Durango is an old Western town, and with that comes a lot of history.
And ghosts.
There have been ghost walks and tunnel tours that have sprung up in Durango, piquing the interest of residents and tourists about the town’s otherworldy residents.
But what happens when spirits start to frighten or otherwise disrupt the lives of those living with them?
Enter Four Corners Paranormal Investigations.
Tessa Thomas-Peterson, founder and director of FCPI, said the group originally started in 2012. When the group lost members, she said she was on her own, and then she met the current group of fellow investigators. They’ve been working together for the past four years.
The group gets calls from people in the area who have something going on in either their home or business that they just can’t explain. FCPI comes in – without charge – to try to get to the bottom of the disturbance.
Thomas-Peterson said FCPI is also planning to offer ghost hunts this summer for members of the public.
But don’t expect it to be like the relatively quick and dramatic ghost-hunting episodes you catch on television.
“I think what you have to keep in mind with the TV shows is they add a lot of extra oohs and ahhhs,” said FCPI investigator Melanie Oles-Graham. “Not that we aren’t scared, but a lot of the stuff you see on TV is because they’re trying to get the ratings. We have a lot of fun, but really when it comes down to it, the investigation itself, we take that very seriously because one, we don’t want to offend the people whose house we’re investigating, and two, you don’t want to mess with the spirits.”
And when the group is investigating a house, there is one major rule.
“You want to have respect not only for the spirit, but the person. Respect is number one for us,” Thomas-Peterson said.
The group holds monthly meetings, which are required to go on investigations because they want to be educated not only for protection of themselves but for the people they’re trying to help as well.
And the investigators have seen some pretty strange things, they said.
For FCPI coordinator and investigator Jamie Pickering, a visit to the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum and an encounter with resident ghost Kate stands out. She said the encounter happened the first time the group met Thomas-Peterson.
“We were in the immigrant car. That’s where Kate is. Mel was sitting at a table explaining about the ghost radar ... I’m sitting in the sleeper car section looking in with what we call a flair camera – my favorite piece of equipment, it’s basically infrared,” she said. “I’m pointing at (the group), so here’s these three red dots because of the heat of their bodies, and out of the wall comes a head and shoulders. It just keeps on poking back and forth. And I didn’t know how to record this at the time, this is the first time I had this piece of equipment in my hand. That figure walks out of the wall and peeks over Nina’s shoulder, like,’What are you guys looking at?’”
Thomas-Peterson said that calls for their service tend to ebb and flow.
“A lot of activity kicked up after the Blood Moon, so we started getting calls,” she said. “We just recently finished (an investigation) in Bayfield. We don’t charge – we just go in and help people because there’s not a lot of help out there; it’s just a service we provide.”
When it comes to helping residents, a lot of times people are just want to put a name to what’s happening in their home, the group said.
“We actually help people, hopefully, to co-exist with whatever’s there. Occasionally, we get a bad one,” Thomas-Peterson said. “But kind of giving them (the spirit) a name because everybody wants acknowledgment, and when you’re on the other side and nobody can hear you, it’s good for somebody to come in and be able to find their name, find their story and acknowledge that they’re there and give the person living there a name to call them.
“And it’s funny, a lot of times, they’ll say the name and come up with the name before we find it; they just kind of get that intuition, that instinct that something is there and that’s their name,” she said.
Once a cause of a house’s disturbance has been identified, the women said it can give the home’s residents a sense of peace just knowing what’s going on.
“Some just want more understanding,” investigator Cheryl Cessna said. “They’re really at peace with just sort of knowing that it’s there and they can cohabitate with it OK as long as it’s not violent or disruptive.”
And, added investigator Selena Trujillo, sometimes validation from someone outside a person’s immediate circle can be a huge relief.
“Some people just want confirmation so they don’t feel like they’re the ones going crazy,” she said. “They just want somebody to come in and have another point of view, and especially somebody they absolutely don’t know to tell them objectively what it could be, what it might not be. ... People have an easier time telling strangers things than they would their closest friends.”
Dates for the summer ghost hunts have not been released; check Four Corners Paranormal Investigations’ website for updates.
katie@durangoherald.com
On the Net
For more information about Four Corners Paranormal Investigations, visit
www.fourcornersparanormalinvestigations.com
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