Ghost hunters gather at Bristol station

BRISTOL, Va. – "Zip it," the head ghost hunter snapped. "We can’t hear her scream if we’re talking."

She and six comrades stared straight ahead from the platform of the Bristol Train Station. They leaned in a bit, straining, waiting for a scream from the great beyond. A dying street light flickered above.

Silence.

Local ghost hunting group, H.A.U.N.T., short for Hunting and Understanding National Terrors, stood in the cold at 12:55 a.m. Saturday because a woman, dead some 130 years, is known to bellow in the train yard just before 1 a.m.

Jennifer Harless’s eyes widened. She glanced both ways. "Did you hear that?" she shouted.

"I heard that!" another exclaimed. Still more agreement: "That was it, that was it!"

An 18-year-old boy jumped up and down: "I’m so excited!"

The scream is reportedly that of Emma Tompkins, who died under the wheel of a train on May 5, 1887. According to local historian V.N. "Bud" Phillips, she was waiting for the northbound train on the depot’s platform, suitcase in hand, as her husband pleaded with her not to leave him. As the train approached, the desperate man grabbed his wife and leapt with her onto the tracks.

"The scream of the poor doomed wife was joined by the screams of many of the women in the crowd who saw the frightful spectacle unfold before their eyes," Phillips wrote in his "Pioneers in Paradise." "Men stiffened and gasped. In seconds the couple was horridly crushed as the heavy engine and wheels passed over them. A lad who was standing on the other side of the tracks often told of how the woman’s neck was directly across the right rail. Her head was completely severed and went bouncing toward him."

Brad McCroskey, general manager of the Bristol Train Station, invited H.A.U.N.T. to investigate the station after a string of ghostly experiences.

First, he said, one evening in November 2008, he was in his upstairs office when he heard the main door open. He walked out on the balcony, overlooking the great room. No one was there. But he heard footsteps walk across the empty room as he stared down at it. When the steps approached the back door, which leads to the platform, he heard the invisible walker cough.

In the following months, the elevators started transporting unseen passengers from floor to floor. The clock stopped everyday at 8:50 p.m. Coins rattled in an imaginary pants pocket. Glass broke when no one was around, groups of disembodied voices laughed and talked.

McCroskey, who readily admits his intention to "drum up business" with ghostly tales, said he’s not the only person to experience it – one future bride and her mother heard the chattering; the elevator man was equally perplexed; a wedding photographer was sure he caught ghoulish faces in his frames.

The ghost-inspired publicity seems to be working: Halloweens and full moons are popular train station wedding days, McCroskey said. So he welcomes the hangers-on, whomever they are.

A different ghost hunting group told him there were 68 spirits crowded into the 108-year-old building. A former owner is said to roam its halls, for some reason trapped between life and death.

In "Pioneers in Paradise," historian Phillips wrote that a man, fleeing an angry mob, tried to jump into a boxcar and missed. He was thrown under the train and, as Phillips put it, "his brains were scattered for several feet along the cross ties."

Worse, Phillips wrote, babies born at nearby brothels were discarded with grisly regularity at the train yard. One was found cut in two across a rail, and another tossed into a passing coal car to die from exposure as it made its way to Knoxville.

Saturday’s H.A.U.N.T. investigation was streamed live on Paranormal TV Network’s Channel 2, where psychics and other paranormal enthusiasts chatted live, with tips and insights.

Harless started H.A.U.N.T. with her daughter, Adrienne, 17, and her daughter’s friend Ashley Sturgill, 18. They’ve hunted ghosts from Kentucky to Alabama, and they’re looking to expand their business. With their team of investigators, they gathered in a semi-circle in the pitch-black station, asking the ghouls to make themselves known. The ghost hunters promised not to hurt the spirits, even offered to loan them some energy.

Starting with a K-2 Meter to test the depot’s electromagnetic field, they pleaded with the dead to "make the K-2 meter light up." It didn’t budge.

They told the ghosts they were using a voice recorder, in case they spoke to them on a frequency the living could not hear.

"Are you trapped in here or do you choose to be here?" someone asked. Nothing happened, but investigator Gary Thomas was sure he was getting vibes. "Are you happy?" he implored. The investigators used more ghost-hunting implements, including video surveillance, thermometers and an iPhone App designed to pick up frequencies emitted by ghosts.

Harless said it would take the better part of a week to conclude whether the train station is haunted: They have 40 hours of video from eight cameras, 16 hours of audio and at least 300 photographs.

She rewound the voice recorder to replay the 1 a.m. scream for an accompanying Bristol Herald Courier reporter, the only one of the bunch deaf to the supernatural.

"It’s real faint," she encouraged. Still nothing.

"It takes a long time to get your ears tuned to hear it," said 18-year-old co-founder Sturgill. "When we clean it up, it’s gonna be awesome."

cgalofaro@bristolnews.com (276) 645-2531