Matt Tomasic, owner of the old St. Mary’s Church in downtown Kansas City, Kan., says he shouldn’t be alive today.
Tomasic tells the story of the time he was up on the church bell tower repairing a cap on the roof when a ladder railing gave way.
The railing, studded with nails, fell 30 feet below and nearly struck another man Tomasic was working with.
With no railing to hold on to, the off-balance Tomasic said he could feel a “strong force” pull him back.
When he first bought the now-vacant property a few years back, Tomasic had the goal of redeveloping the church, or more recently, selling it to someone who would.
He spends time in the church making minor repairs, working while birds fly overhead in the cavernous sanctuary.
Occasionally, he’ll hear creaking sounds and, occasionally, voices.
The “mother” church in Wyandotte County, built in the late 19th century, has been home to many of life’s most compelling events: births, baptisms, marriages and funerals, leaving plenty of “spiritual energy” to float around the empty building at 5th Street and Ann Avenue on Strawberry Hill.
“I have no reason to believe the church isn’t haunted,” Tomasic says.
On Monday, a group from Topeka, including Nick Spantgos and Keith Ross, founders of Paranormal Research Investigators, set up a half-dozen briefcases-full of equipment to gather information, and to test Tomasic’s haunting hunch.
The answer is of particular importance to Beth Cooper, who owns the Topeka, Kan.-based Ghost Tours of Kansas.
Cooper and her company already host tours in KCK of buildings they’ve “confirmed” to be haunted. The current KCK tour includes stops at Wyandotte High School, Memorial Hall, the old County Courthouse, the Strawberry Hill Museum and Kaw Point.
“Kansas City, Kan., is the most haunted city in Kansas,” Cooper says. “It’s surrounded by water on three sides and many ghost hunters believe water can (trap) more spiritual energy.”
Cooper’s group wants to add St. Mary’s Church to their list of stops in KCK. After driving by, doing research and hearing stories about the church, Cooper got in touch with PRI’s Spantgos and Ross to conduct an investigation.
Spantgos and Ross, who consider their investigations a privilege and conduct them for free, arrived shortly before 6 p.m. Monday and quickly started to unpack video cameras, electro-magnetic field detectors, infrared sensors and audio recording equipment.
After taking a tour of the church, Spantgos –a pharmacist by day – and Ross – an auto mechanic – got their equipment in place to start their work.
Sometimes the investigations can take just a couple of hours, while others can go all night.
But for Cooper and PRI, the length and time of an investigation doesn’t matter.
“Ghosts have no sense of time,” Cooper said.
On Tuesday, Spantgos says he and Ross found some evidence that initially can’t be explained away.
“Our opinion is that the place has potential to have paranormal activity, but until all the evidence is reviewed, I don’t know what I might find,” Spantgos says.
The group plans to review more than 40 hours of audio collected by 14 audio recorders and 14 hours of video before they present their findings to Cooper and Ghost Tours during a meeting in October.
Specifically, the pair said they found “cold spots” in the altar area, where temperatures differed by more than 20 degrees from the immediate surroundings.
Later, Spantgos said they might have heard the whispering of what they believe to be a young child.
“Anyone can come in and prove there is a haunting,” Spantgos said. “However, we come in to disprove any paranormal activity at the location, and then whatever we cannot explain away, we use as evidence.”
For more information on Paranormal Research Investagations, visit www.paranormalresearchinvestigators.com, and for more information on Ghost Tours of Kansas, visit www.newmediacafe.net/ghosttourtopeka.
