The very haunted Va City, MT, Opera House

Most ghost hunters (so the locals claim) overlook one of the most paranormally active locales in this frontier western mining town -- the Opera House.

Va City Opera House

(This is part two of a three-part series on our investigations in Virginia City in July 2015. If you missed part one, where we encounter the "little girl ghost" in the costume shop, click here.)

The Opera House gives vaudeville and melodrama performances for visiting tourists throughout the summer, and the residents have preserved or restored the building to its former glory. But some of the best shows take place backstage: the paranormal ones, that is.

Laura Long, who manages the costume shop and also participates on stage as a player, invited us to continue our investigation of the premises inside the Opera House itself. What a great space! The theater holds wonderful Old West charm and must look much the same as it did during Virginia City's rowdier late 1800s heyday.

The Opera House cremona, said to have
hundreds of orbs surround it when it was
returned after renovations.

Nestled at the front of the stage and next to the seating rests a renovated cremona in the orchestra pit. (A cremona is a kind of organ attached to various drums and flutes and once used in the Opera House to accompany silent movies back in the early 1900s.) In fact, other players had told us on the previous night that the organ had been shipped to specialists several years ago to make it functional again. Upon return to the theater, a flood of visible orbs crowded around the cremona, as though the cherished organ needed their protection and oversight.

The stage inside
the Opera House

We decided to start our investigation, however, backstage behind the curtains between the men's and women's dressing rooms. This is the site of the appearance of *another* little girl ghost on the premises. The one reported in the costume shop (named "Hannah," as our investigation revealed) has been described as having blond hair. But accounts of the separate apparition often seen backstage in the Opera House seems to have black hair.

We were eager to see if we'd have as much luck in contacting this second little girl. We set up the camcorder and conducted a session with flashlight, digital recorder, and spirit box. We captured no audio-only EVP with our digital recorder. (EVP stands for Electronic Voice Phenomena, a theory that ghosts can manipulate electronic instruments to produce verbal communications.) Nor did we have a response to our request to dim or turn off the flashlight.

But we did have success with our EchoVox spirit box, which produced an interactive conversation during that session. Among the multiple EVP we captured in the following video clip, listen in particular for the response just past the one-minute time stamp. Mark asks about the little girl and receives an almost immediate reply in a man's voice saying, "Yes, she's little," followed by a young girl's voice that might be saying, "I am."

An EVP conversation backstage at the Opera House

It's not uncommon for EVP to occur at a more rapid rate than normal speech. So notice how clipped many of the names sound after we asked those unseen presences to identify themselves. Our spirit box can also produce what's called a "Mode Burst" -- a concentrated blast of random sounds that allows spirits to create not only words but sometimes sentences. Among the many we later slowed down and parsed from the Mode Burst were two included in the above video clip -- one that sounds to us like "No big [two unclear syllables] anyway" in a woman's voice and then "We're doing okay" in a deep drawling man's voice.

We found ourselves at first skeptical about someone using the expression "Okay" back in the 1880s, but a little research uncovered that the word actually reached national prominence as early as the 1840s. So maybe it fits after all. Of course, we didn't have a chance to parse and isolate this EVP until weeks afterwards, so we didn't have the opportunity at the time of the investigation to ask the speaker when he lived. Maybe next time we visit the Opera House.

We moved to the front of the stage, next to the cremona, and conducted a second EVP session with the spirit box since the invisible "locals" seemed so chatty.

 Multiple EVP, intelligent & residual

Notice in the above video how the first part includes a recognition of our presence, and even answers some of our questions about the cremona -- are they, indeed, guarding it; and who is doing so? We get one answer of "Gustaf" (or Gustave). Lots of frontier mining towns filled with German and Slavic immigrants,and Virginia City had its share. Gustaf is a plausible response.

The second part of this video includes the raw footage from another "Burst Mode" with our spirit box. Although, as mentioned, the device generates only random sounds (no words), this time we captured EVP of not only words but also phrases and even sentences.

After presenting the raw footage, we isolate and extract a number of EVP that are either Class A (clear to understand) or Class B (most listeners -- but not all -- agree on what's said). We captured more than those we include from this Burst, but we considered several of these to be Class C (something's going on, but we can't definitively determine what is said). We suspect all of these EVP are residual. Yes, there are recurring themes (notice the same woman's voice repeatedly reassuring others that some unnamed event is "for the best" in various ways). We also included EVP saying, "Desperate," "Hide," and "Upset." We wish we knew what traumatic event this was all about!

The final capture we included was of a man's voice saying, "Walk this way." This EVP occurred at the very edge of the stage next to the theater seating and sounds to us like someone is stuck repeating the duties of an usher. We take this as a likely example of a residual haunting.

All in all, the time spent in the Opera House left us with the conclusion the locals are right: This building is one very haunted location.

