Old school building in Farrar offers lessons in the paranormal
October 18, 2010
By MELANIE LAGESCHULTE
DesMoinesRegister.com
School's out forever at the former Farrar school, but its owners and their guests are getting an education in the paranormal.
Nancy Oliver sometimes had dreams in which she lived in a spacious building that sported a stage. Those came true in late 2006 when she and her husband, Jim, purchased the three-story, 17,000-square-foot school in this rural Polk County community.
The school had been shuttered since 2002, but the couple quickly settled into their living quarters on the first floor and began renovations.
Then the odd experiences started:
A voice reminding Nancy Oliver to turn off the bathroom light.
A steadying hand on her shoulder while she was climbing one of the school's several stairwells.
The shadowy shape of a little boy on the gymnasium stairs.
Things just got weirder when a psychic, Jacqui Carpenter of nearby Maxwell, pulled into the drive and asked if she could communicate with a ghost she said was inside.
"I've always felt very comfortable here," Nancy Oliver said, but it's a good thing she and her husband are a bit skeptical.
"We really need to be, or we'd just be seeing things right and left."
Their dog, appropriately named Boo, doesn't seem to buy any of it, Nancy Oliver said. But their previous pooch sometimes seemed to bark at things they couldn't see.
Carpenter and other visitors have captured audio and video recordings of odd noises, voices and images at the site, which was part of a farm before the school opened in 1922 and is across the road from a cemetery.
"The one thing we do know is something is happening," Carpenter said, but investigators sometimes find logical explanations for what they see, hear and feel.
"It's all subjective - what do you believe, what are you willing to believe," she said.
Brave souls from around the Midwest can arrange to camp overnight inside the school's echoing walls. Carpenter hosts evening open houses, and there are daytime tours for those who don't want to be around when the sun goes down.
Carpenter, founder of the International Paranormal Research Association, said she began having psychic experiences as a child. Her mother and grandmother also had those capabilities, she said, which have surfaced among her children and grandchildren.
During a recent investigation, Carpenter and grandson Austin Cory crouched on the floor of a former classroom as other researchers sat nearby in a handful of student desks.
Carpenter said she sensed a girl was present - and then another spirit she referred to as Frank, who apparently liked to steal the show during past investigations.
"Let the little girl come forward," Carpenter said.
She asked the spirit if it would answer some questions by lighting up an electromagnetic sensor. Carpenter asked the spirit if it was a male - no response. When she asked if it was female, the reader's red light glowed.
Then she told the spirit she wanted to know its age. Carpenter started counting at six and slowly ticked off numbers until she reached 10, when the red light began to flash repeatedly.
Carpenter and Cory later asked the other spirit they sensed was in the room to move a closet door. The door didn't swing.
Carpenter said the apparent interaction with the girl was interesting but she couldn't accept it without some other evidence. "This is fun, but we don't know what we're messing with," she said.
Sometimes the observational mood turns uneasy, as it did the time a woman taking part in an investigation of the third-floor auditorium suddenly fell backward.
Nancy Oliver, who was only a few feet away and saw the woman topple, said it was the scariest thing she has witnessed at the school.
Carpenter said an inquisitive mind can be the best defense against the unknown.
"Instead of being afraid of things that go bump in the night, look for the answers," she said.
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OZ says: | 2011-03-08 22:00:18 |
| Thanks for the info, info is slim doing research on this school. Any input always valuable. | ||
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