Paranormal investigator Angie Sommers, her partner AJ Jeide and her team didn't get any "hits" during their most recent scan of a west Carson City home last weekend, but they're hoping something will turn up at their next stop.
"Some of our psychics were picking up a dark shadowy figure of a male sitting on the steps, while others picked up the presence of a man, woman and child, and another one picked up on a dog or some other animal," Sommers said. "It was kind of a flat night, though."
Firestorm Paranormal Investigation of Carson City includes eight members who use special equipment that they say detects the presence of ghosts or other-worldly entities.
Sommers said the purpose of their investigations is to help people, and they don't charge for their services.
"We want to help people who think something is going on or help spirits to cross over and send them into the light, but whether we get evidence or not, it's just a lot of fun," she said.
Equipped with full-spectrum cameras, a K2 meter that picks up energy or electricity, temperature sensors, an EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) detector, and a team of seven psychics, Sommers said she has been filling requests since January 2010 from people in Northern Nevada who have had unexplained encounters in their homes or businesses.
"We have two pictures from downstairs in the Washoe Club in Virginia City from last April before it reopened," she said.
"I was fixated on a mirror and moved my camera so I wasn't in the photo, and I saw a woman in black wearing a bonnet, and she had something in her hand. I also saw a face on top of the mirror, sort of skull-like. I was told it was probably (the ghost of) a guy named Jake who used to kill prostitutes," Sommers said.
She said she asked him, "Are you afraid?" and heard something she couldn't understand. When they played back the EVP recording in slow mode, it was clear he had answered, "Threw the chair."
That's when the team remembered that they'd had a chair thrown at them the last time they were at the Washoe Club in January 2010.
On another occasion when she and her sister had gone to do an investigation at Piper's Opera House in Virginia City, Sommers said, she was trying to take photographs when she heard children's voices laughing.
"My sister didn't hear them, and I later found out from another psychic that it has happened before, but only to children," she said.
Other investigations have been at the Knights of Pythias in Reno, at the Virginia City cemetery and at the Geiger Grade lookout.
"We heard a scream and had rocks thrown at us there," Sommers said of Geiger. "One psychic saw settlers or an Indian, so we don't know who was throwing the rocks."
They got two hits from their K2 detector on videotape from a house on the colony in Carson City. They say they have done investigations of the St. Charles Hotel and detected an Irish boxer, Pat Duncan, who died there and a woman who committed suicide there.
Sommers said several incidents have been reported from another house on Carson City's west side in the upstairs bedroom over a garage. Residents have heard a girl singing upstairs and a boy once saw another boy with a baseball glove and ball who asked him if he wanted to play, she said. A gentleman also has been seen going up and down the stairs, she said.
On another occasion, a woman living in northeast Carson City who had played with Ouija boards her whole life decided to play with it again a few months prior to calling Sommers and her team. She noticed personality changes in her young daughter, and wanted to see what the team could find out.
One of the psychics determined that there was a demon in the house and another said that there was an older woman's presence there as well who was protecting the girl.
Sommers said one of her Indian psychics bound the Ouija board, put it away, and then cleansed the home to keep the it safe.
