Rocky Mountain Paranormal group investigates claims of ghostly voices, footsteps and poltergeist activity.

DENVER — The first rule of ghost hunting is that there are no ghosts.

Not according to the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society.

“I don’t even know what a ghost is. I like to think that maybe someday we’ll be able to come up with an answer for it,” said Bryan Bonner, group founder. “But I do want to know what it is.”

TheDenverChannel contacted Bonner following stories from a half-dozen current employees at the Red Rocks Trading Post who all believe the place is haunted.

From hearing footsteps, their own name whispered, to seeing boxes come at them and feeling a hand run across their hair, each has a different story to tell.

Yet at least six of the employees, of varying age, gender, and experience are convinced they work with spirits.

So, on a recent June evening, a team of four researchers from RMPRS came back with cases of equipment to document the stories.

“Well it’s interesting. I’ve heard a lot of the stories. But I don’t think anybody’s been in here doing an investigation,” Bonner said. “It’s another one of (the) big Denver haunts.”

“Well I’m one of those guys that loves puzzles,” said Matthew Baxter, modern paranormal investigator. “And if I come to the end and I find, at the end of this puzzle, that it’s a ghost, fantastic! That’s something that we would love to be able to achieve.”

Built before the amphitheater and opened in 1931, the Trading Post was first filled with Native American wares from the Denver Art Museum.

Over the years, there have been several versions of stories about ghosts inhabiting the grounds around the building itself.

It was an especially intriguing assignment for Baxter and Bonner, perhaps familiar in their roles as Internet radio hosts at warningradio.info

They admit they are trying to get the mainstream to accept the paranormal field.

“After they look at you weird then they get really interested to find out what you might know,” Baxter said, noting he is not a “ghost hunter.” “It is a proper term. It’s not the proper term for me. They (ghost hunters) tend to be having a lot more fun with it and scaring each other and things like that. Because you sit in the dark, completely silent staring at monitors.”

With 12 video cameras, seismometers, electromagnetic frequency monitors and other equipment, the team moved in around 6 p.m. as self-described skeptics.

“And we absolutely aren’t non-believers. You have to be able to go into this with a completely open mind. And if you don’t, you’re going to skew it one way or the other. We’re skeptics by true definition. We want to bring real research into the field,” Bonner said.

They have been stumped before though.

On the Fourth of July in 2008 their video cameras were rolling at the Yak and Yeti restaurant in Arvada when one of the chairs appeared to move on its own.

“The manager there believes the ghost there, Cora, will fold the chairs out and fold them the way they’re supposed to be,” Baxter said.

In January 2007, it was the Bullock Hotel in Deadwood, S.D., where Bonner and Baxter had cameras rolling as a ball placed on a chair rolled forward, rather than backward as it had been doing.

“But after two hours of sitting there, for some reason, it decides to roll uphill. And we couldn’t recreate that for anything. We actually tied helium balloons the next night to every one of the chairs to show that there was no air flow,” Baxter said.

They take pride in their work but do not accept payment for their investigations and have come to rely on public places more than private homes in recent years.

“And now we really have to filter through the private homes calling (us) due to bad paranormal television,” Bonner said.

Bonner is especially critical of “Paranormal State” and “Ghost Hunters”, airing on A&E and the SciFi Channel.

At the Trading Post, the group spent six hours looking for any unexplained events, but found none.

They hope to return later this summer to spend more time searching for the alleged Red Rocks Ghost.

Full source: The Denver Channel