Bartlett has its own ghost stories, and they clamor to be told at Halloween.

We’ve all experienced weird things that we can’t explain: A wooden floor creaking when no one is walking. The antique toy you stored in the top of the closet that keeps reappearing around the house. A faint whisper near your ear, but there’s no one when you whirl around. The unexplained chills and unpleasant vibes that rationality can’t explain but which you notice in certain buildings.

Skeptics find explanations for each of these – changing temperatures and humidity levels that make wood expand and contract, a forgetful person moving things around and then forgetting them, weird acoustics bouncing sound waves in surprising ways, and uneven ventilation systems creating cold spots.

People with other opinions and sensitivities have a different understanding of what’s going on: Ghosts.

Memphis Ghost Investigations & Spirit Rescue recently took a two-hour walk through the Singleton Community Center after hours, with the city’s permission, to uncover what’s behind the facility’s longstanding paranormal stories. Their team offers free confidential paranormal investigations.

They also planned to help any of Singleton’s ghosts who were trapped in the physical realm cross over to heaven.

Their motto is, “We don’t just investigate. We help them move on.”

The group’s founder, Stephen Williams, said it isn’t about forcing spirits to leave. Instead, it’s a matter of using counseling and psychology to persuade them.

Singleton isn’t an ancient structure, but it does have a long history in Bartlett. It served as the original Ellendale Elementary School (1918-1976) before Bartlett bought it from Shelby County Schools. It’s been a community center since 1983.

Multiple people have sensed that there’s something there beyond a well-loved and frequently used public building: One staff member saw a girl with a little white purse enter the office and ask to use the phone to call her father, and then the girl vanished. An employee also witnessed a spirit angrily stomping down the hallway.

Another employee said a breaker kept turning back on by itself, and she heard lots of creaking steps. She also said her husband, who helped her close the facility after late-night rentals, also saw a young female spirit in a blue dress walk from the last classroom to the pottery room.

When Williams was teaching a paranormal investigations class at Singleton in the early 2000s, he handed out EMF meters, which measure electromagnetic fields. Only for the women present, the meters one by one began beeping like crazy. (Ghost hunters use the meters to detect spikes in the EMF signal, indicating a change in electrical current and thus the presence of a spirit in the form of intelligent energy.)

The popular community center is a familiar venue for the team’s investigations, and Williams has taught paranormal investigation classes there in years past.

The crew visiting Singleton this month included Williams, a veteran clairsentient investigator who’s been investigating and clearing haunted locations in Memphis and across the U.S. since 2002, and two mediums who have heard and seen spirit energy since their childhoods — Kayla Bayles of Memphis and Jennifer Brooks of Hernando, Miss. (Click here to read their bios and explanations of some paranormal terms.)

For Williams, sensing the presence of spirits manifests as tingling on his head. The placement of the tingling tells him whether the spirit is at a lower or higher vibration and whether it’s male or female energy.

“You know, mediums have a bad rap, right? Because of the Biblical thing and the Old Testament,” Williams said. “But in Corinthians, it talks about the gifts of the spirit, and it talks about some people are given the gift of prophecy, some are given the gift of distinguishing between spirits. And that’s what we all have. We have the gift. So it’s a good thing. We help people. We don’t use it for any purpose other than trying to help people cross over and trying to help the homeowners.”

He said movies that pretty accurately describe the paranormal as he knows it include “Ghost” (1990, with Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg); “The Others” (2001, with Nicole Kidman); and “The Sixth Sense” (1999, with Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment).

During their Singleton visit, the investigating team listened and looked in different rooms, posed questions to the spirits they sensed, and offered to help those who were willing to leave. They described encountering the following spirits.

Girl in the red dress

Annamarie, a girl about age 14 in a red dress, asked the mediums to watch her dance a brief show on a small stage in the 1918 part of the building.
The mediums listened attentively and relayed that the girl is interested in crossing over to heaven, but it’s a no-go unless she can have a stage there.
Williams said others have seen this spirit dancing down the hallway, too. “She’s the one who’s been on my heart all this time because we weren’t able to connect with her when I was over here before.”

