Kitschy chainsaw vagrants, crumpled tubes of fake blood, and powder-faced vampires with plastic teeth can kiss their glory days good bye. They’ve got nothing on the unexplained mysteries at Fantasy of Flight.

Those mysteries will come under scrutiny during Fantasy of Flight’s nightFlights beginning Saturday. For $75, participants will work with Apollo Paranormal Investigations (API) staff to record paranormal activity among the favorite haunts of the popular Polk County aviation museum. The museum will host the four-hour investigations, starting at 9:30 p.m. It will also be offered Feb. 13 and 27.

Kim Long is the general manager of Fantasy of Flight. She stresses that nightFlight isn’t another Halloween hoax.

The event, says Long, was borne out Fantasy of Flight’s seasoned history of unexplained noises, sightings and other paranormal episodes. In the last two years, Long tells of unplugged copier machines that printed paper, guests of the museum who have interacted with ghosts, and staff members who’ve had “haunting, eerie moments.”

“We’re not weaving together stories of lore,” said Long. “Ghost tours have a great entertainment value, but they usually employ contrivance and are meant to be pure entertainment. We’re here to promise an experience of integrity, interaction and engagement for people interested in unexplainable phenomena.”

API, headed by lead investigator Cliff Kennedy, approached Long and Fantasy of Flight founder Kermit Weeks last summer about conducting an investigation. API confirmed what Long and Weeks say they knew: Fantasy of Flight’s paranormal activity was off the charts.

“We have obtained photos, (recordings of) disembodied voices, and video evidence along with several personal experiences,” said Kennedy.

On a scale of 1 to 10, Kennedy says the eerie activity at Fantasy of Flight is “easily a 10.”

“At Fantasy of Flight … guests will be a part of an ongoing investigation that API started last summer and will continue this year,” said Kennedy. ” They will use the same equipment they see on TV, learn what techniques a paranormal investigator uses, and much more.”

Guests, says Kennedy, will assist the investigation by wielding electromagnetic field detectors, digital voice recorders, and temperature guns. The data that guests collect will be gathered by the API team and analyzed. Results will be posted to a password-protected Web site where guests who participated in the event can review the results, says Long.

While Long can’t promise that guests will see a ghost, she won’t eliminate the possibility.

“We’re not here to promise a ghost around every corner,” she said, “(but) if circumstances are ripe for it, guests may encounter something that cannot be immediately explained.”

Old Everett apparently wasn’t in the mood to mingle with the mortals.

The Caine Lyric Theater’s well-known resident spook did not stir in the wee hours Sunday morning as a team of ghost hunters tried to coax him out. From Everett not a peep — no shaking of chandeliers, no opening or closing of doors.

About eight members of the group Wasatch Paranormal Investigators scoured the 97-year-old theater on Center Street — scaling shaky ladders to reach the dusty rafters, squeezing into tight catacombs to call out to the spirits possibility within.

Alas, no Everett, who, despite his low profile Sunday, has over the years established a reputation of tinkering around the old theater, making his presence felt in one way or another.

The story goes like this: Everett was an actor playing the second gravedigger in a production of Hamlet and was getting more laughs than the guy playing the first gravedigger, which was supposed to be the big laugh-getting part. The actor Everett upstaged grew angry, killed Everett in the theater and subsequently used his skull as a prop in the grave scene.

Everett’s body was later found in a dirt hallway running between the theater furnace and boiler room. Everett now reportedly haunts the theater, prowling the catwalks, calling out to rehearsing actors or stage technicians. He’s got his own seat in the balcony, which some have said they’ve seen swivel down on its own. Actors claim the ghost has been heard laughing during rehearsals of Hamlet. The details and factual foundation of the Everett story is sketchy — there’s no evidence linking any of it to the real world — but the tale still sparks wonder and inspires people like Tom Carr and Jessica Stevens.

Carr has been investigating paranormal activity across Utah for 20 years and is WPI’s founder. Stevens is a 20-year-old Utah State University student.

