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.”

Hoo boy, this is exciting. The movie that many a hard-hearted critic has called the most terrifying movie ever made is coming to theaters! And it’s happening in just a couple of weeks. That’s right: Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity is getting its official release on September 25. You’re not gonna want to miss it. Trust me.

A little background, for the uninitiated: Back in 2006, Peli shot his mock-doc dream project — a chronicle of the nocturnal goings-on in a haunted house occupied by one increasingly terrified couple — on a shoestring budget of $11,000, with a cast of no-name actors. In 2008, he managed to get the movie into Slamdance and Screamfest, at which point all hell broke loose… in the best possible way. Here’s a sampling of the frenzied response: “The entire auditorium was freaked out of their minds…people were actually physically shaking” (Dread Central); “Paranormal Activity managed to do something that almost no other haunted house movie in the past 25 years has managed to do: Actually be scary” (Bloody Disgusting); “It sufficiently freaked out those of us who watched [it]…. that I ended up asking a coworker to crash in my room for the night because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep alone (Cinematical); “Believe the hype!” (Ain’t It Cool). You get the idea: Hardened professionals were reduced to quivering wrecks.

Naturally, the big studios came sniffing, and DreamWorks/Paramount walked away with the rights, only to announce that they’d be giving it the full remake treatment. You know, because a movie made for such a pathetic sum of money couldn’t possibly compare to one of their big glossy masterpieces, right?)

The remake news went down like a lead balloon. About.com’s horror blog snarked, “Would Hollywood ever feel the need to remake a perfectly good film that can stand on its own right…? Oh yeah. Right.” Upon reading that Peli was excited about the new possibilities, New York magazine’s Vulture blog mused, “Will one of those ‘things that were not possible before’ be replacing all of Paranormal’s cast of unknowns with Sarah Michelle Gellar? We hope not! Because Cloverfield’s success should have reminded Hollywood that concept can trump casting if the concept is good enough. And a movie filled with no-names can still make a hell of a lot of money.”

Well, somewhere along the way DreamWorks brigade wised up, because suddenly last week they announced that they’d thought the better of this whole remake idea! “The folks over at Dreamworks have reminded us of a time when being a movie studio actually meant something,” Screen Rant thrilled, “by deciding NOT to remake the already-horrifying Paranormal Activity. In unrelated news, a recent survey of Hell shows the climate of the region down ten degrees from this time yesterday.” Dread Central was also uncharacteristically enthusiastic: “Words alone cannot describe how happy we are to hear this. Our hats are off to both Schneider and Paramount for giving the film a chance to be seen and not rushing out a remake. Best damned news we’ve heard all day.”

Meanwhile, the response to that post should give you some sense of how the fans feel about the matter. “Everything I’ve heard and read about this movie makes me want to see it in the absolute worst way,” moaned one. “Fabulous news!” exclaimed another. A third was even more succinct: “!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

In short order, Paranormal Activity got its own Facebook fan page and Twitter feed. The official trailer finally appeared online (after countless “here it is… oops, there it wents”) and that September 25 release date started popping up all over the blogosphere. The only disappointment? It’s said to be a “limited release,” so there’s a chance no one other than Angelenos and New Yorkers will be able to see it.

Of course, if Paranormal Activity really does turn out to be the Next! Blair! Witch!, as so many bloggers have proclaimed, it will only be a matter of time before the big-budget sequel lumbers into theaters, groaning under the weight of impossibly high expectations and nervous studio oversight. But for now, let’s focus on the positive: Something wicked scary this way comes!

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.

As if 14 kids was not enough, Nadya Suleman apparently has another little visitor living with her, although this one at least was uninvited.

Suleman told RadarOnline that her house is haunted by the ghost of a young child.

She was apparently being serious when she said that she was just about to sit on the toilet when she heard a child — other than the multiple suspects living in her home — say, “Mommy?”

She also related that one of the nannies who helps her reported seeing a small child disappear in an upstairs room that’s always “unusually cold.”

“This is something you’re not supposed to believe in if you are a believer in God, but it’s something that I’m a little worried about,” she told the website.

If praying doesn’t make the ghost go away, she said she plans to buy 20 Bibles and put them around the home.

It’s hard to stump the staffers at Connecticut’s historical landmarks — they’re pretty well versed on their buildings’ one-time occupants. But there’s one common question for which they have no adequate answer: Is this place haunted?

Very old buildings commonly come with lore about spooky happenings, but rarely does anyone really explore these tales. To that end, officials with Connecticut Landmarks have tapped the East Haven-based Connecticut Paranormal Research Investigators (CT-PRI, for short) to get to the bottom of things.

Since May, the group has been schlepping its equipment — infrared cameras, temperature gauges, audio recorders, holy water — to four of the 12 properties maintained by Connecticut Landmarks. They concluded their on-site work last week, at Hartford’s oldest building, the Butler-McCook House on Main Street. After reviewing the evidence, they’ll put together their findings.

That will be the basis for a series of presentations for the public in September and October titled, appropriately, “Is This Place Haunted?”

