Is that you in there, Earl Chism, whistling in the dark?

Members of the paranormal investigating team 3AM Paranormal Midwest think so. They say they have the audio tapes to — prove it? Well, not exactly. They don’t claim to prove anything. But they do believe they can get people, even die-hard skeptics, to thinking.

Seven members of the paranormal team spent a second all-night vigil at the jail on Nov. 12, scouring for spirits — Michael Fox and his wife Judy, Cathy Oldham, and Sarrahh Lauger, all of Stanberry, and Carey Jackson of Parnell, along with Joe and Becky Mendoze, the 3AM founders, from Long Beach, Calif., and Chris Horneker from Iowa. Their first stay was a about a week earlier on Nov. 6.

This trip the team collected a huge amount of data using digital voice recorders, electromagnetic field detectors, audio recorders, thermal scanners and infrared video equipment. It took several weeks to sift through their finding.

On Dec. 10, Mike Fox and Cathy Oldham held a viewing for Dan Lockridge of the Daviess County Historical Society. David Stark, local historian, was also invited.

Fox and Oldham used a laptop computer to play about 30 separate EMF or Electric Voice Phenomena clips. These snatches of ghostly conversation were allegedly caught on digital recorders set to a high frequency. The recorders are so sensitive they can pick up a pin drop, the investigators said.. Each of the seven investigators carried a recorder on their person during their stay at the jail. The other three recorders were left to run unattended in different rooms of the jail.

The fragments of the tape containing the voices were separated and “worked with.” These clips took hours and hours to scan, analyze and identify, the investigators said. First the voices were isolated, then background noises were removed. Next the sounds was amplified. Then it was slowed down.

The 3 AM Paranormal team, which is endorsed by American Paranormal Society, is trained through experience and research to perform their own “de-bunking.”

“We don’t run into ghosts every time we turn around,” said Fox at the viewing. “We tag something as paranormal only when no other logical explanation is left. We are here to show you what we found. And you can take it for what it’s worth.”

The edited tapes played during the summation include a female voice seeming to say “Becca” in answer to an investigator’s request for a name. Fox said this clip was rated a Class A because of it’s good quality. The rankings go from A to C. In another clip a voice seems to be saying “Cathy.” This clip only got a high C rating because it wasn’t as easy to hear. Other female voices seem to belong to “Ellie” and “Nelda.” (The upstairs part of the jail was reserved for women and juvenile prisoners).

A lot of the clips contain breathy whispers and raspy undertones and harsh explosions of sound almost like barks. In a lot of the clips the “voices” are buried behind real people talking. Separating the human voices from the ghostly voices makes the task of locating the EMFs on tape somewhat “tedious,” the investigators said.

The ghost hunters said that on several occasions during the night’s investigation of the jail, they sat in a “round robin” style. The seven of them spread out in a circle and spoke invitingly to an empty room to see if they could get a direct response. When one of the investigators said “We want to help you” the voice on the clip seems to be saying “Help me, help me.”

Voices on other clips sound like “yes” and “no” and “turn that light off,” and “please,” “daylight is coming,” “brother died,” and “back up.” One voice with a distinctly country boy drawl seems to say, “Yeah, I do.”

For the non-ghost hunters to actually hear these voices as voices and not just as mechanical hums and electric whirrs seemed difficult without the power of suggestion from the ghost hunters.

“You gotta have an ear for it,” Fox said.

The investigators did what they could, they said, to make their otherworldly hosts comfortable while they invaded their space at the jail. They even sang “happy birthday” to the dark in order to get the ghosts in a receptive mood.

“We get kind of silly with it,” Oldham said. But the idea is to change the feelings on the premises, especially if there is a sense of “tension” in a room.

“We try to be kind and respectful,” Fox said.

The ghosts don’t always return the favor. Voices on the clips seem to growl “get out” and “get off my ground” (A Clint Eastwood fan possibly). One of the voices sounds like he is telling them to “go to hell.”

At one point during the investigation, Fox sees a “fast moving shadow” and in another swears a cell door mysteriously moved a few inches for no conceivable reason. In one of the eerier clips he and Becky Mendoza are in the upstairs part of the jail. Fox can be heard on the tape saying “I heard that” followed by an indistinguishable whisper of “something saying something” as he puts it. He says both he and Mendoza heard whatever it was with their naked ears during the investigation.

The ghosts at the Squirrel Cage Jail get thirsty. One ghost can be heard loudly gulping a liquid — yes, gulp, gulp, gulp. Another ghost is heard “whistling in the dark.”

“We call something paranormal when it can’t be explained scientifically,” said Fox. “When the Wright Brothers flew an airplane, people called what they were doing ‘paranormal.’”

After the viewing, Dan Lockridge graciously conceded to being neither total believer nor complete skeptic: “Just like the Wright Brothers, what was once illogical is now totally logical,” he said. “As technological advances offer even more sophisticated devices to explore the paranormal, it will be interesting to see what the future holds.” Then he laughed and added, “After this it may be difficult to hire somebody to work at the jail.”

3AM Paranormal Midwest did not capture anything visible on film on this trip. They took one “interesting” photo, Oldham said. But they cannot prove 100% that it wasn’t a malfunctioning camera, and so they won’t claim it as paranormal. They don’t put much stock in photos anyway, Fox said, or have much use for psychics, for that matter.

