Purported ghostly residents don’t necessarily wait for Halloween, the spookiest day of the year, to come out.
At the Museum at the Carnegie at 207 S. Lincoln St. in Port Angeles, noises and creepy sensations abound year-round.
The museum, housed in a building dedicated as a public library in 1919, frequently gives the creeps to Clallam County Historical Society Executive Director Kathy Monds’ dog, Dengas.
“I still sometimes bring him up here. He doesn’t like it, but he comes,” she said.
The normally laid-back dog acts oddly and keeps his eye on the center of the room, she said.
Ghost hunters with Paranormal Investigations of Historic America, based in Monroe, investigated the activity in May.
“A few of us were walking around upstairs, and we definitely heard a voice,” Monds said.
“It was a woman’s voice.”
Although what the woman said was undetectable, the entire group heard the voice, she said.
It was in an area of the museum where visitors can push a button and a voice reads a story, but no one had pushed a button, Monds said.
Also, Monds is familiar with all of the recorded voices, and this was not one of them.
The team also took a look at the Port Angeles underground city, which was formed in 1914 when the streets were raised to what was then the second floor, creating an “underground” of what had been the store’s first floors.
That investigation led to the spookiest goings-on that Don Perry, who gives daily tours of the underground, has seen.
In particular, while sitting in a circle in the dark, Perry held a machine with lights to measure the electromagnetic activity.
As the lights spiked, the team heard a loud noise, Perry said.
“Someone got out their flashlight, and there was one lady who had her purse and her flashlight by her legs, but her flashlight was several feet away.
“Someone or something picked that thing up,” he said. “If she had just kicked it, it wouldn’t have made that same noise.”
In one area, team members sensed a presence and asked, “Can you tell us if you are hot or cold?”
They heard no response at the time, but the recording later clearly played back a voice saying, “Cold,” Perry said.
“There are some things that are still unexplainable,” he said.
And though another ghost-hunting team had photographed an underground window — which mysteriously had faces reflected in it that belonged to no one present in the room — Perry said he isn’t concerned.
“As long as it doesn’t bother me, I’m OK,” he said.
Despite what he heard and saw, Perry isn’t convinced that anything paranormal is going on.
“I’m a skeptic, but I keep an open mind,” he said.
Family Shoe Store, located in the oldest building in downtown Port Angeles at 130 W. Front St., is also notorious for tales of its supernatural visitors.
The building originally sat over tide flats. From 1913-1914, the building was raised to meet street grade.
On the second floor was one of at least seven brothels in Port Angeles. It was closed in 1942.
Owner Kevin Thompson said he regularly hears noises but that he believes them to be just the creaking of an old building.
The Monroe ghost hunters, on the other hand, were convinced that the noises were footsteps.
“It is a fun thing to think about,” Thompson said.
“But I definitely needed more.
“Listening to the tapes, you could possibly call them footsteps, but I don’t know.”
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladaily news.com.