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DIEPART IN THE MEDIA...
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TWO DAYS IN A ROW IN THE QUAD CITY AREA.
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News-byte:
UFO hunters visit Silvis;
see nothing unusual By Anthony Watt , awatt@qconline.com
Dan Videtich
Iowa Paranormal Advanced Research Team members, from left, Michelle Villa of Moline, Kent Amerine of LeClaire, and Teresa Azure of Davenport track airplanes in the early mornig skies over Silvis at Crosstown Avenue and IL 5 Friday. The group was investigating the area where Theresa Sinclair claimed to have seen a bright, triangular object speeding through the sky at 6:30 a.m. on Friday, March 23rd.
They watched the sky Friday morning, hoping to see something extraordinary, and, if not, at least something explainable.
At about 5:45 a.m., a handful of the Iowa Ghost Hunters, or DIEPART, the Des Moines Iowa Extreme Paranormal Advanced Research Team, came out to see if they could find what Theresa Sinclair, 58, Silvis, saw on the morning of March 23 in Davenport, Iowa.
Ms. Sinclair said she was westbound on Crosstown Avenue on her way to work around 6:30 a.m. when she spotted a bright, triangular object speeding through the sky.
She observed it for several minutes before it disappeared. You know This lady's very brave," said Joe Leto, the head of DIEPART, a Des Moines group that investigates the unexplained. "She's obviously very confident and very secure in what she saw."
People who see -- or think they see -- something strange often won't talk to agencies like the police, or the mainstream media, because they are afraid people will think they are crazy, he said.
"Since about 2000, in Iowa, there have been over 200 sightings like this," Mr. Leto said. He said the most recent case his group investigated in the Quad-Cities area was about two months ago.
The Ghost Hunters investigate accounts of the unexplained, from ghosts to UFOs.
DIEPART will try to investigate any accounts of the unexplainable that people bring to it, Mr. Leto said. The group is going to look into Ms. Sinclair's account.
"We're going to see if we can basically debunk it," he said, adding they are "not trying to make her a fool or anything."
It's possible what she saw was something ordinary like an airplane, or possibly it was a hoax, he said.
But Mr. Leto said he does not think it is the latter, because hucksters usually try to pull those off with more people around.
"Maybe, actually, she saw something," he said. "I'm just not sure."
"I'm hoping to see something," said member Michelle Villa, of Moline. "That would be great if I could go back to Theresa and say 'hey, you were right.'"
The group was trying to get video or pictures of anything that could explain what Ms. Sinclair saw, said Joseph Mullenix, Davenport, another member.
The group met in the parking lot of a Silvis Jewel-Osco that Ms. Sinclair said the object flew over. It was was clammy, wet, overcast and early. The group was there by about 5:30 a.m.
About 5:45 a.m., a set of bright lights climbed from the skyline, but it was a plane taking off from the Quad City International Airport.
"Hey Joe (Mr. Mullenix), get your camcorder out," Kent Amerine, LeClaire, said quickly. Mr. Amerine said he's been a member of the group for eight months and had been on some ghost calls.
"First UFO, though," he said.
There would be several more planes over the next half hour or so. Each is dutifully recorded by the group.
One plane turned and flew directly overhead, its lights of green, red and white making a diamond-shaped pattern when viewed from underneath. The plane, its engines audible, climbs into the clouds and fades from view.
About 6:20 a.m., the group left the parking lot and went a few blocks west, down Crosstown Avenue, and stoped at a baseball diamond in between the high- rise where Ms. Sinclair first saw the object and the Jewel-Osco.
By the time they got there, the sky was getting light, the clouds became discernible in massive slate-blue and pearl-colored banks.
At about 6:40 p.m., another plane, heading north, shot above the skyline. It appeared as a sliver of darker gray, a bright white light in its center, ascending over the high-rise.
It was almost daylight out by that point and the observers decided to pack up. Mr. Amerine said he had no conclusions yet.
Usually the group goes to the witness with what it finds to see what that person thinks. He's not sure Ms. Sinclair will be willing to do that. Is she isn't, it will be evidence for their records.
"All we can do is present the evidence," he said.
