“Paranormal” is a broad term. Whatever images that term conjures depends on personal experiences for some and for others, their religious beliefs. We use all kinds of words to describe spooky experiences. Words like ghosts, demons, poltergeists, spirits, haints, shadow people, the dead, the un-dead. It’s fun to have an open mind when it comes to explaining the “unexplained.”
Written by Jessica Crenshaw
Always one for a good scare, when the opportunity came to tag along with an all-female paranormal investigation team for a night, I jumped on it. I’ve scared myself in cemeteries with home-made Ouija boards. I’ve scared myself in dark rooms with cameras. I’ve scared myself walking through the woods at night (friendly reminder: if you hear something calling your name in the dark woods, no you didn’t). What I experienced with the Arkansas Ghost Catchers was less spook and more giggle.
Smiling in the Face of Spooky
The “before” picture of the Arkansas Ghost Catchers Team (left to right): Jeri Hardcastle, Linda Howell, Trisha Wilkison (on the phone with Cheryl Waldmer), co-founder and lead investigator Rhonda Burton and Cathy May.
From the get-go, the women who made up the investigative team were all smiles. When they met outside our proposed location for investigation on the sidewalk, the teammates hugged and exchanged small life updates while unloading their gear.
Trisha was on the phone with Cheryl, who was running late and didn’t make it for our first group photo, the “before” picture, because she was caught in wreck traffic near Mayflower, but she arrived only ten minutes late, Ozzy Osbourne on full blast. Linda asked me who was playing at Riverfront Park, then laughed when she realized the music was Cheryl’s.
After a quick location tour and the full team in place, the women unloaded their equipment. Cameras, electro-magnetic frequency meters, otherworldly-looking gadgets, high-tech laser motion sensors, heat-detecting instruments, and recording equipment took up almost an entire room.
As the click-click of plastic and metal connectors filled the space, so did conversation. Cheryl put a bag of lemon cookies on the table, fuel for the evening. She joked about eating the entire bag herself while showing off a new piece of equipment to the team. Cheryl gifted Rhonda a t-shirt and everyone laughed.
The Team
Arkansas Ghost Catchers got its start in 2008. The group began investigating public spaces known for paranormal activity. They’ve investigated the MacAuthor Museum of Arkansas Military History and Curran Hall, both Little Rock buildings constructed in the 1800s. They’ve explored the Arkansas Tuberculosis Sanatorium near Booneville, the Old State House Museum and Dreamland Ballroom in downtown Little Rock, plus countless private houses and spaces throughout the Quapaw Quarter.
Top: Cathy unpacks gear. Rhonda readying her EVP recording equipment. Bottom: Linda has the best ghost stories. Cheryl and Jeri test out the tech. Trisha is all smiles.
Rhonda Burton is the co-founder of the group and the lead investigator. She specializes in electronic voice phenomenon, or EVPs. “I was always intrigued by my grandfather’s ghost stories,” she remembers. When she was 14, her mom subscribed to Fate Magazine; the magazine’s tagline boasts that it’s “celebrating over 75 years of covering the strange and unknown.”
The Ghost Hunters TV show sparked her interest again “later in life,” she says. “I was just so intrigued by it.”
After watching her first episode, Rhonda immediately investigated her husband’s office. “I got the poo scared out of me,” she laughs. “That was my first investigation attempt, and when I started trying to find a group.” Rhonda joined a group and learned about paranormal investigating, finding she had a particular interest in EVPs. “I joined the American Association – Electronic Voice Phenomena (AA-EVP) and started experimenting in electronic voice phenomena and it took off.”
