We couldn’t have picked a better night for The Evening Sun’s annual ghost hunting excursion. The moon, just shy of full, shone brightly through the broken cloud cover which blanketed the night sky. The only thing missing was the howling of some fanged beast to make it truly spooky.
This year, we selected the sleepy little village of Oxford for our foray into the paranormal. Graciously agreeing to join us on our investigation were two mediums: Audrey Aitken, who has served as our spirit guide on more than one prior occasion, and her friend, Marie, whose full identity we were asked not to reveal.
Our lineup included three stops, the first of which was the Oxford Memorial Library. Situated in one of the village’s most historical structures, the public library is one of the most distinctive edifices in Oxford. And we included it on our list at the behest of our esteemed editor, Jeff Genung. Not only did Jeff’s mother work at the library for many years, but he himself clocked more than a few hours there as a teen. His own experiences there, coupled with tales his mother had told him over the years, intrigued the rest of us as well.
Library Director Nancy Wilcox was gracious enough to give us access to the building, and even provided us a guide: Library Trustee Matt Voce.
We had quite the crew with us this year, in addition to our mediums and ES staffers - myself, Jeff, Melissa deCordova, Brian Golden and Tyler Murphy - a few significant others tagged along. Steve and Sherry Behe joined us at this first stop as well. (Extending the invitation to them as well was the least we could do, really, since their establishment was to be our second stop.) In all, there were 12 of us, plus Matt, tromping around the library after hours, searching for signs of spirit activity.
After a thorough exploration of both the main and second floors of the structure, we headed down the block to our second location, which as previously alluded to, was Behe Funeral Home.
The funeral home also had a tie to Jeff’s family, as Steve’s father purchased the business from our editor’s grandfather, Linn Seymour. Our paranormal investigation and the accompanying history lesson took us through much of the house, including the deepest darkest reaches of the cellar.
We said good-bye to both the Behes and the deCordovas as we departed the funeral home, and walked through the chilly night to our final destination, a private residence which backs up to Riverview Cemetery. The family which owns the home had told us there was a lot of “activity,” and were eager for the mediums to confirm their belief that they weren’t the only beings occupying the house. The stories they told - of visions of a skulking man in the middle of the night, the specter of a young girl running up and down the stairs, the almost constant sound of footsteps overhead, and a third-floor apartment which seemed to repel prospective tenants – made the opportunity too good to pass up.
The home’s proximity to Oxford’s city of the dead, led us to end our excursion with a stroll along the outskirts of the moonlit graveyard.
Read of our individual experiences on this year’s Ghost Hunt below.
If you dare...

Jeff Genung
I was always right there with Fox Mulder ... I soooo wanted to believe. And that’s how I’ve approached each of our Evening Sun ghost hunts – with an open mind and a willingness, an eagerness, to believe.
Unfortunately the images I conjure up in my mind before these little excursions far outweigh those we encounter in reality. There are some spooky moments to be had, certainly, in any old building at night (and this year’s full moon was an added bonus), but I wouldn’t exactly call them brushes with the supernatural.
Perhaps I’m growing cynical with age, but I found it a tad cliché that our psychic friends made contact with a spinster librarian (that wasn’t my mother, fortunately) at the Oxford Library. That’s pretty much Ghost Story 101, if you ask me. That said, having known Audrey through these trips, and knowing Melissa as I do, I can’t completely discount whatever they may have experienced in that closet – I’m just ticked I didn’t get to feel it myself.
That’s not to say that last Friday’s trip stirred nothing in me, because it did. As it took place in my native Oxford, I jokingly referred to it as the “Jeff Genung Nostalgia Tour.” My mother worked at the Oxford Library for two decades, and toiling away in the stacks was my very first job as a teenager. Our next stop, the Behe Funeral Home, is known to my family as the Seymour Funeral Home, where my great-grandfather and grandfather both served as “undertakers” and my mother played as a little girl. The business passed out of our family before I was born, but its legends lived on. Everywhere I turned Friday night, I saw some shadow of my mother, who passed away this past March. All night, I had a refrain from poet Conrad Aiken going through my head. “Your hands once touched this table and this silver/ And I have seen your fingers hold this glass/ These things do not remember you, beloved/ And yet your touch upon them will not pass.”
Sometimes, we summon our own ghosts.

Brian Golden
I’ll be honest. I’ve had experiences with the supernatural and the unexplainable several times in my past. I have a healthy respect for those that have passed on (if only to hauntingly remain) and I guess you could say I’m a believer. Therefore, it was with no small amount of trepidation I embarked on my first Evening Sun Ghost Hunt last Friday.
Now I can’t speak for my fellow ghost hunters, but our first stop, at the Oxford Memorial Library, spooked me enough that I was definitely wary of our other stops throughout the night.
Maybe it’s the fact that I saw Ghostbusters at such a young age (remember the opening sequence with the old librarian in the basement?), but I couldn’t help myself from turning quickly to check behind me whenever I found myself alone, in the darkness, among the shelves of books.
I’ve always found a library during the daytime to be pretty harmless – there are plenty of other people around and they’re typically well-lit. A library in the pitch darkness, especially when your goal is to search for and discover proof of the supernatural, is an entirely different story altogether.
Needless to say, my first experience hunting ghosts with The Evening Sun crew, while not as horrific as it could’ve been, was enough to give me nightmares throughout the remainder of the weekend. Even though I never once saw an actual ghost, the chills running up and down my spine while touring the Oxford Library were proof enough for me. It was a good time, although a frightening one.

