Turning technology loose on the phantoms of the Inn

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Jul 3, 2008 | by Mike Martinez

BANTA -- There were strange noises and lights coming from the Banta Inn late Sunday and into early Monday, and reports of shadowy figures roaming the hallways, whispering "flash," or "that was me," "something touched me."

But it wasn't the usual things that go bump in the night.

The rustic former stagecoach stop and brothel that dates back more than a century has for years been a magnet for the hungry, but lately it's been drawing a different kind of crowd.

For the fifth time in the nearly two years since Dave Colli purchased the Banta Inn, a group of paranormal researchers descended upon the site. It's part research, part debunking and part curiosity -- but mostly it's hard work, as ghostly investigation groups have risen in popularity in part to television shows such as "Ghost Hunters" and "Most Haunted' breathing new life into looking for the dead.

This time, the researchers were armed with technology -- the elephant gun of ghost hunting. They unpacked equipment such as digital video and audio recorders, electromagnetic field detectors, infrared cameras and listening devices, which in concert -- and in theory -- can be used to help prove or disprove whether a place is actually haunted.

Christopher Gomez established the Pacific Ghost Hunters, a loose collection of people who want to find out if there really is "life" after death. Gomez is an admitted skeptic and said it would probably take a chair flying across a room to make him to believe in ghosts.

He spent thousands of dollars on equipment, which he hauls around, sets up and tears down.

"What brought me to want to start doing this was programs like 'Ghost Hunters,' " Gomez said. "They provide a good perspective. They don't put their views into the investigations, just the science, whether it's proof or not. Man is analytical by nature, likes to figure things out and debate them. I started doing this because I want to be convinced."

Most mysterious events at the inn are attributed to a pair of former regulars. Tony was a bartender who died of a heart attack one night while behind the bar. Then there was Margaret, who passed away while sitting in a recliner watching television. There also are stories of a woman and her child perishing in a fire, and one about a woman who was murdered on an outside patio area about 1900.

Colli said he doesn't mind sharing his ghost stories -- it's good for business. But he would rather people visited the inn for the food -- the rib-eye dinner is delicious.

Beer bottles have been known to move off a table, change was stacked up on the bar and people have heard the sounds of a baby crying. Potatoes reportedly have come flying out of the oven. Then there are the images of figures glimpsed in a mirror or the feeling of someone tugging on a person's hair.

"Tony likes to make himself known once in a while," Colli said. "That's just my impression. He doesn't like being sought out."

One recent morning, the front door opened and a kitchen worker saw someone walk by. He told the waitress she had a customer. She already had one diner who was sitting alone at a corner table.

"She comes out looking for a customer and only sees the one that's been there -- and his eyes are as big as they can be," said Tammy Schultz, Colli's girlfriend.

Colli finished the story: "They said his hair was standing up and he had goose bumps. They asked him what was the matter and he said he just saw a figure coming through."

It was those stories that attracted Gomez, Nancy Bowman and Patty, who declined to give her last name, all residents of Santa Clara County with normal day jobs. Gomez is a flooring contractor, Bowman works as an executive assistant in Silicon Valley, and Patty serves as a paralegal when not investigating the paranormal.

They don't charge for investigating someone's claim. It's done for the research, and to help the property owner get some peace of mind. Gomez estimated that 80 percent of haunting claims are the result of overactive imaginations, but Sunday evening's investigation started out eventful and promising.

As Bowman, an investigator with the California Paranormal Research, began unpacking her research tools, she also gave a brief description of some of her equipment, such as the K-2 monitor that measures electromagnetic fields. The theory is, spirits or entities are made up of energy, so when they come close to the device, they illuminate a short row of lights colored from green, for weak signals, to red, the strongest.

She put the K-2 down on a table and told Tony, the dead bartender, that if he could hear her, make the device light up twice. After a short pause with no results, she began to fish another device out her bag. As she turned away, all the lights on the monitor blinked on, then off, then on and off again.

"I was surprised," Bowman said. "It shouldn't have been doing that. There was no reason for it to go off.'

Then there were some false alarms. Bowman and Patty, the third investigator on the team, both said they felt something lightly touch them on the arm. It turned out to be a fly. A shadowy figure seen walking across the dining room turned out to be Gomez, who had just finished taking pictures and was returning to the command center.