ghost hunting

But for others, the tales of ghosts haunting the farms, homes and hotels of the region carry a little more weight. In fact, there's a whole group of people dedicated to actively pursuing-and recording-the spirits of the departed.

"History and the paranormal almost go hand in hand. If you've got paranormal problems, you can trace them back to history somewhere, and this area, of course is rich in history," says Ron Kolek. He's the head of the New England Ghost Project, a Dracut, Mass.-based group that for the last seven years has been hunting paranormal activity throughout Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Their next investigation, beginning sometime in July, will bring them to the Portsmouth Harbor lighthouse on New Castle Island. This will be one of the group's first large investigations in the Seacoast region. Previous outings brought them to Newburyport, where Kolek and his fellow ghost hunters investigated a cellar connected to a series of tunnels underneath the town.

"I was with this fellow, a Franciscan monk...we saw this shadow by the door and we took pictures, and you can see this face on the door that came through (in the pictures)," Kolek said.

Since forming in 1998, Kolek says the group has conducted about 150 investigations, checking out everything from government buildings and cemeteries to restaurants and private homes. The road to ghost hunting was long and winding for Kolek. After a hospital stay following an industrial accident, Kolek had some paranormal experiences that he "wasn't sure was real or not." Once out of the hospital, he was unable to work and decided to take a course in TV production. For his final project, he wanted to do a presentation on the paranormal, not only because of his experiences in the hospital, but also because the manufacturing company he owned was supposedly haunted.

"Everyone had seen something or talked to something that wasn't there, except for me," he says. Some historical research revealed an unsolved murder had taken place at the site of the factory. Kolek rounded up psychics, electronic voice phenomena specialists and other experts and "it all kind of blossomed from there."

So how exactly does a ghost hunt work? According to Kolek's description, it's a thorough process. First, Kolek and his team will interview the residents of the building, getting a full indication of whatever phenomena is occurring in the building. Then, the members of the NEGP will stay at the building, either overnight or for a prolonged period of time. They'll set up a base camp, hooking up remote cameras, temperature sensors, tape recorders and other devices. The investigators will do a sweep of the building, accompanied by a psychic investigator, and explore the building until they "make contact" with something.

Along with drastic temperature changes, Kolek said he's also on the lookout for changes in the electromagnetic fields in the building using an EMF meter. According to Kolek, when paranormal activity is occurring, there are drastic changes in the electromagnetic fields in the area.

"When we go in a building, we go in ahead of time, map the house, pick up the areas that have naturally occurring EMFs," he says. When the levels change suddenly and psychic investigator Maureen Wood starts "picking up something on the way she feels, we know we've got something that wasn't there before," Kolek says.

"It gets freaky" during investigations, according to Kolek. While filming the Old Hill cemetery in Newburyport, Kolek says he was slimed, sort of like in Ghostbusters.

"From my wrist to my elbow got covered by this black, thick, oozy gook. I couldn't get the thing off," he says. "It just, like, freaked me out. I usually don't get freaked out, but it was on me and it was burning."

Kolek said he scraped the mystery substance off his arm, but didn't manage to save any of it. "It was the sorriest thing I ever did in my life," he says, adding that he encountered the substance again while doing an investigation at Tortilla Flat, a Mexican restaurant in Merrimack.

When discussing his ghost hunting career, Kolek said he runs into the usual people who casually dismiss the enterprise as so much bunk. But for the most part, "someone always has a ghost story to tell you," he says. During a recent trip to the doctor, Kolek says once the physician outlined the procedure he was going to perform, "he started telling me about the ghosts running around in his house."

close encounters

Ghosts aren't the only thing haunting the Seacoast. During the 1960s, a rash of reported UFO activity received a lot of media attention. The two most famous cases-a series of UFO sightings in Exeter and a tale of alien abduction told by Betty and Barney Hill of Portsmouth-were chronicled in a pair of books, "The Incident at Exeter" and "The Interrupted Journey" by journalist John Fuller, with "The Interrupted Journey" later produced as a film starring James Earl Jones as Barney Hill.

"Basically, what the '60s involved was a lot of close encounters," says Peter Geremia, state director for the New Hampshire Mutual UFO Network. Geremia, a Rye resident, took the reins of the state branch of MUFON, an international UFO research group, in the late 1970s. Since then, he and other members of the group have investigated UFO sightings across the state, although "it's real quiet now" compared to the heyday of activity in the 1960s, he says.

The Granite State's UFO fever began in 1965 when Norman Muscarello saw a UFO while walking home in Exeter. He hitched a ride to the police station, where calls were already coming in about the sighting. Muscarello went back with two police officers to the field where he initially saw the craft and all three men saw the UFO. Journalist Fuller wrote about the sightings for Look Magazine and later came out with his book.

