The Black Vault - Ghost hunter prowls paranormal

Ghosts have no real need to be in a bathroom -- yet almost anyone who’s lived in a haunted house will tell you it’s the spookiest spot.

Paul Eno thinks he knows why.

"It’s the water, the plumbing -- perfect for conducting electrical currents," says Eno, a Woonsocket resident and one of New England’s most prominent ghost hunters.

"You’ll often find ghosts hanging out in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in a bedroom near a bathroom, or near appliances. They’re drawn to the electromagnetic fields."

That short explanation says plenty about Eno’s approach to spooks and specters. Forget those musty legends about headless horsemen and graveyard apparitions. His notions are more Albert Einstein than Edgar Allen Poe.

As a 21st century paranormal investigator, he has no use for the Victorian-Era séance; he relies instead on the gaussmeter -- a thoroughly modern device that measures magnetism.

Eno can talk a blue streak about quantum mechanics and scientific speculation of the space-time continuum. He theorizes there are other dimensions, parallel worlds that sometimes intersect and overlap with our own, typically because of electromagnetic interference.

And when they do, things can go bump in the night.

"I believe in ghosts," Eno explains, "but not as spirits of the dead. If you hear Aunt Jane skipping down the stairs two weeks after her funeral, it’s not necessarily the spirit of Aunt Jane -- it could be Aunt Jane two years earlier."

Eno, a Connecticut native, began investigating the supernatural as a college student in the early ’70s. His probes continued for the next 30 years, while he worked as a copy editor at several Rhode Island newspapers.

For a long time he kept a low profile, to avoid raised eyebrows from colleagues, but that’s no longer necessary. Today he runs his own company, New River Press, which produces trade magazines and newsletters and publishes books on New England lore. Included in the catalog: two volumes he penned on his ghost hunting experiences, Faces at the Window and Footsteps in the Attic.

These days Eno investigates some 20 or so cases a year. He accepts no payment from those who request his help, but instead using the material for his books, lectures, and articles.

There’s no shortage of hauntings locally. Some say a murdered peddler can be heard crying out from a well in North Smithfield. A phantom rider supposedly gallops though Cumberland woods. And in Foster a bell sometimes rings at eerily at midnight, near the site of a now demolished mill. According to legend the factory bell ringer hung himself by its rope.

But Eno, who’s lived in area for two decades, shrugs off the lore. "I often wonder if the stories were created to explain the phenomenon," he says. "I’m a Republican, not some touchie-feelie type."

And he regards most spooks as harmless.

Not long ago one of his team snapped a photo in the attic of a home in Woonsocket’s North End. There’s an eerie blue glow in one corner that looks like the face of an old woman. Eno suspects it’s an apparition -- but most likely no bother to those living in the house.

"I believe she’s living in there in another part of space-time," he says. "She’s not dead. This woman is living in a parallel time and space with the people who are living there now."

He cautions, however, that some ghosts are less benign.

Eno says he’s encountered entities (he calls "parasites" or "cosmic mosquitoes") that use electrical fields to travel from their world to ours. They’re usually invisible, except when photographed by a professional ghost hunter, in which case they appear on film as glowing blobs or ribbons.

"They’re the origins of all the stories about demons and vampires," Eno says. "They seemingly absorb energy from people, and they can leave you feeling chronically fatigued."

To keep their human hosts pumping out energy, so the theory goes, the parasites try to keep them upset and annoyed, a possible explanation for the rowdy activity associated with poltergeist hauntings.

"I used to go into these cases with clergymen and holy water. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t," Eno says.

"Now I rely on positive energy. You bring in positive energy, good humor, and love, and you can get rid of these things, or at least put them to sleep."

Eno insists that he always looks for commonplace explanations first. He’ll unplug appliances that may be producing low frequency sound waves, noises too low for a person to hear, but which nonetheless make one uncomfortable. And he’ll always inquire whether more than one person sees the ghost. That question helps eliminate psychiatric difficulties.

"Then I ask, may I see your electric bill," he says.

If it’s gone up, he accepts that haunting as genuine. Spectral phenomena, he believes, draw power from electrical systems. Houses near electric lines have a 60 to 70 percent higher haunting rate, he says. A high water table could have the same effect.

As for old cemeteries: the minerals decaying bodies return to the soil can accumulate and create magnetic fields.

To Eno, such explanations are far more satisfying than old campfire tales. And that’s what has kept him poking through attics, woods, and graveyards for the past 30 years.

"You can learn a lot about destiny, even spirituality, our own place in the universe," he says. "What happens when we die? Maybe nothing happens. Maybe our consciousness just shifts to another one of these worlds, where we already are. You might believe, as Mother Theresa did, that we are really all one."

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