Ghost hunters visit battleground park
Charles Cranfield, superintendent of Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, and his rangers no longer smile when they show up. It has become too common.
Last week, three men who announced they were part of the Triad Para-Normal Investigators, came to the park visitors center asking permission to do some exploring. Permission granted.
Para-normals are also known as ghost hunters.
"I didn't pay any attent to them," Cranfield says. "Two or three times a year we get people who want to look for things in the park. As long as they don't bother a resource, we have no objection."
Park historian John Durham said the three asked about different aspects of the 1781 battle that took place over land that includes the park. They wanted to know where certain events happened. They then took off into the 223-acre park.
They carried no equipment, such as cameras and tape recorders. Maybe the next time.
Al Profitt, a professor at Western Carolina Univeristy and a ghost hunter, visited UNCG's Aycock Auditorium and Greensboro College last May to look for spirits.
He came first without equipment first trip, but returned with cameras and recorders. His photos and those taken by others showed "orbs," little particles on film or digital prints. Professional photographers believes orbs are dust particles. Ghost hunters believe they are evidence of spirits or psychic energy.
Durham says the park's ghost hunters departed without saying whether they found anything out of this world.
Hundreds of British and American troops were killed on the battlefield, part of which includes the park, during the Battle of Guilford Courthouse.