It’s The Season For Ghost Hunters

With Halloween in the air, customers at the Woodside Library enjoyed a seasonal treat as the Paranormal Adventurers, Diane Hill (at left) and Joseph Flammer (at right), presented “So, You Want to be a Ghost Hunter?” on Saturday, Oct. 10. They are pictured with Jingru Pei, community librarymanager. (photo: BillMitchell) Just as holiday shoppers create a pre-Christmas rush for retailers, the weeks before Halloween find ghost hunters in a hurry to keep up with the demands of their own busy season.

One could find no better example than The Paranormal Adventurers— otherwise known as Diane Hill and Joseph Flammer—who brought their presentation, “So You Want to Be a Ghost Hunter?” to the Woodside Library on Saturday, Oct. 10.

“We work all year, but this is our busiest time,” Hill said, when asked by a library visitor following the team’s well-received presentation. “We work every single day in October, right through the middle of November.”

If a presidential likeness is one’s idea of a good Halloween mask, Abraham Lincoln might be the ideal choice. Over the years, many have reported seeing his ghost in the White House. They noted that since they both have “regular” jobs, the evenings are given other to their appearances at public libraries in a three-county area from Queens to the eastern end of Suffolk.

Locally, they will bring their tales of hauntings—and the results of their own investigations—to the Elmhurst Library, 86-01 Broadway, on Saturday afternoon, Nov. 7, at 3 p.m.

As is the case with all Queens Library programs, admission is free.

For more information, call the Elmhurst Library at 1-718-271-1020.

The time is right

The duo’s heightened popularity at this time of year apparently has to do, at least in part, with reasons beyond the traditional celebration of all things spooky.

“It’s believed that the veil between the spirits and our world is thinnest around the Halloween time,” Flammer said. “People believe that we can contact the spirits more easily at this time of year. This has gone through the ages, back to the Celts.”

Hill added, “They say that the veil is thinnest between Halloween and All Souls Day (Nov. 2).”

This thought served to provide another consideration.

People share their stories

“The reason we’re in demand is that so many people have had these kinds of experiences,” explained Flammer. “We can divide the audience right down the line. At least fifty percent of the audience has had personal experiences—walking through the house, suddenly they feel a hand on their shoulder or they hear a word whispered, or they see an image in the corner of the room that they think is grandma.”

He told the library visitor, “This is very common and so common that our audience members are mostly people who have had these experiences.”

“We try to make them feel comfortable enough to share those experiences with us, because they’re a little embarrassed sometimes to share it with their families or maybe friends,” said Hill. “So, we give them a safe environment to do it.”

“Suddenly they realize that they can talk about this—they’re not insane,” Flammer said. “They can talk about it; they’re with people of like minds.”

“We’ve had people tell us that they had thought they were crazy— until they sat with us and they said, ‘Wow, other people really do have these experiences,’” Hill reported.

For such persons, finding out about others can be a surprise.

Considering the crowd

In making their Oct. 10 presentation at the Woodside Library, The Paranormal Adventurers took extra care to make their audience feel comfortable. The program was held in a room next to the children’s library room and the attendees were mostly youngsters and some parents.

For this reason, some images and videos that ordinarily would be shown and discussed were left out.

“It may mean a little more thought and effort on our part, but we are very careful when our audience is children,” Flammer said, adding with a smile, “Diane makes sure of that.”

As it was, the attendees clamored for more—seemingly, the scarier the better.

A brief clip from the 2006 film An American Haunting was shown—just long enough to provide a glimpse of the movie, using the scene in which a young girl on a schoolhouse swing encounters the apparition of a girl who looks to be about her own age.

Flammer repeatedly asked the children if they were sure they wanted to see it and, with much exhuberance, they insisted that they did indeed.

When the showing ended, it was not because the audience had seen enough.

Given an opportunity, some were quick to provide stories of their own, recalling what they believed to be encounters with ghosts.

“Wow! That’s quite an experience,” Flammer said, upon hearing one.

He offered that if a ghost does appear, the motivation is likely to be for a reason that is contrary to the notion that it wants to frighten or otherwise cause harm to the living.

‘It’s about love’

“A lot of people see ghosts when they’re in their house and all of a sudden, someone is walking through the rooms,” Flammer said, gently. “Maybe it’s a grandma or grandpa, who has come back to say, ‘I miss you’ or ‘I love you’—and usually, it’s about love.”

It was a notion that brought smiles to many faces.

Typically, Flammer and Hill employ a PowerPoint presentation, with each positioned on either side of the screen, in a darkened room In showing the still images and videos— mostly ones they have taken—they provide their narration/explanation.

Many of the photos can be found in their first book, Long Island’s Most Haunted, “a ghost hunter’s guide” published earlier this year by Schiffer Publishing.

Like the sites of their presentations, the locations discussed in the book represent places in Nassau, Suffolk and Queens—including a cemetery in the Ridgewood/Glendale area.

At the Woodside Library, the children delighted in viewing some still images taken at such sites as Sweet Hollow Road in Melville, as they were asked whether they could see anything that might be a ghost.

They were quick and eager to respond in the affirmative.

World leaders had sightings

During the presentation, it was noted that the late Winston Churchill, England’s prime minister, had been among the ranks of those to report a ghostly experience.

Afterwards, in speaking with a library visitor, Flammer offered another world leader—a U.S. president—as an example of someone seriously troubled by ghostly encounters.

“Lyndon Johnson was so plagued by ghosts from the Vietnam War, he said, that he had to give up his presidency,” Flammer advised. “He was seeing ghosts at night—figures marching around his bed.”

But if the number of claims and people who have made them give cause for consideration, it seems that when it comes to the matter of hauntings, presidents have been able to give as well as get.

In particular, Hill acknowledged a common belief that the White House itself is haunted, “mostly with Abraham Lincoln.”

Since the 1923-29 presidency of Calvin Coolidge—his wife Grace is regarded as the first to report seeing the ghost of Lincoln—numerous people have made similar assertions over the years about a White House encounter with the 16th President of the United States who was fatally shot in 1865.

Their own Halloween

After weeks of holiday sales, a merchant is likely to spend Christmas away from the store. But for The Paranormal Adventurers, they have no intentions of trying to escape from their own biggest day of the year.

As investigators, they have visited, written about and lectured on their experiences at the grave site of Erich Weiss—better known as Harry Houdini—in Machpelah Cemetery along Cypress Hills Street near the Jackie Robinson Parkway.

Since the legendary magician’s death on Halloween in 1926, Houdini has been associated with the day. For years after his passing, seances were held at his grave on the anniversary of his death.

But The Paranormal Adventurers will be nowhere near the Ridgewood/ Glendale area on Oct. 31.

“We’ll be appearing at a nursing home—the Orzac Center—next to Franklin General Hospital (in Franklin Square),” said Hill. “We worked there last year. It’s a privilege for us to entertain senior citizens. The audience was rather quiet during the show last year, but the staff told us that after they went back to their rooms, they couldn’t stop talking about their own ghostly expperiences.”

She added, “Hearing that made us smile!”

Later, they plan on checking out a multitude of ghosts, goblins, witches and warlocks—if only the costumed ones.

“We’ll be heading to Manhattan for the Halloween Parade,” Flammer said.

Editor’s note: For more information regarding The Paranormal Adventurers, including a list of future appearances and how you obtain a copy of their book, Long Island’s Most Haunted, visit www.paranormaladventurers. com on the Internet.