By Michael Swanger

White moonbeams cut through the cold dark of night to illuminate the grounds of the Elkhardt Cemetery, casting long shadows from weathered old tombstones as members of the Des Moines Iowa Extreme Paranormal Advanced Research Team (DIEPART) quietly gather EVPs (electronic voice phenomena) and other paranormal evidence. It’s training night for a handful of DIEPART recruits who stalk the burial grounds with care and wonder. To the uninitiated, it would appear to be the perfect setting for a haunting. But the spirits of the dead won’t appear for a few more hours until a these ghost hunters analyze their findings with some high-tech equipment.

Later that night, white beams of light from an autumn moon shine down on Joe Leto’s rural home in Bondurant. They foreshadow an evening in which new members of DIEPART — a group Leto founded in 2004 — are about to get their first lesson in paranormal research, a kind of imperfect science that attempts to shed light on life’s (and death’s) unexplained mysteries. Those same heavenly lights, as DIEPART’s veteran investigators and clients later attest, represent one man’s tireless efforts to alleviate peoples’ fear of things that go bump in the night, and his belief that good triumphs over evil.

“Remember, evil only survives when good men step back and do nothing,” says Leto as he prepares some EVPs for playback. It’s a statement that could easily serve as a slogan for DIEPART, which rebukes Hollywood’s sensationalism of ghost hunting by debunking its myths through fact-finding and science.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” says Leto, 39. “It’s a rare phenomenon. It’s a personal experience.”

Like most paranormal investigators, it was a personal, outer-worldly experience that motivated Leto to get into the ghost busting business. About 12 years ago, Leto and his first wife and daughter rented a converted church in Winterset. Leto, who was raised a devout Catholic, says the former house of worship was crudely dismantled and remodeled, and it appeared as though its previous owners had torn down the cross with a rope. “It was sacrilegious,” he says.

Soon after they moved in, their troubles began. Their obedient pets refused to stay in the house, continuously running away. All of the kitchen cabinet and appliance doors mysteriously seemed to open on their own. When their then 4-year-old daughter started hearing voices and her hysteria grew with each passing day, Leto consulted a priest, who refused to help.

“I couldn’t find anybody who could help me,” Leto says. “Most mainstream churches won’t deal with it because of the publicity and fear of spreading sensationalism. I thought, ‘This is ridiculous, people are going to think I’m crazy.’ Someone told me to cast out the spirits in the name of Jesus Christ. That seemed to work.”

When news of Leto’s experience got around, people with similar problems sought his help.

“I’m not into voodoo or exorcisms, but I started researching it [paranormal science] and doing it on my own,” he says. “Finally, I decided to form my own team.”

Leto’s unwavering commitment to helping those with paranormal problems is impressive. He spends hours each night after he comes home from work and nearly all of his weekends fielding calls from potential clients and tracking ghosts — or as it is in most cases, finding common solutions to common problems and coincidences. What’s more, he does it free of charge. And he has built DIEPART’s reputation to the point that it is widely known as Iowa’s leading and most professional paranormal investigative team.

“There’s always doubters about what we do,” Leto says. “But I’m deadly serious about helping people.”

Investigating paranormal phenomena is an expensive proposition, especially when you don’t charge clients for your services. Leto, who works as a cell phone tower engineer, has invested about $70,000 of his own money into equipping DIEPART. He owns two 2005 pickup trucks complete with laptop computers and other tools of the trade, and he has put about 80,000 miles on each tracking ghosts in Iowa, Nebraska and Kentucky. His home office is DIEPART’s command central, equipped with advanced computer hardware and software for precision audio and video recording and editing, as well as spectrum analyzers to detect the faint and fuzzy sounds of EVPs undetectable to the human ear. There’s also a gaggle of field instruments including tri-field meters to measure magnetic, electric and radio fields, infrared thermometers, motion-sensor detectors, digital and analog recording devices (camcorders, cameras, audio recorders) and parabolic microphones.

“I’ve been a tech geek since I got my ham radio license at 12,” says Leto. “It’s all about the toys.”

Members of Leto’s crew also furnish their own equipment and volunteer their time on nights and weekends.

“Some people collect baseball cards; we collect ghosts,” says lead investigator Shannon Kingrey, 25.

