2008 Woodie Awards
Herriott haunting follow-up
Nicole Wilke
Issue date: 9/25/08 Section: Features
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There is nothing else to see but fields of corn and empty gravel roads. It would indeed be spooky if the sun weren't shining brightly in the cloudless blue sky.
This is the headquarters of the Iowa Paranormal Advanced Research Team and home of Dan Berger. Berger is the IPART General Manager and TAPS Regional Manager. He is a friendly guy who one wouldn't expect to be a full-time ghost hunter. But Berger speaks about the paranormal as casually as a businessman might speak about his office work, although far more passionately.
"There are a lot of people who're so shocked that there is actually a group in Iowa doing this," Berger said. "We're here to help the clients. My passion is to help people."
Ghost hunting is a full- time hobby of Berger's and the other investigators in IPART. It is an unpaid job that involves long investigations and even longer hours of analyzing gathered footage.
"We usually have investigations two or three times a month and collect anywhere from five to 10 hours of footage," Berger said. "Then we have to review and reexamine the footage."
This spring, Berger and his team conducted an investigation at Drake University's Herriott Hall on suspicions of paranormal activities.
"On the basement level, some investigators thought they heard the water in the showers running," Berger said. "But what we found was that the plumbing in those showers was so bad that the leaking just never stopped. So we debunked that."
The investigation team also used an Electromagnetic Field (EMF) detector to look for spikes of electricity, which may indicate a paranormal presence. An electromagnetic field occurs any time electricity passes through a wire or an appliance that is operating. When using an EMF detector, hunters must first rule out any possible sources of the field, including wiring, running appliances or nearby buildings.
"There was a lot of activity in Tony (Tandeski)'s (J'08) room. The EMF detector went off the charts two feet above his bed, but when it was lowered down to the mattress, there was nothing there," said Vicki Stinson, senior archivist and team leader for IPART. "It was very unusual."
Other unusual occurrences included unexplained coughing and sneezing noises from the third floor bathroom. Investigators tried to duplicate the noise after they heard it, but it did not sound the same. Another investigator thought he saw the shadow of a man in the hallway, but the quality of the video wasn't good enough to make an accurate call.
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