Go 6 THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2008

LIVING Florence Sicoli, editor, fsicoli@thespec.com or 905-526-3375

SPECIAL TO THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR

Members of The Shadows Project team of paranormal investigators include Elvis Podvorac, left, Gord Westwater, Sean Ross, Tom Hubert, Don
Belmore, Stephen Willet and Chae Graybiel.

member, Chae Graybiel, 19, take

Ghost story their turn upstairs.

At an abandoned farmhouse in
Flamborough, a team of ghost
hunters seeks out the paranormal
BY ROSIE-ANN GROVER
By day, Elvis Podvorac solves tech-
nical problems in McMaster Uni-
versity’s IT department.
By night, he takes on a darker
persona.
On the evening of Oct. 24, he
leads the way through a country
field in Flamborough.
No moonlight. And no flash-
lights.
It’s cold and raining.
The long, wet grass has been
matted by a tractor. We follow the
treads but after 10 minutes, my
socks are soaked.
I’m not afraid of ghosts. I don’t
even think I believe in them.
Suddenly, a house looms in the
clearing. I stop to catch my breath.
“We go through skeptics like tis-
sue paper,” Podvorac warns.
The Shadows Project investi-
gates the paranormal as a hobby.
Their service is free to anyone.
They don’t care to convince you
that ghosts exist. They only want to
investigate what they believe is out
there.
“I get goosebumps,” Podvorac
says. “Not like when it’s too cold or
when you shiver. These goose-
bumps spread across your arms and
The Shadows Project
at a glance
❚ While trying to make a docu-
mentary about the paranormal,
Elvis Podvorac of Hamilton joined
with eight other ghost hunters in
2006 to form The Shadows
Project.
❚ The nonprofit group investi-
gates supernatural activity in
private homes and public places
for free.
❚ Sites the group has investigat-
ed include Decew House, Keefer
Mansion and the Mahoney Doll
House.
❚ View their work at
theshadowsproject.com
jawline. Like your skin is too tight.”
Since 2006, their team of eight,
whose ages range from 19 to 40,
has done more than 30 investiga-
tions.
Some are for private homeown-
ers. Others are for notoriously
haunted dwellings around south-
ern Ontario. Most investigations
are chronicled on their website at
theshadowsproject.com.
They specifically ask homeown-
ers not to give details of their para-
normal suspicions. They want to go
in blank.
“We prefer to tell them what they
are experiencing afterward,” says
Stephen Willet, one of the only
Shadows members to say he’s seen
an apparition or ghost.
If there are no requests from
homeowners, there are plenty of
places to check out.
The old abandoned farmhouse is
surrounded by wild shrubs, littered
with empty bottles and garbage.
Every window has been kicked
in, exposing gaping black holes.
This investigation would work
like any other. The crew splits into
two groups. One surveys the exte-
rior grounds, the other explores the
house.
Video cameras and audio
recorders are set up in rooms and
left alone.
Both groups meet at the end and
compare notes. This will take two
or three hours. They do not discuss
anything before then.
“There are a lot of people in this
field where every bump and noise is
a ghost,” says Shadows member
Gord Westwater. “You have to take
the time to analyze what that noise
could be.”
As we approach the wide-open
front door, we hear a loud shatter-
ing noise.
Westwater jumps back and yells
that someone’s inside. He looks
scared. I get scared.
My heart feels like it might seize.
With wobbling legs, I head inside
with the group.
Broken glass crunches beneath
our feet with every step.
“Get out” is scrawled in red spray
paint behind the door.
Cabinets and shelves have been
Shadows Project members Gord Westwater, left, Stephen Willet and Tom
Hubert set up cameras and audio recorders in the farmhouse.
PHOTOS BY ROSIE-ANN GROVER, THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR
Chae Graybiel, left, and Stephen Willet investigate inside the farmhouse.
Three team members said they sensed the presence of spirits.
overturned, kicked in or smashed.
The team turns on their audio
recorders and holds out the micro-
phone.
Plaster has been ripped from
every wall, letting shadows from
the next rooms pass through the
skeletal wood planks. Wet leaves
and a small animal carcass are on
the floor.
No one is inside. The noise was
likely a raccoon.
“What do you feel right now?”
Westwater asks, as he sets up a
video camera on a tripod.
I close my eyes like I’ve seen Pod-
vorac do before. Try to tap into any
intuitions.
Just a racing heart. I can’t calm
down. It’s freezing.
I follow Willet and Westwater
through the rooms upstairs. A cou-
ple of empty bedrooms and a bath-
room with a crushed toilet and tub.
An odour wafts by my face. Feces.
“Is there anyone here?” Willet
holds the microphone a little high-
er. Perhaps he’ll catch an EVP —
electronic voice phenomenon.
To date, the scientific communi-
ty has no evidence of paranormal
existence.
Dr. Daniel Goldreich, a neural
scientist from McMaster Universi-
ty, is critical of EVPs, saying you
have to know the source. Many
faint voices or sounds are open to
interpretation.
“Extraordinary claims require
extraordinarily compelling evi-
dence,” he says.
Goldreich plays the song Stairway
to Heaven. Played backward, it
sounds like gibberish or highly am-
biguous sounds. When you listen
again while reading lyrics, with
words such as Satan and death, you
believe the gibberish you are hearing
corresponds to what you’re reading,
he says. The concern, specifically
with poor-quality EVPs, is that once
you are told what the voice is saying,
it may influence what you hear.
Tom Hubert, carrying a mini
video recorder, is the team skeptic.
His job is to give logical explana-
tions for matters in the field.
“When they are talking, I try to
stay away from what they’re say-
ing, so I’m not influenced,” he says.
“That way, anything I get, I know I
got it on my own.”
He’s not picking up on anything
in the house. It doesn’t feel scary
any more.
Podvorac and the youngest
In one room, she experiences se-
vere stomach cramps and backs in-
to a corner, breathing deeply.
She says she’s not wanted in this
room. She can’t describe it. It’s a
physical pain that tells her.
A while later, Podvorac, looming
at over six feet tall, squats to the
ground with his face in his hands.
He senses a little boy who is petri-
fied and needs comforting.
There is no one else with us.
“I feel like I have to get down to his
level,” he says, adding that he wants
to reach out and hug the spirit.
Dr. Richard Day, a McMaster
professor in psychology, neuro-
science and behaviour, says the ex-
istence of ghosts is not a question
in the scientific world.
“I suspect they are very intu-
itive,” he says of the Shadows Pro-
ject members. “But it makes them
susceptible to fit a feeling.”
Day believes if your mind is set on
looking for evidence, then no mat-
ter what you find, it can be made to
fit the paranormal.
On a hot summer night when Day
was a boy, he says, he fell asleep
with an open window and caught a
glimpse of a shadow as he rolled
over.
He looked several times and saw a
burglar climb inside. He made a
plan to run screaming through the
house.
He said it was really the view of
the moon outside, playing tricks on
his impressionable mind.
“I could really hear him breath-
ing. God knows what it really was,”
he says.
“This tells you the power of be-
lief. Once you believe this impres-
sion, you can create anything with
your mind.”
The video and audio tapes
recorded at the Flamborough
house give inconclusive evidence
of paranormal activity.
Outside on the porch, the group
discovers each one experienced
stomach irritation, except for Hu-
bert. Two sensed a woman and one
a little boy.
To date, they have little informa-
tion about the history of the house.
Did a woman and child once live
there?
Moving away from the old farm-
house, I don’t look back.
Perhaps we were watched from
those gaping black holes.
rgrover@thespec.com
Check out video of The Shadows
Project investigation at an
abandoned farmhouse.

