LAREDO, Texas -- The kitchen-area room of the Republic of Rio Grande Museum in downtown Laredo looks spooky enough during the day.
But at night, it could well be considered off limits.
Paranormal investigators from the Southeast Michigan Ghost Hunters Society spent a couple of hours recently looking for suspicious activity inside the museum, which dates back to the early 1800s.
On June 18 at about 10:30 p.m., paranormal investigators Brad and Brenda Mikulka grabbed their equipment and ventured into the dark room.
As soon as the investigators walked inside, Brenda Mikulka felt a presence.
She said she could feel the spirit of an old lady, the same one they believed they had made contact with earlier that day.
"No saben de los espiritus (They don’t know about the spirits)," Brenda Mikulka said the entity stated.
Inside the dark room, Brad Mikulka put a Trifield meter, or electromagnetic field meter, on the table.
"When a person passes away, the physical body dies, but the spirit moves on," he said.
"The Trifield detects the electromagnetic changes in the area."
In theory, he said the spirit takes the shape of a ball of energy, also referred to as an orb.
"A true spirit orb will have an illumination that looks like it comes from inside itself," he explained.
He added that if a picture or video footage shows a glow over a light, that could well be considered an orb.
But not all orbs are spirit orbs. He said dust, pollen, raindrops and other things can be mistaken for orbs.
Brad Mikulka said sometimes spirits are in certain places, but they are not able to communicate the message they might have.
Brenda Mikulka said sometimes children are more sensitive to the spirits.
She believes people are born with that ability.
"As you get older, because you don’t use it, you lose it," Brenda Mikulka said.
"But children are able to pick up on them a lot easier."
The investigators have found four reasons spirits will remain at a certain place.
One is that they do not know they have passed away, such as because of a quick death, he said.
That could include death by fire, suicide or even a fatal accident.
Other spirits remain at the scene because of unfinished business.
A third reason spirits stay is that they don’t know where to go, according to the paranormal investigators. In one instance, a farmer had died, but his spirit remained.
"He knew he had died. He didn’t know where to go," Brad Mikulka said.
The fourth reason spirits don’t leave could be attributed to their love for their place, he added.
Some people had their best times at a certain place and just do not want to leave.
Investigators recalled an incident from a hotel room where the entity did not want to leave.
"He told us, ‘I know I’m dead, but I don’t want to go because I love it here,"’ the spirit told investigators.
It was too early to determine why the old lady was in the room at the Laredo museum.
But investigators also placed a voice recorder to capture any EVP, or electronic voice phenomena, in the room.
The device is used to record voices that were not audible during the investigation but could have been caught on tape.
As for the results of the investigators’ visit to the museum, that information won’t be available until the Mikulkas analyze the data.
Results will be made able to museum officials.
The museum is operated by the Webb County Heritage Foundation.
Museum director Rick Villarreal said some visitors have said they sensed a presence at the historic site in the past, but there is little proof that ghosts do inhabit the halls.
Still, it remains a popular topic of discussion.