Tyler Murphy
The full moon’s pale light bloomed across the clouds, the air was cold.
The buildings were silent, dark.
In the library, blood spewed from the book shelves and sloshed against my feet.
The undertaker’s carelessness caused the escape of an animated skeletal hand to scamper from an 18th century cremation vase.
Standing in the home’s rear window, I caught the gaze of a ghostly child drifting on the back lawn. Just below her transparent visage was her grave.
Not exactly.
The full moon’s pale light did bloom across the clouds and the air was cold.
The buildings were, for the most part, well lit.
The awkward hum of a dozen people gossiped and bingo could be seen taking place at the firehouse down the street.
In one isolated corner, the darkened library’s book shelves caught the glow of a red exit sign.
The funeral home’s basement was recently insulated, resulting in huge energy savings, or so we were told, and no human remains were ever in sight. I did see an old vase though, but flowers were in it.
A family living adjacent to a graveyard property were able to bury their daughter just a few feet from their own lawn. The family later moved and the current inhabitants believe they are now being haunted.
In my heart I have no belief of ghosts, spirits or gods, whatsoever – at least not any conventional interpretations of them.
I do think our trip to the Oxford Memorial Library had plenty of creeping-out potential, but it was a small place and there were a lot of people. Behe Funeral Home, though enjoyable and interesting, had zero paranormal activity.
The final stop to me was the most compelling. The setting of our ghost hunting trip couldn’t have been better. A young teenage girl died and was basically buried in the backyard in the early 80s. The three story house shares property lines with the Riverside Cemetery, so technically she’s buried in the graveyard. We were greeted by the homeowner’s and her son’s reports of strange upstairs footsteps and chilling drafts with no origins.
The top floor’s ceiling was braced against the roof and strange angles cut into the side of the rooms added an otherworldlyworld appearance.
Going outside though was certainly a creepy experience. Seeing the child’s tombstone from the back door, underneath a full moon, with the graveyard a distance behind it, was the most stirring scene all night.

Melissa Stagnaro
I was pretty keyed up for our annual Ghost Hunt, probably because I’ve spent a good deal of time over the last month organizing it all. But also because two years ago, on my first such excursion with the ES crew, I had what I consider my first up close encounter with the spirit world. I’m not sure I’d say I was eager to experience it again, but I definitely went into Friday evening open to the possiblities. I was hoping Audrey and Marie would be able to give me a glimpse of what they see that the rest of us miss.
Which is why, when Marie tugged on my arm and asked if I’d step into a closet off the library’s soon-to-be Theodore Burr room, I did so without question. She told me she’d seen some “interesting light play” in there, and while I wasn’t sure what I’d be able to offer, I was game to give it a go.
I can honestly say that I didn’t expect to witness anything, yet there it was. By rights, the space should have been pitch black when we shut the door. There was no visible source for the light which gradually brightened the room once we were closed inside. And I’m not talking about my eyes adjusting to the dark. This was localized in one corner. And then, as goose bumps formed along my spine, everything went slowly black. It was darker even than when we’d first shut the door. And somehow oppressive, like being covered by a thick blanket.
Audrey joined us, and as we started talking about the history of the place, the cycle playing out again. I commented on the beauty of the place, and wondered at what it must have been like to live there. No sooner had the words left my lips than I felt, rather than saw, the glow return, this time right behind me. Before I could say anything, Marie and Audrey commented that the light had shifted. Marie tapped the wall right behind me to indicate where it was now localized, and I felt that chill again as we were once again plunged into darkness. They both agreed the presence was female, but I didn’t sense anything. Just the unexplained sensation of light in a place which should have been pitch dark.
I was trembling when we left the confined space, both eager to relate my experience to my coworkers and see what else the night would to bring.

Melissa deCordova
Carrying the news of the day all year long can be a burden, so, for me, The Evening Sun’s annual spook hunt is the perfect way to lighten up. That’s why I joined the team and its entourage of brave spirit hunters and guides on a tour of the Oxford Memorial Library and Behe Funeral Home last Friday night. With flashlight and tape recorder in hand, I hoped to get in the mood for Halloween at least.
Just seeing each other away from the busy office, in the dark and bundled against the fall night chill felt like an adventure. Plus, I relish the opportunity to snoop around in dank, old basements and creepy upstairs closets inside historically-significant buildings. As I step on worn floorboards at the base of stairs and inspect inside huge cooking fireplaces, I get to let my imagination run wild with thoughts of those who tread before me.
But, since I’m grown and old now, I don’t ever think anyone, or their spirit, is still there. Though intriguing, others’ claims about experiencing unknown light sources and a spinster-bunned woman hanging around the library just weren’t convincing. Learning that we all go to our own funerals felt creepy, but not enough to make me actually believe. No one told me they saw any ghosts, and no one said “Boo” to me except for my annoying husband.
I think we all just like to creep each other out and then laugh about it. Life’s too serious otherwise.