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Sunday, September 2, 2001
Group seeks past's ghosts
Lexington officials deny request to stay a night to hunt for a haunting
By Jeremy Brown
Caller-Times

Michelle Christenson/Caller-Times

Judith Whipple, historian for the Lexington Museum on the Bay, discusses some of the ghost sightings reported on the retired aircraft carrier. She is in the ship’s engine room, where she said the majority of the sightings have taken place.

   Cynthia Rowland doesn't want to bust ghosts. She just wants to prove they exist.
   Armed with sophisticated cameras and tape recorders, she and her band of paranormal investigators have visited historical sites across Texas, hoping to find evidence of all things ghostly, from orbs to apparitions.
   They have stayed overnight at the battleground at Goliad and at Theodore Roosevelt's old San Antonio stomping grounds, the Menger Hotel.
   They have searched Houston subdivisions that are built atop plantation cemeteries, and they have camped out in the old federal courthouse in Corpus Christi.
   Now, Rowland and her crew, who call themselves the Spectre Inspectors, want to stow on board the USS Lexington Museum on the Bay for an evening and capture on tape and film the ghosts that have long been rumored to roam the corridors of the retired aircraft carrier.

Caller-Times file

The Lexington (or ‘Blue Ghost’) has been the site of ghost sightings.

   "There's a known entity that's on the Lexington," Rowland said.
   "To do a ghost investigation would not be done with any disrespect for people who died in times of war. It's just done out of pure interest in paranormal activity and pure interest in history."
   Rowland, a Houston resident who lived in Corpus Christi in the early 1990s, said she read about a program online that, at a price of $44 a head, allows groups to spend a night on the ship, run fire drills and eat mess food.
   To her, the program sounded perfect.
   The 12 or so active members of her poltergeist-pursuing posse, plus whoever else was interested, could come aboard and see for themselves the ghost of a 19-year-old seaman who, dressed in a white summer uniform, has tricked unsuspecting folks into thinking he is a tour guide.
   But Lexington officials balked at the request.
   Their quarrel was not with the paranormal beliefs of the inspectors - why, the museum even cultivates the legend of its haunting with an online ghost camera - but with their age.
   Adults forbidden
   "Our charter forbids us to house adults," said Lexington Curator Judith Whipple.
   "These live-aboard programs are strictly for children who are in non-profit organizations such as the YMCA, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts."
   Rowland said, though, that the rule should not stand in the way of an investigation that could arouse a lot of public interest.
   "We don't have backpacks with lasers or anything like that, but we have infrared cameras and thermal sensors and electromagnetic frequency detectors and still cameras with 800-speed film," she said.
   The group would like to add photographs of the Lexington ghost to its collection of evidence and, one day, present it in a scientific manner.
   But unless Lexington officials change their minds, the inspectors will have to revisit old haunted sites or learn about new ones through the international community of paranormal investigators, which includes outfits across Texas.
   And maybe, one day, Rowland and her crew will sway skeptics who have not already been won over by everyday evidence of ghosts such as the way the temperature in a room can plummet or doors can open and close on their own.
   "We don't have ectoplasm traps like the Ghostbusters had," Rowland said.
   "We just want to capture proof that they exist."


Contact Jeremy Brown at 886-3746 or brownj@caller.com

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