Discovery Channel ‘Ghost Lab’ in Enid to look for spirit of John Wilkes Booth

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Discovery Channel ‘Ghost Lab’ in Enid to look for spirit of John Wilkes Booth
August 27, 2009
by Kasey Fowler
EnidNews.com

Stars of a Discovery Channel television show are in Enid searching for the ghost of John Wilkes Booth.

Brad and Barry Klinge, stars of “Ghost Lab,” along with their investigative team, Everyday Paranormal, came to Gar-field Furniture to search for the presidential assassin, ac-cording to Alan Lagarde, one of the executive producers of “Ghost Lab,” which will air this fall. Their investigation started Thursday and continues today.

“We are conducting a paranormal investigation,” Lagarde said. “This episode is related to the possible ghost of John Wilkes Booth.”

According to local legend, a man claiming to be Booth died in the Grand Avenue Hotel, which now houses Garfield Furniture.

David E. George, a house painter from Texas who frequently quoted at length from Shakespeare’s plays in Enid bars, ingested strychnine, a powerful poison, on Jan. 13, 1903, in one of the hotel’s up-stairs rooms and died writhing in agony.

Before he breathed his last, he told a physician who had been summoned to the hotel he really was Booth, the assassin who killed President Abraham Lincoln 38 years earlier. The owner of Pen-niman’s Funeral Parlor kept the unclaimed remains and would tie the embalmed and fully dressed body to a rocking chair and display it in the storefront window with a newspaper laying across its lap.

For a number of years the body was displayed at amusement parks and carnival sideshows in many states, before finally disappearing.

The Klinges brought their “ghost lab,” a 24-foot car hauler capable of providing 200,000 watts of electricity to Enid. It contains audio, video and photo analysis stations; flat screen televisions; an interactive touch screen smart board; surveillance video cameras capable of shooting 300 feet away in total darkness with 180 degree peripheral view; temperature/ humidity/dew point data loggers; various digital cameras, including thermal imaging cameras and audio recorders; and more than 8,000 feet of video cable.

This on-site, high-tech lab enables investigators to analyze data on the premises in real-time, helping them to more narrowly focus their investigations on known paranormal hot spots.

“They are a pretty high-tech group. We bring an investigative science lab with us on the road. They can talk to the people in the lab when they are inside. They can get their footage back to lab immediately,” Lagarde said. “They have thermal imaging and electrostatic equipment. They have monitoring systems that monitor the entire time they are here. It will monitor things like moisture, temperature and movement.”

Besides the technology, the group will try to have items to help the ghost feel more comfortable.

“They will be in there and they reach out to the possible spirits in there,” Lagarde said. “They will have specific things that might be familiar to the ghost, or they might speak to them as if they are in the era of the ghost.”

The Klinges also may try to simply speak to the ghost, but, according to Lagarde, people may not be able to hear if the ghost responds.

“When a ghost tries to respond it may come back in a frequency you can’t hear with your ear; it may be in a frequency that only a recorder can get,” he said. “A normal person may not hear it right away, but when the background noise is taken out pretty amazing things can happen.”

Lagarde said the owners of Garfield Furniture and others in the community have been friendly and helpful.

“The people at Garfield Furniture, they were very friendly and hospitable and this came together very quickly, in the last few weeks,” he said. “When we got the information and we found out, we wanted to do it. We were in Dallas and we figured that was the closest we are going to be to Enid. People have been really friendly and receptive, from booking hotels and setting up food, and the owners of the store have been fantastic.”

Some of the locations the Klinge brothers will investigate on “Ghost Lab” are: Tombstone, Ariz., home to some of the most violent deaths in history and a hotbed of paranormal activity; Shreveport (La.) Auditorium, where Elvis got his start and may not have left the building; and Granbury Opera House where, according to legend, Booth changed his name to John St. Helen and performed Shakespeare after assassinating Lincoln.

The new 13-part “Ghost Lab” will premiere 9 p.m. Oct. 6 on Discovery Channel.