Paranormal experience

Several paying guests and members of a paranormal team experienced something peculiar during their visits Saturday night at the Tucumcari Historical Museum.

Whether it was a ghost probably never will be known. Regardless, the event wound up being a successful and fun - when they weren't creeped out - fundraiser to restore the museum's retired F-100 fighter jet.

About 40 people paid to spend four hours at the night-darkened museum, formerly Tucumcari's Central School, while eight members of the Buried Secrets Paranormal team from Amarillo walked through the building and grounds with night-vision video cameras, motion sensors, audio recorders and electromagnetic detectors. The museum had anticipated a maximum of 25 paid attendees. KTNM/KQAY radio in Tucumcari also did a live remote that night.

Visitors and staff members at the museum, which also served as a hospital, soup kitchen and flying school before becoming the history museum in 1969, periodically have felt a presence there. Even museum director Paula Neese is convinced a benevolent ghost haunts at least one floor of the circa-1903 building.

After just a few hours at the museum, it was apparent to Buried Secrets Paranormal team member Tony Dealessio it wasn't a wasted trip from Amarillo.

In the museum's basement near a piano, Dealessio said he and two other people had an odd experience. He said one visitor said she saw during previous trips to the museum a "full-body apparition" that was a nurse named Miss Emma.

"We were trying to communicate with a Miss Emma," he said. "There was wood table about five feet from all three of us. All of a sudden, you hear two knocks and a drag on the table. It was as plain as day; all three of us heard it."

Dealessio said the team also received significant readings on an electromagnetic reader in the basement.

On the second floor, Dealessio said he was with five people, with one using a smartphone app called Ghost Radar.

"She walks in the room, and right off the bat she gets two words on that app that were 'mother' and 'rose," he recalled. "We looked down on a bed, and there is a pillow with a rose embroidered and 'Mother' on it."

Thirteen-year-old Trey Williams of Tucumcari also was in the basement seated on the floor for several minutes. As he went upstairs, he reached into his back pocket for his smartphone. Instead, he felt a flat rock about the size of a half-dollar.

"I thought someone was messing around and put a rock in my pocket," he said. "But I was sitting on the floor most of the time down there. I was confused."

Denise Valencia, who is Trey's grandmother, said the experience unnerved him.

"He was in shock," she said. "He was puzzled where the rock came from."

After telling a museum board member about the rock, he was advised to put it back with the basement's fossil collection, which he did.

Trey said he and a 13-year-old pal, Ayden Otero, also were descending from the museum's second floor when their smartphones went dead simultaneously. Their phones wouldn't power back on until they both had left the building.

Trey said he still didn't believe in ghosts, but the experiences "got me thinking."

Melody Hughes, one of the founders of Buried Secrets Paranormal, also said one of the team members captured an audio anomaly at the museum.

Some may see it as unusual a so-called ghost team would find evidence with dozens of people roaming around, but Hughes said paranormal beings don't follow a set pattern.

"Like anything else, it depends," she said. "Just like you and I would be different personalities, spirits aren't all alike. They all have preferences, likes and dislikes, just like the living."