They add that though they had no photos, they may have caught a ghost in a laser net. A laser net is when the meters measuring magnetic frequency waves spike for no apparent, natural or man-made cause.

The Gallatin jail was nearly as active as the Squirrel Cage Jail at Council Bluffs, Iowa, which the paranormal team had recorded earlier. It was a pleasant surprise they said to hear anything at all.

“It’s much more common to hear nothing,” Fox said.

The third squirrel cage jail in the country is located at Crawfordsville, Ind., and the team hopes to investigate that one next year some time.

“We’d like to come back to Gallatin a third time in the summer,” Fox said.

Watch for the recordings from Daviess County Squirrel Cage Jail on their website at http://web.me.com/ufojoe/3amparanormal_Mid_West/Welcome.html. It should be posted soon.

The hunt continues. The 3AM Paranormal Midwest team will continue to investigate “residual hauntings,” where the spectral energy force is left behind, but have their hopes on someday investigating an “intelligent” haunting, one that involves actual interaction with the ghosts.

“It’s fun to do,” said Fox. “We meet a lot of interesting people and see a lot of strange stuff.”

He added that media attention to their investigation may provoke curious individuals, ghost hunting teams, and other people to visit the Gallatin jail. Such ghost hunters could be charged a reasonable fee, thus increasing the revenue for the historic building.

David Stark played the skeptic during the viewing (“since nobody else was”) and called the investigators to task on a few fine points, like how ephemeral beings can project voices without vocal chords and what exactly did the investigators mean when they talked about “energy” in a room.

For that matter, why would a ghost haunt a place they didn’t even die at? According to Stark’s research only one prisoner ever actually died at the jail.

Oldham explained that ghost tend to abide in a place for one of two reasons: The ghost has very good memories of it or very bad memories. That being said, it’s easy to see why the squirrel cage jail might have lingered as a bad taste in a ghost’s thirsty mouth far into the afterlife.

Here is the story by Dave Stark of young Earl Chism and his gruesome death (he was shot lengthwise, Stark says, as he lay on the ground). He was the only prisoner believed to have died at the Squirrel Cage Jail….

There are few instances in the history of Daviess County when officers of the law needed to use a gun. One of these happened on Monday, March 29, 1909, when the “Nitro Chism Gang” hit Jamesport.
John Atchison (Atch) Blair, sheriff of Daviess County, was serving papers in Jackson Township. About noon he was informed by telephone that three suspects were headed his way on foot from Jamesport. They were followed by a growing posse led by former Sheriff Hutchison; a posse from Lock Springs was also on the move, heading north. Blair was also told that one of the men had shot unarmed city marshal George Caraway in the back. George had been shot at 11:30 a.m. on the railroad station platform.

The “Nitro Chism Gang” was first spotted about 11:15 a.m. by the conductor of an eastbound freight train before it stopped at Jamesport. The conductor knew of the Spickard burglaries and that the suspects had taken a handcar to Trenton. The brakeman was asked to find the city marshal and to get the suspects off the train. Caraway found one man in a box car and removed him with the brakeman’s help. The other two gang members showed up with food from town and shot Caraway in the back. At 11:47 a.m. an eastbound train came to the station as the three men escaped southward on foot.

Sheriff Blair drove toward northeast Jackson Township and found both posses in a standoff during shooting from the outlaws. This was about three miles southeast of Jamesport. Blair also met a hail of bullets, two of which struck his buggy. He returned fire with a borrowed Winchester rifle, shooting Earl Chism as Chism was firing his gun while laying on the ground. Roy Chism then surrendered. The third man and the youngest, Harvey Chism, took off on his own and escaped from the county.

The crowd at the nearby farmhouse of Maurice Wood threatened to hang Roy Chism until Roy disclosed the gang’s true identity. He led the posses to where he had left some loot and equipment.

Earl Chism was identified by witnesses as the criminal who shot Caraway. Roy Chism, 26, and Earl Chism, 22 (alias James Farrel) had new Colt semi-automatic pistols and pockets full of cash and ammunition. Their hidden grip held several small bottles of nitro, caps and long fuses. The grip also contained watches and jewelry taken from stores in Spickard, where they had blasted two safes open the previous Sunday night.

Roy Chism was placed in the Squirrel Cage Jail in Gallatin; Earl Chism was attended by Dr. Doolin. By Wednesday, Harvey Chism had been arrested in Bloomington, Ill., and was given over to Grundy County law officers. Two other brothers, Walter and Jesse, came to Gallatin from Bloomington, Ill., and posted $1,000 bond for Roy and $1,000 bond for Earl. Marshal Caraway had been shot through the chest just under his liver but was recovering. The burglars’ father, Merrit Chism, was in prison at Joliet, Ind., on murder charges. Earl Chism died on a Friday afternoon, April 2, 1909; Roy skipped out on his bond but was re-arrested at Bloomington, Ill.

On April 7, 1909, County Prosecutor Fred Fair charged Roy Chism in Daviess County, with felonious assault with intent to kill. Two days later, Roy Chism was on his way to Leavenworth, Kan., with a five-year sentence.