Orangeville Banner
By Chris Halliday

Paranormal investigators say they have found evidence indicating at least three ghosts are haunting Orangeville’s town hall and opera house. Given rumours of people hearing or seeing strange things inside Orangeville’s town hall, members of the Wellington County Paranormal Investigators and The Searcher Group, one of the oldest paranormal research teams in Canada, ventured into the 140-year-old building in early September.

After compiling data collected with surveillance cameras, electronic voice phenomenon (EVP) recording devices, energy detecting meters and motion detectors, the researchers believe they left town hall with some solid evidence of several ghostly encounters.
“We did indeed amass a rather large number of recordings of disembodied voices,” said Peter Roe, assistant director for The Searcher Group, who has spearheaded several investigations of former town halls throughout southwestern Ontario for the purpose of a book documenting the group’s findings.

“It’s safe to say there were at least two males and one female that occupied the house of the theatre,” Roe said, adding several voices responded to one investigator’s questions with a degree of indifference. “The female admitted to being an actress, so that helps narrow the research, an iota.”

Rumours of Orangeville’s town hall possibly being a refuge for the supernatural have been circulating for many years. Several employees have reported sensing strange presences there in the last decade.

“There was one member of staff who, in the past, felt a presence when she was in the building at night,” town spokesperson Sheila Duncan previously told The Banner.

“Someone on the Theatre Orangeville staff has had a similar feeling.”

Those rumours certainly piqued Roe’s interest. As he told The Banner back in September, theatres are “notorious” for ghostly activity.

“At this point, it is also safe to conclude there were two male spirits inside the council chambers as well,” Roe added. “Mind you, this does not mean that they are limited to one area at a time, so who’s to say if one or both didn’t also oblige us upstairs in the opera house?”

Roe acknowledges a fair amount of skepticism can exist amongst the public when it comes to paranormal research. The Searcher Group doesn’t expend any energy trying to convince people of the existence of ghosts; it merely collects data to help build theories.
“We aren’t really out to convert anyone. We’re out for ourselves to prove there is something beyond what we call death,” Roe previously told The Banner. “We can’t invite a ghost into a lab and we’ve tried. They just won’t oblige. We have to go into the field.”

The Searcher Group has already inquired to see if town officials will allow them to conduct a follow-up investigation. Roe has no idea how researchers will be received by the unseen hosts a second time.

“We approach each case with a healthy respect for history and heritage,” Roe said, explaining the group aims to bring some historic context to any evidence uncovered.
“Much of (the evidence) is still under peer review,” he said, referring to the ghostly encounters. “From the comments captured between them, we may be able to begin to verify who they were.”

For more information about The Searcher Group, visit thesearchergroup.ca.