On the web: For more information about the Des Moines Iowa Extreme Paranormal Advanced Research Team, go to their website at www.diepart.com/
Dan Videtich
Iowa Paranormal Advanced Research Team members, from left, Michelle Villa of Moline, Kent Amerine of LeClaire, and Teresa Azure of Davenport track airplanes in the early mornig skies over Silvis at Crosstown Avenue and IL 5 Friday. The group was investigating the area where Theresa Sinclair claimed to have seen a bright, triangular object speeding through the sky at 6:30 a.m. on Friday, March 23rd.
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UFOs in Q-C? Group sets out to probe, debunk sighting Comment on this story
Related stories
By Anthony Watt , awatt@qconline.com
Theresa Sinclair may be a rare specimen -- someone who came forward seeing something in the sky that she couldn't explain.
About 6:30 a.m. March 23, the 58-year-old Silvis woman spotted a bright, triangular object speeding through the sky.
Afterwards, she was willing to talk to a reporter about what she saw, though she said she had no idea what she actually saw.
"This lady's very brave," said Joe Leto, the head of DIEPART, a Des Moines group that investigates the unexplained. "She's obviously very confident and very secure in what she saw."
People who see -- or think they see -- something strange often won't talk to agencies like the police, or the mainstream media, because they are afraid people will think they are crazy, he said.
"Since about 2000, in Iowa, there have been over 200 sightings like this," Mr. Leto said. He said the most recent case his group investigated in the Quad-Cities area was about two months ago.
But the Rock Island and Scott county sheriff's departments said it is unusual to receive calls about unidentified flying objects.
"We rarely get them," Rock Island County Sheriff Mike Huff said. "The last time we got them, we believe they were connected to a large display of what is called the Northern Lights."
That happened a few years ago, he said.
"I don't know if we can remember when we've got a call like that,"
Maj. Mike Brown of the Scott County Sheriff's Office said.
But people do see things they can't explain, and there is interest in their accounts. Enter "UFO" into Yahoo.com's search function and there are millions of hits.
Some local educators believe the interest stems from a desire to classify the unknown, because the unknown can be frightening.
"We're obviously not going to be able to tell if what she saw is a UFO or not," said professor Mark Vincent, who teaches psychology at Augustana College, of Ms. Sinclair's account. "I think people are always trying to construct explanations for their observations."
In modern culture, people know what a UFO is; references abound in the mass media, so they can be a possible explanation for any unexplained sighting.
Though it's not surprising people can come to that conclusion, those conclusions aren't always based in fact, Mr. Vincent said.
Sometimes the brain plays tricks on the witness.
The human brain tends to see order in things even when it's not there, said Ian Harrington, a biological psychologist, also in the Augustana psychology department.
If the brain does not have complete information, it still tries to make sense of what it has, he said. It might form connections that aren't really there, making something that could actually be mundane into something extraordinary.
"The brain can't help itself," Mr. Harrington said. "The brain is desperately trying to make sense of things all the time."
To where someone's brain leads that person is up to that individual, he said. Some might see a UFO, yet others might just see aircraft, he said.
What happened to Ms. Sinclair can happen to anyone, said Bruce D. LeBlanc, a sociology and psychology professor at Black Hawk College.
"I think anything's possible for any human being to experience," he said.
Though some people who see the unexplainable are mentally ill, others exhibit no signs of illness, he said.
Mr. LeBlanc added it is also possible for someone to see something that exists, but that cannot be measured with existing science and technology.
DIEPART will try to investigate any accounts of the unexplainable that people bring to it, Mr. Leto said. The group is going to look into Ms. Sinclair's account.
"We're going to see if we can basically debunk it," he said, adding they are "not trying to make her a fool or anything."
It's possible what she saw was something ordinary like an airplane, or possibly it was a hoax, he said.
But Mr. Leto said he does not think it is the latter, because hucksters usually try to pull those off with more people around.
"Maybe, actually, she saw something," he said. "I'm just not sure."
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HERE IS HER ORIGINAL NEWSPAPER ARTICLE..
Silvis woman claims to have seen a UFO on 6:30 a.m. March 23
Comment on this story
By Anthony Watt ,
awatt@qconline.com
At first, she thought what she was seeing was something ordinary.
"As I pulled out of my driveway, I noticed it," Theresa Sinclair, 58,
Silvis said. "I thought it was an airplane that was very low."
