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Paper Ghosts
  
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By MATT HOLLIS
They say you can see her in the office windows of the Pasadena Citizen Building on South Shaver, but only at night. She wears white and has black hair. She appears only at night and sometimes appears in the lunchroom. Others say they see her wander the building after hours.
She is known as the Woman in White and she supposedly haunts the building, the same place where newspapers such as the Pasadena Citizen, the North Channel Sentinel, the Deer Park Progress are written and printed.
The North Channel Sentinel ran a story about local ghosts for its Halloween edition Oct. 30. They story caught the attention of a group of paranormal investigators in Pasadena. They asked for permission to spend the night in the building to see if they could make contact with the alleged spirit.
Ghost hunting has become more popular in recent years with shows such as “Ghost Hunters” on the SciFi Channel. Many paranormal investigators have sprung up and decided to go out to scary-looking places in search of ghosts.
“We just started this business this year,” said Debbie Gast, head of Pasadena Paranormal Investigations. “I grew up in houses that were haunted. A psychic told me once that I attract spirits. So we have been playing around with it for about five years.”
Gast and her son, Ryan Burgamy, and daughter, Christi Martinez along with Mary Jones, a rookie ghost hunter, decided to come up to the Citizen building to do a paranormal investigation in the dead of night.
The Citizen Building is located in what was once the heart of Pasadena. There were several stores located where the newspaper is now including a Woolworth, a Pittsburgh Paints and a Singers Sewing store. Today, it is the place where the local newspaper is written and printed. As with many old buildings, there are ghost stories connected with it. As the story goes, the Woman in White was an employee of Woolworth in life and died while in a fall from one of the building’s many stairs. Now she haunts the building, showing up in one of the office building windows and appearing in the middle of the lunchroom, where allegedly a stairway used to be.
The night began with the paranormal team putting together their ghost-hunting equipment. That consisted of video cameras with night vision, tape recorders and an electromagnetic field (EMF) device. It goes off when near something emitting electricity or when triggered by something else. Gast said it will pick up ghosts that come near it.
“Spirits are energy,” Gast said. “Whenever something comes close to the meter, it fluxuates. When it moves away, the meter drops down. Unless something is manipulating it, the meter should give a steady reading.”
Armed with the EMF meter, video cameras and tape recorders, the team set out to venture around the Citizen Building. First, they checked out a set of stairs in the back. Today, this is where forklifts move pallets of newspapers and other items around and is used as a storage area. The stairs are old and rickety, creaking with every step. Old paint from years past chips off from them. It was here that the EMF meter started going off.
Gast and her team paused and tried to speak to whatever was causing the meter to jump.
“What is your name?” Gast would ask. “Did you work here? Why don’t you show yourself to us?”
Gast then said she picked up a cold spot where the meter was going off.
“It feels cool here,” she said, holding her hand in space.
The meter then returned to normal and the hunt continued upstairs into another storage area. Walking up another set of old stairs, the team came across a little room off to the side that held newspapers from long ago. Upon placing the EMF meter inside, it almost went off the scale.
“There is a lot of activity in here,” Gast said.
The team spent some time in the little storage room, trying to communicate with whatever might be in there. With the lights out, Gast and her team talked to the “spirit.”
“Come out and show yourself, are you a wimp?” Gast would say. “Are you a man? Then you shouldn’t be afraid of us. If you are a woman, then don’t be afraid. We are just trying to talk to you.”
Gast said sometimes she has to get aggressive with the spirits in order to get a reaction. Otherwise, they will not respond, she said.
Then the team went into the lunchroom. A night worker told them he had seen the ghost when the lunchroom was expanded years before. He said he and some other workers were in the lunchroom when the figure of a woman came out of the wall near the restrooms. He said it walked halfway through the room before it disappeared. To this day, he said, he and the others are afraid to go near the lunchroom.
