Paranormal group to give tours of Kansas Aviation Museum next weekend

Even though they haven’t RSVP’d yet, Terri Pratt is certain of some of the guests who will join her next week at the Kansas Aviation Museum.

There’s Lloyd Stearman, designer of the 1931 Stearman Model 4D that’s a museum exhibit. Or a pilot simply known as Duke, whose plane is also on display. And a youngster whose name has never been revealed.

“There’s a little boy that runs through the museum a lot,” Pratt said. “A lot of times people will feel him hold their hand, or he’ll press against them.”

Pratt is lead investigator for the Spirit Hunters Paranormal Society, a group of seven who investigate happenings at homes, businesses and other buildings in Wichita and the surrounding area.

In six separate sessions next weekend, they will conduct investigations at the Aviation Museum as a fundraiser for the museum.

Pratt and her crew have been there before and know not to expect any post-Halloween ghoulishness.

“There is not one thing negative in the Kansas Air Museum,” she said. “I would never subject the public to anything like that. We make sure it’s safe before we have a public fundraiser.”

The Spirit Hunters Paranormal Society have been to the museum several times and “we know where we can normally get the biggest hits,” Pratt said.

Those “hits” come from energy left behind by the individuals, she said, and are detected in several instruments she and her colleagues use to detect spirits.

“Every place we go ourselves, we leave energy because … our bodies are made of energy. When we leave a room, our energy is still there,” she said. “We normally get at least something in every place where we go. It could just be residual energy.”

However, “it doesn’t mean Grandpa’s haunting the place, it just means Grandpa’s energy is still there.”

During the fundraiser next week, visitors will get to use the equipment Pratt and her team use to detect spirits. In one gauge, a spirit will appear as a stick figure on the screen.

Pratt said she is far too used to naysayers about her hobby or the experience.

“There’s always one in a group,” she said. “We can always tell because they don’t want to hold the piece of equipment. They go around, they kind of huff, they kind of puff, it’s OK. But when we see something, we normally give them the equipment. Once they experience it, they fully think maybe this is real.”

Paranormal investigators, Pratt said, are just as interested in the history of a building as they are whether it has ethereal occupants.

“We literally, thoroughly enjoy doing it for the history and the paranormal,” she said. “We’re very serious about it, so we don’t go in halfway about it.”

Once her group takes footage of a building, they confer on a decision whether there’s a spirit lurking, Pratt said. If one person questions the findings, the data is thrown out.

“We pride ourselves on the real thing. We don’t want anybody to ever question. We want them to say, ‘Yes, that was,’” she said. “We want people to be believers because we want them to know that there is something after we leave this world. There’s nothing to be afraid of. No one should be afraid.”

In that vein, she said, she doesn’t want to scare audiences.

“We don’t go in (saying) ‘This is a haunted house,’” she said. “There’s too many people who watch way too many ghost stories, and that’s nuts. Most of the stuff is never demonic – maybe 2%, I think – and those would be brought in with a Ouija board or conjuring.”

While Pratt is fairly confident that Stearman, Duke and the mischievous little boy will make an appearance next week, she doesn’t guarantee it.

“We always say they’re not trained monkeys,” she said. “We can’t get them to perform.”

‘Ghosts of Our Past’

When: Friday Nov. 6 and Saturday, Nov. 7; 75-minute tours available at 7, 8:30 and 10 p.m.

Where: Kansas Aviation Museum, 3350 S. George Washington Blvd.

Tickets: $30, at kansasaviationmuseum.org; masks are required. Must be 18 or older to participate. Space is limited.

For more information on the Spirit Hunters Paranormal Society, go to https://tcpratt1.wixsite.com/website, or the group’s Facebook page

This story was originally published October 30, 2020 at 9:01 AM.