Written by Zach “Ghostbusters!” Dalton
Nothing says spooky like going to the most haunted spot on Roanoke’s campus. On a weekend in September Dr. Carter’s INQ class: Ghost and Human Perception got to experience this first hand. This is a tradition that has been going on for 16 years and showed no signs of stopping during Covid. Dr. Carter commented, “we’ve had to scale back the all-night investigations to two-hour sessions over three nights.” With these measures in place the students set out to find some ghostly action. Senior Kaeyln Spickler noted, “I went into the experience with an open mind,” she added, “the first night I personally didn’t see any action, but some students did.” The “action” mentioned range from case to case. Dr. Carter, who has led this expedition for years, explained, “we’ve had some interesting experiences: a cool light anomaly, a touch on the back, hearing footsteps, a cold spot, and perhaps some object movement.”
Monterey House was acquired by the college in 2002 and before that acted as anything from a hotel to a fraternity house. There has been a lot of energy moving through that house and this energy is commonly associated with spirits. Dr. Carter told Roanoke College News, “[t]he real question is, ‘Who lived in the house?’…It’s all about life energy, basically.” Using this energy helps the students find where the most activity has occurred in the house and can lead them to paranormal experiences…if they are lucky.
Spickler recounted on the second night, “[it] was completely different and what happened certainly makes me wonder what goes on at the Monterey House.” Which is a good question. What does go on at the Monterey House? Dr. Carter told Brackety-Ack that while the sessions never develop publishable findings “[he hopes] to write up [the] observations and experiences in a popular-audience book,” he added, “Of course, I’ll have to list every student in the class since 2006 as co-investigators.”
