Press coverage about Whale Tales--Story 1

[db73]

Hello Team.
The following 2 stories are from the Bradford County Telegraph. Dated 14 May 2009 (Today)

Local restaurant haunting a whale of a tale?
 
 
 
 
By: Cliff Smelley Telegraph Staff Writer May 14, 2009
 
 
 
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Asher Sullivan takes a look up at the second floor of Whale Tales before walking upstairs. He and a friend stayed at the restaurant one night after business hours in an attempt to see or hear something of a paranormal nature. The two men have not been the only ones to ask owner Mark Bushey if they can spend the night, so Bushey is contemplating having “ghost lock-in” parties on Sundays when the restaurant is closed.
 
 
Whale Tales restaurant offers customers more than 50 types of beer, but it appears as if owner Mark Bushey can now add spirits to his menu.
These spirits, however, are of the non-alcoholic variety.
Members of the group CAPE (Catch Any Paranormal Event) spent a night at the Starke restaurant after hours in March and declared it haunted. Several employees have also experienced unexplained phenomena.
As for Bushey, well, he's not a believer until he actually sees a ghost. He does not mind the talk about his restaurant being haunted, though.
"I don't think it's going to hurt (business)," he said.
Bushey allowed a couple of men interested in ghosts to spend the night at the restaurant after hours approximately a month ago and has had others asking if they can do the same. The interest has Bushey contemplating hosting "ghost lock-in" parties, perhaps on a monthly basis on Sundays when the restaurant is closed.
Bradford County resident Daniel Barnett, who is a member of CAPE, said he sees no problem with people wanting to spend the night at the restaurant. Though CAPE concluded the haunting at Whale Tales appears to be of an "intelligent nature" in that the ghosts attempt to interact with the living, Barnett said no paranormal presence in the building appears to be malicious.
"I think it's good for people to do things like that-to discover and explore," Barnett said. "There's nothing wrong with knowledge."
Documentation of the knowledge Barnett and the members of CAPE gained from their stay at the restaurant was presented to Bushey. CAPE personnel heard shuffling noises in the main dining room while conducting investigations upstairs. The downstairs area was unoccupied at the time. A sound like ice being dropped in a glass was heard by one investigator and recorded digitally, while shadow figures were seen on three occasions.
While upstairs, CAPE members reported feelings of fear and melancholy. Equipment malfunction and battery drain were also noted in this area. Downstairs, a fleeting shadow, first appearing in front of the freezer just inside the kitchen door, was recorded on a hand-held video camera.
The CAPE documentation also listed three instances of unexplained phenomena captured on voice recorders: a male voice saying what sounds like, "Just a game," in the game room, a male voice saying something that sounds like, "Awww," and a male voice saying something that sounds like, "Uh oh."
Barnett said the "main thing" occurred when a couple of CAPE members were investigating upstairs. They felt a movement as if someone had taken a step. One investigator took a photograph, with the flash revealing what they described as a face looking back at them through the bathroom/dressing area window. The investigators took 27 more photographs, but the "face" appeared in only the one photo.
CAPE members took many photographs throughout the night, some of which seemed to record unexplained phenomena. However, the documentation presented to Bushey states that only the "face" photo could not be "debunked." In reviewing the evidence afterward, CAPE members discounted the other phenomena captured as simply "dust, bugs, reflections, etc."
In fact, CAPE personnel attempt to attribute a "natural" explanation for everything they observe. For example, the women's restroom in Whale Tales is "noticeably cooler" than the rest of the restaurant because it is well insulated and contains an AC event.
There were also areas of high electromagnetic fields that can cause "headaches, dizziness, feelings of dread and hallucinations." CAPE personnel, for example, recorded high readings from the neon signs and video games.
Barnett said the evidence of paranormal activity is stronger if an attempt is made to explain every so-called paranormal event.
"You want to go in and try to debunk everything, to find a scientific reason-a natural reason-for the stories you've heard," Barnett said. "What's left out of that that you can't explain is paranormal.
"If you go in looking for ghosts, you're going to find ghosts."
Asher Sullivan and a friend, who wished to remain anonymous, did go to Whale Tales looking for ghosts. Bushey allowed the two men to stay after hours one night last month. They managed to give themselves a good scare when, armed with a voice recorder and a cell phone, they entered the men's restroom and turned out the lights in an attempt to record ghostly sounds. They were detected walking around in the dark by the motion sensor on the paper towel dispenser. As soon as the paper towels began spitting out, the two men made a mad dash for the door, practically falling out of the restroom in fits of laughter when they finally realized what the noise was they heard.
As Sullivan had stated earlier in the night, "We don't go chasing ghosts for a living." However, he and his friend thought it would fun to see if they could experience something as CAPE members had, though Sullivan admitted, "If I saw a face, I probably would leave."
The men were joined for the night by professed "non-believer" John Griffis. He said he does not watch such shows as "Ghost Hunters" as Sullivan and his friend do. Griffis said if there were such things as ghosts, the people who you were close to in life would try to make contact with you after they were deceased. For his part, he has never experienced that.
"I wanted to be here to say a shadow is a shadow," he said.
One Whale Tales employee, who wished to remain anonymous, said Griffis, Sullivan and the other man were brave for wanting to stay the night. The employee described an incident in which he was in the mop room-a small area underneath the stairs-when he felt something almost knock the cap off of his head.
"I looked around and there wasn't anybody there," he said. Half a minute later, it happened again.
The employee said two weeks after that incident, the jukebox started flipping through its selections on its own before playing the AC/DC song "Highway to Hell."
Still, the employee said he was going to stay the night with the CAPE personnel in February until a sighting changed his mind.
"I saw a figure go across the room and move toward the girls' bathroom," he said. "I left."
Bushey admitted he's on the fence when it comes to believing in ghosts. He knows a couple of friends and has a cousin who were all non-believers until they actually experienced a paranormal event. Bushey would have to experience something himself, too, before he believes.
"I need the tangible proof," he said.