It was about 6:30 a.m. March 23, and Ms. Sinclair was on her way to her
job at the Rock Island Arsenal. What she saw through the open window of
her car was a triangular shape in the sky, with bright red, green and
white lights along its edges, outlining the shape.
When Ms. Sinclair first saw it, the triangle appeared to be over a
high-rise building at the intersection of 10th Street and Crosstown
Avenue. She couldn't say what distance it actually was away from her,
but it appeared big.
She said she then looked away because she was concentrating on driving
west on Crosstown, but when she looked up again, it was moving -- fast.
"It just, like, zipped to Jewel (grocery store), then it zipped to over
by Colona Road," Ms. Sinclair said.
She stopped her car at the intersection of Crosstown and 10th Street and
got out to have a better look.
"I decided I was intrigued at this point," Ms. Sinclair said. "Then I
looked up, and it was gone."
The whole episode only took three or four minutes, she said.
The whole time she observed the object, she did not hear anything like
the sounds of jet engines or helicopter blades. It appeared to stay the
same distance away from her the whole time.
"I heard nothing, I heard nothing at all," Ms. Sinclair said.
And apparently neither did anyone else.
Local and federal authorities, including the National Weather Service,
the Federal Aviation Administration and Quad City International Airport
said they received no reports of anything odd in the sky during that
time.
Ms. Sinclair said she did not report it either. "I was just so taken
aback by it," she said.
She did tell some of her co-workers about it, though. Jokes about little
green men ensued.
"You laugh, but stranger things happen," she told them.
The next day, Ms. Sinclair went out at the same time, but did not see
anything. There wasn't a second show.
She said Wednesday that she's not on any medications, had not had any
alcohol, nor suffered any recent blows to the head.
Many officials, and some local astronomers, also could not or, in some
cases, would not, explain what she saw.
"Chances are she wasn't seeing what she thinks she saw," said Black Hawk
College professor Richard Harwood, who teaches geology, geography and
astronomy.
He said that Saturn and Jupiter would have been visible in the sky as
bright stars that morning. It's possible one of them could have appeared
moving because Ms. Sinclair's vehicle was in motion.
"In her case, who can say," Mr. Harwood said. "Nobody else saw it, it's
hard to tell."
When asked what she thought it was, Ms. Sinclair replied with a laugh
that it was an unidentified flying object, or UFO.
But then she added, "I can't say."
"I would like to have been able to say it was a plane or a weather
balloon," she said. "But I don't know. It was unidentifiable."
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The real ghost busters? Not quite
By GREG PIERQUET
T-R PHOTO BY GREG PIERQUET
Investigator Jeff Eastman sets up sensitive audio equiptment which will potentially pick up otherwise unheard sounds.
Some might call them ghost busters. They have the vans and the fancy equiptment, but that is not how Joe Leto would put it.
Leto is the founder and lead investigator for the Des Moines Iowa Extreme paranormal Advanced Research Team, or DIEPART. He orchestrates a team of about a dozen investigators who travel to sites where people have reported paranormal activity. And they do it free of charge.
Leto, who works for a telephone company in the Des Moines area, attended the University of Iowa where he earned a degree in Radio Frequency Engineering. Having knowledge of the advanced equiptment he and his team uses is imperative. Many of his team members grew up in houses they knew to be haunted. He didn’t but has simply always been interested in the paranormal.
“It’s never really been a question of being scared of any of this,” Leto said.
He said it is more a question of being excited, rather than scared.
“But, we’re not really about busting ghosts,” Leto said. “We are simply trying to validate, or not, claims that people make about their alleged encounters with the paranormal.”
Team members get excited about the possibility of finding activity, but they conduct their research professionally.
“I try not to hear other peoples’ ghost stories,” team member Rick Cowman said. “That way I don’t have expectations in my mind of what I should be hearing or seeing.
Cowman said most of the time the team does not see any activity.
The investigation team typically conducts one investigation per week. They set up their equiptment throughout the house or building and by about 1 a.m. the team turns off the lights and waits. They usually finish up at 4 a.m. and meet at Leto’s house to analyze the data collected.
“We want to approach this from a scientific perspective,” Leto said. “We want to be more like a fly on the wall instead of like people using a Ouija board.”
Leto said the team is very careful to avoid conjuring anything.
