The totally immersive ghost story experience for adults promises to make a paranormal believer out of anyone.
Note: Since this article was published, the October 15, 2022 event has reached its participant limit. The organizers of the event have therefore added a second day, which is 8:00 p.m. on Friday, October 21, 2022. Spots may be reserved at the same link below. Participants are limited to a total of 25 people.
A local couple claims that Downtown Waxahachie has a ghost population and they want to prove it to you during a fundraising event that’s just in time for Halloween.
Happening at 8:00 p.m. on October 15, 2022 at the Odd Fellows building at 210 South Rogers Street in Downtown Waxahachie, the Become a Ghost Hunter event will offer a 3-hour tour of the I.O.O.F. building that Waxahachie residents and famous ghost hunters Sandy and Andy Emmons purport is rife with paranormal activity.
The cost of the tour is $20 per person and is limited to 25 participants, 16 years old or older. Tickets must be purchased in advance through the event’s Paypal page. If the event sells out early enough, an additional tour may be scheduled in the weeks that follow. Proceeds raised from the tour will fund the Odd Fellows scholarship program for local high school graduates.
The building to be toured was originally built in 1891 as the Texas Mortgage Banking Company. The financial institution operated on the first floor, and additional businesses and doctors offices were located on the second floor. After a fire destroyed the initial Odd Fellows building located elsewhere, the local Independent Order of Odd Fellows chapter purchased the mortgage building in 1911, renovated the structure and held its first meeting in their new chapter headquarters the following year. The building has served ever since then as the local I.O.O.F. building.
“The lodge has a history of some hauntings, and there’s several eyewitness accounts and documented evidence,” says Sandy, who’s become known as a paranormal expert. “We will start it off in the lodge dining hall. We’ll give a background of the building; we’ll give a background of the Odd Fellows; we’ll give them some of the ghost stories that have happened, [and] we have a whole array of of paranormal equipment in what we’ll do.
“We have what they call a R.E.M. pod. And basically what a R.E.M. pod will do is it uses a miniature telescopic antenna to radiate its own E.M.F., which is an electromagnetic field, and it can be easily influenced by materials and objects that conduct electricity. So, this is something that if something gets close to it, you will see it react.
“And what we’ll really do a lot of is what’s called an E.V.P session, where it’s electro-voice phenomenon, and we’ll use what’s called an S.B.7 Spirit Box. And it uses radio frequency sweeps — it just sweeps stations … like radio stations that are out there to generate a white noise, which in theory, gives some of the entities the energy that that they need to communicate. And so you actually hear voices coming through the static — and it’s not just radio … you can hear answers [to questions] in real time.”
Both I.O.O.F. members, Sandy and Andy Emmons have gained fame as paranormal investigators. As co-founders of Wide Awake Paranormal, they have led tours of purportedly haunted historic buildings throughout the state, including the Catfish Plantation restaurant in Waxahachie and the French Legation Museum in Austin. Also known as the Texas Haint Hunters, the two have traveled from Savannah, Georgia to Tombstone, Arizona on ghost hunting expeditions. They’ve investigated with Syfy Network personalities Dustin Peri with Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters International and John Zaffis with Haunted Collector. They’ve also appeared on shows such as my Ghost Story for the A&E Biography Channel and the Travel Channel and other ghost-hunting episodes on the Discovery Channel.
About the Odd Fellows Building tour, Sandy says the event can be described as a totally immersive, ghost story experience and that both believers in paranormal claims and skeptics alike can enjoy the tour.
“We’ll do a little explanation on each piece of the equipment so people will understand what we’re doing when we’re doing it. But it’s very interactive,” Sandy says. “It’s an interactive entertainment … it is fun. I mean, we do laugh a lot because you never know what’s going to happen. And you never know what other people are going to say either. We’ve seen people that don’t believe in anything — they don’t believe it — they laugh at it — but then when something actually comes through, they tend to be the ones that are the first out the door scared.”