A new policy of having the radio play at night prevented any electronic voice phenomenon (EVP) from occurring, so the team then worked its way around to where the huge printers produce the local newspapers. Another worker told them that they had been in the other lunchroom when a door blew open once. The door is always locked, he said.
The team then went outside to see if they could catch a glimpse of the Woman in White in the office window. While no one saw anything, Jones said she could feel a presence up there.
The team then returned to the little storage room where the EMF meter had gone off earlier. This time, Gast said she spotted a shadow in the back of the room.
“It moved when I spoke to it,” she said. “There is something definitely in that room.”
Then the team decided enough was enough for the night.
A couple of days later, they returned with their findings.
A couple of photos they took showed orbs floating near the heads of some of the team members. On an EVP, when asked what the spirit’s name is, a voice can be heard saying “Selena.” The team claims the female voice does not belong to any of them. In addition, videos taken during the investigation show orbs floating across the room.
Orbs, Gast said, can be mistaken for dust particles sometimes. She said if they have a face, what she calls the “Uncle Fester-face,” then it is dust, not a ghost. But, if it emits its own light or has a tail showing movement, then it probably is a spirit.
Based on what they discovered, the team concluded that there is a ghost lurking about the Pasadena Citizen Building.
“It is not malevolent,” she said. “The woman is most likely a residual haunting. In other words, it is like a tape playing over and over. She is repeating something she did in life in spirit. The ghost in the storage room is different. It is more like a classic intelligent haunting.”
Gast said the apartments she lives in are haunted by the spirit of a man named Chris. He supposedly killed his own son before killing himself. She says he has shown himself to her in a full body apparition.
“We are Christians,” she said. “Some say we shouldn’t be doing this, but the Bible says we should have no fear if God is with you. You just have to protect yourself and cast these spirits out if they get too out of hand.”
She has investigated the San Jacinto Battlegrounds for spirits and said she picked up an EVP of a solider responding to questions such as if it knew who Santa Anna is. She says she also picked up the sounds of ghostly soldiers walking in cadence at the site.
So, if you ever feel like you know of a place that is haunted, don’t run for the door, call Pasadena Paranormal Investigations. They just might make you a believer.
They can be reached at pasadenaparanormal@hotmail.com.
She is known as the Woman in White and she supposedly haunts the building, the same place where newspapers such as the Pasadena Citizen, the North Channel Sentinel, the Deer Park Progress are written and printed.
The North Channel Sentinel ran a story about local ghosts for its Halloween edition Oct. 30. They story caught the attention of a group of paranormal investigators in Pasadena. They asked for permission to spend the night in the building to see if they could make contact with the alleged spirit.
Ghost hunting has become more popular in recent years with shows such as “Ghost Hunters” on the SciFi Channel. Many paranormal investigators have sprung up and decided to go out to scary-looking places in search of ghosts.
“We just started this business this year,” said Debbie Gast, head of Pasadena Paranormal Investigations. “I grew up in houses that were haunted. A psychic told me once that I attract spirits. So we have been playing around with it for about five years.”
Gast and her son, Ryan Burgamy, and daughter, Christi Martinez along with Mary Jones, a rookie ghost hunter, decided to come up to the Citizen building to do a paranormal investigation in the dead of night.
The Citizen Building is located in what was once the heart of Pasadena. There were several stores located where the newspaper is now including a Woolworth, a Pittsburgh Paints and a Singers Sewing store. Today, it is the place where the local newspaper is written and printed. As with many old buildings, there are ghost stories connected with it. As the story goes, the Woman in White was an employee of Woolworth in life and died while in a fall from one of the building’s many stairs. Now she haunts the building, showing up in one of the office building windows and appearing in the middle of the lunchroom, where allegedly a stairway used to be.
The night began with the paranormal team putting together their ghost-hunting equipment. That consisted of video cameras with night vision, tape recorders and an electromagnetic field (EMF) device. It goes off when near something emitting electricity or when triggered by something else. Gast said it will pick up ghosts that come near it.
