GAINESVILLE - Saturday night at the downtown Gainesville branch of the Hall County Library Ghost Hunt, participants met a little girl named Emma.<br />
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The Southeastern Institute of Paranormal Research (SIPR), a non-profit organization, defines a ghost as 'the energy, soul and personality of a person who once lived' and around 20 people who sat in the dark with SPIR researchers, and one of those researchers, feel that is precisely what they experienced.<br />
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Institute founder Denise Roffe said she does not go looking for ghosts, and often SIPR debunks reports of 'things that go bump in the night,' but Roffe told the group she once saw the ghost of a woman from the early 1900's at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta during an investigation, and has experienced the supernatural.<br />
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"We try to find a reasonable explanation for whatever might be happening," Roffe said. "It's when we can't debunk it is when we know there is something paranormal happening."<br />
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And that is what keeps the group going, when there is the unexplained, when there is the paranormal, and observers said Emma was definitely unexplained.<br />
After a two hour session which included a review of the different types of haunting, equipment used to record paranormal activity, evidence and psychic studies, participants divided into groups and went into the library's dark shadows. <br />
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As soon as the group arrived in the children's section on the first floor, one participant heard a small child's laughter, then silence, and then SIPR researchers Dona Ueltschi and Doug Smith detected movement in a corner of the room. Later, April McKaig with SIPR led her group into the same area and felt a soft gentle touch on her arm, a child's touch, and then a tickle. <br />
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McKaig, sensitive to unnatural stimuli, said in her mind, like a memory, she envisioned a little girl with blonde curly hair, about five or six years old, dressed in a 1950's era play dress. Another woman in McKaig's group felt her hair touched, another felt her hair playfully tugged.<br />
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"She seemed to be happy where she was and loved the books," McKaig said. "She seemed to be glad we were there, and was glad someone had come to play with her."<br />
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Another group led by Roffe entered the child's section, and as they were beginning to leave one of the men noticed a child's puppet in the chair he occupied and said he did not notice it before. A lady in the group had placed the puppet on a table near the chair to hopefully attract the spirit's attention, but how did it get in the man's chair?<br />
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There was evidence of the unexplained in other parts of the library; upstairs observers smelled wood smoke, heard a tap on a table, heard voices, and researchers detected motion in the reference section.<br />
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"I'm interested," Ashley MacDonnell said as the event concluded. I believe there is more out there, I believe there are spirits in limbo and I believe they're here."<br />
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MacDonnell said she experienced a headache and a chest pain in an area where a few years ago another woman had similar symptoms.<br />
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"I felt it more than saw it," she observed.<br />
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This was MacDonnell's first ghost hunt at the library, but she has had other experiences.<br />
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"I believe the Library is haunted. I've believed that before this happened, I've always had a feeling that there was something here, but I got some information today," MacDonnell said.<br />
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MacDonnell said what she felt was in the Spanish section upstairs but what was seen was in the children's section. Outreach Librarian, Gail Hogan, said this was the 4th or 5th Ghost Hunt she was involved in.<br />
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"We can see by the enthusiasm of the participants that there is a curiosity," Hogan said. "Different people come for different reasons, maybe for answers that they have in their life, maybe just curiosity about what's here."
