S.P.L.A.T stands for the Southwestern Pennsylvania League of Apparition Technologists. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, it was a project and paranormal research group founded in 2007 in Johnstown, PA. It was led by myself and my good friends Jason Thornton, Jamie Muscatello and his brother Tony.
While no longer in existence, we have articles and information collected over the years that I plan to showcase on this page, including some of more interesting and prominent investigations. S.P.L.A.T. deeply changed me in many ways and exposed me to ideas and topics the average person probably doesn’t spend much time thinking about. It left a lasting impression and produced a lot of memories.
I have and always will always have an interest in the paranormal. While S.P.LA.T may have vanished like the glimpse of a specter in the night, I’ll continue to research the paranormal on my own, hoping to find the answers I’m looking for.
Blog Posts
Dunlo & Llanfair Pennsylvania – Scary Stories, Folklore, Legends and Other Strange Tales by Walter S. Hutsky Jr.
Becky’s Gave – Tribune-Democrat Mention
Paranormal Publications
Investigations
Below you’ll find a listing of our best investigations, including detailed information each one. These are investigations that produced possible evidence or are simply interesting locations we have investigated over the years.
Investigation 09-1: Portage Railroad Museum
Investigation 02-1 Crum Cemetery
Investigation B2-1: The Windber Hotel
Investigation O6-1: Becky’s Grave – The Truth Revealed
Investigation O7-1: The Rolling Mill Mine
Paranormal Articles
Here’s a collection of articles I wrote while in SPLAT.
- Becky’s Grave – The Truth Revealed
- EXIF Data
- Franks Box
- Hex Signs
- Infrasound & EMF
- Johnstown, PA Haunted Location
- Paranormal Weather
- Paranormal Dangers
- Poltergeists
- Shadow Figures
- Lost Children of the Alleghenies
- The Wickerman
- Wilmore Dam Apparition
- Morley’s Dog
- The Rolling Mill Mine Disaster
- Crum Cemetery
- False Positives
Media Mentions
- Tribune-Democrat 2009 03 16
- OurTown Magazine 2008 10 29
- Portage Dispatch 2008 11 06
- WTAE TV 2007 11 28
Team Photos
SPLAT with Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson from T.A.P.S. at Univcon in Penn State.
SPLAT at Draculacon in Windber, PA with paranormal researcher and author Rosemary Ellen Guiley.
SPLAT with paranormal investigator Steve Gonsalves of TAPS at Pittsburgh Steel City Comic-Con
Our very first investigation.
Walt with Jamie and Tony checking for EMF and temperature anomalies.
Pittsburgh Comic-Con: 9-11-2009
Media Release Overview:
Paranormal Panels (Ghost Hunting with S.P.L.A.T. and U.F.O.’s the Truth is Out There) have combined into ONE two hour paranormal extravaganza, with The Southwestern Pennsylvania League of Apparition Technologists; John Ventre, the Pennsylvania director of the Mutual UFO Network; Demonologist, Adam Blai; The Greater Pittsburgh Paranormal Society; and From California – the Dangers Of The Paranormal Team.
Dracula Con 2009: Windber, PA
Strongtown Emporium Christmas in July 2008: Strongstown, PA
The Ghost Girl Cemetery Apparition
Below are two of the most controversial pictures SPLAT has ever encountered. On May 21st, 2004 at approximately 10:40PM, Brandon Connor snapped the following two photographs on his Nikon E2100 camera. I won’t divulge the location of these pictures because I worry it could bring unnecessary attention and possible vandalism to the cemetery.
To give you a brief overview of how these pictures came about, I was with him and some friends and we were trying to give ourselves a scare at a nearby cemetery. After taking a walk around and snapping some photos, we drove off and thought we had left empty handed because no one saw anything unusual. That was until Brandon called me a few weeks later hysterically telling me something really strange came out on film the night we there.
What happened was Brandon was reviewing the photos on his computer and found what appears to be the apparition of woman or girl. In both photos,
It’s very difficult to make out unless you adjust the brightness and contrast of the photos. Whenever we were all in the cemetery the night the photos were taken, we only quickly reviewed them from the small LCD view-screens on our cameras. It would have been nearly impossible to see this without careful review on a full sized monitor.
Upon learning of the photos, we made many repeated visits to the cemetery to try and recapture the same images. I even sent the photos to some well known ghost hunters and paranormal researchers hoping to find an explanation for them, but no one could offer an answer. One woman I used to work with claimed to be psychic and she warned me to never go back to that cemetery because she felt something evil was there and that the ghost girl was simply a decoy for something very sinister.
Of course this didn’t stop me or SPLAT from doing further research in the area. In fact one night, we setup a VHC-C camera on a tripod. We walk a short distance away and when we came back, the camera’s power button was physically turned off.
In another bizarre incident, I was telling a story of how my father and uncle came across a woman who had committed suicide at that very same cemetery. She shot herself with a revolver and my dad and uncle were across the other side of the cemetery cutting grass. As I was retelling the part about the revolver, the digital audio recorder I was holding picked up the distinct sound and reverberation of a gunshot. The strange thing we didn’t hear anything at the time of the recording and the cemetery itself is rather isolated and quite, especially at night….
I’ll leave these photos
2004.05.21 10:41PM (original photograph)
2004.05.21 10:41PM (enhanced photograph)
2004.05.21 10:40PM (original photograph)
2004.05.21 10:40PM (enhanced photograph)
