Spirits sought at county museum

TEXAS PARANORMAL ADVANCED Research Team members spent the weekend investigating the Freestone County Museum in Fairfield. The team the first night consisted of: front l-r, Chrissy Snider, J.J. Rice, museum curator Sandy Bell, Kim Williams and Diane Johnson; back l-r, Jet Rice, Aaron Ramirez, Jimmy Billman, Mike Johnson and George Williams. Are ghosts haunting the Freestone County Museum in Fairfield?

There could be, and that is what a team of real life ghost hunters, Texas Paranormal Advanced Research Team (TEXPART), came to town Friday evening to determine.

Museum curator Sandy Bell and several volunteers believe the museum grounds, which includes a former Freestone county jail, are haunted and cite a number of happenings they can’t explain.

—Often she hears tapping sounds, such as on a window or counter, and there is nothing around that could be making the racket.

FREESTONE COUNTY MUSEUM curator Sandy Bell, left, and museum board member Kathleen McKee show a picture of Fairfield’s first firetruck in which a ghostly fireman appears to be sitting behind the wheel. —The covers on an old bed in the exhibit building get ruffled as if someone sat on the bed, and after Ms. Bell straightens the covers they get ruffled again.

—A picture of an old firetruck displayed on the museum grounds appears to show a fireman sitting behind the steering wheel, even though the windshield is almost opaque with dust.

—Lights in the old jail building turn on and off, although nobody has been in the jail.

—Ms. Bell says that while talking with visitors in the exhibit building, she was hit by a small bead that came from nowhere.

“We would like to know,” the curator says. “Also, if it is haunted it could become a tourism destination.”

“Ghost hunting has become one of the top activities in the nation.”

A check of television listings shows seven television programs are currently airing that deal with ghosts and the paranormal.

The old jail, a brick structure that resembles a structure on E. Main Street, served Freestone county from 1879-1913, and was a private residence from 1913-1966 when it was deeded to Freestone County Historical Association for use as a county museum.

As the site for a possible haunting it has the bona fides—-four legal hangings were conducted on the grounds.

The old jail, the third built in the county, sits on the site of two other county jails.

First hanging was in 1861 of a man convicted of murder, second was in 1875 of a man convicted of rape, third was in 1878 of a man convicted of murding his wife and stepdaughter and the last was in 1880 of a man convicted of killing his wife.

The last hanging was conducted inside the old jail that now is part of the museum complex.

In addition, Sheriff J.B. Rogers was fatally shot in 1872 by a horse thief within a block of the jail grounds, Ms. Bell reports.

If violent deaths contribute to hauntings, then the old Freestone county jail easily fits the bill.

When the facility served as a private residence, a staircase was moved from along an interior east wall to the middle of the structure, which leads to another ghost sighting.

Ms. Bell recounts that a man visiting the museum was upstairs in the jail building and said that he saw another man who walked down the staircase, the staircase that was removed during remodeling.

Recently, the curator and volunteer Casey Collins noticed a solar and flourescent light powered calculator cycling through numbers as it sat on the front desk in the exhibit building. The oddity, Ms. Bell says, is that the calculator does not work when it is sitting on the front desk.

“It was cycling as fast as it could,” Ms. Bell says.

TEXPART team members made a preliminary visit to the museum last month and came back Friday evening to spend two nights on the grounds with digital recording and video equipment.

“This is one of the things we can do together. It’s a lot of fun going to different places,” Mike Johnson of Denton, who arrived with wife Diane, says.

Leading the team were J.J. Rice, founder of the team, and Jimmy Kelly Billman of Dallas.

Billman has been involved in searching for paranormal activity since 1994, and has made treks to different sites regulary since seeing an apparition while visiting the Alamo with his daughter—-he saw a man walk across a path, but nobody was really there.

“That really got me going full bore,” he says.

In his investigations Billman reports he has witnessed pieces of glass flying across a room and a small girl apparition talking, and had his hair pulled and been slapped.

“I am a believer, but I think there are plenty of explanations,” he says. “We go in to try to explain it away first.”

The team uses infrared cameras linked to a computer to try and detect ghostly presences, and digital recorders to pick up otherworldly voices which sometimes are detected in the background of regular conversations.

Billman took a picture Friday night that showed a green orb in the museum exhibits building and will study the picture to try and determine what the cause might be.

K2 meters read the magnetic field in an area, and fluctuations of the field that could indicate paranormal activity.

Friday night the team got readings on the K2 meter in the exhibits building, and on asking questions of the presence a nearby cabinet started shaking, followed by skipping footsteps across the room and sounds of knocking and tapping in an area in which wooden counters from the Stewards Mill store are on display.

The K2 meter readings, shaking cabinet and noises were witnessed by a half dozen people.

Billman and Ms. Bell report that all electronic equipment set up in the old jail shut off for a short time Friday night as investigators

detected what they thought was a paranormal presence.

Team members worked in shifts over the weekend in the exhibits building, old jail, Young Community Church and log cabins on the museum grounds.

They were joined by some Freestone county residents who have ties to items at the museum—-for example Connie Watson of Fairfield is from the family that formerly lived in the Watson log cabin on the museum grounds, and she participated in the investigation Saturday night.

“It seems like activity picks up when members of certain families are in here,” Ms. Bell says.

As a way to perhaps entice spirits to appear, the old prisoners’ bathtub and a ball-and-chain were moved into the jail for the investigation.

TEXPART members will take all recordings and indications they received at the museum and study it over the next few weeks, trying to determine if there are reasonable explanations for what they saw and heard. If something can’t be explained, it could indicate ghost activity.

The first priority of the investigators, though, is to find a worldly explanation to anything they come across. Each team member writes a report, which are compared, and hours of video and audio recordings made at a site are played.

“You have to police yourself so that you don’t put out bogus information,” Johnson says. “When in doubt, throw it out.”

“I’m a skeptic and I’ll run it through the ringer.”

Should the TEXPART team determine that the museum grounds is a site of paranormal activity, haunted, it could be a tourist draw for Fairfield.

The team conducted a lengthy invesigation of several buildings in McKinney and found things they could not explain. McKinney now holds a “ghost walk” event at Halloween.

“We’re here for two purposes, to find out what is happening and to help support the museum,” Billman says. “It a service in more ways than one and, the truth is, it’s a whole lot of fun.”

When the investigation is completed, TEXPART will notify museum personnel and post their findings on their website.

Billman points out that even if paranormal activity is not detected, most of the team members are history buffs and enjoy researching locations.

In the meantime, the group has enough investigations scheduled to keep it busy through the summer.