On occassion, people call Tracy Franklin to discuss stange occurances happening in their homes or businesses. Perhaps, the home owner or business owner has heard voices from unseen individuals or perhaps they have seen the ghostly image of someone in the midst.

  Franklin is well qualified to investigate such matters. Franklin is the president of the East Tennessee Paranormal Research Society. The group investigates reported paranormal activity.

  When most think of ghost hunters they think of the movie "Ghostbusters." But, the popular move is comedy science fiction at best. In reality, paranormal investigators use high tech audio recording devices to record ghostly voices frequently undetected by human ears.

  In one instance, the group was investigating a haunting at Greenbrier Restaurant in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Typically, the members of the ETPRS split up into pairs and enter various rooms searching for evidence of paranormal activity. The investigators ask questions of the spirit in hopes of recording a response on the audio recorder.

  According to local lore, the ghost of the Greenbrier is that of a young bride named Lydia. According to lore, the Greenbrier was a private home before being converted into a restaurant. Lydia lived in the home and was waiting for her fiancee to take her to the chapel to get married. He never arrived. Deeply despondant, Lydia committed suicide by hanging herself. She died unaware that he had not jilted her. In fact, he had been killed earlier that day by a bear in the Great Smoky Mountains.

  Members of the ETPRS investigated the restaurant and recorded the voice of the ill- fated woman.

  "One of our members asked 'Lydia, do you know you are dead?' Franklin said. "When we listened to the tape recording later we heard a woman respond 'I'm not dead.'"

 During their many investigations, the group has complied not only audio recordings of the voices of the dead but photographic evidence as well. 

  At an abandoned Union County school, the image of a dead child appears in a window in one photo. the child was not there when the photo was taken.  In another, taken at an abandoned mental asylum, the image of a ghostly specter seems to be peering around a wall. In a grainy photo taken outside the gymnasium at the school, there appears to be a man's face prominently seen in a haze of dark fog.

  These images are frequently not visible to the naked eye but appeared in the photographs providing photoghrapic proof of the sightings.

  Do ghosts exist? judge for yourself.    

A ghostly form seems to hover in the basement of this old building

Investigators observed the ghostly image of a child that appeared in a window of an old school in Union County.

      Investigators photographed what appeared to be the image of a man emerging from the walls of an old gymnasium.

  More photos and audio recordings of ghostly voices can be heard at the Web site etprs.com.