At 2:12 a.m., after more than an hour of cigarettes and coffee and waiting, it was finally time. The bar had been mopped down, customers cleared out, lights turned back up. A crew of two 20-something cameramen and a sound engineer ducked inside the second-floor nightclub so they could film Beckah Boyd and Katie Boyd, a psychic medium and a demonologist, making an entrance.
The pair opened the door, stepped inside.
It only took a minute for a long-dead busboy to introduce himself.
“He’s yanking stuff, he’s very all over the place,” Beckah said as she paced the bar, talking to a someone no one else could see, Katie on her heels, cameramen behind them both.
She tugged on curtains hanging against one wall, something, she said, the 1920s busboy did back in the day to clean dust off the drapes — a near-repeat of paranormal footage that the bars’ owners claim to have caught on security tape, footage that she said later she didn’t know about.
That floor finished, the crew and their stars moved onto the next.
“Audio will make or break this, no pressure Abbey,” show runner Jordan Scott said to the girl holding the boom.
“Action!”
The Boyds, from Manchester, N.H., investigated the Empire Dine and Dance on Congress Street in Portland last week for the second episode of their Web series “Supernatural Hotspots,” filmed by Wasted Minds Media. (They shot previous episodes with a hand-held camera on their own.)
A short edit of part of that episode will debut in a screening at the night club on Halloween at 9 p.m.
Bill Umbel, one of the Empire owners, said employees have reported apparitions peeking around corners and martini glasses being flung off tables. He’s seen Christmas lights jiggle for no reason.
The nearly 100-year-old building has been a Chinese restaurant, a bank and at least two different bars, and at least one former patron died inside.
This summer, an employee caught movement on one of the club’s security cameras and grabbed his own cell phone camera in time to record drapes on the second floor drawing open and close in the middle of the afternoon. In the grainy black-and-white footage, the curtains fling back and forth for about 15 seconds. There’d been no windows open, Umbel said. No AC.
No one had been on that floor at all.
Wasted Minds learned about the footage, prompting the Boyds’ investigation.
Between authoring books and speaking engagements, the pair make the paranormal their living. Their hope is that “Hotspots” gets picked up for cable TV. The Boyds work, they said, by keeping Beckah in the figurative dark; Katie walks in knowing a place’s history and any evidence, Beckah doesn’t.
They start with a lights-on sweep for first impressions. Then they take out equipment to measure temperature and electrical activity, and set up tests. (Things like sprinkling baby powder around a glass; if it is moved or touched, prints will show in the powder.)
By 2:30 a.m., the pair headed into the Empire’s basement, part employee lounge, part kitchen. That was where the late busboy told her she’d find “The Boss,” Beckah said.
He didn’t turn out to be so chatty.
“The impression he gives me is funny, ‘Back off, back off, back off,'” Beckah said. “You’re not going to feel comfortable down here by yourself, at all. You’ll hear him banging around a lot in the kitchen . . . ‘I don’t do a monkey dance,’ is what I’m hearing.”
The pair stayed until nearly dawn before driving back to New Hampshire. Early in the week, they were still sorting through hours of tape and listening for EVPs (electronic voice phenomena). They also reported that after the Sun Journal left the Empire at 3:30 a.m., they had experiences that included seeing a full-bodied apparition duck behind the second-floor bar and responses on a K2 meter (another way to measure magnetic fields).
“I always love going into a place with what I like to call ‘virgin spirits,’ ones that haven’t been investigated before, because a lot of time they’re a lot more talkative,” Beckah said. “With some of the ones that have been investigated before — Lizzie Borden, ones like that — they’ll talk but it’s old hat.”
One of the EVPs picked up that night by Wasted Minds’ President Laurie Notch: a voice that, Notch said, appears to saying “Turn off the faucet.”
That discovery didn’t take on any meaning until the next afternoon, when a big puddle was found on the basement floor. Umbel said staff came in to discover someone had left the water on overnight in the mop sink.
A second EVP they picked up that, Notch said, gave her the chills: “I am here.”
Ritchie Wilson, right, and Abbey Greslick, second from right, film Katie Boyd, left, and Beckah Boyd for an online show called “Supernatural Hotspots” as they investigate the Empire Dine and Dance in Portland. Greslick and Wilson are from Wasted Minds Media in Portland.
Screening details:
Five to 10 minutes of “Supernatural Hotspots” footage will air at the Empire Dine and Dance at 575 Congress St. in Portland on Halloween night at 9 p.m., part of an evening of live music. The crew from Wasted Minds Media will be on hand to answers questions. The opening act is musician Jacob Augustine with headliner Spencer Albee and the School Spirit Mafia. Cover is $12 at the door.
A full-length episode from the Empire investigation will be posted at a later date at www.supernaturalhotspots.com
View footage of the Empire’s fluttering curtains at portlandempire.ning.com
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