Woodstock may very well have a genuinely haunted landmark.

Historic Ghost Watch and Investigation (HGWI) has conducted three ghost-hunting investigations, including one earlier this month, at Hot Dog Heaven in downtown Woodstock to determine if spirits from days past still occupy the building.

Becky Wentzel of Woodstock, who owns the eatery with her husband, Barney, called in the ghost hunters after some unexplainable things began happening.

For example, she displays things like the restaurant's certificate of occupancy and business license on the windowsill of a window that does not open, yet she's come in to work at least four or five mornings to find the papers on the floor.

There also have been times when equipment has been mysteriously turned on and hot dogs that were in a container ended up across the room.

"And all our pipes are under the building, so there's just concrete walls between (businesses)," said Mrs. Wentzel, who knew about the ghost hunters because her sister is one of them. "But pipes have been rattling in the walls. It's something that's just weird."

Every once in a while, she'll "get a feeling" that there's an invisible guest in her presence.

"I get a tickle behind my knees," she said.

Because the restaurant is housed in an almost-100-year-old building that used to be the post office, Mrs. Wentzel said she thinks the spirit is that of the original postmaster.

"I've never had anybody tell me that," she said. "That's just what I think it is."

After several seemingly supernatural occurrences, she called in the Kennesaw-based ghost-hunting organization, founded in 2004 by Kevin Fike, who also manages the Ghosts of Marietta Walking Tour.

For the Hot Dog Heaven assignment, Fike brought in two three-member teams of ghost hunters to each do an independent investigation.

"The teams never know what is going on with the other," he said, noting he approaches ghost hunting from a scientific perspective by using audio and visual recording equipment, temperature gauges and electromagnetic field (EMF) meters to conduct investigations. "If they encounter something, it's not because the other team felt it. That establishes a little bit of control data. We use personal experience, but we don't depend on that unless it was witnessed by several people."

Inside the building were four infrared cameras, which can see in complete darkness, that recorded everything and transmitted the scene to a four-way split television screen that was being monitored by three members in the mobile base unit.

The investigation teams used a digital voice recorder to record electric voice phenomena (EVP), an unexplained event where voices and other noises are heard on the recording but weren't heard by the investigators, probably because spirit voices are at a higher frequency than the naked ear can hear.

They also measured any fluctuations in temperature and electromagnetic activity in the four areas of the restaurant -- the dining room, the kitchen, a storage area and the bathroom.

"We try to establish a baseline -- establish the temperature in the room and establish how high the electromagnetic fields are in the room," Fike said. "If we get anything off that, it's not normal."

After the first team established the baselines, lead investigator Michele Lowe of Marietta and investigators Michael "Stu" White of Powder Springs and Melanie Rogers of Kennesaw began the EVP by asking questions like "Is there anyone here who would like to communicate with us?" "Can you tell me your name?" and "Can you show us a sign by tapping on a wall or moving something?"

In the kitchen, Ms. Lowe felt a cool breeze blowing around her ankles in an area where there were no air vents.

"It was enough to give my leg goose bumps," she said.

Though investigators didn't find much with their own eyes and ears, that doesn't mean a spirit wasn't there.

"We might check the pictures and see something we didn't see or might listen to the recordings and hear something we didn't hear," Ms. Rogers said.

"We never know until we check out the findings," White said.

After the investigation was complete, Fike analyzed the data and, combined with data from a previous investigation, concluded the restaurant could have a spirit living there.

"We were able to record possibly eight unknown EVPs or voices, but they are not clear enough to make out what is being said," he said, noting the voices "are not those of our teams." "During the second sweep of the restaurant, we recorded some strange EMF fluctuations that seemed to temporarily occur on demand. These occurrences happened several times but could not be re-created long enough to conclude the fluctuations were caused by paranormal means. I do feel that the location is possibly haunted, but we have yet to document enough activity to prove it."

Mrs. Wentzel's belief that the spirit is the old postmaster could be right on the mark. During a previous investigation, the ghost hunters secured a recording of a clear, distinct voice.

"It was a real clear, old Southern accent saying 'yes ma'am,'" he said, noting they've also had changes in temperature and EMF. "It was a man. That's one of the clearest EVPs we've recorded. I feel with that EVP, we need to keep coming back to try it."

Though the voice "could be anybody," Fike said he would "tend to probably agree with" Mrs. Wentzel's assessment because "postmasters at the time were not allowed to put things in the window and the fact things keep getting taken out of the windows."

Whether the old postmaster is haunting the building or not, the tale has brought in a lot of business for the eatery, especially this time of year.

"People want to know how they can feel it, how they can see it," Mrs. Wentzel said. "I have to tell them to sit here and be peaceful. Don't look for it. You definitely can't expect it."

Fike said he became fascinated with ghosts as a first-grader who checked out a book that featured a photo of The Brown Lady, regarded as one of the best ghost photographs of all time.

"It showed a shining figure coming down the stairs," he said. "I saw that, and it just captivated me."

In 1996, he did his first paranormal investigation and decided he wanted to "go more in depth and learn about it."

Wanting to take a more scientific approach, he founded Historic Ghost Watch and Investigation eight years later and now has 22 hand-picked members working with him.

"I'm very selective," he said. "I've got hundreds and hundreds of applications from people who want to join."

The group, which doesn't charge for its investigations, treks to Savannah four to six times a year for ghost hunts and hits other sites across the Southeast. The members, who try to limit investigations to Saturday nights, consistently do two or three hunts a month but have done as many as five or six, Fike said.

One investigation, Anthony's Fine Dining in Buckhead, landed Fike and his assistant director, demonologist Tim Naylor, on "The Montel Williams Show."

"We got a really clear EVP that said, 'Go home,'" Fike said.

They've also investigated two private homes in Cherokee County, and "one of them was pretty active," he said.

Members may spend as few as three to five hours or as many as eight to 12 hours at an investigation site, but sometimes they spend the night, he said.

Though he's never encountered any demons in any of his 100-plus investigations, Fike said he has been "uneasy a time or two."

"I've been touched twice," he said. "I've had doors slam shut and lock, cold spots you can feel physically with your body. I've had several different things you would think would startle you, but I tend to go to where I think it went. But if I had to live with it, it would be different. I don't want to live with it."

People call HGWI to investigate their home or business for a variety of reasons.

"Most of the time, they just want to make sure they're not seeing things and not crazy," Fike said, noting clients have reported everything from hearing knocks and being shaken in bed to seeing full-body apparitions and objects moving by themselves. "That's 90-plus percent of the time."

While the ghost hunters may not always be able to definitively determine if a site is haunted, their goal is to "help you try to understand (the ghosts) and figure out if it's something you really need to fear," he said.

"Our findings are pretty speculative," he said. "But every once in a while, we get head-on, dead-on corroboration."

dharris@cherokeetribune.com

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