Ghosts take a holiday from Chellberg Farm

PORTER | No one answered the door or the repeated calls for responses at the Chellberg Farm on Thursday. That's not too surprising, since no one has lived there for decades.

But Mike McDowell wasn't looking for the living. McDowell, leader of the Indiana Ghost Trackers, was hoping to chat with the dead. The house is said to have a history of ghostly activities, and McDowell -- along with his group -- have visited the home before and recorded comments from someone, who was heard but not seen. Or maybe they were.

When a picture taken of the house was examined later, there appeared to be a man and a woman standing in one of the windows. Supposedly, no one was in the house at the time. The comment heard on the tape sounds like a woman sighing and saying what could be "rainy day." McDowell said it was a sunny day when they were there, so the showers must have been on "the other side."

If the "rainy day" comment is played backward, it sounds like she says "Can you hear me?" McDowell said listening to recorded comments backward occasionally turns up a second message.

Recordings that pick up comments otherwise undetectable to the human ear are called electric voice phenomena or EVPs. McDowell's newest ghost chasing gadget is a "real time" EVP recorder that replays everything after a five-second delay rather than having to wait until he is done recording the whole thing to listen for voices.

McDowell tried to get a response from any of the unseen inhabitants of the farm house. He stood on the front porch of the farmhouse for almost 15 minutes asking questions about who they were, why they were there and if they had any plans for the July 4 weekend. The recorder didn't pick up anything.

In past visits, he said he has picked up a voice at the nearby cemetery asking, "What am I doing here."

"The parks are not open to the whole ghost hunting idea, so we are not out there at night," he said. "We are there during regular hours getting these recordings. There's definitely something to that ghost thing."