Sheryl Nadler will return

BRIDGE AND CHESS

Use the shape to place the cards

BY PHILLIP ALDER
Look at the North-South diamond hold-
ings in today’s diagram. If you were South,
having played a diamond toward the king-
jack, would you call for the jack or for the
king?
Who knows? But often the bidding can
supply a clue.
West opened two spades, a weak two-bid
usually promising a six-card suit. With
seven, one would normally open three
spades. North correctly doubled for take-
out. (Yes, his point-count was low, but af-
ter a pre-empt, the player short in the op-
ponent’s suit should strain to enter the
auction.) True, this might have resulted in
a heart contract in a 4-3 fit, but it would
have been worse to overcall three clubs with
such an anemic suit. Now South jumped to
four hearts. With a six-card major, two aces
and one king, he was right to go for game.
West led the spade queen. Declarer won
with his ace and took dummy’s two top
hearts, getting the bad news. South played
dummy’s second spade, East discarding
the diamond two. Declarer won with his
king and ruffed his last spade on the board,
East overruffing and shifting to the club
king.
South won with his ace and returned a club
to dummy’s nine, but East won with his 10
and continued with the club queen. De-
clarer ruffed and led a diamond, West
ducking smoothly. Should South have
called for dummy’s jack or for the king?
The clue was West’s opening bid. With sev-
en decent spades and the diamond ace, he
would have opened three spades. But with
only the diamond queen, two spades was
comprehensible. So declarer called for the By Shelby Lyman
diamond jack and made his contract.

Look for the Saturday Bridge and Chess and local Bridge results in Wits & Pieces