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However, there is a big difference between being here all alone with the lights on and wandering around with a flashlight in the dark.
I did not last long before a cool chill swept over me, both of my arms were covered with goose bumps and the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

The place is spooky at night, and I immediately had an uneasy feeling about it.

I grabbed a tape recorder and talked throughout the first hour and a half of my investigation of the building, just in case I could catch any sounds on the recording.

I ventured to the basement first, which has to be the creepiest place in the building.

Earlier in the week, I went to the basement with managing editor Brian McCauley, to shoot the picture to run with this article and realized we were not alone.

The old basement has the remnants of a burning pit of sorts, which lore has it was used when the building was an undertaking business and furniture store.

I found it odd the building would have two businesses like that together, but back in those days, the early 1900s, the furniture makers also made the caskets.

Something has stayed behind to greet Brian and I. There were two bodies and a living thing with us, I knew that much for sure.
Before we left the basement, Brian and I heard a noise, a high-pitched chirping.

I heard it a second time and began to shine a flashlight around the basement, asking Brian if he heard that.

“This is starting to freak me out, see ya,” Brian said, as he darted up the steps back to the main offices.

I kept shining the flashlight and saw a bat hanging on the wall. I looked on the other walls and found nothing. Flashing the light on the floor, I came across two more bats, which were dead.

So, needless to say, when I returned to the basement on Halloween Night, I proceeded with some trepidation. Did I mention it was now midnight, on Halloween no less, and there was a full moon?

I had an uneasy feeling in the basement and really wanted to get out of there. I spent some time down there, looking around with the flashlight and nothing happened.

I did locate my bat friend on the wall, again, so I wasn’t alone on this trip either.

Several coworkers, who have been here late at night, have reported hearing footsteps and loud noises coming from the upstairs, concentrated near the front of the office.

I sat in our conference room for a while, located in the front, right outside of our publisher’s office, where the footsteps have been heard.

I have heard these footsteps before myself late at night, at least that is what they sound like. But, it is a very old building with lots of wooden flooring on the second and third floors.

The place just has its own noises, like any old building.

But, there are some interesting things to know about the third floor. There used to be a ballroom up there, I hear, and the footstep sounds we hear could be coming from there. I never have heard any music up there. One would think you would hear some music to go with the footsteps, if it was a ballroom at one time.

The top floor was the second most uncomfortable place to be in the building, next to the basement.

I walked around up there for some time, stopping to take it all in. Flashing the light on the top of the walls, I was moved by the ornate decoration along the top, a golden decoration on black.

I presumed the room, now with a newer wooden diving wall, would have been all one large room at one time, back when the ballroom entertained guests.

Looking around up there, with the lights off, I imagine just how magnificent the ballroom would have been.

I was up there with just a flashlight. And, with little light up there, I could see what the room would have looked like with dim lights and a band playing.

The view from up there, if you are not a little too freaked out by the cool temperature or the feeling it has, is really quite breathtaking.
Huge windows along the front of the room offer a beautiful view of the courthouse lit up at night and the Paola Park Square.
I could imagine this room, with dim lighting, would have just been an incredibly romantic place to be.

While walking in the room, I could hear the old wooden floor creek and groan under my steps. Later, standing near the windows, looking towards the middle of the room, I heard what sounded like footsteps behind me as the wood made noises to indicate the presence of someone else. I saw nothing.

Investigating another room, I saw what I had first believed to be orbs, small balls of light, which can be an energy or a spirit. At the time, I saw three separate orbs in one room, coming out of the corner of my eye to the left, then right in front of me and then off to the right.

I discarded the light as flashlight reflections off some glass in the room, or other shiny surface, and that light hitting my glasses and bouncing off, merely creating an illusion of orbs.

I left the recorder on in the ballroom and went back downstairs to the main floor for a while.

Upon returning to the steps leading to the second floor, I heard what sounded like a footstep at the top of the stairs, as if someone was starting to walk down the stairs as I stepped up on the bottom step.

That caused me to pause for a moment, before proceeding.

In all of the thousands of hours I have worked here late into the evening and early morning, I would hear noises and just explain them away as the sounds of an old building at night.

On two occasions, while sitting at my desk working on the 100-year Paola Panther football section, I believe former owner Phil McLauglin’s father Drew, a longtime publisher of the newspaper, was making sure I did a good job or just wanted to oversee how the stories for the section were coming along.

It was the last special section produced at the paper under the McLauglin name. The sale of the newspaper to St. Joseph News Press and Gazette had already been announced.

Typing away at one of my stories for the section, I was suddenly inundated by a damp, wet tobacco, cigar smell. It followed me home on two occasions.

I told Phil I thought Drew was just making sure I was doing a good job on the section.

The second evening the smell followed me home, I stopped and told Drew I wasn’t going to let him or the McLaughlin family name down.

As mysteriously as it arrived, the odor was gone. I never have smelled it again since.

Is the building haunted? I don’t really believe so. Could there be a few spirits enjoying the ballroom? Possibly.

More than likely, most of it is the sounds of an old building and a wild imagination at 2 to 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning.

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