 

[db73]

Here's story #2:


  Features
 
 
 
 
Haunts are Starke man's hobby
 
 
 
 
By: Cliff Smelley Telegraph Staff Writer May 14, 2009
 
 
 
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Some people watch birds for a hobby, but Daniel Barnett keeps his eyes peeled for ghosts.
Barnett, who lives in Bradford County, is a member of CAPE (Catch Any Paranormal Event), which recently investigated and documented unexplained phenomena in Starke restaurant Whale Tales. However, he began investigating supposedly haunted places on his own prior to joining CAPE.
"I've always been kind of interested in it," Barnett said. "I got myself a little digital recorder and started recording EVPs (electronic voice phenomena) and stuff like that a few years ago."
It's a hobby that brings out a mixture of reactions.
"Some people just kind of roll their eyes," Barnett said, "but most of the time, people want to talk to you about it. They'll tell you their stories. That's the main reaction I get-people will tell me their stories. I like to listen to people."
Barnett used to work in landscape, but is currently recovering from an automobile accident. He discovered CAPE online and decided he wanted to be involved.
CAPE was formed in 2008 by Al and Wanda Thackrah. Barnett said he is one of approximately 25 members from throughout Florida, adding that investigations are still in the infancy stage in this part of the state.
"We just really started the north Florida part of it," he said. "We've only been on three (cases) now. Down in south Florida, they've been on a few more than us."
A case typically involves approximately an hour of set-up. Eight zero-lux infrared video cameras, for example, have to be placed throughout the site with a monitor station so a CAPE member can watch all eight cameras at one time.
When the set-up is complete, it's time to start investigating.
"What we'll do is send a team of two or three in at a time instead of the whole group being inside the building," Barnett said.
Members enter the site and take still pictures and record audio. Some take readings with electromagnetic field meters.
Barnett said it takes four to five hours to investigate a site. More work follows, though, as CAPE members return to their respective homes.
"It takes a couple of weeks to go through every piece of evidence you've collected-to listen to your audio and watch your video," Barnett said. "You have to actually physically sit and watch every second of the video you've captured and listen to every second of audio you've captured."
The after-investigation work is when most of the "aha" moments occur, Barnett said, though there are times when such a moment occurs at the sight. That is what happened at Whale Tales.
"We had a pair of investigators who actually saw a face in a window," Barnett said. "Everybody was kind of happy about that."
Barnett said 99 percent of paranormal activity is benign, but there is still some aspect of danger in investigating a sight because the CAPE members' belief is how a person was in life is how that person is in death.
"If you were a bad person alive, then you're probably going to be a bad person after the fact," Barnett said. "We have a little prayer before we go into a place just to make sure nobody gets hurt and nothing follows anybody home or anything like that. Generally, it's nothing bad.
"When people have a haunted house, most of it is the fear of the unknown other than something physically threatening."
CAPE, which documented several instances of unexplained phenomena in Whale Tales, concluded the entities in the restaurant are not threatening.
Barnett was interested in investigating Whale Tales because of stories he's heard about the building when it was Burkhalter's Antiques. Another CAPE member told Barnett she had been to Burkhalter's as a little girl and had seen a shadow while on a ghost tour.
Barnett approached owner Mark Bushey, who allowed CAPE to investigate.
"He let me talk to a couple of his people who work there," Barnett said. "They told me some stories they had heard and experienced there."
One story that intrigued Barnett was of an employee who was in the restroom and had seen someone standing next to him. The employee looked down for a second and then looked up. The person standing next to him was gone.
The employee thought maybe the mirror in the restroom was playing tricks on his mind, but Barnett said there is nothing in the restroom that can explain what the employee had seen.
"That's one of those things that's kind of hard to explain," Barnett said.
In terms of paranormal activity, Barnett described Whale Tales as average in comparison to other haunted locales. The best investigation he's been a part of as a member of CAPE, it would have to be the old Clay County jail in Green Cove Springs. That particular case involved one of the CAPE members becoming physically ill.
"When we were reviewing the evidence from it, we had seen this black shadow had completely encased her right before she got sick," Barnett said.
Not every investigation will yield paranormal activity. Barnett said many times it takes more than one or two trips to a site to actually document something unexplainable. That's why he is a skeptic when it comes to the "Ghost Hunters" television show.
"These shows, they're not going to get ratings if they don't find anything," he said. "In the beginning, the shows were 50-50-they didn't find something, they did find something. Now, every week-it's haunted, it's haunted, it's haunted, it's haunted.
"It's more entertainment than anything anymore."
CAPE does not charge for investigating a site, though donations are welcome to cover expenses.
Anyone who would like to learn more about CAPE or suggest a site for investigation may call Barnett at (904) 964-6845 or visit the CAPE Web site at www.weseeghosts.com.



 
 

[bigyeti12]

Fantastic job Daniel ! Go CAPE ! I'm so proud of you!
Vishi

[admin]

Daniel,
 Nice work.
 Do you have the web links to the stories so I can place them on the web page?

[db73]

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=20314811&BRD=2150&PAG=461&dept_id=411073&rfi=6

[db73]

that was the first one here's the second


http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=20314810&BRD=2150&PAG=461&dept_id=411073&rfi=6

[admin]

Thanks Daniel,

           The links have been placed on our web page!

[kchiki]

Awesome!!

I'm sorry I missed these earlier but they're both great articles!