"Local Library 'Ghostbusted' with SNIPE Team"

I don't know when the cold set in. I just remember shivering. I moved from my seat, waded through the dark to the chair on which I set my jacket. I put it on and sat back down. No help. I still shivered and flexed my jaw muscle, trying to stop my teeth from clicking.

There were four of us sitting in that boardroom. Ohsweken library, second floor, just to the right after you come up the old stairs. Different contraptions, measuring electronic and magnetic fields, were scattered on the large wooden table before us, courtesy of SNIPE.

We flicked the lights off and we waited. Darkness, eleven something at night. Bits of light leaked in when cars passed, the steady hum of their engines joining the building's creepy ambience. A faint red glow from the hallway exit sign radiated dimly into the room as well.

Still, it was near impossible to see the team members a couple feet to my left, and across the table. How did I get so cold? Why am I freezing, even with the layers on, the icy feeling snuck through.

That's when one of the team members commented on how hot she felt. Not just warm, but sticky and uncomfortably hot. Is the heat to high? I touched her hand, the hands of the two sitting beside her. I seemed to be the odd one out. My fingers were bent icicles.

I sat just two feet away from them, and I was freezing. Some of the sensors began to go off.

"It's by you," one of them whispered.

So much changes at night. Take the cozy, neighborhood library for example. Nestled in the village core, stuffed into a 200 year old house.

It warped into a dark and brutal structure under the light of Saturday's full moon.

When I called Todd Thomas, one of the founder's of Six Nations Investigates Paranormal Encounters (SNIPE), I didn't really know what I was getting into. As I sat there cold, paranoid something I couldn't explain was wrapping me in its dead, icy embrace, I realized I had stepped into a completely different world.

All I wanted was a cool story.

The cold dispersed. A few minutes later more of the SNIPE team emerged from the basement and made there way to the second floor. I stood up, warm again, and decided I would head into the basement myself. I was scared to do it - that was a good enough reason to go. I followed behind Todd, his son, Todd Jr., and another of the team members. The door down into the basement was opened. The steep stairs were illuminated by another of the exit signs.

It's hard to overstate how creepy the basement was. First off - it's a basement. The air is thick and musty. There are little chairs, fit for preschoolers, stacked in a columns near shelving units that held nothing. A lifeless room.

In the corner a hallway snakes, pipes push down from the ceiling; I hunched. Pieces of the concrete floor were torn up, revealing dirt. Empty buckets lay on their side. I thought of some OCD friends would have a field day in the basement, armed with a swiffer.

Traversing the hallway the first room you see holds the furnace, a gap in the concrete opposite the door reveals a foreboding crawl space. I thought of the feeling from the boardroom, the shivering, and stayed out.

As we explored the basement, Todd held up his camera, equipped with a night vision and ultraviolet light. The battery went from a full charge to dead.

"Goodbye," the electronic voice of the camera rang, before shutting itself off. That was odd.

"They use the energy," Todd explained. I thought of the walkie talkies, and even my own camera that died within minutes of entering the library despite full charges.

Todd finally stopped in the very back of the basement. Todd Jr., a fourteen year old who's fearless in a way I might never know, was snapping pictures away on his camera.

Todd flicked his recorder on and began asking questions. The entire time it felt like we were being laughed at. Like something was really behind us, amused we were gawking in the completely wrong direction.

"Let us know that you're here," Todd would call out. "We just want to communicate." Then he asked "If you're here, touch one of us." I found that question a little aggressive, but I wasn't the expert. JUST DON'T TOUCH ME, I thought. WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD EVER ASK TO BE TOUCHED BY A GHOST?

I didn't voice these concerns. I wasn't trying to appear brave. I just didn't feel the need to admit it was a miracle I wasn't peeing my pants.

After more questions, his camera, the one with the ultra violet light, flicked on again - back to a full charge but with a catch. The pictures were erased. Way odd.

Now these are events you shrug at. You look for a logical explanation for absolutely everything - even if you answer something with "I don't know the logical explanation. There is one, but I just don't know why." That's still a logical explanation, right?

Todd Jr. had left the room by this time, and was back in storage room of the basement near the stairs. I followed him back along the cob-webbed hallway. We were joined by two other of the SNIPE team members.

We stood in there in silence, four silhouettes against the glow of the exit sign. Todd was at the end of the hallway, still asking questions, hoping his K2 meter would buzz from green to red, set off by the presence of a ghost.

Our silent vigil continued. And then the cold came back. Not as all encompassing as it was in the above boardroom. It was like a cold, wet slobber drizzling over my spine. My hair stood on end and I looked to my left. I looked harder. I couldn't make out the silhouette.

There was Todd Jr. There was Carl. There was...

"Todd," I said, in a terse whisper. "Take. A. Picture." The flash went off. We were the only three in the room. There was no fourth SNIPE member with us. But there was also nothing on camera. The mind can play tricks can't it?

The night wrapped up around 2 a.m. The activity died down well before them. At least I thought.

The stories about the library go on and on. Books flying off of shelves when you walk by. Children in old-fashioned clothing occupying different chairs. Barefeet at the top of the stairs that walk away and disperse. Black masses that disappear upon a second look. A feeling that when you're going to walk down those stairs, something is going to push you.

Nothing was caught on video that night. Nothing was caught in pictures either. But, there was a lot caught in recordings.

The sounds are faint, but they're there. A little boy saying "Mom." A hoarse voice whispering "Books." Traditional drums thumping a song (there were no drums in the building that night). And what sounds like the growl of a big cat. The growl was caught in the same room where one magnetically sensitive device announced "demon."

Coincidences? Figments of the imagination? You can decide. I know SNIPE will be posting them on their Facebook page at some point (search "Six Nations Investigates Paranormal Encounters").

I don't know what I saw. But I know what I felt. I know that thick, icy feeling. I know what it is to freeze in a room when everyone is hot. I know what it is to realize there's only three people in a room, not four. I know what it is to go on a ghost hunt.

A special thanks to the SNIPE team for having me along. Todd Thomas Sr. and Steve Hill co-founded the group about two years ago. They've been poking around the rez chasing the paranormal since. Investigators Roy Webb, Tom Hill, Wes Hill, Carl Maracle, and of course, Todd Thomas Jr. have all joined the team. They're all still searching - the faces in photographs, the anomalies on video, the voices in recordings - all add up to something that tugs at their curiosity. To something that keeps them going.

They said, as we sat at Steve's going over the voices they caught on camera, in two years nothing has really scared them yet. That there's been no real evidence, no ghosts with the naked eye. That they'll keep searching.

Best of luck to them. One time is probably enough for me. But if they really want a scare, there's old houses scattered across Six Nations, abandoned. They're not only left alone, they're avoided. Everybody whispers one word, a warning, more than a title.

"Witch."

Consider it a dare.