On July15 the team conducted an investigation at a 110-year-old home in Zearing. The occupants have lived there for 30 years and had each encountered what seemed to be spirits on numerous occasions. The family of three wished to remain anonymous.
“The first thing I saw was a couple passing through the hallway between the bedroom and bathroom,” the 37-year-old daughter said. “That was about a week after we had moved in.”
Her father did not believe her for many years, until recently.
“There’s a little girl and there’s some bigger people,” the 75-year-old father said. “I see things in my daughter’s room, and that’s what scares me.”
The daughter said the scariest thing anyone has experienced was when her brother was a baby and her mother was rocking him. She said her mother looked up and saw three men each pointing a gun at her. After flinching and closing her eyes, she said, the men were gone.
The more recent sightings have left the family frustrated and bewildered.
“We just want whatever they are to leave,” the daughter said. “We had a pastor and a missionary come pray over the house 20 years ago, and it had worked, but just recently we started seeing things again.”
Leto said that having someone say a prayer over the house and family helps.
“It has worked every time,” Leto said.
After a night and full morning of investigation, Saturday’s investigation produced some exciting results for the team.
“We got some voices and things,” Leto said. “There were about 12 distinct voices, but that’s not uncommon for a house this old. You have to think of it like a tape cassette. Sometimes if you’ve recorded something onto it and then record over it, the original will show through a little bit.
“We heard some pretty erotic things this morning,” he said. “Some of them I won’t repeat, but one clearly said ‘She wants him,’ which is a pretty common theme in what we hear. Oftentimes speech that was once accompanied by strong emotions shows up on our recordings.”
This, according to Leto, is why cemeteries, churches, hospitals and schools are often the most researched.
DIEPART is preparing to launch a documentary-type show on Iowa Public Television.
To contact the group or to view pictures and listen to audio clips of DIEPART’s findings, visit www.diepart.com.
———
Contact Greg Pierquet at 641-753-6611 or gpierquet@timesre publican.com
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Somebody You Should Know: Shannon Kingrey, Ghost HunterWho you gonna call? Try Shannon Kingrey. She ain't afraid of no ghosts.
Arturo Fernandez/Juice
Shannon Kingrey, Ghost Hunter
:: Shannon Kingrey
Age: 24
What she does: Leads investigations with DIEPART, the Des Moines Iowa Extreme Paranormal Advanced Research Team — also known as "The Iowa Ghost Hunters."
Info: diepart.com.
On TV: DIEPART has a cable-access television show on Mediacom channel 15 at 7 p.m. Sunday nights. Watch DIEPART's promotional video.
Do you see dead people?
Kingrey said there are many signs your house may be haunted. Here are some of the most common:
•Unexplained noises (like cries and whispers)
•Unexplained shadows
•Pets behaving strangely
•Feelings of being watched
•Mild psychokinetic phenomena (objects moving on their own)
•Unexplained hot and cold spots
•Unexplained smells
She said if you notice these things happening, keep a journal of the activity to see if any patterns develop. Obviously, the existence of any of these signs does not necessarily mean there are ghosts roaming your home, Kingrey said.
“In most cases, any suspected activity can be easily explained,” she said. “There’s usually a rational explanation for everything.”
But if you can’t find an explanation and are spooked, Kingrey suggests calling a team of experts like DIEPART.
by tim paluch
juice staff writer
05/24/2006
http://www.dmjuice.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060524/JUICE03/605240316/1119
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Team goes where g-g-ghosts may resideLARRY BALLARD
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
May 9, 2006
The Des Moines Register featured DIEPART on their website and on the 2nd page of their Iowa Living section. It was a very well written article.
Team goes where g-g-ghosts may resideLARRY BALLARD
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
May 9, 2006
A little background: Save the “Ghostbuster” jokes. Natalie Boswell has heard them all. She’s an investigator for the Des Moines Iowa Extreme Paranormal Advanced Research Team. The 12-member unit uses parabolic microphones, EMFs (more on those later) and other specialized equipment to root out the reason things go bump in the night. The Villisca hatchet-murder house, the Kasier Bevington manse in Winterset, the Jordan House in West Des Moines; if there’s something creepy going on, Boswell and company will happily come out to assess the situation. For details, go to www.diepart.com
In the news: The paranormal sleuths later this month will head to Louisville, Ky., to what some consider the mecca of haunts: Waverly Hills Sanitarium, which has a lengthy history of apparitions, ghostly encounters and general weirdness. The infamous hospital was once home to one of the country's largest tuberculosis treatment centers. More than 60,000 people died there between 1926 and the time it closed in the early 1980s. Trip volunteers should be prepared for a marathon spook-hunt session. Call (515) 250-2108; ask for Joe. Before the trip, Boswell answered 10 (or so) Questions about banshees, doppelgangers and crazy coffee-makers.
