Ghost hunters

Paranormal society sets up shop in Mahoning Valley

By BILL RODGERS / Tribune Chronicle
CORTLAND — It’s night and the snow is starting to fall on Park Avenue. On the radio, a voice warns of bad winter storms ahead.

Alone, inside the old Opera House, a group of people dressed in black lock themselves in for the night. They creep through it, stepping on creaking floorboards, walking past yellowed photographs. They hold blinking electronics, flashlights, camcorders and microphones.

And all the while they are searching, listening for Solomon Kline, whom — if the legends are true — hasn’t left the building in more than 100 years.

All-in-all, it’s just another Friday night for the Mahoning Valley Paranormal Society.

“I’ve heard ever since high school that the Opera House was haunted,” said co-founding member Mike Rohrbaugh, 22, of Warren. “It’s like fishing. Sometimes you find a hot spot. Sometimes you don’t.”

MVPS is a group of local paranormal investigators who search purportedly haunted places in the hopes of catching a spook on their audio and video equipment. They’re all cousins of Rohrbaugh except for Stephanie Conrad, who is Rohrbaugh’s fiancee.

Rohrbaugh, a 22-year-old who works at KraftMaid, first became interested in the supernatural at a very young age. That interest was fed by the creaking, old country house he grew up in.

The group formed a few years ago after hearing ghost stories while on a tour of the Mansfield Reformatory. They all loved the experience so much that they travel around the area in search of more weirdness. They keep records of their trips on their Web site.

“I’ve always been scared of ghosts. But I got interested in seeing if there was anything else out there,” Conrad said.

There might be something in the old Opera House, according to Di Matijevic of the Cortland-Bazetta Historical Society, which owns the building and rents it out. Built in 1841, the Opera House is the oldest building in Cortland. It began as a Methodist church, but is best remembered for being a center for music, drama and the arts in the late-1800s.

Then-owner Solomon Kline helped give the Opera House its life. And according to legend, he bummed around the place after his death.

Matijevic has heard the stories for years. People claim to have heard voices and music, while others say they have even seen figures dressed in clothing from the time period.

Matijevic, who swears she once heard someone walking up the stairs while she was alone there, wouldn’t be surprised if MVPS caught something. And although she’s sure Solomon is friendly, she hopes to keep him a little farther than arm’s length.

“I’ve never met him. I don’t want to,” she said.

But MVPS wants the exact opposite. Ray Marks set up a microphone to record onto a laptop computer in the main ballroom, which he said would pick up any voices. Cameras were positioned throughout the house in case something drifted through in the middle of the night. The crew will spend the next week reviewing this footage for evidence.

Sometimes they catch wisps of white on their film. Other times they say the specters are a little more brazen. Rohrbaugh played a digital recording he said was taken in an old mansion in Trinway, Ohio. The recording has the group members talking in the background, and then a voice flatly says “tickets.”

The group said that according to popular lore, a train wreck occurred nearby.

They could have problems in this investigation, however. It’s common knowledge among the historical society that Solomon is a somewhat snooty ghost. The stories say he only shows up for people who share his last name. Group member Rachel Miskell made it a point in her pre-investigation research to ask Matijevic if Solomon ever broke tradition in this respect. Matijevic said he hadn’t.

But that would not discourage Rohrbaugh.

“I’ve ran into a few places where people said they only got stuff from girls, that they only touch girls, but I got attacked that one time and I’m not a girl,” he said.

It is Rohrbaugh’s job to draw the ghost out, he said. That means asking a lot of questions and, if need be, insulting the ghost. At his most extreme, he has asked empty jail cells what it felt like to get prison shanked, but he thinks he may have gone too far at the Trinway mansion.

“I provoked it too much. Something grabbed my arm and I almost got pulled over a ledge,” he said.

So it might be a relief to the group that the Opera House, with its fliers of Temperance-era morality plays hanging on the walls, could be a more laid-back type of haunting.

The group was upbeat and optimistic as they took readings and stocked up on coffee before shutting themselves in for the night. Even Pat Linse, co-founder of the California-based Skeptics Society, was optimistic in a telephone interview.

“They will find a ghost. My psychic powers are telling me that they will find a ghost,” Linse said.

Linse said there were a few problems with using electronic instruments to chase after the paranormal. Ghost hunters like MVPS use electromagnetic field readers, which they say can indicate the presence of ghosts.

Who, Linse asked, decided that if this meter jumps, that means a ghost is nearby?

“You can make any kind of meter you wanted to use as a dowsing rod. That’s what it is, an electronic dowsing rod,” Linse said.

When asked about Linse’s comments, the group said they go into each of their investigations believing it’s just as likely they won’t find a ghost. Prior to the hunt, they went through the house scouting for places where the EMF reader would jump such as a breaker box, wiring, or something equally normal. And part of Miskell’s job in the group is researching the area to see if there could be any natural explanations for the “haunting.”

But Linse didn’t come off as sour. She said that ghost hunting could be a lot of fun.

And the group probably would agree with her there. Miskell and Robalyne Sciubba laughed that this was how their family got together for some fun.

But it was getting late. More snow was starting to fall. Soon it would be time for the group to kill the power to the lights and get to work. They had a long night ahead of them and a notoriously stubborn subject to work with.



brodgers@tribune-chronicle.com