Inmates still haunting old jail? Paranormal group says 'yes'

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Inmates still haunting old jail? Paranormal group says 'yes'
June 20, 2009
By BRAD KELLAR
Herald-Banner

GREENVILLE — It has been several years since the top floors of the Hunt County Courthouse were used to house prisoners.

But a group of local paranormal investigators believe they may have discovered that at least some of the former inmates may never have left the old county jail.

Members of the Paranormal Research and Investigations of Northeast Texas (P.R.I.N.T.) team spent Saturday night inside the courthouse, alongside a documentary film director, for an eight-hour study, according to P.R.I.N.T. co-founder Chad Miller.

Miller e-mailed the Herald-Banner to give a preliminary assessment of what the organization uncovered. Miller said the first four floors of the courthouse were a disappointment.

“It was a dark, quiet courthouse that didn't so much make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up once,” Miller said. “Nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever.”

But things began to get interesting when the group checked out the former jail on the fifth and sixth floors of the courthouse.

“After numerous EVP (electronic voice phenomena) session reviews, we have several that would be considered 'jail house conversations',” Miller said. “They are all either negative, aggressive, or racial in nature. It's exactly what you would expect from an old jail. These files have not been ran through spectrum analyzation yet, to see if they register above or below the human voice, so we're not yet categorizing them as electronic voice phenomenon yet, but we're working on them. On numerous occasions, activity in the old cells, such as knocking and disembodied voices, would reply to our questions and actions. Kenny, our most seasoned and skeptic member heard his first disembodied voice in seven years of investigating! Upon review from his video equipment, he caught it there also. He was so excited that he began break dancing at one point.”

Miller said he also he attempted to make contact with ... whatever it was ... by calling out the name of an inmate who had committed suicide in the old jail.

“Things actually began to intensify,” Miller said, adding the group is going over the results of the weekend lock-in before making any calls as to exactly what it found. “Is the Hunt County Courthouse haunted? I can't say. It would probably take a few more investigations there to make that determination. Is there activity there? Yes, definitely.”

Miller said P.R.I.N.T. is already making plans to do more investigations in the coming months.

“We're attempting to negotiate with Six Flags over Texas again to try and do a repeat of last year's Halloween investigation and we're in talks with the Cotton Museum to possibly investigate the Ende-Gaillard House,” Miller said.

The group intends to post its results at its Web site, www.myspace.com/paranormalnorthtexas. P.R.I.N.T. can also be reached via e-mail at paranormalnorthtexas@yahoo.com by phone at 903-217-0499.