Q: So, how's the ghost-hunting business?
A: Busy. We've been doing them almost every weekend for the past three months or so. When someone contacts us, we try to get there soon as possible. I know I'd want someone there as soon as possible if it were my house.
Q: How many folks out there are attracted to paranormal research?
A: There are about 12 of us. Members come and go, but right now we're pretty stable. We welcome new members, but they have to be willing to do two or three overnight investigations per month.
Q: What's the appeal for you?
A: I've been interested in the paranormal all my life. As I child, I always wondered what happened to people after they passed on. When my father died, I asked him, "If here's some way. ..." He finished my sentence for me: "I will give you a sign."
Q: And?
A: He hasn't yet.
Q: When a customer calls, what's your first move?
A: First, we get all the information we can from them about what happened, and the history of the house. The first thing we do is try to find an explanation for whatever it is. We take temperature readings, then audio and video. We'll take an EMF in. ...
Q: What's an EMF?
A: An electro-magnetic field detector. They basically tell you where electrical lines are.
Q: How long does all this take?
A: It takes six or seven hours just to go through the evidence we gather.
Q: Sounds expensive.
A: We don't charge. It's all free.
Q: So ghost-busting is a nonprofit pursuit?
A: Most of us work during the day. We come from all walks of life. I'm a stay-at-home mom with four children. We have one retired guy; the youngest is 26. All kinds of people, really. We aren't witches or anything like that.
Q: Do you consider yourself scientists, or do you just assume that spirits and ghosts are everywhere, just waiting to be discovered? I have a coffee-maker that comes on for no reason. Does that automatically mean there's a ghost in the house who likes caffeine?
A: We are on the scientific level. The first thing we do is debunk. We try to prove that a place isn't haunted. A coffee-maker is electrical. There are plenty of reasons why electronic devices malfunction. There can be plenty of reasons why a door slams, or why something moves inexplicably.
Q: Do you check for drafts?
A: We look for open windows, too.
Q: Anybody ever call you out to their house and then play a practical joke on you?
A: Not yet, but we have shown up to find that the person who called had been drinking.
Q: Ever had your own ghostly encounter?
A: We were in Wilton, Ia. I was sitting in front of a table with a parabolic microphone that amplifies sound. I heard this whisper: "I am the one who said that." When we played back the audio, everyone heard it.
Q: What does your husband think of all this?
A: He's a foreman at Des Moines Steel Fence in Johnston. He knows I've been interested in this my whole life, so he's used to it. We both sacrifice time so the other can do their thing. He likes to go hunting.
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DIEPART WAS FEATURED ON THE COAST TO COAST WEBSITE
LISTEN TO DIEPARTS (((NEW THEME SONG))) HERE...
evps/DIEPARTthemesong.mp3
This is for our tv show as well as for
The media and radio interviews etc... This theme song is fast and cool with DIEPART evps mixed right into the entire song... Tell us what you think I think we need a album.. The greatest dead hits.. LOL... This song was produced by ERIC KLINE and JOE LETO.. 04/2006
evps/DIEPARTthemesong.mp3
Click on the image to hear song.
DIEPART or the Des Moines Iowa Extreme Paranormal Advanced Research Team has been very busy for 2 years now gathering evidence of the supernatural and the paranormal.. DIEPART have collected over 500 voices from the dead... All of the voices you hear in this song are evps or Electronic Voice Phenomena...which are voices caught on tape not heard usually by the persons taping at the time, but later when reviewing these same tapes we find these frightening unusual voices from supposed haunted locations...
We recently needed a theme song for our local public access TV show so.. Eric Kline and Joe Leto wrote & edited & produced a unique blend of evps and music... this very fast beat hip/cool musical version of some of DIEPARTS EVPS collected in these short 2 years...are all originals no tampering no filtering whatsoever.
