Looking For Things That Go Bump In The Night... And The Day, Too

Great Plains Paranormal Investigations recently spent a night investigating one of the burning questions of our time: Is the Kansas Aviation Museum haunted?

Ok, well, maybe it's not burning, exactly... but it is kind of interesting. Lead investigator Sam Tyree and his team had heard a lot of stories about the facility... like of the man wearing a fedora that appears in front of you then vanishes, 40s style music playing somewhere, voices of a crowd in a distance -- where there are no people.

At the Kansas Aviation Museum in Wichita, such goings-on are apparently pretty routine.

Tyree was so intrigued by the stories; he requested permission to spend a night at the museum. He also wanted to perhaps validate a picture he took there. It shows this wispy looking little orb that could be something on the lens or…maybe not.

Museum Director Teresa Day thinks that kind of stuff is fun.

"From my perspective, we are doing this out of curiosity," she said. "It could bring attention to this old building and make it more interesting. At the same time, I don't want people thinking we are off track from our mission."

Back in the day, the Wichita Municipal Airport (ICT) was a major stopover for the airlines and was one of the busiest airports in the nation with something taking off or landing about every 90 seconds in the 1940s, according to the Wichita Eagle.

Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh have been said to have graced the facility, as well as Fred Astaire and Gregory Peck. The airport was eventually closed, after the military took it over and ran off general aviation first, then commercial airlines, and it was turned into an aviation museum.

So, Saturday night, Tyree and his team arrived and set up camp brining audio and video equipment and an electromagnetic field indicator and stayed until 4 a.m.

Tyree said they heard sounds like public announcements from another era.

"Stone buildings can sometimes get events recorded and under the right conditions will replay themselves," he said.

Is that all?

"We did have an exceptional experience," Tyree said.

He said the electromagnetic field indicator gauge needle began jumping when readings were taken near the skeleton of a 1931 Stearman. The aircraft went down in Alaska many years ago.

"We asked emotionally charged questions and it responded to our questions for 10 minutes," Tyree said. "We need to go back in and double-check but we believe it's the pilot who died in the plane. He was a crop duster and did not want the plane scrapped. He wants it restored to flying condition."

According to Tyree, the pilot said the accident wasn't his fault and a defective engine brought the plane down.

"It's definitely unusual," Tyree said. "You normally don't get that level of interaction."

Museum volunteer Cyndi Rhodes has had some weird experiences herself in the museum. She recalls one instance while working in the gift shop. 

"It was quiet that day yet I could hear voices in the next room," Rhodes said. "It was a babble of voices. They were happy."

The she heard a door slam upon returning one night after closing, "like somebody was really irritated, but there wasn't anybody there," Rhodes said. "I decided we must have disturbed the ghost for whatever was planned that evening."

Tyree denies being a ghost hunter, he just uses scientific methods and equipment to rule out what has explanation and document what doesn't. Anything that cannot be explained is "preternatural."

"People talk about the supernatural," he said. "The supernatural only refers to God. Preternatural is everything else."

The team wants to return for further study.

FMI: www.kansasaviationmuseum.org, www.gpprs.org