PANAMA CITY — As quaint as they seem, antique shops are notorious little nooks for paranormal activity because of energy attached to memory-laden items that once meant a great deal to their owners.
With Halloween upon us, the team at Panhandle Paranormal Investigations, or PPI, set up Thursday night to investigate things potentially stirring at BelMar Antiques downtown.
“These things have soul,” said Belinda Betz, co-owner of the store. “Old things have personality and may even have souls attached to them.”
The love of all things old and steeped in history runs deep in the Betz family.
“I never felt a draw to things that are new,” she said.
It made perfect sense to Betz and longtime friend Marilyn Pippin to make a business out their hobby of picking beautiful things with interesting histories. They’ve enjoyed passing on those perfect finds — and their stories — since they opened the store Dec. 21, 2013, the day after both of them retired from the Bay District Schools transportation department.
Every corner of the store is filled with items that have a past. Betz is fascinated that people today can run their hands over the same tabletop someone else touched and lived with a hundred years before them in the midst of joys and tragedies.
“These pieces of furniture took in all these family memories,” Betz said. “That’s why I believe old stuff has soul. It’s just all been absorbed into the pieces.”
Maegun Humphries, co-founder and case manager for PPI, said most objects hold on to positive or happy vibes, in her experience.
“In a location like this, you’re dealing with different objects through different eras, and the fact that a lot of them have a lot of emotion put into them.”
Humphries said if something meant enough to someone when they were alive, that energy can still be attached to that object after they die.
PPI co-founder James “Skip” Skipper made the comparison to how a child might feel intensely attached to a teddy bear and how that type of feeling, or energy, might stay connected to the bear long after the child has discarded it or passed it on to someone else.
Betz thinks that anything found in BelMar today is shrouded in good energy, but said they’ve had objects fall down on occasion when they shouldn’t have.
“I came in one morning to find a light fixture on the floor broken,” Pippin said. “There was no apparent reason for it to be broken.”
The back of the store is where items had been unexplainably disturbed. Betz and Pippin feel the whole sprawl of antiques carries the potential for a discovery during a paranormal investigation.
Betz hopes the team can pick up what might be attached to a set of Jacobean high-back chairs that once sat in a bedroom in her son’s home. She said one night a family friend woke up to see an apparition sitting in one of them.
“It scared her to death,” Betz said. “She wound up pitching the chairs into the closet so she couldn’t see them anymore.”
They also have a hutch sideboard in the store that belonged to a Panama City woman who recently passed away. Betz wonders if the deceased woman will pay the investigators a visit.
“As long as they’re not cranky, they’re welcome here,” Betz said of the spirits in her store.
She said she wouldn’t venture a guess on what, if anything, PPI may find hanging out in BelMar Antiques on Thursday night. The News Herald will tag along on the investigation and run a follow-up story after the team reveals their findings.
No matter what turns up, it won’t change Betz and Pippin’s affections for all things vintage.
“There are stories. There is history,” Betz said. “That’s why we love this stuff.”
Hauntings on Harrison
- Because of its history and location near the water, the team at Panhandle Paranormal Investigations said downtown Panama City is home to more ghostly happenings they’ve seen to date. Some of the most active sites they’ve investigated are located along Harrison Avenue.
They are:
- Martin Theatre — The team has investigated the theater at 409 Harrison Ave., built in 1936, at least a dozen times. They said resident spirits they believe to belong to past theater employees have stirred around enough to turn skeptics into believers. Panhandle Paranormal co-founder James “Skip” Skipper said he was smacked in the back of the head by an unseen force during one investigation.
- Franci’s — Panhandle Paranormal says the cutesy boutique at 447 Harrison Ave. is a particularly active location. One investigation involved digging in the basement with shovels, where human bones were found.
- Elegant Endeavors — The team said customers browsing the shop at 551 Harrison Ave. have reported seeing objects move on their own in the massive antique store.