Joe Leto
DIEPART FOUNDER
help@diepart.com
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City View ran a nice story including DIEPART and our trip to Villisca
http://www.dmcityview.com/archives/aug/08-25-05/cover.shtml
Villisca House was the cover story in the Thursday, August 25, 2005 edition of Des Moines' Cityview newspaper. DIEPART was part of the feature!! Reporter Erin Randolph did a great job of reporting on the history of the home and some of the sensationalism surrounding it. Excellent job, Erin!
We enjoyed having her along for the investigation.
Quote about DIEPART in that Newspaper article.
DIEPART wrapped up its investigations about 5 a.m. after a very quiet night in the house. Nothing was really picked up that was out of the ordinary, though the group had hours worth of recorded noise to go through in search of EVPs. A few days later, it would be revealed that a few EVPs were found. However, DIEPART has been in other homes with far more paranormal evidence than Villisca, which, in a way, is a bit disappointing considering the house is touted as one of the most haunted in the Midwest.
Following the investigation, founder Joe Leto would release an e-mail to his group, saying in part that, "We are average people looking into claims of the paranormal. We don't make stuff up and we know not every place is genuinely haunted... Although Villisca seemed dead (no pun intended), I am glad the spirits of those poor children, and those vicious killers are at
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(( CLICK HERE to see the Winterset face in the window))
(( CLICK HERE to see the Winterset face in the window))
TO WATCH THE TV NEWS CAST IN MPG FORMAT..
Channel 5 WOI TV AMES, IOWA did a story on the Bevington mansion we investigated with the face in the window we got on film..
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CLICK HERE TO SEE THE BEST NEWS CAST SO FAR ABOUT
DIEPART... THIS REALLY SHOWS US IN A WONDERFUL LIGHT..
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Here is the follow up story which is ok but not as good as part 1
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SATURDAY JUNE 24th ISSUE of the Davenport newspaper front cover
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If you've got a house with termites, you call the exterminator. If your
house develops a leak, you call a plumber. But what happens if your house
comes down with something slightly more mysterious, spooky, or altogether
ooky?
Stan and Dee Dee Gaunt are your typical young married couple. Having set up
home in Wilton, IA three years ago with their young daughter, the three were
like any other family -- until this January, when they say an uninvited
houseguest moved in.
"I was at home by myself," explains Stan. "I was in the shower, when out of
nowhere a female voice asked, 'Are you about done?'" Stan leapt out of the
shower -- to find that he was still alone in the house. Not long afterwards,
Stan was headed into the bathroom when both he and Dee Dee clearly heard the
same voice asking, "Where are you going?"
It was shortly after that when the Gaunt's daughter began telling her mother
about a "lady" and an "angel" who were appearing to her. "The lady doesn't
say anything," Dee Dee explains, "but my daughter talks to her. And the
'angel,' who she says is a little girl, appeared in her room and asked her,
'Are you afraid of ghosts?'"
While Dee Dee Gaunt says that's she's always been a believer and "sensitive"
to the paranormal, her husband isn't.
"I've never believed in ghosts," says Stan, "until I started hearing the
voices." That was enough for the couple to try and use a ouija board to
contact their new ghostly friends.
"We contacted a woman who says she's 30 years old. And she said there were
'others,'" explains Dee Dee.
Now convinced that they were sharing their home with the dearly departed,
yet not wanting to tell anyone for fear of their reaction, the Gaunts
instead turned to the internet to research their phenomena -- and that's
when they found DIEPART.
DIEPART -- The Des Moines Iowa Extreme Paranormal Advanced Research Team --
has spent the past few years helping folks like the Gaunts. Their mission --
and it's one they do completely for free and out of their own pocket -- is
to document ghost sightings and investigate purported hauntings throughout
Iowa.
"We pride ourselves on our availability and our 24-hour helpline," says
DIEPART founder Joe Leto. "People can and do call us when they experience
activity that's so out of control they're literally unable to cope alone.
We're someone to talk to who really cares, won't judge them, and will try to
figure out with them the ghost psychology of a haunting. Most people just
want to verify that they're not crazy."
