Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 28, 1994 TAG: 9410280084
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
To some, ghost stories are the stuff of campfire tales. To parapsychology students at Virginia Western Community College, they're homework.
The eight students in the college's parapsychology class have spent the better part of this semester learning about the world of the unseen - extrasensory perception, fortune-telling, spirits and more - from Debra Frashure, a self-professed psychic who has taught parapsychology in colleges for almost 20 years.
Tuesday night, Frashure's students used their newly acquired knowledge to search for ghosts with her in a haunted house.
Well, possibly a haunted house. Legend has it that Avenel - a historic Bedford plantation house dating to 1838 - harbors a shy specter known as "The White Lady of the Avenel."
The house now is uninhabited and is being renovated by the nonprofit Avenel Foundation. But past residents of the home have reported seeing the ghost of a woman dressed in an antebellum-style hoop skirt. Her face is obscured by a gauzy mist.
These days, foundation officials and tour guides speak of ghostly footsteps, lights that turn on and off inexplicably and motion detectors that go off when no one's around to trip them.
On a ghost hunt on a dark, chilly October night, Avenel is good fuel for the imagination. The sparsely furnished house has peeling wallpaper that surrounds odd-looking portraits with eyes that seem to follow passers-by. Labyrinths of stairs crisscross under cathedral ceilings. One closet door opens to a brick wall.
Frashure herds her class to an area on the first floor, underneath the main staircase.
"This is a cold spot. It's like a place for entities to come through."
A dimensional porthole to the realm of ghosts and phantoms, if you will. As the students walk past, some shake suddenly with chills. Others say the hair on the back of their necks stands up.
Upstairs, they enter the Lee Room, a bedroom in which Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee once spent the night. Some foundation members say that the imprint of a body can be seen occasionally on the four-poster mahogany bed, and the rocker in the room frequently rocks by itself.
Frashure places her hands on the bed then moves to the thick, wood molding of a door frame. Her hands press against it gently, firmly, like a doctor checking for a pulse.
"You can put your hand on furniture and really get a feeling for what's going on. Just get quiet, ... think about it and feel the vibrations in the room."
Class members mill about, after taking a moment to prepare themselves quietly by visualizing energy fields, a method Frashure taught them.
Frashure said she became aware of her psychic talents at an early age, when she accurately would tell her mother of events soon to happen. In high school, she wrote a column for her school paper about the paranormal.
After graduating with a master's degree in educational psychology from West Virginia University in 1975, she began teaching parapsychology at Salem College and Parkersburg Community College in West Virginia. She joined Virginia Western's faculty in 1987. Her red van even sports the license tag "PAR PSY."
Reporters and police have sought Frashure's help, seeking to locate homicide and abduction victims.
"Once this news reporter contacted me and asked if I could pick up the vibrations of a missing girl. I saw two men dressed in hunting outfits out in the woods. Her body was found on the first day of hunting season by two hunters."
She also claims to have seen the White Lady (``Just the train of a dress in my peripheral vision ...'') and says she senses the presence of two ghostly slaves in the house.
Whether the skills can be imparted to others is another question. Walking about the Lee Room, Neil Swanson, a full-time student majoring in education, said, "When I was downstairs, I could feel the cold spot. Up here, I don't feel anything."
Edward Kubik, another student, was videotaping in hopes of capturing the White Lady on film. A nursing major, he chalked up his interest in the unknown to the scientist within him.
"I didn't want to believe in any of it, at first. But it's hard to put into words. When you open your mind, you start to pick up on things."
At least one student, who preferred not to be identified, remained a skeptic.
"If Robert E. Lee came out of the closet and ran past me, I'd be a total believer. I'd also be in my car and out of here."
But even though the White Lady didn't appear and no one in the class had a definite spectral encounter, Frashure remained undaunted.
"I wanted them to see that they could feel and sense presences. They were able to feel temperature changes, and some could see changes in auras," she said.
She said she thinks ghosts are psychic imprints of the past that sometimes can be measured scientifically. She said she hopes to return for an overnight stay at the house next semester with equipment such as infrared cameras and air-pressure meters that possibly could find more than the trailing dress of the White Lady of Avenel.
by CNB