News & Reviews
Ghosts at Courthouse GrillCan you see him? This is a non-doctored photo, except that it was brightened up so you can see him more clearly in the mirror behind the bar. The restaurant was closed when Linda took this picture - she was testing her new camera. She just bought it and Matt and Juan were with her; they remember being the only ones in the bar. This past weekend, someone pointed to a man's face in the picture. "It made the hair on the backs of our necks stand up," remembered Linda. "It still does, especially when we try every conceivable way to replicate the image, like having someone sit in various positions in the bar and in front of table 34 by the jail cell ... our faces end up being half the size of this man's face no matter what we do." Help us identify this person or explain how this person showed up in the photo. We have the original digital camera it was taken on. Of course, the Court House building being 150-years old and listed on the National Register of Historic Places... maybe the man was a prisoner or an employee from the past and he's come back to say hello. Maybe McHenry County has old photos that could confirm his identify from the past. Or maybe he's a customer who is too young and alive to be a ghost and who has now given us all a good scare! Please show yourself so we can buy you some dinner. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, or if you know this person, please e-mail ghosts@courthouseonthesquare.com, or stop by to tell us what you think.
NBC News Reports on the friendly ghosts at Courthouse Grill.
NBC5.com POSTED: 2:30 pm CDT July 10, 2008 To help explain the unexplained, some people are turning to a group of local paranormal investigators for clues. Using voice-recording devices, these "ghost hunters" can capture a sound called an electronic voice phenomenon, or EVP. These voices or noises are often only heard with electronic devices. According to some, these voices are from beyond the grave. Cher Anderson founded Paragon Paranormal Investigators last year after doing an investigation of a hotel that piqued her interest in the paranormal. Anderson said that since she began ghost hunting, she has not been the same. "I have changed my mind and my outlook on everything, -- religion, how I deal with people and how I deal with myself," Anderson said. Paragon Paranormal co-founder Diane Plotts and her husband, Chris, are part of the team. Not all six members of the group are convinced of the EVP evidence. "I'm the group's resident skeptic. I'm the one who's got to debunk everything," Chris Plotts told NBC5 Next. "I like to get the scientific side of it." So far, the evidence gathered by the group has not swayed this skeptic. "I haven't seen anything yet that's going to make me change my mind," Chris Plotts said. "I want to, like to, but I don't see how it's going to happen." The group's founders both say it is a quest for knowledge that drives the investigations. "First off no one has all the answers. There are no experts in this field," Diane Plotts said. "We just want to know what happens when you pass away. Do you move on? Is there something else there?" During a recent investigation, the team checked out the former County Civic Building in Woodstock, IL. Part of the more than 150-year-old building is now a restaurant called The Courthouse Grill. The kitchen was once the county morgue and crematorium, and a cell once used for solitary confinement is behind the bar. Paragon contacted restaurant owner Linda Tejeda after the group saw a picture posted on the Internet of what they believed to show a ghost behind the bar. Tejeda said she took the picture with her own camera, and was happy to allow the team to try to gather additional evidence. She said she just wants to know more about the spirits present in the building. "They're not scary, they're not harmful, they're just mischievous. They'll push dishes around or knock glasses off the counter or stuff like that. It's not that it's really scary, we don't want them to go away, we just wanted to know more about them," Tejeda said. Waitress Linda Brown has worked in the old civic building since 1999 and she said she has witnessed paranormal activity in the restaurant. "I think the creepiest for me is the kitchen, the morgue factor there, and the crematorium is that big blue area… that nobody knows that was the crematorium," Brown said. With more than a dozen ghost-hunting groups in Illinois, and many more across the country, it's not difficult to find an investigator in your area. Most paranormal investigators do not charge a fee. To contact Paragon Paranormal on the Web, visit www.paragonparanormal.com.
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