This time, they sensed the girl’s long-deceased aunt joining the room to help her cross over.

The watchful teacher

In one classroom, the mediums said they sensed the spirit of a stern, territorial and protective teacher, Miss Elliott, who picked up her ruler and immediately told them to leave.

“This is her classroom, and she’s not leaving until all the kids leave,” Bayles said.

The teacher at first resisted counseling from Williams, but he piqued her interest when he told her about spirit children on the other side who need her help.

Bayles found a quiet little girl spirit about age 3, finger-painting at one table in the classroom and feeling safe under the teacher’s supervision.
The medium explained that the girl had been missing her parents for a really long time, and the teacher agreed to accompany her to the other side.

The pottery room boy

In the pottery room, the mediums sensed the presence of a confused male spirit, about age 10, who kept saying over and over, “I don’t know why I’m here.” He walked out as the mediums approached, and they followed him into the boy’s bathroom.

He told them he didn’t remember anything for a long time. His last memory of life was wearing jeans and a red-and-white striped shirt, walking along a street late at night near a light post. He might have been walking home from a friend’s house.

After talking with the mediums, he happily crossed over when his little sister came to help him.

The bird lady on the bench

The mediums identified an aloof heavyset female spirit with a floral scarf, sitting with her legs crossed on a hallway bench. Williams sensed that she was an isolated spirit who wanted to cross over but didn’t know how.

The mediums said she talked about her love of birds and bird watching, and they persuaded her to cross over to heaven by describing how a heavenly flock of bluebirds would guide her over the bridge.

Chimney sweep boy

The mediums sensed an angry male spirit in the larger Singleton auditorium (formerly a lunchroom when the building was a school). They said he’s been responsible for tripping people on the stage’s right-side stairs by shoving them or grabbing their ankles.

They nicknamed him “chimney sweep boy” because he had soot all over him and wouldn’t give his real name. The mediums said he was short, about 5’5” or 5’6”, and he seemed about 17-18 years old. They believe he died of smoke inhalation in a fire.

They straightened out his attitude and got a hug from him eventually before helping him cross over.

The woman in the kitchen

A low-vibration female spirit inhabited the kitchen just off the auditorium. She indicated stabbing pain in her lower left ribs and was defensive, not wanting to talk, the mediums said. So they asked the other side to provide healers.

The female spirit described an aggressive and controlling male employee around age 38-40, who used to intimidate her with vulgarities and angry yelling. Williams recognized the description and said he was a janitor whose spirit had to be removed from the building because he tried to interfere with a little girl ghost’s crossing over.

Williams doesn’t burn sage to clear negative energy from rooms because he’s allergic to it and many people also don’t want the smell in their homes. Instead, he uses a tuning fork that he strikes against a crystal. He used the tuning fork’s piercing sound to clear energies in the kitchen, auditorium and stage, as well as the land for those spaces.

Teen girls in the bathroom

Two playful, giggling teen girl spirits inhabit one of the building’s bathrooms near the auditorium, and a female protective spirit at the door watches over them, the mediums said. They were 16 and 17 and said they were not interested in crossing over yet. One stays in the middle stall while the other is in the stall nearest the bathroom door.

“They love that bathroom — that’s their playhouse,” Bayles said.

Williams said people have reported hearing voices in that bathroom when no one else was around.

Other spirits of Singleton

In a hallway, the mediums heard the clink and rattle of dishes and people talking in low tones, as at a dinner party. They also saw a spirit dash down the hall and through an exterior door to a courtyard.

In the ballet room, they sensed a crowd of spirits who said they still enjoy dancing there. One spirit mentioned often seeing a creepy older man walk back and through the parking lot. (It wasn’t clear if the man was a living being or a spirit.)

