'Ghost Hunters' makes stop for supernatural tales at Town Square

Las Vegas could be featured on Halloween episode

F. Andrew Taylor/viewChristian Litke, the Wrestlemania Fan Axxess tour master of ceremonies, listens as Carol Bell, a licensed psychic reader at The Psychic Eye in Henderson, describes her experiences photographing what she believes to be ghostly balls of light known as orbs to the producers of the Sci Fi Channel?s reality series "Ghost Hunters" at Town Square, 6605 Las Vegas Blvd. South, Feb. 15. Advertisement

"From Ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night, good Lord, deliver us."

-- Old Celtic Prayer

One would think that in a town as relatively young as Las Vegas, there wouldn't be enough time to accumulate a significant number of ghosts, but judging by the people who went to Town Square on Feb. 15 and 16, that may not be the case.

Producers from the Sci Fi Channel's reality series "Ghost Hunters" came to town looking for America's most haunted places. The show follows the real-life exploits of members of the Rhode Island-based group TAPS, The Atlantic Paranormal Society.

The event, called The Great American Ghost Hunt, was part of the Wrestlemania Fan Axxess Tour, a nationwide tour promoting World Wrestling Entertainment, better known as the WWE. The tour included a stop at Town Square, 6605 Las Vegas Blvd. South.

Although ghost hunting and wrestling may seem like an odd match, the WWE's ECW, Extreme Challenge Wrestling, runs on the Sci Fi Channel. "The show (ECW) has some sci-fi elements," said Maureen Granados, spokeswoman for "Ghost Hunters."

So, there among wrestling fans clad in black T-shirts emblazoned with pictures of WWE stars, a small group of believers in the unbelievable came to tell their tales of the supernatural.

It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the best place to tell a ghost story. Aside from the broad daylight and the crowd of wrestling fans and random shoppers at the outdoor mall, the participants were standing on a multi-purpose stage designed and decorated to look like a wresting ring. Still, they persevered, despite a touchy sound system and low-flying planes that often drowned out the sound.

Christian Litke, the Wrestlemania Fan Axxess tour master of ceremonies, kept the proceedings lively and moving along. Many people who came to share their stories not only said that they had experienced ghosts, but that they knew who those ghosts were. If they are to be believed, family members tend not to stray too far into the great beyond, but rather they hang around their living relatives, for reasons unknown.

Carol Bell came with a thick photo album filled with pictures of orbs, ghostly balls of light that are unseen to the naked eye, but are believed to appear mysteriously in photographs.

"I took my first orb photos in 2004," she said, "but I didn't know what they were; I'd never heard of orbs."

Bell continued taking pictures, thinking that something was wrong with the camera, but after a year or so, she realized that she was taking pictures of what she believes are unseen forces.

"Even I don't believe what I'm seeing sometimes," she said. "It scares me sometimes."

Bell, who is a licensed psychic reader at The Psychic Eye in Henderson, described her experience with the "Ghost Hunters" event as "strange."

"It wasn't a ghost story I was telling," she said. "I just had the photos I wanted to show."

Chuck Klenus, founder and chief investigator of Sin City Paranormal, a local ghost hunting group, found the whole thing to be just about what he had expected.

"I was just checking it out to see what they were going to do," he said. "It's not like I'm looking into moving to Rhode Island."

Klenus gave a brief rundown of his fledgling group's activities for the "Ghost Hunters" cameras. Off camera, he contended that the most haunted place in Nevada is the Goldfield Hotel in Goldfield, which his group will be investigating soon.

"The last paying guest checked out in World War II," Klenus said. "They've had plenty of guests since then, just not living ones."

There are six more cities on the tour, which wraps up in May. Afterward, "Ghost Hunters" will peruse all the tapes and ascertain the best stories and determine the three most haunted places in America. The winning storytellers will attend a live filming of the show on Halloween.

"We're very excited about it," Granados said. "It's not just a good way to find ghosts, but a good way to connect with the fans."

For more information about "Ghost Hunters," visit www.scifi.com/ghosthunters, where you can see clips of the show and some of the highlights of the cities previously visited on the tour. Eventually, the best of all the taped interviews from the tour, including Las Vegas, will be available on the site.