The five-member CT-PRI was founded by Christine Kaczynski, who introduces herself as “coming from a family of exorcists in Greece.” A design engineer by day (she doesn’t charge for ghost-hunting), she’s been working in the paranormal field for 35 years and formed the group five years ago. Kaczynski points out that they’re not actually looking for hauntings, which are malevolent spirits, but for spiritual presences.

Kaczynski twisted her ankle a week earlier but discounts the possibility of otherworldly menace. “Mostly they play upon your fears,” she says of evil spirits. “They’re psychological attacks a lot of the time.”

Spots That Go Cold

Connecticut Landmarks long resisted the idea of paranormal research — after all, it’s a serious organization that deals with history and facts, said Rochelle Simon, director of communications for Connecticut Landmarks. But, after years of fielding questions from the public, the group’s officials realized they also were curious. Simon says they also were impressed by CT-PRI’s professionalism.

It takes the crew about 20 minutes to set up all the wiring and install infrared cameras in four of the rooms Butler-McCook House. Cynthia Riccio, Butler-McCook’s site administrator, has said that she feels a distinctive “presence” when she’s alone in the house. She suspect’s that it’s Frances McCook, the house’s last occupant.

The investigators do some preliminary photography to get the house’s layout and set up temperature gauges to check for spots that suddenly go cold. Adam Shefts of Wallingford, who joined the group about a year ago, does most of the tech stuff. Many of the gadgets are gifts from his family, even though his father thinks it’s a waste of time. His mother, though, is a believer, and his friends think it’s a cool hobby.

“I don’t go around telling too many people because I don’t know what their reaction is going to be,” Shefts says.

Jan Forcier of Bridgeport wanders the house, extending a digital recorder in her hand and petitioning any spirits to make themselves known. She’s hoping to capture electronic voice phenomena, or EVP, in ghost-hunting argot.

“I’m here to communicate with you. Do you mind our being here?” she says to the dark. “Can you tell me your name? Is there something you would like to say?”

If any spirits take her up on the offer, Forcier won’t know until she reviews the tape later; you can rarely hear spirits with the naked ear. Even on recordings, she says, words are usually muffled, as though they’re being spoken underwater. EVP experts claim that spiritual voices are either below 30 hertz or above 28,000 hertz; human voices are mid-range.

Sometimes presences make themselves known visually in the form of silhouettes or even full human shape, Forcier says. She’s never seen this happen yet, though.

Faint Orbs Of Light

Most of the action takes place in a room downstairs as the investigators watch the monitor, split into four screens for each camera, waiting for something to happen. When something does, it’s not flying furniture or the risen form of the house’s last occupant, Frances McCook, but usually faint orbs of light. Most are dismissed as dust, but at about 10:30, an orb that appears on Screen 3 (the music room) catches Shefts’ attention.

“It’s got substance to it, and it curves. It’s an oval shape, and dust wouldn’t be oval,” he says, jotting down the time and location. “The real important thing is that it changed shape — it went from circular to oval.”

The non-investigators in the room find this curious but aren’t particularly taken aback. A short while later, a brighter light that shoots across the screen has a different effect.

“Holy crap!” says the otherwise poised Simon of Connecticut Landmarks, putting her hand to her mouth. A few weeks earlier, she described herself as something of a skeptic, but lately she has been talking of eerie happenings. At a previous investigation at the Nathan Hale Homestead in Coventry, one of the cameras went black momentarily. The investigation at the Bellamy-Ferriday House & Garden in Bethlehem produced both spooky orbs and EVP.

None of this surprises the staff at some of these landmarks. Ghost stories at the Hale house, for instance, go back to the early 20th century — weeping, footsteps, chains, the works. On the night of the investigation there, workers told one story after another of odd events.

Hours Of Just Waiting

But an investigation can go on for hours with nothing happening. Sometimes the crew goes home empty-handed. On-site work takes about four to five hours. Nonetheless, time moves along at Butler-McCook with lively conversation. Kaczynski holds court, remembering some of her more harrowing exorcisms. Talk also turns to more earth-bound topics, such as the rise and fall of Krispy Kreme stock. They also talk about their favorite ghost-hunter TV shows, except for Kaczynski, who can’t stand any of them.

It’s doubtful that the Connecticut Paranormal Research Investigators would make for good TV. Watching a handful of folks stare at a monitor hardly sounds like a ratings blockbuster. But their earnestness is such that a non-believer can get caught up. Even staunchest skeptics can admire the crew’s dedication; the job requires an astoundingly high threshold for tedium. After crew members pack up a little after midnight, they’ll go home and review hours of audio tapes.

“It’s very tiring work; you could miss something in a snap,” Forcier says. “The energy has to be just right, and the conditions have to be just right.”

Sheryl Hack, executive director of Connecticut Landmarks, says taking the paranormal approach should be a fun way to tell the histories of its properties. And, she adds, the question of whether they’re haunted is worth answering.

“We’re committed to telling the stories of these places we steward.”