HAMLET — If you’re the kind of person who enjoys a good scare, the Pee Dee Paranormal Group’s Hamlet Depot Ghost Tour aims to fulfill all your spooky needs.

During their third iteration of the tour, the tried and tested investigators will lead the group through the Hamlet Depot, the Tornado Building and, for the first time, the caboose. The tours will run at 8, 9, 10 and 11 p.m. on Oct. 19 and 20 and cost $20 apiece.

Last year, the group said they recorded male and female voices, as well as a child’s voice, using their state-of-the-art audio equipment. They also said they witnessed lights flickering, heard ambient voices answering questions through “spirit boxes” — tools that scramble radio frequencies randomly, allowing spirits to communicate with our corporeal dimension — and felt things brush up against them when nothing visible was there.

The group asks participants to download spirit box apps iOvilus, Digital Dowsing, Echovox or Portal. In their arsenal, Pee Dee has thermal cameras and motion sensors to pick up any paranormal activity.

The Pee Dee Paranormal Group conducts dozens of investigations around the area each year, and ventures up to other known haunts along the East Coast. The group is nonprofit, thought it accepts donations to pay for equipment — batteries mostly, co-founder Robert Humphries said.

On Friday the 13th last October, the group investigated a Civil War-era home the residents said was inhabited by an entity they referred to as “Barlow,” the name of the former owner of the home. Barlow apparently was standing over the matriarch of the family while she sat at her computer, was moving chairs and opening cabinet doors their children couldn’t reach, and creating other strange phenomena, including flipping a heavy ceramic coffee cup off a high surface and causing it to land upside down without spilling.

In January, group members investigated a home in Taylorsville, where the residents reported “poltergeist activity” but apparently housed a much more sinister presence than previously thought.

Another in Monroe in February created multiple readings on the vast array of detection tools the investigators have at their disposal, but they ultimately concluded that the spirits meant no harm — not all ghosts are mean.

The big night of the year, Humphries said, was the St. Albans Sanatorium, an old hospital for the mentally ill known as one of the most haunted locations in the county.

“We do it because we love to do it — we’re seeking the truth: Is there life after death?” Humphries said in an interview last week. “We help people. If you feel uncomfortable in your home because of some entity and we can come in and help you understand it and feel comfortable again, we do it.”

The third annual Hamlet Depot Ghost Tour will take participants through the depot, the Tornado Building and the caboose. The tours will run at 8, 9, 10 and 11 p.m. Oct. 19 and 20.
https://www.yourdailyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/web1_Depot-BW.jpgThe third annual Hamlet Depot Ghost Tour will take participants through the depot, the Tornado Building and the caboose. The tours will run at 8, 9, 10 and 11 p.m. Oct. 19 and 20.

Staff report