Media

Ghostly Tales from America’s Jails by Joan Hall, Ghost Hunters of the South: Dr. Alan Brown , and…Haunted Hotels, Bed and Breakfasts, and Inns by Olyve Abbot

Sarah has also made an appearance on the radio show "The Professors" KWKC in Abilene, and many of the CTGS investigations have been highlighted on local news broadcasts and articles. The following are just a few of those articles.

The Stamford American

Erika Wilson from the Stamford American paper wrote a brief article about our investigation at the Stamford Inn. Click below to see her article.

Ghost Hunters Search for Stamford's Paranormal

Stamford Star:

Callie Metler from the Stamford Star paper in Stamford Texas accompanied CTGS on our investigation of the old Stamford Inn hotel. Click the link below to see her story about the investigation.It is a PDF file and takes a minute to pull up, but worth the read!

82-Year-Old Fire Brings Ghost Searchers to Stamford

Ghost hunters report activity in Buffalo Gap

By Brian Bethel / Reporter-News Staff Writer
August 5, 2005

But a group of ghost hunters who visited the Buffalo Gap Historic Village recently found what they believe to be evidence that the village is more active than expected after the staff turns out the lights.

Frazier, a history professor at McMurry University and executive director of the Grady McWhiney Research Foundation that owns and operates the village, told the Kiwanis Club of Greater Abilene Thursday that the ghost hunters took some ''interesting'' photographs and recordings there during a late-night excursion a couple of weeks ago.

The ghost-hunting group, Central Texas Ghost Search, collected photographs of ghostly orbs in several buildings and recordings members believe have no earthly origin, Frazier said.

Ghostly tales about the village abound, he said, and some staff members insist that they have experienced unexplained activity.

The house of Marshal Tom Hill, now located on the village grounds, is said to be haunted by a ghostly woman - after his death, Hill's wife and daughter both lived in the house until their own deaths - who may display dislike for male visitors, Frazier said.

''For example, someone visiting the house was looking at an artifact he wasn't supposed to be touching,'' he said. ''He noticed some movement behind him, and turned to see what he thought was the upper portion of a woman fading off into the distance.''

Workers at the village, primarily men, have reported similar disturbances, Frazier said.

''I've been through the house, but the ghost doesn't seem to fancy me,'' he said.

The schoolhouse and jail on the grounds are also said to have ghostly residents.

While he maintains his stoic skepticism, Frazier did concede that ''if there is a place that is haunted, it seems the village would be a good candidate.''

Central Texas Ghost Search was founded by Sarah Zell, an Abilene woman. The group's Web site www.centraltxghostsearch.com claims the group is constantly growing.

In an e-mail interview, Zell acknowledged ghost hunting may seem strange to outsiders. But the Cisco Junior College biology teacher considers it to be at the frontier edge of hard science.

''Remember, before 1895, if you had told the world that X-rays existed, you would have been shunned and laughed at. Just think what they do for us now,'' she said.

Ghost searchers try to document events

By Brian Bethel / Reporter-News Staff Writer
October 29, 2005

Sarah Zell, 31, has had an interest in the paranormal since she was very young, growing up in a house in Cisco she believes is haunted.

Today, Zell, who is the mother of a 7-year-old son and is engaged to another avid ghost hunter, teaches botany, zoology and anatomy/physiology at Cisco Junior College.

And, she is leader of a group of intrepid ghost hunters known as Central Texas Ghost Search.

In 2001, while living in the Dallas area, I started reading about the subject and thought it would be fun to try it myself. I bought a cheap digital camera, gathered some rather brave

friends, and we headed out to every cemetery in Central Texas. It only took one great ghost photo, and I was hooked.

I joined the paranormal group MAJDA and then started my own chapter under them, called Central Texas Ghost Search. I created a Web site, and since that time I have added more than 35 members to the group who share my interest and many who join me on investigations.

We have done more than 100 investigations including at cemeteries, museums, businesses, homes, hotels, Louisiana plantations and the Buffalo Gap Historic Village.

We have also expanded the equipment we use to document the paranormal to include not just digital still photography, but also video recorders, motion detectors, digital voice recording for EVPs (electronic voice phenomenon), EMF (electro-magnetic field detectors), thermal detection equipment.

