Spirited Shanty Of A Dead Sailor

Sounds of footsteps and dis-embodied voices are captured during an investigation of a naval museum.

Columbus, Georgia - What do you do with a haunting sailor? That’s not a bawdy seaman’s song like What do you do with a drunken sailor? Nor is it a hypothetical question at the Port Columbus National Civil War Naval Museum.

The place really is haunted, ghost hunters say.

That’s the assessment of the Alabama Paranormal Research Team headed by Salem’s Faith Serafin, who said an eight-hour ghost hunt Aug. 15 “exceeded my expectations - by far, I mean vastly.”

Serafin said recording equipment captured the sounds of footsteps on a wooden deck and of disembodied voices that paranormal investigators call EVPs, or “Electronic Voice Phenomena.” The research team has posted some of those recordings on its Web site.

“In no investigation I have ever conducted, either as a sole individual hunter or as an organized group, have I ever been to a location where I pulled so many what we consider platinum EVPs,” Serafin said. “These are obvious EVPs of different voices.”

Of those recordings posted on the Web site’s “Investigations” menu, the first is interpreted as an “argh,” like in pirate talk, and then the salutation “Hey Mark!” The second is said to be “Sit down,” and the third is described as: “A whispering voice that asks ‘Would you like coffee?’ or possibly something in effect to a coffin.”

Books And Brushes

The ghost hunt was arranged after museum workers reported that books occasionally fly off a rear book shelf in the gift shop and a spindle upon which trinkets hang at the shop’s front counter spins by itself. To this the paranormal research team on its site adds: “Even the apparition of a sailor seems to be seen on the surveillance system.”

During the 7 p.m.-3 a.m. ghost hunt, team members and museum workers sat at a table inside a replica of the USS Hartford, where they felt some unseen force touch them.

“At every point, every one of them, with the exception of myself, had felt something brush past them or stroke them, and it was almost as if it just went in a circle around the table,” Serafin said.

On the EVP said to be “Sit down,” a ghost hunter asks, “Are you doing that? Are you touching people?”

Then there were the footsteps, like on a ship’s deck, which also were posted on the Web site.

“Just to be able to document that personal experience and have so many people experience it and back it up with factual evidence, that’s astounding,” Serafin said. “There is no doubt in my mind that there are still some sailors at Port Columbus.”

If only they would speak more clearly.

Author: Tim Chitwood

Source - http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/