When the ghost investigators first arrived, a principal spirit was standing at the building’s front door, staring out the door. There’s also a girl spirit who stays outside in the parking lot area, and a counselor stands post outside.

A little girl called Tabby likes to play jacks in the hallway by some of the steps.

A male spirit in an ornate white shirt with billowing long sleeves and ruffles was at the top of some steps in the building. He shared a vision of long ago when a group of older people smelled an odor (like a gas leak) that upset and disoriented them. It was in the old part of Singleton.

The mediums also saw a vision of children being ushered into a hallway with something like a siren sounding.

A sweet little boy spirit about 4, named Joshua, was evident near a filing cabinet and conveyed that he liked to run up and down the hallways. His mother and his dog, Toby, came for him, and he crossed over.

A little girl spirit with coarse dark hair in loose pigtails and a blue outfit was in a piano room. She seemed about 6 and soon stopped talking to the mediums. She was set on getting her lessons done when her teacher returned.

In a hallway before the classrooms, there’s a male who storms angrily out the door.

More to come

A lot of spirits have gravitated to Singleton over the years, and the investigating team said not all are ready to leave yet. The team expects they will return for another visit.

Memphis Ghost Investigations & Spirit Rescue offers free confidential paranormal investigations. For more information, call 901-877-8406 or visit MemphisGhostInvestigations.com.

Another ghost story

Memphis Ghost Investigations & Spirit Rescue has helped many community members in its more than 10 years of work. Audrey Turner of Bartlett told The Bartlett Express how the group helped her family last year when her young son, around age 4, became afraid to sleep in his dark room.

His stories seemed beyond what a little boy might imagine. Keeping the lights on wasn’t helping him rest easy. His distress went on for about a month.
Then her sister found Memphis Ghost Investigations, and they agreed to visit Turner’s home.

The home’s not old, built around 1986, and Turner said she’s always had pretty good vibes there. But the crew soon identified benign spirit activity in the house. One of the mediums sensed the presence of Turner’s grandfather in the home office, where some old family heirlooms were stored, including his photo.

Turner found that revelation validating, as she believes in the paranormal.

She said she’s always had weird electrical things go on around her, like the car randomly beeping when no buttons were touched, or her phone’s programs randomly opening and starting to play. She’s not fearful of these events. She was, however, creeped out when the first apparition she saw as an adult was a shadow walking through her mirror.

“I had experiences as a child,” she said. “It’s not like it’s new to me.”

The grandfather’s spirit wasn’t the only ghost in the house, either. Upstairs, Kayla said she found who was troubling Turner’s son — an earthbound little girl ghost, Gabby, who had followed Turner’s son home from school.

Her son had already mentioned a Gabby, who she thought was an imaginary friend.

“That made me feel better, to know that there was a reason for everything,” Turner said.

A medium said Gabby liked the family. The crew prayed to an angel for assistance, and they helped Gabby cross over to heaven, where her brother awaited. The mediums said they also sensed a portal to the spirit realm in the boy’s room and closed it.

The Memphis Ghost Investigations crew then used a crystal and tuning fork to clear the house of negative energy.

It was an eye-opening and emotional experience for Turner. “It changed everything for me.”

The work made an immediate difference for Turner’s son, who lost his fear, stopped complaining and began sleeping peacefully again.

The mediums told her that her son was sensitive, and Turner now wonders if it runs in her family. She said her paternal grandmother also had prophetic dreams. Her father never said if he had any similar experiences, but he did tell her that his mother had a gift with animals and a couple of cool dreams that came true.

The grandfatherly spirit continues to hang around, according to Turner. He’s already crossed over but returns sometimes to check on his family.

Overall, Turner said she’s glad she called for help. “It was a very, very positive experience.”

CAROLYN BAHM is the editor of The Bartlett Express. Contact her at 901-433-9138 or carolyn@magicvalleypublishing.com.