“I think it’s a natural thing to want that thrill, that rush,” said Carr, a Tooele resident. “It’s like riding a roller coaster — you never know what’s around the next bend.”

WPI investigated the Caine in January 2008 and had better success — a drinking fountain turned on and off by itself, a door latched and unlatched on its own.

Ron King, a production director at the Caine, was on hand Sunday morning. As an undergraduate student years ago, he lived for a short time in the theater’s light booth. He heard a noise one night and looked down to the stage where he saw a man standing. He called out to him but received no response. By the time he made his way to the stage, the man was gone. There was no way to get out, King said.

He tells the story with a skeptical smirk but still says, “I believe there’s something going on.”

Several current theater workers said strange stuff happens.

“He just likes to play around,” said worker Chrissy Wagstaff of Everett. Some have seen Everett wearing his brown pants and green sweater.

WPI member Stevens likes the rush but also said she enjoys getting to explore historic places and learning about days gone by.

“I’ve always loved the backstories,” she said.

If you want to believe so bad, aren’t you going to see and hear stuff? Carr was asked.

“I think it’s possible that in our minds we can see things and hear things that really aren’t there, but once you’ve been doing this for awhile you get past it. You develop a skill to tell the difference.”

Also, some encounters are undeniable — several WPI investigators said they’ve had experiences that have blown down their walls of skepticism concerning the supernatural; Carr, a large man, said he was once knocked on his butt by an unseen force at Wendover Air Force Base. “There was no way I could’ve done that myself,” he said. Stevens describes full apparitions she’s encountered.

Ghosthunting is kinda like fishing — sitting around for hours and ending up with nothing to show for it, unless you count having a fun adventure with like-minded friends.

“Are we crazy? Well, we sit alone in the dark and talk to ourselves. Is it fun? It can be a blast,” Carr said.

After the evening, the crew will go home and analyze the audio recordings they made to see if any ghostly voices turn up.

“That’s where the thrill gets me,” Carr said.

As the evening wound down, WPI member Doug Frame said, “I felt something warm move past me.”

He’s primed for that next thrill, which could happen at any moment.

“I wish I would get scared again,” he said.

Glamis Castle, believed to be the most haunted in Scotland, is to turn away ghost-hunters in a bid to rebuild its “image”, it emerged on Monday.

Marketing chiefs at the castle, which is the ancestral home of the Earls of Strathmore and the Queen Mother’s childhood home, intend to rebrand the building as a family-friendly visitor attraction and promote its royal credentials instead of emphasising its spookiness.

The castle, near Forfar, Angus, is widely regarded among paranormal investigators as one of Britain’s most haunted buildings. Spectres are said to include the Grey Lady, who prowls the chapel, a tongueless female phantom, and the ghost of Earl Beardie, condemned to play cards with the Devil until Doomsday for breaking the sanctity of the Sabbath.

Previously the castle has played on its supernatural reputation, hosting ITV’s All Fright on the Night, a ghost-hunt presented by Uri Geller, the Israeli-born spoon-bender and paranormal showman.

But now castle bosses say they want “nothing to do” with the castle’s paranormal reputation.

David Adams, the castle’s general manager, said: “We don’t encourage ghost-hunters, we don’t encourage ghost-hunting TV programmes and we certainly don’t encourage people who want to come in and do overnight stays to try to locate ghosts.

“We don’t want anything to do with that. If you happen to believe that stuff, that’s fine, but we don’t. There are various myths and legends surrounding the castle but they are just that. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that there are any supernatural beings in the castle.”

Mark Turner of Ghost Finders Scotland, a paranormal research group, said he was astonished by the castle’s new stance.

He added: “Glamis’ reputation as the most haunted castle in Scotland is its unique selling point. Publicly announcing there are no ghosts at Glamis is like people in the Highlands saying there’s no monster in Loch Ness.”

File this squarely under creepy. A few months before his body was found hanging in a Bangkok hotel room closet, David Carradine sat down to discuss a ghost he believed was haunting him … from a closet.