Next time, we conclude the three-part series of our investigation in Virginia City, this time recounting our midnight investigation at the community's Boot Hill cemetery, site of the graves of five men lynched by 1860s vigilantes. The spirits are still not quiet.

* * *

We're still having as much fun analyzing the results of our ongoing investigations as we did conducting the investigations over the past year for our book, WILD WEST GHOSTS.

There are puzzling experiences and encounters aplenty out there, and you just may want to pick up a copy of the book for either your own armchair musings or else as a guide for some of your own expeditions into the fascinating world of the paranormal.

You can buy the book as either an e-read or a trade paperback. Visit our Website for the links.

In the meantime, happy hunting!

An encore investigation in notoriously haunted Va City, MT

During our summer book tour for WILD WEST GHOSTS, we were invited to give a paranormal talk at the Thompson-Hickman County Library in the notoriously haunted town of Virginia City, MT. (Click here to see our summer 2014 investigations in this frontier mining town during .)

Thompson-Hickman County Library

It was a standing-room-only crowd filled with locals and, to our delight, many shared their own ghostly stories and encounters. After the event, several folks told us about the many celeb ghost hunters who'd come to town, but the townies said all these groups had overlooked what locals considered the most haunted location in town -- the Opera House. And they invited us to conduct our own investigation at this hot spot while we were in the vicinity.

Luckily, we brought our gear -- hey, you never know!

Turned out, we conducted three investigations over the next 24 hours: the Opera House costume shop (in a separate building), the Opera House stage, and nearby Boot Hill cemetery, the burial site for vigilante hangings in the 1864. We were not disappointed, capturing not only residual haunting EVP but also intelligent responses on both our digital recorder and our EchoVox spirit box. Read on.

The Opera House Costume Shop Investigation

The Opera House gives vaudeville and melodrama performances for visiting tourists throughout the summer, and the locals have preserved or restored the building to its former glory. But behind the Opera House, a separate little pioneer shack serves as clothing storage and workshop station for costumes and props.

The Opera House costume shop, where the
"Little Girl" ghost appears

Costume Shop manager Laura Long gave us the tour of the building the day after our book talk. The facility consists of multiple rooms clearly added on each time more space was needed. We invited Laura to participate in our investigation. Good thing, since she's the one who's had the most interaction with the "Little Girl," the most active ghost on the premises.

Other Opera House players have also encountered the "Little Girl," sometimes as a full-bodied apparition. Several have experienced her mischievous antics.

She's known to abscond with key bits of stage costuming or props just before a performance. But she always returns them just in the nick of time (to the exasperation and chagrin of the cast), often placing these items on Laura's workshop bench.

Laura Long before the workshop
bench favored by the ghost

Our team established EMF baseline readings throughout the building at the start of our investigation. (EMF stands for Electromagnetic Field, and ghosts are said to draw on this energy to manifest their presence.) Then we set up camcorder sessions with flashlight, digital recorder, and spirit box for the locations most reported for the "Little Girl."

After an hour and a half without results, we decided to clear the building and let just Kym and Laura have a go at contacting the "Little Girl." (We'd heard from several local interview sources the previous evening that the ghost preferred women and was more likely to manifest to a feminine audience.)

Kym and Laura used a camcorder, a flashlight, and a digital recorder during the session. Wraiths in the Thick team member Fonda Porterfield provided an antique child's doll named Mandy to use as a trigger object.  This configuration turned out to be a good hunch in approaching the "Little Girl." Here's the evidence we captured:

EVP capturing the ghost's name, "Hannah"

Only during later analysis, when we amplified the recording, did we detect that Kym and Laura had actually gotten a response. The capture of the little ghost's name, "Hannah," is so clear it falls under the category known as a Class A EVP, where all listeners agree on what's said. (Class B EVP are those where most hear the same thing, and Class C EVP are those where there are differing interpretations of what's said.)

During a follow-up session, we also captured on spirit box the name "Mandy." Guess the doll was a hit after all.

 EVP using doll as trigger object

When we shared the EVP of the "Little Girl" ghost's name with Laura, she in turn shared it with the summer Opera House theater players. They all agreed the recording did indeed say "Hannah." The cast members may have agreed, but it also so spooked (pun intended) the players that they were reluctant to visit the costume shop afterwards. By contrast, the EVP capture thrilled Laura, who now addresses her little friend by her name.

We packed up our gear and headed across the back parking lot to conduct our second investigation on the stage of the Opera House, and the subject of the next article.

* * *

We're still having as much fun analyzing the results of our ongoing investigations as we did conducting the investigations over the past year for our book, WILD WEST GHOSTS.

There are puzzling experiences and encounters aplenty out there, and you just may want to pick up a copy of the book for either your own armchair musings or else as a guide for some of your own expeditions into the fascinating world of the paranormal.

You can buy the book as either an e-read or a trade paperback. Visit our Website for the links.

In the meantime, happy hunting!