Shortly thereafter, Fuller was tipped off to another UFO case in the Granite State, this one involving two Portsmouth residents. During a drive back from Canada in 1961, Betty and Barney Hill claim they were taken aboard an alien spacecraft. During the abduction, the pair were experimented on; later, under hypnosis, Betty told of how she had communicated with the alien beings, one of whom showed her a star map. After the abduction, the Hills had persistent nightmares about the incident, but didn't consciously recall what had happened until undergoing hypnosis a few years later. The Hills story gained national attention, becoming one of the cornerstone cases of modern UFO research. From then on, Betty became somewhat of a celebrity among UFO investigators and aficionados, writing the book "A Common Sense Approach to UFOs" and speaking at conferences. She lived in Portsmouth until her death last fall.

Geremia joined MUFON in 1977. His interest in UFO phenomena goes back to his days at Dow Air Force Base in Bangor, Maine. During his time there as a civilian contractor in the mid-1960s, there was a "heck of a sighting" in Bangor witnessed by an "entire fourth grade class" and a group of railroad workers. Later on, a man in town was arrested for discharging a firearm within city limits; he claimed that he was firing on a floating disk he encountered one night.

"This piqued my interest," Geremia says. A few years later, working at Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth, he became friends with an officer who was interested in UFOs. Geremia was invited to a briefing on a UFO case in Massachusetts.

"I didn't know if I was going to meet a bunch of crazy people or what," he says. The briefing was at the home of veteran UFO researcher Raymond Fowler, and the group there included doctors and engineers from Raytheon. Shortly thereafter, he joined MUFON.

Investigations are difficult to do from a distance, Geremia says.

"You need to be on site and interface with the individual," he says. "Most people are not trying to pull a fast one. They're being truthful as far as they know."

During a typical investigation, Geremia says the first step is a phone interview with the witness. He also asks them to make a drawing of what they saw and if they'll provide any photos or the names of other witnesses. After getting all the basic information, Geremia sets up an appointment to meet with witnesses, at which time he asks them to fill out a standard questionnaire developed by MUFON. Investigators conduct a site visit and try to establish a detailed chronology from before, during and after the sighting. Once all the data has been collected, investigators look for any inconsistencies in the story or for any possible explanations for the phenomena. When it's all over, investigators are sometimes left with something that simply can't be identified.

"If they saw something 30 feet long hovering 10 feet off the ground and not making a sound, there's nothing we know about that can do that," he says.

Though a lot of sightings don't pan out ("You always have people that have a strong interest in something, and unfortunately they see a UFO around every corner," he says), Geremia has encountered only one hoax since he's been investigating, he says.

During the 1990s, NH MUFON hosted a series of conferences at Yoken's Convention Center in Portsmouth. Though the conferences generated a lot of interest in the state, Geremia ultimately had to give up the conferences because "it was not financially possible to do them."

The number of investigators is also dwindling. Of NH MUFON's membership of 100 or so people, there are only four active investigators looking into sightings. Geremia says that a lot of old-time UFO investigators have gotten out of the business due to frustration over the lack of progress on determining the origins of the phenomena.

"We were all of the same opinion. We were going to develop a database, find out what's going on...30 years later, we're in the same position. We've seen how the phenomena changes, but we're not closer than we were back then," he says.

So what, exactly, is out there? Geremia's not sure, but he believes the phenomena are definitely real.

"Is it possible everyone that's reporting these things is hallucinating? It's possible, but my gut feeling is no," he says. "The bottom line is people are reporting a physical craft that is exhibiting maneuvers and technology that I don't believe present day technology can explain. So you're left with (the questions), who the heck built it and how does it work?"

weird in your backyard

One of the Seacoast's strangest hidden gems, the Woodman Institute in Dover, is more grounded in history and traditional science. A three-building museum nestled along Central Avenue, the Woodman houses a total of almost four centuries worth of Seacoast history, along with some, well, pretty weird things.

"There's a polar bear, a four-legged chicken, and Abraham Lincoln's saddle, and that's only the first building," says museum trustee Thom Hindle.

The four-legged little baby chick, perfectly preserved and situated among the Woodman's expansive collection of taxidermied animals, isn't the only mutant animal; there's also a tiny, two-headed baby snake. Some of the animals are from out of town-like the 10-foot-tall polar bear donated by a Dover resident in the 1960s-while others carry their own share of state history, like the "last cougar" killed in the state in Lee in 1853. There's also an iguana found on the side of the road in Milton in 1937.

"How an iguana got to Milton, I have no idea," Hindle says.

The Woodman has been a Dover institution since 1915. After her death, Annie Woodman donated $100,000 to the town to preserve "natural science, local history and art." The museum has received donations from around the world, but almost every item has some kind of Seacoast connection. For example, the museum has a piece of chain mail armor that dates back to the 1400s, found by a Dover soldier digging a foxhole while fighting in France in World War I.

Now the museum is short on acquisition funds and relies entirely on donations to build up its catalog. The museum is also trying to modernize and refurbish some of its exhibits. It's been challenging, Hindle says, because the age of some of the items makes them extremely difficult to handle. Maintaining the distinctive style of the museum is also important.

"We've tried to modernize and upgrade but still preserve the turn-of-the-century, eclectic type of museum," he says.

