By Lasia Kretzel

Paranomal investigators scare up ghosts at Saskatoon hotel

Oct 31, 2014 | 7:23 AM

As Saskatoon kids don their scariest costumes Friday night, a team of paranormal investigators will spend Halloween searching ghosts and ghouls of a different sort.

The crew of The Other Side television series have spent three days searching for supposed hauntings at the Park Town Hotel.

Built in 1956, the hotel on Spadina Crescent is no stranger to ghost stories. Host Jeff Richards said they have heard 13 different stories of eerie happenings but none have been confirmed.

“Saskatchewan has a long history of people living, working and having their lives set here. So any time you have that kind of history, you’re bound to get at least some spiritual activity and some hauntings,” Richards said.

Alleged sightings include a ghostly girl playing the piano that used to sit in the hotel’s lobby, a man who drowned in the pool walking the halls and the spirit of an irate property owner who felt pressured to sell his home when the hotel wanted to expand.

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Using their own equipment of infrared cameras and electrocardiogram – EKG – readers, the team set out to find out if any of the stories hold water. Richards said he doesn’t do any research of the area beforehand and uses his three pillars of intuition, history and equipment to determine if there is any paranormal activity.

He said the team encountered one strange event on Wednesday.

The team’s elder, Tom Charles, said he came in contact with his late brother-in-law. Charles said when his brother-in-law was sick, he and his wife stayed at the hotel; which, he said, might explain why he contacted them at the Park Town Hotel.

Halloween has long been regarded as a day when the worlds of the living and dead collide but Richards said it’s still debated among the paranormal community.

“Myself, personally, I think that veil between the spirit world and the world we experience as the physical is a little bit thinner on Halloween but I’m a little bit of a romantic when it comes to the supernatural,” Richards said, adding he realizes there are plenty of paranormal skeptics out there.

“I invite them to have an open mind. We look at every single case as a case where we should be skeptical and we don’t jump at every creep and bump and assume that it’s supernatural.”

The team’s three-day filming trip wraps up Friday night.

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