The interview, taped for the Oct. 3 premiere of the BIO show ‘Celebrity Ghost Stories,’ centers on Carradine’s belief that his wife Annie’s deceased husband Dana was using the closet in their bedroom as home base to spook them. In the footage, the late ‘Kung Fu’ actor describes the “icy cold” feeling he got.

“I think he was hanging out in the closet, and sometimes when I walked into that closet … it would be cold in there, unreasonably cold,” Carradine said, according to quotes from the New York Post, which claims it’s his final interview ever.

Carradine was equally freaked out by one of Dana’s ties that remained in the closet. “[It] was turned around and it had a little logo attached to it … that said ‘Grateful Dead,’ and I thought, what does he mean by that?”

“It was obviously a joke, that the dead were grateful . . . it was the only way he could communicate [that] he now felt like everything was settled, the kids were taken care of and I was gonna be there for them,” Carradine said. “And I will be.”

Carradine died of asphyxiation on June 3 after an apparent self-bondage episode went horribly wrong. He was found naked with a rope tied around his neck.

Rob Sharenow, BIO’s senior VP of programming, said the network didn’t want to exploit Carradine’s death, so they held the episode and didn’t mention the actor’s involvement until now.

“We wanted to be respectful, first and foremost, and to roll the show out as planned,” he told the Post.

And “roll the show” they shall, with Carradine featured heavily in marketing materials.

“We’re absolutely going to feature the Carradine story prominently the week it airs,” he says. “While we don’t want to appear as if we were exploiting his misfortune … we don’t want to be shy about talking about it.”

“It’s extraordinary — and people are going to notice it.”

Spirits don’t take vacations. At least that’s what Bonnie LeTourneau thinks.

Although the May-Stringer Heritage Museum has been closed for the past month for its annual cleaning and maintenance, the woman who hosts the celebrated ghost tours at the museum says things inside the Victorian mansion remain as spooky as ever.

“I don’t think it’s possible to chase away the spirits that reside there,” LeTourneau said. “They’ve been there too long.”

As a weekend volunteer guide, LeTourneau leads groups of visitors in search of the many mysteries that surround the four-story, 12-room museum. Legend has it that the 151-year-old house, originally built by Brooksville pioneer John May, is inhabited by the spirits of long-deceased family members, including May’s 3-year-old daughter, Jessie.

All of which, in the minds of LeTourneau and others, explains some of the strange occurrences that go on there. In addition to numerous odd noises, museum staffers have reported encountering images of people moving through darkened hallways, cold spots and mists that suddenly appear in areas of the house, and glowing orbs of light that hover over the house’s tin roof.

LeTourneau said her own encounters with these “entities” have been fairly frequent. She has often heard footsteps coming from the upper floors of the house and has felt the touch of something or someone on her shoulder when no one else is around. And then there’s the soft wail of a small child that LeTourneau and many others believe belongs to Jessie May.

“It sent shivers down my spine the first time I heard it,” LeTourneau said. “It was very unsettling.

LeTourneau admits she was a skeptic when she first set foot inside the door of the house near downtown Brooksville 3 1/2 years ago. Nevertheless, she felt a strange attraction to the history of the edifice, which through the years also served as a boardinghouse and a doctor’s office. At the behest of museum caretakers, she began conducting special group tours on weekend nights for those interested in exploring the home’s deepest secrets.

Although the museum’s paranormal activity can be somewhat inconsistent, LeTourneau claims there is enough going on that the house has earned “hot spot” status from such supernatural investigative groups as Paranormal Seekers and Florida Ghost Hunters.

For some locals who are into ghosthunting, the Moonville Tunnel in Vinton County is too tempting to pass up.

The ghosthunters who make up Unseen Forces Paranormal Research Team consist of members from both Meigs County and Mason County, W.Va. who specialize in investigating haunted places. Unseen Forces has previously investigated Beech Grove Cemetery in Pomeroy.

