Fixed to a tripod, the camcorder is trained on the stalls. I peer through the viewfinder: the infrared gives a cool, greenish tint to the pipes and cement walls. But it’s a deceptive cool. A heat wave is on and the Stratford Motor Hotel AC is dead. Even here and now, the ladies’ room at 2 AM, Bing Crosby breezing from the portable tape deck sitting on the baby changer (eerily crooning “all the way from Phil-a-del-phi-ay”), it is hotter than blazes.
There are no level streets here. You’re either driving uphill or you’re driving downhill. The city teeters on bluffs. Home to the tallest man in history–Robert Wadlow, 8 feet 11.1 inches–Alton also claims the distinction of being Golgotha to the first white abolitionist martyr, the Reverend Elijah Lovejoy, shot dead by a mob in 1837. Come winter, migrant bald eagles hog the bridges and docked barges. From its aerie, the Stratford looks down upon the town’s colossus, the Conagra grain mill. The desk manager at the Stratford told me about the eagles. As for Robert Wadlow, the Guinness Book of World Records says so, and I saw his statue, so it must be true.
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It’s considered a faux pas to profit directly from ghost research. Most ghostbusters don’t charge for actual investigation. If they don’t have day jobs–most of them do, including Dale, who’s a forklift operator–they make money selling books, equipment, and conference registrations (this one is $150 a head). The IGHS now offers a “Home Study Course for the Certified Ghost Hunter Diploma” ($149.95). Dale’s assistants sell T-shirts and hats and videos and a bunch of used books on everything from bigfoot to the Amityville horror. Tomorrow conventioneers will pay ten bucks to walk through a condemned building.
Without so much as a bad joke, Dale cuts to the chase, to his ghostbusting repertoire, a blinking nexus of motion detector, Geiger counter, negative-ion detector, EMF meter, voice stress analyzer, and oscilloscope–all networked to a laptop that he proudly lets us know sets its watch “by military time.” An experiment concerning ionic charge that I vaguely remember from sixth grade is repeated here when Dale’s assistant comes up and scrapes a comb across his pate.
A crew is going to see The Haunting, but we beg off. Back at the Comfort Inn I go for a scalding dip in the heated pool, and then watch C-SPAN2’s Book TV. Barry Glassner, author of Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things, quotes Nixon: “People react to fear, not love. They don’t teach that in Sunday school, but it’s true.” Ed, listening to tape from our first batch of interviews, is nodding happily. Giving me thumbs-up.
“Yes! Yes. I’m anticipating your question. Yes. Definitely.”
“At that point it was pure desperation. I just yelled out, ‘OK, everybody! Thank you, I’m going home now, and this is your last chance to get in a photo!’ And then I got that nice ecto and I was like, Yes!” He pumps his fist like he’s scored a goal. “These are the little peaks in the valleys. The thing you live for.”