I grew up in a haunted house where I saw and heard things that weren't ''normal'' since I was a young child. Lights would come on when they weren't plugged in, plates and other things would literally fly off of the shelves across the room for no reason. We would hear awful moaning sounds that could not be pinned down to one room. They seemed to drift throughout the house.

We experienced other things like being tapped on the shoulder, only to turn around and nobody was there, beds shaking while you are trying to sleep. On occasion it felt as if someone sat on the bed or crawled into bed with you - but there was no physical body there.

I still get reports of things like this on occasion from my parents and experience things when I visit.

Nobody really knows. It is believed that ghosts can be the actual energy left from a living person that has not moved on for some reason. These are the ones that can and will interact with the living.

Ghosts can also be seen 'reliving' an emotional event, almost replaying themselves over and over. Nobody really knows what they are, but we are out to document evidence that they do exist.

We were investigating an old abandoned house in Lexington, Texas, just a few weeks ago. Two mentally ill people were said to have died in the home and the owners reported that there had been too many strange things happen there for them to ever return to the house.

Immediately after we entered the house, we heard a low, muffled growl that sounded like an injured dog. We searched the area for animals but couldn't find anything.

We ventured into several of the rooms taking pictures and getting a feel for the place but we weren't getting too much. When we went into this one particular room I started getting some strange photographs and EMF spikes.

I turned on my voice recorder and began asking some questions. The lady standing beside me began saying that her hand was burning. - when we looked at it, some unseen entity had literally scratched her and drawn blood.

About the same time, something fell off of a shelf on the far side of the room. We began to hear whispers in our ear that were audible even without the EVP recorders. We decided that this thing did not want us in that room so we turned to leave.

Scott, my lead investigator from the Austin area, was the last to leave the room and was violently pushed out the door from behind, yet there was nobody behind him. He fell into me and we both almost fell to the floor.

Others in the group were also pushed by an unseen force, we heard several more audible whispers, and we captured a strange ''face'' anomaly in that same room. It was the first real physical encounter I have personally had. I won't forget it for a long time.

We are returning to that home in December for a follow-up investigation. Pictures from the investigation will be up on the Web site soon.

EVP stands for electronic voice phenomenon. It is a mysterious event in which human-sounding voices are captured on some sort of electronic media (most commonly a tape recorder or digital voice recorder).

These voices are usually not heard by the human ear at the time of the recording but are heard when the tape is played back. Many times we have captured EVP that actually answer the questions that we ask, which helps debunk the theory that these are possibly only random radio waves being picked up on the tape.

Our latest clear EVP was from an investigation of a home in Cottonwood. I was sick at the time and I coughed. On the tape, you can clearly hear me cough, and then a male voice with a metallic tone to it says, ''Get a doctor.'' There was nobody in the room with me at the time that recording was made.

When you go out in the field, do you try to follow any particular protocol?

There are many unspoken rules that a paranormal investigator will know to follow. Although each investigation is different, we adhere to strict standards and protocols that allow the investigation to be done effectively as well as to prevent any false positives to show up in our results. I won't list them all here, but they include guidelines about dress code, personal behavior, proper equipment use, and positive attitude. To see our list of protocols for both indoor and outdoor investigations, please see our Web site.

Skeptics are actually welcome to join our group. A true skeptic will keep a ghost hunter honest. Too many groups out there are trying to prove that what they find IS paranormal, whereas a good investigator will try to prove that something is NOT paranormal. When you can rule out the ''normal'' and are left only with something that can not be explained, then you have possible evidence of the paranormal.

A skeptic is also trying to prove that what we find has a normal explanation and many times they are right. The fun comes when that skeptic can no longer find any explanation for what we have found and must then admit that a ghost might actually exist.

Since I've been back in Abilene, I have gotten several new local members who are very active and who are really knowledgeable about what they do. I think our group really took off when I got back here and we have had some outstanding investigations. We've also gotten more requests for investigations in this area than I did in the Dallas area. I think we have been very successful and I look forward to meeting more new members as the group grows.

As we continue to grow, I would really like to see more experienced members join the group as well as those who are just interested in learning. I am looking into offering some classes for those who would like to become active investigators with the group as well.

If we can educate people about what we do, then we will begin to see a growing interest in the field. I would really like to be seen for what we are - as a group of people who are out to look for documentable evidence of what can not yet be seen, rather than as a bunch of ''Ghost Busters'' as we are sometimes called.

I also want to continue posting our evidence on the Web site for educational purposes for the general public.