THE PROFESSOR GHOST

A full ghost-hunting crew from the people who wrote Haunted Pennsylvania conducted an investigation here. Their crew was seven people. I didn't know any of them. They brought three psychics with them who knew nothing of me nor the building's 1880 history. It was a fascinating evening. They got EVP recordings of a woman whispering that shot chills through the entire group. Everyone was delighted.

For that night they kept the entire hotel dark. All lights were out.

One investigator's name was Charley Helsel. He wrote the following notes from that night:

First Investigation of the Grand Midway Hotel
December 16, 2006

It was a cold winter evening when several members of the Ghost Research Foundation went to Windber to investigate the Grand Midway Hotel owned by Blair Murphy. Patty Wilson, the founder of our group, is the only person who knows the details of the site that we are going to investigate. She does this so that hearing the stories before we work the site does not taint us investigators.

I, as well as several others in the group, are sensitive and pick up feelings and impressions. Others work strictly with the equipment. Blair took us on a tour of the hotel. I began to feel that it was going to be an active night! I like to write down my impressions and feelings when working on site, and that is what I did that night.

I felt a lot of female presence. I instructed Blair to answer my questions with a "yes "or" no" so that he did not give me too much information. I asked him if this hotel was used by ladies of the evening at one time? He said that it was.

The second floor is very active. The room that Blair uses as an office has a man in it that calls himself "the Professor."

I noticed one of the psychic women was gravitating toward the hotel room which is my office. My office has a full library in it as well. I said there were no stories associated with this particular room. She smiled and seemed to be on to something regardless. Then Charley followed her, like both of them following a scent. I repeated again this room wasn't part of the ghost tour, that I'd never heard stories from other investigators about my office. I told them, "Oh there's nothing in this room."

They sat down and smiled.

They corrected me and said, "Say hello to the professor, Blair."

"The professor?" I asked. Skeptical, imagining I would have picked up on something new if it were around me.

"Oh, he's around you." They said a man a little over mid-life visits this room at times, and that he loves my books very much.

They spoke about him a little more. After a while they said that perhaps he wasn't a 'professor' so much as that he appeared that way to them. They said that he liked my energy and there was something about the word "Bohemian" that they were getting from him.

These two psychics didn't know that I throw the annual Jack Kerouac Festival each year in the building, and that the place fills up with poets and painters and other Bohemian-types. For me the word "bohemian" stood out and made sense that someone would link it to my private hotel, which is always entertaining visiting artists.

Now, I don't know how much I was taking these two psychics seriously about how a professor-ish spirit was in my office, but I indulged them and let them continue.

They said he was not 'stuck' here in our world but had already passed over, but that he visits certain places at times and this office is one of those places. They said he has a moustache.

All of this was taking place in a completely dark room. One of the psychics stood up on a dime and darted quickly over to my wall of book shelves. "He loves to stand right here the most." He said, "It is his favorite spot of all the books here."

His face was within inches of a particular spot of books. The moustache comment plus where this man stood face to face with certain books sent up potetial flags up in my mind. The room was still very dark. He was standing eye-level the 'Rice shelf' section of the library. It was all books by the novelist Anne Rice and her husband poet Stan Rice.

At that comment I flashed on Stan for the first time as a possibility to their story. I pulled from the shelf Stan's 'Singing Yet' poetry collection, and without showing them who wrote it, I showed them the photo on the back cover.

"Is this the man?" I asked them.

"Yes! That's him!" the two psychics said with absolute certainty. "He's right here."

They meant he was right in the room with us as they spoke.

So I asked, "Ask him to tell you his name?"

They did. They said he wouldn't say his name.

I laughed at this answer, imagining that if it were Stan he'd know I'd promote the story, and so would probably not answer.

They said I had some relationship with this man when he was still alive.

That was true. Stan Rice and I did have a relationship of sorts. I am the man who recorded Stan Rice a few years ago on video, in the 1990s, all the poems and interviews in his New Orleans studio as well as in LA. He wrote me at times and we met in LA as well. He sent me some signed copies of his paintings which now hang in the hotel. For me, even though our meetings were brief, he was a bit of a father figure for me in the arts (much like Baird Bryant and Gary Gygax were to me as well). I genuinely loved Stan's work and loved that he took a risk on me to allow himself to be recorded. Also, our conversations on the arts were wonderful.

The time in his attic in New Orleans Stan and I discussed the value and need today for throwing counter-culture poetry-related events. The Kerouac Fests came out of that a bit. I'd discussed the possibility of Kerouac Fests and poetry projects with many other artists out there over the years, but Stan's footage from that attic afternoon ended up in the film Coolsville, which celebrates the Kerouac fests. So that particular afternoon and discussion made it into the final cut of what the Kerouac Fests eventually will be recorded as.

Also, Anne Rice bought most of the Stan footage from me later, so her generous contribution went into this hotel, which is one big bohemian experiment. I imagine she loved the tapes, but I don't think she was so thrilled that I'd recorded them, a stranger, and owned them.

Back in the library office with these two psychics, in that moment, from little things they were saying that were private details I felt like Stan was standing there in the room with us for real. So I finally told them, "Well, if this is for real, and there is a professor-like spirit in here, I think it is this man Stan Rice that I used to know. He was a poet. And I liked him very much."

I added, "I did some tapes of him. From what he told me they were the only recordings of him. I eventually sold part of them to his wife. I thought she would have been a little more appreciative of these recordings, but she was kind of mean to me."

The psychics said, "He is laughing, and says that you were a fool to think she'd be appreciative."

They said he likes the energy here, and likes what I am doing, and pops in at times, and that I will feel him most when I am seated at my computer in this room (as I am now).

So trying to turn this into something positive and additional, I asked them to ask this 'professor spirit' if there was any message he'd like me to relay to his wife?

They said, "He says if he has anything to say to her he will contact her directly himself."

Charley's notes on the Professor wrapped up as:

"The Professor" likes to visit Blair and check up on him, "The Professor" likes to stand in front of the bookcase in one particular spot and look at the books on the shelf. I noted that the author of the books was Anne Rice. Blair said that "The Professor" was once married to her.

I love the idea of Stan Rice approving of what we are doing in this place, and checking in on us! Certainly he played a role by our conversations, his taking a risk on me recording him, that his poster has hung in our dining hall since the place re-opened, and the money and hotel upgrades that followed with the sale of the recordings. I am looking at his photo right now and am honored to have known him.

I will end this with Stan's own words:
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MY TRIP TO HADES
by Stan Rice

I had to go to Hades
Because I wanted a dark beer.
Anne stayed above, drinking
The golden stuff. Once there
I couldn't get enough.
The other inhabitants were going through hell
So they didn't know I was constantly drunk.
I stayed there about ten years
And grew more and more charming.
I was constantly hung-over, of course,
But it was a price I was willing to pay
For being such a nice person.
Eventually I got so tired of being sick in the mornings
I quit; and immediately surfaced.
For two years I was ok.
My colleagues even elected me chairman.
Then one day one of them treated me
As if I were Satan; and then another.
They thought I wanted power.
All I wanted was to be desired.
But I was sober, and so moved on.
Being drunk is like being dead,
And a death to fear.
But there's one other thing I'd like to make clear.
In Hades they brew a great dark beer.

___________________________________________________

Recently, after purchasing an antique cemetry print from a stranger on E-Bay, a handwritten note arrived in the package with the print. It read, "Say hello to the Professor for me."