“Spirits are energy,” Gast said. “Whenever something comes close to the meter, it fluxuates. When it moves away, the meter drops down. Unless something is manipulating it, the meter should give a steady reading.”
Armed with the EMF meter, video cameras and tape recorders, the team set out to venture around the Citizen Building. First, they checked out a set of stairs in the back. Today, this is where forklifts move pallets of newspapers and other items around and is used as a storage area. The stairs are old and rickety, creaking with every step. Old paint from years past chips off from them. It was here that the EMF meter started going off.
Gast and her team paused and tried to speak to whatever was causing the meter to jump.
“What is your name?” Gast would ask. “Did you work here? Why don’t you show yourself to us?”
Gast then said she picked up a cold spot where the meter was going off.
“It feels cool here,” she said, holding her hand in space.
The meter then returned to normal and the hunt continued upstairs into another storage area. Walking up another set of old stairs, the team came across a little room off to the side that held newspapers from long ago. Upon placing the EMF meter inside, it almost went off the scale.
“There is a lot of activity in here,” Gast said.
The team spent some time in the little storage room, trying to communicate with whatever might be in there. With the lights out, Gast and her team talked to the “spirit.”
“Come out and show yourself, are you a wimp?” Gast would say. “Are you a man? Then you shouldn’t be afraid of us. If you are a woman, then don’t be afraid. We are just trying to talk to you.”
Gast said sometimes she has to get aggressive with the spirits in order to get a reaction. Otherwise, they will not respond, she said.
Then the team went into the lunchroom. A night worker told them he had seen the ghost when the lunchroom was expanded years before. He said he and some other workers were in the lunchroom when the figure of a woman came out of the wall near the restrooms. He said it walked halfway through the room before it disappeared. To this day, he said, he and the others are afraid to go near the lunchroom.
A new policy of having the radio play at night prevented any electronic voice phenomenon (EVP) from occurring, so the team then worked its way around to where the huge printers produce the local newspapers. Another worker told them that they had been in the other lunchroom when a door blew open once. The door is always locked, he said.
The team then went outside to see if they could catch a glimpse of the Woman in White in the office window. While no one saw anything, Jones said she could feel a presence up there.
The team then returned to the little storage room where the EMF meter had gone off earlier. This time, Gast said she spotted a shadow in the back of the room.
“It moved when I spoke to it,” she said. “There is something definitely in that room.”
Then the team decided enough was enough for the night.
A couple of days later, they returned with their findings.
A couple of photos they took showed orbs floating near the heads of some of the team members. On an EVP, when asked what the spirit’s name is, a voice can be heard saying “Selena.” The team claims the female voice does not belong to any of them. In addition, videos taken during the investigation show orbs floating across the room.
Orbs, Gast said, can be mistaken for dust particles sometimes. She said if they have a face, what she calls the “Uncle Fester-face,” then it is dust, not a ghost. But, if it emits its own light or has a tail showing movement, then it probably is a spirit.
Based on what they discovered, the team concluded that there is a ghost lurking about the Pasadena Citizen Building.
“It is not malevolent,” she said. “The woman is most likely a residual haunting. In other words, it is like a tape playing over and over. She is repeating something she did in life in spirit. The ghost in the storage room is different. It is more like a classic intelligent haunting.”
Gast said the apartments she lives in are haunted by the spirit of a man named Chris. He supposedly killed his own son before killing himself. She says he has shown himself to her in a full body apparition.
“We are Christians,” she said. “Some say we shouldn’t be doing this, but the Bible says we should have no fear if God is with you. You just have to protect yourself and cast these spirits out if they get too out of hand.”
She has investigated the San Jacinto Battlegrounds for spirits and said she picked up an EVP of a solider responding to questions such as if it knew who Santa Anna is. She says she also picked up the sounds of ghostly soldiers walking in cadence at the site.
So, if you ever feel like you know of a place that is haunted, don’t run for the door, call Pasadena Paranormal Investigations. They just might make you a believer.
They can be reached at pasadenaparanormal@hotmail.com.
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