“We feel that good energy promotes good results,” said Thompson the day after the investigation. “They know we are not there to do any harm, to be disrespectful.

“Because we are respectful, because we all get along so well and have the same goals in mind, they recognize that.”

Paranormal investigators

WSPIR, which draws its members from around the Puget Sound region, uses both technical means and the psychic sciences to gather evidence of the paranormal in investigations and assessments throughout the state.

Eight members of WSPIR (pronounced “whisper”) and a guest had gathered inside the Issaquah Depot Museum after 7 p.m. to conduct Saturday’s investigation.

With special permission from the Issaquah Historical Society, WSPIR president Darren Thompson had arranged for the group to conduct an investigation in three of the society’s properties. (Darren and Jill are husband and wife; the couple lives in Sammamish.)

To ensure the integrity of the investigation, Darren Thompson was the only member with prior knowledge of the locations of the assignments, which included two rail cars at the depot and an auto repair warehouse west of Gilman Town Hall.

Before the investigation started, the group gathered in a circle to conduct an opening.

Jill Thompson began by asking for cooperation from the spirits, then told the spirits that the group would be taking audio and video recordings and photographs.

“Some members can hear you without benefit of the recorder — please feel free to speak with them. They will try to respond to you,” she said. “We’re not here to change anything, we just want to know what’s going on with you. Thank you.”

The group then divided into two psychic teams and a technical team.

Each psychic team consists of a psychic to describe the contacts and observations that he or she might make during the investigation, a psychic observer to record what the psychic reports and a videographer to document the investigation.

The technical team uses high-tech devices to measure changes in electromagnetic energy and temperature that could suggest the existence of paranormal phenomena.

Darren Thompson directed the team of psychic David Vacknitz, psychic observer Jill Thompson, and videographer Terry Cranston to begin the investigation in the U.S. Army Transportation Corps rail car outside the depot.

He then led the second psychic team to an undisclosed location, marking the last time the two psychic teams would interact until the investigation was finished.

Riding the rails

Vacknitz’s psychic team entered the rail car, which has been converted to a small museum layout, with examples of mining and logging equipment and a model railroad display at the rear of the car.

Outside the sun was setting, casting inside the car a faint glow that gradually faded as dusk progressed.

Once inside, Vacknitz made some initial observations.

“I see a group of guys playing cards, or some kind of game,” he said. “I keep seeing pictures of things, but I don’t know what they are.”

Jill Thompson recorded Vacknitz’s comments in a logbook as Cranston paced up and down the car, alternately shooting video and snapping photographs.

When Cranston felt a flash of heat on the right side of her face, Jill Thompson recorded that, too: Anything that goes undocumented during an investigation is inadmissible once the teams regroup to wrap up the assignment.

Several minutes into his time in the car, Vacknitz said he began sensing a spirit named “Dan” or “Stan” (for convenience, the group ultimately settled on Dan, but apologized if they were addressing the spirit incorrectly).

Vacknitz then said he saw a large mirror, and then a boot with metal over the toes.

As he described the items, Vacknitz bristled slightly, self-consciously.

“I feel stupid saying the stuff,” he said.

Vacknitz then described a picture of Dan’s wife, wearing a full-length dress and her hair pinned into a bun.

Jill Thompson asked Vacknitz if Dan had any children, and the psychic responded immediately with two.

“Does he have boys?” Jill Thompson asked, through Vacknitz.

“No, girls,” he responded. “Elizabeth…Beatrice. Either Beatrice or Gertrude.”

The spirit also confirmed that it’s dry in the afterlife.

“He wants a drink,” Vacknitz said. “He wants some brandy.”

Shortly before 8:45 p.m., Vacknitz took a seat on the floor, across from an old scale. Thompson sat in a chair to the left of the scale, and Cranston stood on the other side of the scale, videotaping.

Vacknitz had just asked Jill Thompson about the age of the rail car, and how long it had been in use.

Then something unusual happened.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, did you touch that?” Vacknitz said, pointing to the balancing arm of the scale.

Jill Thompson replied that she heard something tapping.

The scale arm had moved, Vacknitz said, rising and falling on its own.

Then it happened again.

“There it goes,” he said, calmly. “Up…down. Up…down.”

The psychic team and a reporter watched as the motion continued, slowly and steadily, for several seconds.

Then it stopped.

Vacknitz requested that the scale be moved once again, but whatever force or action had done so would not oblige.

“I can’t believe that — I mean it’s like it takes a while to sink in, but — something’s — going on,” Jill Thompson said, moments after the action had ceased.

In years of paranormal investigating, Jill Thompson said she’d experienced a similar phenomenon only twice before, and both times during an assignment in one of the largest homes of New Orleans’ Garden District.

While touring the home, Jill Thompson said that she and several other people, including the building’s historian, saw the counterweights strung from a chandelier swaying in different directions. The weights themselves were out of reach of the people in the room, she said.

In the same house, she and several other people were in a different room when the lights from another chandelier suddenly came on.

The scale in the train car marked the third such occurrence.

But rather than celebrating what might have been an extraordinary event, the group quickly set out to debunk the event: bumping and prodding the scale platform, swinging the weight that dangled from the arm that moved and lifting the arm up and down manually.

Each test failed to reproduce the motion as the group had witnessed it.

“Darren drilled into all of us: Try to find the natural cause of things,” Jill Thompson said. “And I don’t know what else we could have done.”

Darren Thompson, the self-described “dream crusher” of the group, said after the investigation that seeking a natural explanation is an important component of WSPIR’s work.

“The way we go about it is we try to find any reasonable means to disprove it,” Darren Thompson said. “You can never actually prove anything is paranormal phenomenon, all you can do is prove that it isn’t.”

What is left — what can’t easily be proved as natural phenomena — goes into a file called the “phenomenon report.”

Darren Thompson said he sees the contents of the phenomenon report not as indisputable proof of the existence of the paranormal, but as “fodder for discussion.”

Corroborating evidence

The experience inside the rail car certainly made for lively discussion when the group convened its investigation shortly after 11 p.m. inside the Issaquah Depot Museum.

At the wrap-up meeting, Vacknitz’s team learned that the second team had a similar but unique encounter with the scale in the U.S. Army rail car.

In that instance, psychic Regan Vacknitz, psychic observer Julie Whitman and videographer Nikki Henderson all said that the weight suspended from the scale arm had begun swinging back and forth, without the arm itself rising and falling.

Video taken by David Vacknitz’s team proved inconclusive, but Nikki Henderson’s video shows the weight swaying back and forth, Darren Thompson said.

That both groups experienced variations of the same phenomenon makes the evidence even more compelling, according to Darren Thompson.

It’s also a more gentle type of occurrence than the stuff of scary movies.

“It’s not horrifying: It’s something that people can kind of grab their minds around,” he said. “If someone can come up and say, ‘You know, this is what happened,’ that’s great. Then it’s explained.”

He likened the brief but thrilling encounters, wrapped within a five-hour investigation, to watching a sport fisherman land a trophy bass.

“A paranormal investigation is like a fishing show,” Darren Thompson said. “It takes a lot of editing to make it look exciting.”