DIEPART has about 20 members on four teams in Iowa, including Des Moines, Lamoni, Burlington and Sioux City. It works closely with The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS), best known through the popular Sci-Fi television network show “Ghost Hunters.” Leto closed a fifth chapter in Cedar Rapids when he discovered its members were “doing conjuring.”

“We’re trying to help people,” he says. “We’re not out for a Scooby Doo ride.”

Finding and training quality, rational people is difficult, Leto says, adding that he receives as many as 20 calls per week from people who want to join DIEPART. He weeds out thrill-seekers, substance abusers and other undesirable applicants through a rigorous screening process.

“It’s a demanding job,” Leto says. “To be an investigator, you’ve got to be skeptical and professional. We’re there to prove or disprove there’s something going on. I don’t want nut jobs with Elvis paintings in their trailers who worship the devil. I look for safe, sane people.”

The same is required of Leto’s clients, who must show that they’re experiencing what seems to be a genuine paranormal phenomenon before DIEPART intervenes. On average, he fields about three requests per week for DIEPART’s services. After passing an initial telephone interview to demonstrate the validity of their alleged paranormal problems, clients are asked to complete an online questionnaire. Afterwards, the team’s licensed psychotherapist meets the client to evaluate that person’s mental stability. Later, researchers conduct a daytime safety inspection and schedule an overnight investigation (which includes a prayer at the beginning and end), usually between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. on a Saturday. Then investigators spend a few days analyzing the evidence to try to reach a conclusion.

“Most spouses don’t support the work, but support the cause,” says Leto’s wife, Linnea. “Joe’s a responsible guy, but I worry about him at night.”

Leto says there is no textbook on how to prove or disprove paranormal phenomena. Most “hauntings” are easily explained as household noises, lights from passing cars or faulty plumbing.

“He seems to have an answer for everything,” says Michael Hamilton, 41, of Des Moines. Hamilton joined DIEPART last summer after reading a Cityview story about the infamous 1912 Villisca murders in which eight residents were bludgeoned to death with an axe in the middle of the night. The house, reportedly, is haunted, though DIEPART has yet to find conclusive evidence.

“Joe’s work ethic is tireless,” Kingrey concurs. “He’s very rational and open-minded.”

Still, DIEPART’s founder doesn’t always have the answers. Last summer, he and his team researched a home in Fairbury, Neb., and left scratching their heads following a series of paranormal occurrences there. In addition to EVP readings, which are fairly common, the team saw a ball of light float up a stairwell, and reported sightings of shadow people and beds moving. Then there was the summer investigation of a house in Winterset where the temperature quickly dropped 30 to 40 degrees in certain rooms and investigators could see their breath. And nobody has forgotten the extraordinary number of EVPs they recorded — about 80 in less than 10 minutes — at a former crack house on the north side of Des Moines. Just last week, they started investigating a home in Madrid where a woman claimed to have been sexually touched by a spirit.

They’ve seen just about everything, except a full body apparition, which Leto says would be like finding a needle in a haystack.

“I’ve never seen one,” he says. “It’s almost impossible.”

Not so, according to DIEPART members Mike Judge and Shannon Kingrey, who claim to have seen apparitions during their youth. Judge, 32, of Grimes, joined DIEPART earlier this month after seeing shadowy figures in his home. It’s not the first time he’s witnessed extreme paranormal activity.

About 10 years ago, he saw “someone on fire walk through the walls” of his father’s home near Lake Rathbun, the same home that has caught on fire three times. In that house, children claim to have conversed with a man named “Charlie.” Incidentally, Judge says, a man named Charlie died in the house before his father bought it.
“I’ve had an interest in the paranormal ever since,” Judge says.

Kingrey was raised in a house on Des Moines’ east side that she and her family believed to be haunted. It wasn’t uncommon for them to see the ghost of two young girls at least once per week.

“One night, my mom heard a noise in my bedroom while I was sleeping,” she says. “She came in, turned on the lights, which woke me up, and we both saw one of my dolls floating in the air. You could even see where it looked like someone was pressing in its stomach.”

Those personal experiences are why most join DIEPART. They can relate to victims’ frustration, fear and embarrassment in their search for answers to complicated paranormal problems.

