Date 2/26/2010
Participants: Dave, Sharon, Kathleen, Miranda, Micah, Jenn, Jeff, Kira, Seth
We were invited to investigate the Longmont Theater (Longmont, CO) by our friend Jenn, who is an actor and director for the theater company that performs there. Sharon and Dave were leading.
Originally built as a movie house in the 1920′s, the theater was taken over by the Longmont Theater Company in the 1980′s and continues to operate as a community resource to this day. The theater itself is designed in an art-deco style common to its day.
Claims:
The most compelling claim we heard about the place was, during a performance, a relatively new actor had finished her lines and exited off stage left, and immediately came upon the image of a woman, dressed in white, who disappeared after a few seconds. The story came to us third-hand, unfortunately, as the event occurred almost 10 years ago.
Other claims included Jenn reporting she had been touched on the head while alone, in the administrative office (~3 years ago), and a few reports (reported secondhand) of audible, disembodied voices.
Baseline:
We conducted a walkthru of the entire theater, including backstage area, the house, projection room, administrative office and prop room adjacent to the administrative office. We did pick up some ambient cooling along the back (west) wall the theater building, consistent with its exposure to the outside. The costume room upstairs and backstage also housed the dimmer array for the house lights and the entire room had all our of EMF meters pegged. Kira reported a marked sensitivity/physical reaction to the high EMF in that room. There were also some high EMF readings in the small projector booth, centered unsurprisingly around a number of outlets and poorly shielded electrical cords. Not other unexpected EMF or temperature readings were recorded.
Evidence:
No compelling evidence was recorded by the digital voice recorders.
On still cameras, we captured a few orbs.
While the static video camera trained on the test objects onstage revealed no movement, we did capture an interesting sequence on the Sony DCR-SR82 video.
This was the first video footage of the evening. Jenn and Dave were in the darkened administrative offices. This clip captures the last 30 seconds or so of the video sequence shot there. Dave remarks that there is a little bit of noise coming from the street, Jenn acknowledges, and then shortly thereafter a whispered (male?) voice seems to say “I got the camera.” Immediately after, Dave makes an audible sound as if acknowledging the voice.
We’ve listened to this clip several times. I’m about 80% certain it is not Jenn (it sounds male to me), and probably 60% certain is not me. And although Sharon initially dismissed it, she is now skeptical that the voice is Jenn’s as well. (Video plays in WMP.)
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Coda:
We were unable to capture validation of the claims.
The single EMF spike suggested something unusual, but left too little a footprint to regard it as a paranormal event.
Our view on orbs is that most of these images are dust, insects, moisture droplets or other explainable phenomena. Generally, we would cast a skeptical view of orbs representing paranormal activity, unless a) the same orb is captured by at least two different cameras b) the orb casts its own light against something else in the frame c) the orb was visible to the unaided eye or d) the orb appears in a scene not illuminated by a camera flash.
The single piece of video linked above, while interesting, cannot completely be ruled out as investigator contamination, although remains intriguing.
We hope to do a followup at a later date.
Thanks to all particpants.
–Dave