Leto himself was a skeptic of the paranormal until an event happened to him
that changed his life.
"I was home from work on lunch," he explains. "I had just gotten back to my
truck when I decided to run back into the house and grab something to drink.
When I walked into my kitchen, every cabinet and drawer was standing wide
open. I had only been outside for a matter of seconds."
After Leto's own unexplained event, he founded DIEPART in an effort to
capture scientific proof of things that go bump in the night. And now, on
most weekends, you can find Leto and his team of volunteers trekking all
across Iowa in vans and trucks loaded with investigative equipment of all
sorts.
When DIEPART takes a case, a team of investigators shows up for a paranormal
slumber party. The team sets up camp, spends the entire night collecting and
recording every last detail, then spends weeks afterwards analyzing the data
in hopes of proving or answering any unexplained phenomena. Very much like
the acclaimed television show on the Sci-Fi Channel, Leto and DIEPART are
modern-day Ghost Hunters.
DIEPART's investigations utilize tools that range from the scientific to the
simple. When the team arrives at a location, the first step is setting up
infrared cameras throughout the house. Weighted mylar strips are hung from
the ceilings like futuristic flypaper to capture any unexplained movement or
breezes on infrared. Parabolic microphones, so sensitive that they might
actually hear a pin drop, record the entire evening's audio straight to a
laptop computer in hopes of picking up EVP's (Electronic Voice Phenomena).
Then smaller controlled experiments are set up throughout the house. "One of
the simplest controlled experiments we do uses just a golf ball and a rubber
band," explains DIEPART investigator Terri Smith. "We place a rubber band on
a flat surface, then set a plastic golf ball inside. At the end of the
night, we'll look to see if a force of some kind has moved the ball outside
of the rubber band."
After the experiments are set up, each member of the investigative team is
given a thermometer, a camera, and is sent to a different room to observe.
One member of the team roams the house to chronicle the progress, and
another films the whole night for DIEPART's Des Moines-area cable access
television show.
"I think the reason that we even discuss the paranormal is because it's so
hard to prove," says Leto. "However, DIEPART is constantly pushing the
extreme to find better mousetraps to catch these phenomenas that people
cannot explain. It's our goal to keep trying new ways of proving or
disproving that the supernatural exists."
DIEPART is not a group comprised exclusively of ghost-lovers. "We've got a
pretty even mix of skeptics and believers on our team," says DIEPART
volunteer Shannon Kingrey. "It keeps things even."
Kingrey says that she wasn't even sure of the paranormal until her first
DIEPART trip. "I had just joined the group," she explains, "and we
investigated a home in Fairbury, Nebraska. We experienced everything that
night from a shaking bed to a glowing orb of light floating just feet away
from me. I've been hooked ever since."
Pop culture often associates ghost hunts with images of mediums and psychics
who attempt to contact the supposed spirits, but DIEPART laughs the notion
off. "We call it 'conjuring,'" says Leto. "We need scientific proof of the
paranormal, and speaking to dead air, no pun intended, is not science. We're
here to find evidence, not practice witchcraft."
Leto also stresses that DIEPART are ghost hunters and NOT ghostbusters. If
the team DOES find evidence of a haunting, they can only chronicle and
report it. And that's fine by the Gaunt's.
"I don't want our spirits to leave," says Dee Dee Gaunt with a smile.
"They're not doing anyone any harm. I just wanted someone else to experience
what we have, so that we know we're not crazy."
The results of all of DIEPART's investigations, including strange EVP's
captured at the Gaunt's home in Wilton, are available to the public via the
group's website, www.diepart.com . The team is also seeking new
investigations in the Quad Cities area, so if you think you've got a
boogeyman in your basement or a poltergeist in your pantry, they encourage
you to e-mail help@diepart.com or call their hotline, 515-250-2108.
And here's the sidebar article, which is my usual weekly humor column:
11:30 PM. I'm already a bit creeped out. Route 927 has never looked this
ominous before. I'm in the car, on my way to the spookiest slumber party
EVER. An avid fan of all things hocum-pocum, I've been invited to join the
DIEPART team as they investigate a possible haunting at a home in Wilton. I
am, in a word, psyched. Haunted houses can be spooky, but the fact that I'm
going to be there with a half dozen paranormal investigators puts me
somewhat at ease. I mean, if Gozer the Gozerian pops out of a wall, the pros
can just blast it right back to Heck with some kind of
thermo-gamma-ectoplasm ray, right? Right? The Psychedelic Furs come on my
satellite radio with "The Ghost in You." I turn it to comedy, but not even
Larry the Cable Guy can take the chill out of the air tonight.