“There’s always going to be doubters. We’re skeptics, too; we’re not sensationalists,” says Kingrey. “But the most rewarding thing is to be able to help the clients. They’re at their wit’s end, and we help keep them from being afraid to live in their house.”

Guardian spirits?

“Julie,” from Greene County, says she and her husband and their three young children were ready to vacate their Victorian home shortly after buying it two years ago before DIEPART stepped in to help. A series of freakish paranormal events including doors opening and closing, footsteps on the stairs, knocks on the walls, lights turning on and off, feelings of being watched, disconnected phone calls and sightings of shadowy figures — including one that stood about 6’5” that would sit on the edge of the couple’s bed every night at the same time — nearly drove them out of their dream home.

“You have to understand we’re a very Christian family, and we don’t believe in this stuff, but we thought we were going to have to see a psychologist because we couldn’t explain what was going on,” Julie says. “Every night you could set a clock to it. My daughter would scream ‘The man is here, the man is here!’ None of us could sleep. It was starting to affect our lives in a negative way.”

The activity increased when Julie’s husband was deployed overseas by the military. “They say activity starts when families go through stressful times,” Julie says. So she turned to the Internet to find answers when she stumbled upon some information on the CNBC television network’s Web site, which eventually led her to DIEPART.

“I called Joe and he immediately put me at ease,” she says. “He asked me scientific questions and reassured me I wasn’t losing my mind. He was the answer to our prayers.”

Leto and his team recommended a series of controlled experiments before they investigated. “They were amazing,” Julie says. “I wasn’t afraid anymore because we learned it was trying to communicate with us.”

Julie and her family nicknamed the spirit “Johnny” the night of the DIEPART investigation. It would turn out to be the first of a few prophetic coincidences linked to their paranormal activity.

“Joe said there was nothing we could do, that the spirit was stuck to the house,” Julie says. “Then the most amazing thing happened to us on a Christian level. When my husband returned, the activity slowed down. ‘Johnny’ would still come sit on the corner of the bed at night, but it was as though he was very attached to me as a mother figure.”

Soon after, Julie met a woman who grew up in the house. The woman had a brother — Jonathan — who’d been diagnosed with schizophrenia. He’d lived in the house with his mother until he killed himself at the age of 34.

Jonathan, she told Julie, used to disconnect the phone each time his mother took certain calls. He also adored children.

“At that point I didn’t mind him being here because I thought he looked out for the kids,” Julie says. “One afternoon the doorbell rang. There was nobody there, but I saw my 2-year-old going out the back door. I might not have seen him otherwise.”

Pressed to find an answer regarding “Johnny’s” identity, one night Julie and her husband called out to him to give them a sign. Moments later, one of their child’s toys turned itself on and began singing. Midway through a second rendition of the same song, it stopped. Stunned by the event, Julie’s husband checked the back of the toy, only to learn it didn’t have the batteries needed to power it.

“We couldn’t believe it,” she says.

Last September, about 10 one morning, Julie and her children were upstairs playing in the couple’s bedroom when they felt like an enormous weight had been lifted from the house. Shortly after, Julie received a telephone call from a friend saying Jonathan’s mother had died that morning at about that time.
“I think that was Johnny saying goodbye,” Julie says. “And we haven’t heard from him since. I think he was waiting for his mom.”

Julie says her friends have urged her to write a book about her family’s paranormal experiences. It’s the kind of story DIEPART shares with viewers during its Sunday night cable-access television show, “Ghost Town,” on Mediacom channel 15 at 7 p.m.

Leto has constructed a miniature set for “Ghost Town” in his basement and has recruited members of his team and local actor/director Neil Wells to help produce the show for Dark Art Films Studio. Modeled after TAPS’ “Ghost Hunters,” the TV show is centered on disproving myths.

“We’re telling the tales that need to be told,” Leto says.

Dark Art is also in the process of recruiting actors and actresses for a long-term project. Leto says he hopes to sell a few episodes to a network to help pay for better equipment, like a thermo-seeking camera that costs about $8,000. Regardless, he has no plans of ever charging clients and looks at his work as a calling.

