Visitors to Pitt-Greensburg's Lynch Hall report otherworldly encounters

In the basement of Lynch Hall, a Tudor-style mansion housing administrative offices on the Pitt-Greensburg campus, paranormal investigators may have made contact with a spirit in need of help.

That was just the beginning of an otherworldly conversation on a late September evening as a group of about a dozen people took part in a paranormal tour of the 100-year-old building, led by members of the Monongahela-based Revenant Entity Paranormal Society.

“Can you help me?” said a voice generated by tour guide Kathleen Wilson’s phone app. The GhostTube app is meant to pick out words based on changes in the energy in a space, such as fluctuations in the electromagnetic field. It’s tied to the theory that spirits can manipulate the environment to make their presence known.

“How can we help you?” replied Wilson, who lives in Bridgeville. “We can’t help you unless you tell us how.”

There was no immediate response via the app, but Wilson said the same message was heard earlier as the group of investigators was preparing for the tour.

When the tour group was present, the voice also was heard to say, “come here,” and referred to an unknown “closet.”

‘Building on what we learned’

Ryan O’Shea, a fellow paranormal tour guide from Canonsburg, said, as the evening continued, the investigators would try to encourage further communication based on the eerie utterances. “We can continue building on what we learned in this session,” he said.

More than 100 people toured the house that evening, during the university’s Blue & Gold Celebration Homecoming week. They stopped at three spots where unexplained phenomena have been reported. That included the basement area where voices were heard — directly below an office used by university President Robert Gregerson and formerly used by the home’s original owner, Commander Charles McKenna Lynch.

A U.S. Naval Academy graduate, Lynch served in both World War I and World War II and was president of the Pittsburgh Stock Exchange. He built his estate, known as “Starboard Light,” on former Hempfield farmland and died there in 1963. The University of Pittsburgh then purchased the property to form the beginning of its Greensburg branch campus.

Campus lore holds that Lynch’s spirit still is present at his former home, with some university staff reporting unnerving experiences.

‘There was nobody there’

One of the R.E.P.S.-led tour stops was in a first-floor conference room, where chairs had been found inexplicably rearranged.

R.E.P.S. member Valerie Winghart, of Morgantown, W. Va., related a security guard’s experience in the nearby foyer.

The guard, she said, “heard the front door open and felt a gust of wind come at him. He turned to look, and there was nobody there, and then the door slammed shut.”

The tour group visited an additional section of the basement, where students conducted a seance in 2008 and used an Ouija board in an attempt to communicate with the spirit of Commander Lynch.

As previously reported by the Tribune-Review, when the students asked if Lynch’s spirit was present, a pointer that five of them were touching pointed to the letters “Y-E-S.”

When the’ students asked if the spirit wanted them to leave, the letters indicated were: “G-E-T-O-U-T.” When they asked why the spirit remained in the house, the indicated letters were: “D-E-A-T-H.”

R.E.P.S. members said they don’t use Ouija boards in their investigations. They did have on hand various devices that were intended to display colored lights or generate sounds in reaction to movement or changes in the electromagnetic field or temperature.

“They say spirits are really cold,” said tour guide Richard Jenkins of Monaca.

Some tour participants grasped a dowsing rod in each hand, with uncertain results.

Traditionally used by believers to point toward sources of water underground, paranormal investigators use the rods in attempts to communicate with a spirit. They may ask a disembodied presence to cause the rods to point in particular directions, to indicate responses to the investigator’s questions.

‘Everything all at once’

Among those attempting to reach out to the beyond was tour participant Bill Eger of Greensburg. He attended with his wife, Joyce, an admissions counselor on the campus.

Bill Eger said he likes to watch paranormal-themed TV shows, and both spouses reported having unusual experiences when they toured other buildings with histories.

He said he felt a sensation “like a finger went right along the top of my head” while exploring an upper floor of R&R Station, a former restaurant and hotel in Mt. Pleasant. She suddenly became “emotional, crying and everything all at once” while seated in a Charleston, S.C., bar — later learning a man reportedly had hanged himself in a room directly above.

Bill Eger encountered the unexplained on a previous visit to Lynch Hall, while attending a dinner for university employees and their families. While he was “upstairs, just walking around,” he said, he saw an interior door that was just closing. Thinking he might find somebody to chat with on the other side of that door, he went into the connecting room, but he discovered, “There was nobody in there.”

‘They’re nice spirits’

Organized in the fall of 2022, R.E.P.S. includes members who have been active in paranormal investigations for at least the past decade, according to founder Jason Iampietro. He said the 13 members of the group have conducted investigations in public venues with strong traditions of hauntings and also have advised private clients who have been troubled by potential supernatural phenomena.

Iampietro said he got involved in the paranormal field after his family’s Monongahela home came under attack in 2013 by a poltergeist — an unruly ghost or spirit. “We heard voices when no one was there,” he said. “There were lights turning on and off and rooms that were flipped upside down.”

Their plight was featured in an episode of the Travel Channel series “Ghost Bait.”

Eventually, he said, “We got rid of the poltergeist. We still have a couple of spirits that linger on, but they’re nice spirits. The nuisance is gone.”

Taking the opposite precaution, while the first tour group departed Lynch Hall, O’Shea called out to any spirits that might be present, “Please do not attach yourself to or follow any of these people home. Make sure you stay here.”