Knoxville, Tennessee - Oak Ridge’s historic Alexander Inn is well-known not only for the scientists who once stayed there, but for those who some say are still inside.

Saturday night, investigators with the Office of Paranormal Studies put all the ghost stories to the test.

“We’re ghost hunters. We go around to places where paranormal activity is claimed. We’ll check it out for ourselves and see what we can find,” said Office of Paranormal Studies Co-Founder Clint Ferguson.

“There’s a lot of rumors that it’s haunted. We’d like to find out if it’s haunted or it’s not. If there’s activity here, we’ll find it,” Investigator Pete Fransen said.

Requests to track paranormal activity at the old hotel aren’t rare.

“I get a call probably every week to either take a tour to see the ghosts or somebody wants to come look for ghosts,” Oak Ridge Revitalization Effort Executive Director Kate Groover said.

This time, the Oak Ridge Revitalization Effort decided to say yes.

“A month ago, I took it to my board and said, ‘Look, what are we going to do about this?’ And they said, ‘Let them go. It can’t hurt us,’” Groover recounted.

ORRE, which bought the Alexander Inn last December, has faced consistent challenges with fund-raising efforts to restore the old hotel.

“We’ve been a little disappointed with our fund-raising efforts and so we thought, maybe this will help us do something, maybe it’ll bring us more attention, maybe we’ll get some more national exposure out of it,” Groover said.

Investigators spent six hours studying the deteriorating, graffiti-filled rooms and hallways.

“Sometimes we catch stuff, most of the time we don’t,” Ferguson said.

They used electromagnetic field detectors and night-vision cameras, as well as radios to open up potential lines of communication.

“Capture disembodied voices, voices of the dead,” Ferguson said.

Investigators also checked temperatures throughout the night with thermometers because they believe paranormal activity typically brings with it a drop in temperature.

When studying a room, the team would often ask questions out loud such as, “Is there anyone else here?” or “Would you please make yourself known?”

Towards the end of the evening, some investigators believe they picked up audio on one of their radios.

However, they say more conclusive results won’t come for another few weeks until after they’ve been able to review all the data, including audio and video recordings.

If anything abnormal shows up, the paranormal may become a more normal piece of Oak Ridge’s history.

“We’ll start having ghost tours I guess and charging money for it,” Groover laughed. - Alison Morrow