Betty Ward of Alexandria will tell you “Paranormal Activity” is much more than the name of this year’s sleeper hit movie.
Ward has lived in a haunted house near the George Washington National Masonic Memorial since 1954, and the ghost that inhabits it has become almost part of the family.
“They usually ask ‘Were you scared?’ or ‘What does he look like?’ ” Ward said of the questions many ask her about the ghost. “Our ghost is a friendly one.”
Ward, who works as a tour guide for Alexandria’s Footsteps to the Past — which her brother Steve Doss founded in 2002 — said most people were quite accepting of the phenomenon. Her company and others in the area fully research and study the history — paranormal and otherwise — in the D.C. area before they present it to guests during the extremely popular “ghost” walking tours they host.
“Everything we share is documented,” said Ward, discussing the painstaking research Doss and others put into the project. “We talk about the history of the town and take them to various historic sites, talk about houses and early owners and what their experiences were there.”
Ward isn’t the only homeowner with firsthand “ghost” experiences.
Spencer Chamberlin of Arlington, a self-confessed “technology geek” by day, is a member of the East Coast Research and Investigation of the Paranormal.
He was part of an ECRIP team that took part in a recent paranormal investigation that started when the owner of a historic row house in Logan Circle recently asked the group to document paranormal activity in his home.
“He said everybody knew about the ghost,” Chamberlin said of the owner who reported the activity. “The homeowner had seen a man and a woman or two different women. It’s hard to tell because, of course, [the ghosts] don’t say, ‘Hi my name is Sally.’ ”
Although ECRIP did find some “interesting audio files” while at the house, it continues to investigate, he said.
Although Chamberlin said he has never experienced paranormal activity, he is open to the idea and conducts investigations and seminars, including an upcoming session over Halloween weekend at Brentsville Courthouse Historic Centre in Bristow, Va.
“We have gotten actual word and odd sounds, what sound like footsteps,” Chamberlin said of past treks. “I just really want to solve it, really find out what’s going on.”
Carolyn Crouch, who founded Washington Walks a decade ago, said ghost tours were the most popular of all the historic walks her group offers.
Lafayette Square, repeatedly called the most haunted part of Washington, is especially popular, although Georgetown and other areas have their share of fans. Crouch said visitors would often take multiple ghost tours.
“About a third of the people are those that take ghost tours wherever they go,” Crouch said. “There are people who just love hearing about the paranormal and others that are very serious about it. It’s not unlike people who want to visit sites of the Civil War.”
Unlike cities with centuries-old history, such as London and Paris, the stories in Washington are not horrifying or overly violent but eerie, she said. Although some guests hope for embellishment, Washington Walks’ guides only relate stories — paranormal and historic — that are accurate.
Crouch said she has never had a paranormal encounter.
“After having spoken with true believers, I’ve decided I would love to have [such] an experience where I would be in the presence of the paranormal,” she said. “I wish it would happen, but it hasn’t.”
