favored by a longtime customer who is now deceased. The orb raises from its position and moves forward, then quickly away from the camera and out of view up a staircase. Shannon Silvey, a manager at the bar who lives in an apartment above it, said she has had several encounters with the “ghost,” which she believes has been captured on film. “This kind of stuff happens all the time in this building, two or three times a week,” Silvey said. “I will be here late at night and hear footsteps in my kitchen. Once I was in here late one night and no one else was here and all the Tupperware flew off the top shelf in the kitchen.” With the video evidence in hand and a curiosity to get to the bottom of these strange events, a call was made. No, not to the Ghostbusters or X-Files agents, but to a paranormal investigation group called the Ghost Hunters and Investigators of the Ozarks. “Basically, our job is to help anyone who thinks that they need help with a paranormal problem,” said Rex Baldwin, lead investigator for the group. “We try to see if we can find a natural explanation for things and a lot of the times it can be. But other times it can’t. We approach everything we do as skeptics. We try to disprove the activity, and when we are left with something you can’t disprove, then we can consider that as evidence.” The group originally started out based in Aurora, said founder Bill Hutson, but now has members from around the region. 
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