Ghost Hunt With PSU Paranormal Research Club

Ask any student on this campus, and they can tell you one thing about Plymouth State University: it’s haunted. There are stories that surround the underground tunnels between Blair and Mary Lyon, people seeing the figure of a little girl in Merrill, or the figure of a boy in the clock tower at Rounds Hall. You hear about items moving around on their own in dorm rooms, or students getting the feeling of being watched when they’re alone. Many tend to believe that ghosts are a myth, or that some of the experiences students have had are figments of their own imaginations, but the PSU Paranormal Research club dares to disagree.

Jess Neufell, the Vice President of the club, said, “It’s been quite the experience. We have gone to Rounds Hall, the Silver Center, the Holmes House, Mary Lyon. We have gone to a couple of off campus locations as well. There is evidence of paranormal activity everywhere around here.” Within the past year, Jess has made her way up from secretary, to Vice President, and is now in line to be the President of the club for next year. She joined last year after having her own paranormal experience, seeking to know more information about the paranormal and how the technology involved works.

Neufell talked about a couple of the group’s paranormal experiences here on campus. Throughout her time in this group, she has noticed the older buildings seem to have attracted more spirits than anywhere else on campus. For Jess personally, her weirdest experiences have mostly occurred in the Silver Center and Samuel Read Hall. “In the prop room of the Silver Center, we used a trail camera to see what we could find. We ended up communicating with a spirit through tapping on a wall. It would tap once for yes, and twice for no. After a while, I felt a tug on the back of my head. Another member thought she had heard someone coming down the stairs behind her, when no one was there. Another time we went to Samuel Read Hall, and we were communicating with a spirit. When we went to leave the building, there was a series of banging on the wall. The noise from the banging was so loud, you could feel the ground shaking.”

The Paranormal Research club determines their actions off of reports they’ve heard, as well as routine visits. “Every two weeks, we do on campus investigations, as well as off campus. People send us reports of paranormal activity, and as a group, we go to different locations to check it out. We use different types of equipment to detect spirits,” said Neufell.

The group owns their own thermal imaging camera, an EMF detector, a REM pod, audio/video recorders, a spirit box, and more. Their website is full of videos, photos, and audio recordings of the group’s experiences with the paranormal around and off campus.

Although they are not a huge group on campus, the members dedicate their time to getting permission to enter buildings, planning investigations/events, getting the funds they need, and more. They hope to keep the group going for the years to come. “A lot of students on campus don’t know about us. We are all very welcoming, and we are looking for new members to join. We’d like to show more students what we are about,” Neufell said. The Paranormal Research club meets on Wednesdays at 5:30 in the Silver Center, room 305. To learn more about the paranormal, consider joining the group. They can be contacted at @psu_paranormal on Instagram, @psuparanormal on Snapchat, or directly by email @jln1014@plymouth.edu.