Jon Mark Beilue: Where Pampa man goes, spirits follow

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Jon Mark Beilue: Where Pampa man goes, spirits follow
August 7, 2009
Jon Mark Beilue
amarillo.com

When Dan Guthrie is at his Pampa home, he's rarely alone. Most people hate the pop-in visit, and that includes Guthrie and wife Virginia. Yet at any time, he's liable to see Jessie, the little girl, or Miriam, the cranky old lady. Cody, a Buffalo Bill-looking character, will visit as, on occasion, Tom, a Native American.

"At least one of them will show up every day," Guthrie said. "I'm so used to it now. We're so used to lack of sleep and not getting any peace or rest because there's always something going on."

It should be said these visitors are ghosts. Guthrie doesn't care what anyone else thinks. He said he's seen them, talked to them, heard them, been pushed by them. It's all right there in his 64-page self-published book, "A Haunted Life."

Jessie has curly blonde hair and dresses in a 19th century white dress. Cody has a bit of a temper, slamming doors and such, but when he's calmed down, at least he stays at one end of Guthrie's home.

Tom doesn't come by as often. Dressed in a native headdress, he approached Guthrie one day while he worked out on his Bowflex. And Miriam? She's apparently an atheist.

"You have some spirits who refuse to believe they're dead. They believe they're still living," he said. "You have some spirits who don't believe in God. They just will not go. There's a recording of her - I can hear it as clear as day - and they ask her if she believes in God. 'No, he didn't do anything for me,' she said. 'I'm stuck here, and I'm not leaving.' That's Miriam."

OK, maybe the in-laws aren't such an inconvenience after all. That's probably four ghosts too many for most, but that's just a small segment of spirits, demons and ghosts that are alleged to have followed Guthrie, 42, all his life and across the country.

He said it began when he was 8 or 9 years old in California and saw twins, two children no one else could see. At a visit to some friends of his parents he saw Frank, a ghostly farmer, that was known only to the residents. At a boarding school in South Carolina, he could hear and see Civil War veterans.

After a move to Lubbock in 1996, he said he was visited by Mary in the middle of the night. She pointed to the wall. Guthrie told her to go to the light. She did, and he never saw her again.

After moving to Pampa in 1997, it was relatively serene, but the paranormal really hit the fan two years ago. He claims while working various shifts at a manufacturing plant that he declines to name, he and his co-workers were attacked many times by a demon over several months. The demon later followed him home to wreak havoc on him for eight months. Seven other spirits came with it, Guthrie said.

"I was under attack," he said. "I was hit, pushed, bit, scratched."

Last year, Guthrie brought in two paranormal groups, one from Lubbock, the other from Dallas, to get rid of the unwanted company. It didn't work, and only when he formed his own group, the Pampa Texas Paranormal Research Society, was he able to extract the demon.

Guthrie and a team of 16 active members across the Panhandle now conduct local investigations. They've gone through as many as 60 in the team.

"They will see something that scares the crap out of them, and they're gone," he said.

Guthrie said the group will try to "coach" a spirit to leave where he boasts of a 90 percent success rate. Active for more than a year, he said they have "four to eight" cases a month and booked for the next three months. They've investigated houses and businesses.

The Good Times Bar in Borger, which claims to house a practical joker and gangster from the 1920s named George, has been investigated. The Nat Ballroom in Amarillo is scheduled for later this month.

Now you may be just a wee bit skeptical or wonder why all these "X-Files" tales seem to follow Guthrie. Those thoughts crossed my mind more than a few times. He didn't seem too bothered by the questioning.

"I hear it all the time," he said. "That's why we stream our cases. I say see it for yourself. I'm not going to convince people we've got ghosts. Watch our site (www.pampaparanormal.ning.com) and use your own judgment. All we do is show it as it is. You see what we see. And I'm more open to it. I'm not as closed minded."

As the "X-Files" claimed, "The truth is out there." And that truth is in the eye, ear and mind of the beholder.