As for their Moonville Tunnel adventure, Unseen Forces members Brenden Black and Raven Johnson said their experience was by far the most haunted the group has documented. Black, Johnson and members Ryan Ferrell and Whitnee Russell have been to the tunnel three times, collecting evidence that the location is indeed haunted.

According to various ghost hunting sources on the Internet, the Moonville Tunnel is regarded as one of the most haunted places in Ohio by many ghosthunters. The old tunnel sits along Raccoon Creek in the Zaleski Forest. The town of Moonville was a mining town founded in the 1850’s which was said to be located around the tunnel which was used by the Marietta-Cincinnati Railroad. The town’s population is said to have peaked in the 1870’s at under 100 residents. The town then completely fell off the map and disappeared in the 1930’s. All that’s left is the tunnel, a cemetery and a few old foundations for long-gone homes. The train stopped running in 1986 and the tracks were torn out in 1988.

Though some ghosthunters report there were as many as six people killed in the tunnel between 1859 and 1986, the most popular “ghost” story haunting the tunnel is the ghost of a railroad worker. The legend goes a Marietta-Cincinnati railroad worker fell onto the tracks outside the tunnel on March 29, 1859 and was hit by the train. People claim to have seen his ghost walking the tracks with a lantern, wearing his railroad uniform.

The crew from Unseen Forces believes they came in contact with what could be the mysterious railroad worker during their investigations at the tunnel. While in the tunnel, Black said the group turned on a flashlight and began asking questions of what they felt was a spirit near them. The group asked the spirit to dim the flashlight for “yes” and brighten it for “no.”

Through this communication, Black and Johnson said the spirit answered to the name of “Brakeman” and said he died in the tunnel. He told the team he is staying at the tunnel because he feels he has a purpose there. He also communicated he did live in Moonville, is happy and feels at peace, was killed at night time and there was an important thing he wanted the team to know but he couldn’t tell them. The Brakeman also said there was a girl in the tunnel who died there. In fact there are reports of a small girl dying in the tunnel in 1986 after she was struck by a train.

In addition, team members reported being touched by unseen hands and heard unexplained noises and footsteps in the tunnel. The team also captured a photo of what appears to be the shadow of a person at the far end of the tunnel. Black said the photo was taken during daylight and no one saw the “shadow man” in the tunnel when the picture was snapped.

Black said the team utilized video recorders, digital cameras, voice recorders, EMF detectors, contact thermometers, UC blacklight flashlights and K2 meters to complete the investigation. In addition they used laser levels in the tunnel which occasionally would show breaks in the light as if something unseen was walking past.

“It is definitely haunted,” Black concluded about the tunnel.

As for those who don’t believe in hauntings, Black and Johnson said, “you’ll believe once you experience it.” As for why do ghosthunting? Johnson said “it’s a rush.”

The evidence collected at the Moonville Tunnel as well as during other Unseen Forces’ investigations can be viewed on the group’s myspace page or at www.unseenforcespr.webs.com.

State police are warning paranormal enthusiasts to stay away from the former Torrance State Hospital, a century-old building that has housed thousands of mentally ill people in Derry Township.

“People have been going in there for years thinking they’ll see a ghost or something. But it’s now owned privately and the family that owns that building no longer wants anyone going in there,” said township ordinance officer Terry Giannini.

The owners of the building are John and Lori McConnell.

“It’s all over the Internet that it’s supposed to be haunted … there are entire Web pages devoted to it. But I don’t know,” Giannini said.

Videos taken by trespassers are posted on YouTube, showing crumbling walls and collapsing ceilings, and message boards describe late-night visits to the red brick building as “spooky” and “freaky.” The amount of graffiti evidences the number of late-night visitors looking for a thrill.

Lori McConnell said Monday that she and her husband have farmed neighboring property for years, but they knew of no paranormal phenomenon at the former hospital until they purchased it earlier this year.

“We just don’t want anyone getting hurt. We have been in that building quite often, at all times of the day, and we can assure everyone there is no paranormal activity,” she said.

She said the family has not yet decided what to do with the building.

