If you're having a roommate problems, Dennie Guppy may be able to help.
Guppy is the founder of GUARD - Ghost Unit Analysis, Research and Detection Agency. The agency is an all-volunteer group that tries to help home and business owners decide whether unusual experiences - noises, breezes or feelings, usually - are environmental or paranormal. That means starting with skepticism.
"We try to go in and find logical explanations," Guppy said. "But if you can't find an explanation why and you capture evidence, that's more proof there is something going on."
"We just help them discover the truth," said case manager Joanne Bridges.
GUARD never charges a fee to analyze a building, though donations are accepted and go toward the extensive list of equipment that helps the investigators work.
That equipment includes digital voice recorder, camcorders with night vision, wireless recorders, thermometers, electromagnetic field meters, wireless cameras, motion detectors, laser levelers and more.
Most of what they detect can't be seen or heard but shows up later on tapes.
All the findings are shared with the clients. Guppy and his colleagues also give them some advice, depending on the results.
"Most of the stuff we capture is nothing frightening," he said.
When everyone agrees a place is "haunted," the residents are encouraged to gently assert themselves.
"Let them know you don't mind them being here - just don't scare you. It's your house. A lot of people can co-exist with it," Guppy said.
People who request the services of GUARD fill out an extensive questionnaire on the Web site.
Some of the questions - about the drinking habits of the residents, and any medication they may be on, for example - are designed to flag other reasons for "seeing things."
Anyone legitimate will get the full power of GUARD in their basement.
"I think people call us so they can say, 'I'm not crazy. Other people see it, too,'" Bridges said.
She's a day-care provider by day - GUARD does its investigations at night.
Guppy is a security guard at the Par-A-Dice casino and a firefighter in Bartonville. He had an experience he considers paranormal as a child, and has been interested in the supernatural ever since. The interest was further sparked by the television show "Ghost Hunters."
"Some people believe. Others don't," he said. "Most people think it's a fascinating hobby."
One of the group's first jobs involved a family in Toluca. The family's children all claimed to see a ghost they called the "dirty feet guy." The family called Guppy after one of the girls said she was thrown to the ground and held down by the ghost, in the presence of others.
The children would often ask their parents to open a door or window so dirty feet guy could get out and go to work. When the parents asked where that was, the children would wave in the same direction.
After researching the house and area, Guppy found some miners had been killed in a coal mine near the house - in the direction where the children pointed.
GUARD volunteers captured electronic voice phenomenon - or EVPs- with their equipment, including a voice answering the question "Why are you here?" with "I can't get out." The reply was not audible to the people in the room, though the equipment captured it.
GUARD has also had interesting results at a home in Kewanee and the Lawford Theater in Havana.
"Sometime we say a place is haunted," Bridges said. "Sometimes we don't. We don't say a place is haunted unless we have the evidence to back up the claim."
Jennifer Towery can be reached at 686-3119 or jtowery@pjstar.com.