The museum's largest donation came from Ellen Rounds, who donated the town's only surviving fortified garrison house in 1915. The William Damm Garrison House was built in 1675 and inhabited up until the Civil War. Originally located in the back river section of Dover, the house was lifted up, placed on logs, and, over the course of 10 days, rolled over to its present location behind the Institute. Along with the building, Rounds also donated approximately 800 artifacts from the time period when the building was in use. Today, the garrison is open to the public as part of the museum. Visitors can climb the narrow, ladder-like stairs up to the second floor of the house and see a pair of antique rope-beds, a mechanized butter churner and more. Some strict historic preservationists have objected to the building remaining open for public view, but Hindle says its good to give visitors an up-close view of history.

"What's the sense of having something if you can't enjoy it?" he says.

There's also the last saddle used by Abraham Lincoln, a regular Seacoast visitor and friend of one of Dover's top lawyers. The museum also boasts "the largest collection of minerals northeast of Harvard," according to Hindle, as well as a room filled with 300 dolls donated by a local woman.

While not all the items at the Woodman may be as weird as a mutant chicken, just about everything carries with it a story. Take the working model of the Mount Washington steamship built by Clyde Whitehouse in 1939. The model was finished on Dec. 23; when Whitehouse woke up the next morning, he learned that the ship had caught fire and was destroyed the night before.

"Families call and stories come along with them," he says. "The story is what makes (the items) interesting."

Last year, the museum had visitors from 46 states and 18 countries; however, Hindle says a lot of Seacoast residents are still unaware of the Woodman's existence.

"It's one of those things where you don't go into your own backyard," he says.

wild about wolves

In Joni Soffron's backyard, there's another kind of natural oddity: a family of gray timber wolves.

Wolf Hollow in Ipswich, Mass., opened to the public in 1990. Paul Soffron, Joni's late husband, started the education center; he wanted to teach people about wolves and change the negative perceptions many hold about the animals. Paul died in 2001 after a battle with Alzheimer's, but Joni and the rest of the family continued on with his work.

"He hoped if he created a place where people could come in and see a pack of wolves, people would see how vital wolves are" to the environment, Joni says.

The wolves at Wolf Hollow are raised in captivity but roam about the facility in a natural setting. There are two main fenced in areas, with one section housing the pack of Denali, Jelly and Geniek; the other area is home to Luna and Weeble, former members of the pack who decided to split off on their own. There are also two puppies, Osa and Nina, which will be released into the main pack next week.

None of the wolves raised at Wolf Hollow are reintroduced into the wild because "the wolves lose their fear of man," Joni says. Wolf Hollow is one of a handful of wolf education centers in the country. Each new pup raised at Wolf Hollow comes from another wolf center, so that new bloodlines may be introduced into each facility's pack. When new puppies are born in captivity, they typically spend their first few weeks sleeping, eating and playing surrounded by humans, so that a close bond develops.

The wolves' taste in treats also sets them apart from the average canine. According to Joni, Paul used to like to give the wolves a "sort of sabbatical from meat" once a week, feeding the pack dry kibble and other alternative food. After grating some cheese into the mixture, Paul noticed wolves were fighting to get at the food. From then on, cheese was handed out as a treat to the wolves. For presentations, Joni will yell "CHEESE!" to get the wolves to come out into view. During a recent demonstration at Wolf Hollow, the wolves stayed hidden in the shade of a nearby tree until the call came out for cheese. Denali, Jelly and Geniek came bounding out to the fence, their yellow eyes glistening as they enthusiastically scarfed up cheese cubes from Joni's hand. She must pay attention to alpha-male Denali first, then Jelly, the pack's alpha-female, and finally Geniek.

"It's no different than a kid" hearing the word candy, she says. "They associate cheese with something they like." Another favorite treat among the wolves at Wolf Hollow is Newman's Own Sockarooni Pasta Sauce, Joni says.

Just off of Route 133, Wolf Hollow attracts a lot of visitors. When the farm was being built, Joni says there was no opposition from neighbors or the town.

During the presentation, Joni makes it look easy to take care of the wolves, doling out cheese cubs to each wolf and howling along with them. But living with them is a full-time activity.

"It's 100 percent commitment. You either do something like this or you don't, there's no half way," she says, adding that she marks her life in the time "before wolves" and "after wolves."

Joni has a large pack of her own, with her oldest son, Zee, and his wife living in the house, along with Joni's two other sons, her husband Pony, and a stable of visiting family members. Everyone helps out on the farm; on the weekends, a there's a volunteer staff that comes in to keep things running smoothly.

To establish a good relationship with the pack, Joni says she has to spend a lot of social time with the wolves. But even though she's the one caring for them, she must take a submissive role with the wolves, scratching under their chins or behind their ears, but never patting the tops of their heads, which is a sign of dominance.

"It's quite a feeling. It's incredibly rewarding to be accepted by them, into their world, their life," she says.

on the web

Seacoast NH: http://www.seacoastnh.com
New England Ghost Project: http://www.neghostproject.com
NH MUFON: http://www.nhmufon.com
The Woodman Institute: http://www.seacoastnh.com/woodman
Wolf Hollow Ipswich: http://www.wolfhollowipswich.org

Larry Clow is The Wire's staff writer. Email him at lclow *at* wirenh *dot* com