The hospital opened in 1919 and housed 3,300 patients by the mid-1950s, according to a state Web site. It closed during the 1960s, according to the state Department of Public Welfare Web site.

Giannini believes that some interest in the vacant asylum was spurred by rooms that were used to administer shock therapy and perform lobotomies, methods used to treat mental illness before the 1960s.

State police recently cited 18-year-old Sarah Davis, of Johnstown, for criminal trespass after she allegedly was found on the property off Torrance Road about 9:35 p.m. Aug. 15. She must appear before Derry Township District Judge Mark Bilik and faces a fine up to $300, plus court costs, if convicted.

State police said McConnell has gated off the building entrance and posted no trespassing signs.

The creaks of an old building could be the settling of the floorboards, or, as some believe, the nighttime jaunts of a ghost.

To test what may be making nocturnal noise at the Southington Grange building on Summit Street, members of the New England Ghost Hunters Guild will make a moonlit investigation Saturday using their wits and a van full of high-tech equipment.

The Grange moved into its headquarters about 60 years ago, said President James Lamoureux, but the organization itself was founded 115 years ago. “People have a strong connection to the organization,” he said. That connection could mean friendly spirits want to stay in touch, Lamoureux mused.

“You hear creaks and the pipes go on. The curtains blow because the windows are leaky,” Lamoureux said. “I can’t say there is paranormal activity,” he added.

“We’re not going to catch Casper the Friendly Ghost flying around,” said Jay Palazzo, a Ghost Hunters Guild member from Plainfield. He said digital electronic equipment can record sounds that can’t be heard by the human ear and infrared cameras can spot movement in the darkest of rooms.

Palazzo said electromagnetic fields can be measured and could show a spirit is present. “We use five LED lights. The theory is, if a spirit is present, they can move the lights up and down,” he said.

Guild founder Cassy Pabst, of Chelmsford, Mass., started the organization when she was 19. “We saw shows like ‘Ghost Hunters.’ We noticed they were nonprofit and made up of kids like us,” she said. She’s done about 30 investigations since then and has learned how to help the folks who are worried about what they are sensing.

“Some feel they’re insane. I’ve heard it many, many times. I give them comfort. They are not insane,” Pabst said.

Both Palazzo and Pabst say the best paranormal encounter they’ve had came in an historic home in Warner, N.H. Pabst said an innkeeper asked the guild to investigate a ghost. The investigation showed the home’s former owner, known as Uncle Frank, was still around, they said.

“The owner thought it was so cool. They see Uncle Frank all the time. The innkeeper said (Frank) looks like an old man, which he was,” Pabst said.

“We called out, ‘Are you Uncle Frank?’ ” Palazzo said. “He answered ‘yes’, very distinct. It was an instant, intelligent response,” Palazzo said. “It was like they were protecting the home. It was Uncle Frank’s old home.”

Palazzo said they believe two or three of Frank’s family members are also present.

Paranormal investigations usually take most of the night, and the guild often visits the same location several times. “There is a fifty-fifty chance the first time they won’t communicate,” said Pabst. Another visit gives the spirit the chance to get used to the guild members, she said.

Palazzo said it will take about a week to compile the information from the Grange investigation. “We don’t know of any paranormal activity, but this is about curiosity,” he said.

Paranormal investigators have become fairly well-known through popular television programs such as “Ghost Hunters” and “Paranormal State.”

Locally, the City Lights Paranormal Society has investigated Stemies Place in Easton and, recently, the Newburg Inn in Lower Nazareth Township in attempts to confirm or refute the alleged haunted history of both buildings.

Joe Iannetta, a car salesman by day and “ghosbuster” at night, had his team taking video and readings last week at the 250-year old restaurant in the Nazareth area.

Stories of ghosts at the Newburg Inn are well-known around Nazareth. Customers, workers and tenants have claimed to see apparitions including those of a former owner named Newt and an Indian reportedly hanged in the rafters of the attic.

Iannetta has to review more than 60 hours of video taken on the premise before revealing his findings.