“I couldn’t do that,” Leto says. “I do this to help people. It’s not just a hobby, it’s a service to the community.” CV

SIDEBARS

Signs of a haunting

True hauntings are rare occurrences, and it may be difficult to determine whether the strange phenomena you’re experiencing might be due to a haunting, since nobody knows what causes one. There are theories that some hauntings feature a single phenomenon such as the same door slamming shut repeatedly, while others include a variety of phenomena, ranging from odd noises to apparitions. Here are some signs you may have a haunting:

• Doors, cabinets and cupboards opening and closing
• Unexplained noises, including footsteps, knocks, banging, rapping and scratching sounds
• Lights turning off and on
• Unexplained shadows
• Pets behaving strangely, including looking as though they’re watching something that isn’t visible
• Feelings of being watched or touched
• The sound of cries, whispers or muffled voices
• Cold or hot spots in the house and unusual smells
• Mild psychokinetic phenomena including moving or levitating objects, household appliances or toys that turn off or on, unexplained writing on paper and walls or handprints and footprints
• Physical assault, including scratches, slaps and hard shoves

What to do

If you feel you’re being haunted,
follow these steps:
• Explore rational explanations — from noises made by faulty plumbing and homes settling to doors opening due to faulty hinges to shadows caused by a car’s headlights or a neighbor’s porch light to your imagination running wild. The human mind and senses are easily fooled, and people often mistake natural occurrences in their homes for the paranormal.
• Get help finding rational explanations — Call a plumber or a handyman to identify previously mentioned problems. Tell a neighbor or a friend — a fresh perspective might help.
• Keep a journal as phenomena occur.
It will come in handy if you enlist help from a paranormal investigator.
• Try to document unexplained phenomena with a portable tape recorder, video camera or camera.
• Call the experts after you’ve ruled out rational explanations. Don’t hesitate if you feel the phenomena are extreme or that you and your family are in physical or psychological danger. To contact DIEPART, visit www.diepart.com or call 250-2108.

Haunted Des Moines

DIEPART’s Web site includes a section on verified haunted sites in Iowa as compiled by the Shadowlands group (www.theshadowlands.net). Here’s a sampling of a few Des Moines’ area listings. Visitors and investigators must have permission from owners, as trespassers will be prosecuted.
• Air Lanes — An upstairs back room in the bowling alley allegedly was used for illegal gambling in the 1920s. If you listen closely, you can hear noises, including people talking and dice being rolled.
• Drake University Observatory — It’s rumored to be haunted by the late Dr. Robert Morehouse, who discovered a comet in the 1920s. His remains, along with those of his wife, are interred in the wall of the entryway. Students have reported feelings of being watched and an unknown force correcting the calculations in their observation logs.
• Dowling Catholic High School — Reports of a purple orb seen.
• Lincoln High School — Strange occurrences in the auditorium, including lights flashing on and off in the light booth when it is locked up and uninhabited, seats of wooden folding chairs swinging up and down, stage curtains blowing in the breeze though there is no air conditioning, and strange noises. If you go in the Paint Room in the wings of the stage, you get the feeling someone is watching you and running their fingers up and down your back.
• East High School — Two students have reported seeing a blue light in a restroom mirror, but it disappeared before they could turn around. Before the flash there was a spark of electricity on the faucet when one of the students reached for it.
• Old Red Horse Armory — Now the city school bus barn, the old Cavalry armory was once occupied by the Iowa National Guard when soldiers reported hearing the sounds of horses clip-clopping across the floor where the stables were and reported sightings of an older man dressed in an old cavalry uniform.
• Merle Hay Mall Tower — Built over a site of a monastery that was closed during the 1950s, rumor has it that on occasion a nun would become pregnant and miscarry and that these babies were buried in unmarked graves on the grounds where the mall stands today. Apparitions of a nun nursing an infant have been reported. The Tower is said to be haunted by a figure wearing an old style habit, crying as she carries a dead child. People who have offices there report the elevator runs on its own late at night, and when it stops footsteps can be heard. Cold spots are common, too.
• Terrace Hill — Witnesses report seeing a transparent little girl, eyes in pictures following them and many other things, including a code-activated elevator that sometimes operates on its own.
• Weaver House — Home to a table that sounds as though someone is knocking on it. Some say it’s the antics of a genuine poltergeist.
• Simpson College — In the late 1800s, a woman died after falling down the staircase in College Hall. On every Friday the 13th, it’s rumored you can see her reflection or “shadow” in the third floor window while you’re stepping on the college seal at midnight.

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