12 Highlands Ranch Herald
LIFE
LOCAL
CULTURE FA I T H FA M I L Y FOOD HEALTH
October 20, 2016
Supernatural sleuths pursue ghosts Paranormal investigators explore things that go bump in the night By Tom Skelley tskelley@coloradocommunitymedia.com
E
ven when she was by herself, Luana Kurz always knew she really wasn’t. “I never felt alone at nighttime,” she said. As a child Kurz didn’t want to believe in ghosts, despite mounting evidence that her family shared their home with other, invisible tenants. Candles blew out on their own. Cabinet doors, closed when the family went to bed, were open in the morning. Lying in bed one night when she was 17, Kurz received a visit from her grandfather. “I was lying on my side, I couldn’t move, and I felt cold,” Kurz said. “I felt a hand patting me, and I looked down and saw his hand, and I just felt his peace.” She remained in bed, motionless, until her father knocked on her door. “About an hour later, the phone rang and my father came to my room,” Kurz said. “He said ‘I just want to tell you that your
grandpa died about an hour ago.’ ” Englewood resident Michelle Mayer always had a feeling her childhood home in Rochester, New York, was haunted, but her parents wouldn’t talk about her suspicions. When she moved to her own apartment in 1987, she didn’t suspect there were ghosts in the building. She knew. Lights turned themselves on and off. The phone rang spontaneously. She watched plates float around her kitchen. “I’d be cooking and the dish I was about to put the food on would move from one side of the sink to the other,” Mayer, 45, said. At 10 years old in Michigan, LeeAnna Jonas and two friends played with a Ouija board, hoping for a spooky thrill. They ended up screaming and running from the basement. “We all looked up and saw an apparition of a woman sitting in a rocking chair, with a baby in one arm and a knife in her other hand,” the 54-year-old Littleton resident said. “I always knew it was there,” Jonas said. “I just didn’t know how to find out for sure.” Now she knows. Ghosts continues on Page 13
A 2005 photo taken by Michelle Mayer shows rising mists at the Central City Masonic cemetery. A formation in the center, somewhat skeletal in appearance, appears to be rising from a headstone. Courtesy photo
Michelle Mayer, head of Full Moon Explorations, takes a stroll through Littleton Cemetery on Oct. 6. Mayer says paranormal investigations don’t require equipment beyond a camera and an audio recorder. Photo by Tom Skelley
On the case Colorado Shadow Investigations at the Lumber Baron Inn By Tom Skelley | tskelley@coloradocommunitymedia.com
An Ovilus, such as this one used by LeeAnna Jonas, amplifies and deciphers supernatural voices. Courtesy photo