communicatin' with the dead

It's not so easy, especially when City Hall stands in your way. Let's jet up to Roslyn, Washington--yes, that Roslyn, the home of "Northern Exposure"--where paranormal investigators (a polite way of saying "blithering idiots") want to poke around the old cemetery.

The guvmint has other plans.

The town council voted 5 to 2 Tuesday to reject a request by Washington State Paranormal Investigations and Research for permission to check for eerie, odd and unexplained phenomena during the wee hours, when the graveyard is closed....

The research group has visited the town a few times this year. Members who said they found evidence of paranormal activity near a mine shaft and a few electronic voice phenomena at the cemetery posted an audio sample on the Web at www.wspir.com/evps-and-videos.htm....

President Darren Thompson said the group will abide by the daytime restriction but noted that many such organizations have found that paranormal activity increases at night and peaks at about 2 a.m. to 3 a.m.

"We wish we could have gotten to say, 'Come with us and see what we do,"' he said.

Ghosts apparently operate in a limited capacity, stuck by the mine shaft after hours, flitting from station to station on the AM dial in the hopes that Michael Keaton will listen in.

The WSPIR yahoos are the only "eerie and odd" part of the whole deal.


[forty-third in a series]