12:00 AM. I arrive at the purportedly haunted house. It might very well be
the UN-spookiest house I've ever seen. It's in a happy little neighborhood.
The kind of neighborhood where kids play and people grill out. Not the sort
of neighborhood where the undead roam the Earth seeking brains. Then again,
if television has taught me only one thing, it's that you never quite know
where those pesky ancient Indian burial grounds are located...
12:05 AM. Team DIEPART arrives in a caravan of trucks and begins unloading
equipment. Surely if this place IS haunted, the ghosts are hightailing it
out. Everywhere I look, there are cameras, mics, cords, and boxes of
equipment. We look less like ghost hunters and more like Bon Jovi's road
crew.
1:35 AM. The team members set up in different corners of the house and
"Lights Out!" is called.
1:36 AM. "Lights Out" must mean something else in DIEPART lingo, because
when the command is given, the house lights go out, but are replaced
immediately by what I'd guess to be roughly 20,000 flashbulbs. Every few
seconds, a team member whispers "FLASH" and takes a picture. I'd love to
know what people driving by right now are thinking. The ghosts, meanwhile,
remain silent (yet clearly now blinded.)
1:55 AM. I am positioned in the child's bedroom (the heart of the
hauntings) with DIEPART member Shannon Kingrey. This is my favorite part of
the whole night, as Kingrey kills the time with a good ghost story or two
from her childhood. Atop the bed sits a ouija board, set out by DIEPART in
case our boogeypeople want to host an impromptu spelling bee. Between the
flashbulbs and the extreme silence, my blood is pumping.
2:00 AM. As I open my phone to check the time, it says that it's 3:00 AM.
It's not. It's 2:00 AM. I blink and suddenly my phone says it's 1:00. I
blink again and it's back to 3, then 1, then 2. My phone plays this game for
3 minutes. As a professional writer, my head fills with thoughts.
Predominantly the thought that I want my mommy. My color returns only when
another DIEPART member notices HIS phone is amok as well. We are the only
two with the same provider. Either its a network-wide fluke or our spirits
du jour have a serious issue with Verizon Wireless. Hey ghosts, can you hear
me now? Gooooood.
3:19 AM. We're still in the bedroom, but the investigators in the front
room ALL hear a whispery voice emanating from the hallway we're adjacent to.
Shannon and I hear nothing. I brush it off (until two weeks later, when
DIEPART sends me an EVP captured on 4 different microphones. A voice
irrefutably whispers, "I am the one who said that." I've never been happier
about my hearing loss from years of loud music, because if I HAD heard that,
I would've leapt out of my skin and become a ghost myself.)
3:30 AM. Now I'm hearing a noise from down the hall. It's a breathy
growling sound that common sense and my years of training tells me is either
a werewolf, a hellhound, or the ghost of Ginger, the poodle I tormented as a
child. Either way, I'm a goner. I creep down the hall, ballpoint pen readied
as a melee weapon against the supernatural, to find a DIEPART member snoring
away in the back bedroom.
5:15 AM. Having heard no more whispers, the team packs it in for the night.
Rather than stick around and risk more heart attacks, I bid adieu to Team
DIEPART and any assorted Wilton wraiths and make for civilization (after
first checking the car for hitchhiking ghouls.) There's nothing on but
conservative talk radio, and for the only time in my life, I'm okay with
that - Ann Coulter might be insane, but at least she's not dead. Little do I
know that as I cruise back to Rock Island, the DIEPART team experiences
ghostly humming and the overpowering smell of bubble gum as they tear down.
I just hope Banshee Bazooka Joe doesn't hum his way to Rock Island.
SHANE BROWN would like to thank Joe Leto and all at DIEPART for their
patience and allowing him to join in the hunt! Shane is an entertainment
correspondant and columnist for the Dispatch, Rock Island Argus, & Leader.
You can contact him at sbrown@qconline.com or read his online blog at
http://shanebrown.blogspot.com.
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