By BRAD KELLAR
Herald-Banner Staff
GREENVILLE
October 31, 2008 12:50 am
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By Brad Kellar
Herald-Banner Staff
Most people find rides such as Shockwave, Titan and Texas Giant provide enough scares at Six Flags Over Texas.
But a local group of supernatural investigators believe they may have discovered something even more thrilling and chilling at the Arlington theme park.
Chad Miller of Greenville, co-founder of Paranormal Research and Investigations of North Texas (P.R.I.N.T.), detailed the group’s recent visit to Six Flags and the evidence of a possible haunting.
Miller understands how most people take tales of paranormal activity with a certain amount of skepticism, to say the least.
“Up until about four years ago, I was the same way,” Miller said.
It was around that time he met his current wife, Nez, who had been keeping a secret. She believed she had been followed for years by a mysterious, shadowy figure.
Miller accepted the story on faith until one night when the pair were watching television and Nez directed Miller’s attention to the other side of the room.
“Standing in the hallway is a six-foot-tall shadow ... a three-dimensional shadow,” Miller said.
Miller, who is employed as a jailer with the Hunt County Sheriff’s Office, reacted as most macho males would.
“I stood up and ran toward it,” Miller said. “If I didn’t understand it, I was going to knock it down.”
The figure disappeared when he approached, which was enough to convince Miller to more aggressively pursue such phenomena.
He and Nez launched P.R.I.N.T., which answers the call of those who feel the need for an investigation of their home or business. The group also conducts its own probes of unexplained, perhaps paranormal, occurrences, using instruments such as digital cameras, video recorders and digital voice recorders.
The latter device, Miller explained, has really been the group’s bread and butter, as it can be used to collect what are referred to as Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP), voices which can be detected on a tape or digital media which were not heard during an investigation.
Such was the case during one of the group’s early ventures, at a local cemetery which Miller said had been the source of a lot of reported ghost sightings and other paranormal activity. It wasn’t until later, when they listened to the recording, that they caught a whispering EVP.
“It was the name Carla,” Miller said. “To this day, I have no idea what it meant, but it was amazing.”
There was a second voice on the recording, who provided an even more startling proclamation.
“It said, ‘We’re under here,’” Miller recalled.
Miller said P.R.I.N.T. checked into another local legend, of the “haunted railroad tracks” between Cumby and Sulphur Springs, where a spectral light can sometimes be seen wandering along.
The researchers detected an EVP at the point on the recording right as they were packing up to leave, but couldn’t understand what was being said until it was played backwards.
“The moment you play it backwards, it says, ‘Keep going,’” Miller said.
It was one of a handful of occasions when he and the other investigators found themselves truly frightened by their specialty.
“There are times when it is not all pleasant out there,” Miller said.
The group’s reputation grew, even as its numbers increased. P.R.I.N.T. currently has six members from across the region, including Sulphur Springs and Mount Pleasant. All have regular jobs, in addition to their devotion to investigating the paranormal.
“This entire organization is funded off of our meager little paychecks,” Miller said, noting that P.R.I.N.T. never charges anyone to conduct an investigation.
Miller said he had read a book titled “Ghosts of North Texas”, by Mitchell Whittington, the first chapter of which dealt with ghost stories connected to Six Flags Over Texas. This prompted Miller to ask the powers that be at the theme park to allow P.R.I.N.T. to conduct an investigation ... and ask ... and ask.
“I started emailing and begging them,” Miller said, realizing the parent company might not necessarily want hauntingly bad press to come out about the park. But things have a way of changing.
“They called me about two months ago and said the activity out there, in some places, had increased,” Miller said.
P.R.I.N.T., accompanied by Herald-Banner Publisher Lisa Chappell, set up at the Southern Palace last Saturday night, Oct. 25, where they met with several of the park’s personnel, from management on down.
“They were telling us every ghost story they’d heard since 1965,” Miller said.
One tale caught the group’s attention in particular, that of the body of a young girl which was found in the 1920s in a creekbed on the property which would become Six Flags some four decades later.
The employees had taken to calling the girl Annie, telling of unexplained phenomena centered on “her room,” which is now a storage area above the old candy kitchen at the park.
“The perfect place for the ghost of a young child to hang out,” Miller said.
During the investigation, one of the female researchers said she felt as if someone was playing with her hair.
“At that section of the recording, you can hear somebody say, ‘Let me play with your hair,’” Miller said.
Later, another of the researchers observed a teddy bear in one corner of the room moving on its own.
“He asked, ‘Can you do it again?’” Miller said. “The little girl said, ‘No.’”
Miller said the investigation of a famous Texas theme park is destined to go down as a highlight in the group’s annals.
“This has been the pinnacle of our research so far,” Miller said. “It doesn’t get much bigger than that around here.”
Miller said P.R.I.N.T. will be taking November and December off, in order to spend the holidays with their family and do things far less paranormal.
“For the next two months, I don’t even want to hear the word ghost,” Miller said.
During the presentation, Miller was asked whether he or Nez ever encountered their original shadow figure again. Miller said the couple had, and on a regular basis, as it apparently was not intimidated by Miller’s initial confrontation.
“We call him Fred,” Miller said. “Most of the time he just watches.”
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