This year marks Rhonda’s twelfth year teaching a paranormal investigation class through the University of Arkansas – Pulaski Technical College’s Community Education Program. Her next event will be at the Old State House Museum, a fundraiser through the Arkansas Statehouse Society. “It’s a class in investigation, and in a place that is absolutely unbelievable as far as spirits go,” she says. Fun fact: Interest in the paranormal runs in her family. Rhonda’s daughter, Heather Amaro, has expanded her Arkansas ghost hunts to worldwide adventures as a co-host on Discovery’s Expedition X where she and a team goes out chasing cryptids, tracking strange phenomena, and poking around in scary places. Heather still joins the Arkansas Ghost Catchers team on investigations when her production schedule allows.“She is so sensitive,” says Rhonda. “She is a natural ghost detector.” Be sure to check out the episode filmed in Fouke, Arkansas—Season 9, Episode 2, titled “The Beast of Boggy Creek.” You can stream episodes of Expedition X on Discovery+ or HBO Max.
Mother-daughter duo Rhonda Burton and Heather Amaro have spent years exploring Arkansas’s eeriest spaces and organizing the state’s only Paranormal Expo. Heather has hosted the event since its first year in 2011 and will return to host again this year. Expedition X, airing on the Discovery Channel, follows host Josh Gates, biologist Phil Torres, and investigator Heather Amaro as they travel the globe exploring the unknown.
Cheryl Waldmer is the team psychic and high-tech paranormal equipment expert, developing and building instruments she tests and perfects before passing along for Heather and her Expedition X team. “This is exactly what Heather uses,” Cheryl says as she shows off a piece of equipment. Technology has come a long way in the paranormal investigative world. “The equipment we have,” says Cheryl, “it’s very intriguing and I really enjoy working with it.” Cheryl’s husband has worked in the tech field his entire career, so it was just natural that the two teamed up to figure out how to create the instruments they use.
Cheryl’s relationship with the paranormal has been a lifelong journey. “It’s always been a part of my life,” she explains. “I have seen them and heard them [the dead] before I even knew how to talk.” Psychic abilities run through her maternal family line. “My mother and grandmother always supported me.” Cheryl says a visit to meet Carol Pate with her mom was a defining moment. Carol is a nationally-known psychic with a center located on the outskirts of Little Rock. “She mentored me,” says Cheryl, “and my mother as well.” It was Carol who initially connected Rhonda and Cheryl. After moving back to Arkansas from Kansas City where she worked as a psychic, Cheryl was restless. Carol suggested she needed to work and told her to reach out to Rhonda. “Carol is a dear friend,” Cheryl told me.
Cathy May, a former coworker and friend, is my connection to this group of lady scare-chasers. She is the team photographer and has been with Arkansas Ghost Catchers from the start. “I’ve always had a keen interest in the paranormal and anything out of the ordinary,” she explains. She recounts an experience from the investigation at Mountain Village 1890. “We were in a blacksmith’s shop and he was also a coffin maker. And there was a coffin we thought was empty. One of the investigators said, ‘Oh, take a picture of me!’ She leans back into the coffin and then all of a sudden she came flying out screaming: ‘Something touched me, something touched me!’” After the investigation, when she reviewed her photos, “I zoomed in and there it was,” Cathy laughs. “A big moth. She must have disturbed it when she entered the coffin.”
“I’m very skeptical, but enthusiastically interested.”
Cathy May
Linda Howell, a team member for over 15 years, works at the Oakland and Fraternal Historic Cemetery Park. She’seven written a book about her experiences. You can buy Haunted Little Rock directly from the author at her Paranormal Expo booth at MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History in Little Rock this Saturday and Sunday, October 25-26. She’ll also be selling copper dowsing rods handcrafted by the sexton at Oakland and Fraternal Cemetery Park.
“I like to go somewhere alone and talk to ghosts with dowsing rods,” Linda told me.
“Once I told a ghost that I had to rest my wrists. He got restless and threw the rods open very wide as if to say NO. I told him to ‘calm down!’” Linda says her investigations and working at the cemetery hasn’t influenced her perception of death or dying, but, “it has a mournful affect on me.” If you don’t make it to the Expo, you can buy Linda’s book at most book stores, plus Walgreens, MacArthur Military Museum, and Cracker Barrel. Linda says she was honored to learn her book provided much-needed entertainment at a local Cracker Barrel one winter night when employees were stranded during inclement weather.
Jeri Hardcastle, part of the Arkansas Ghost Catchers team for more than a decade, manned an iPad that was connected to a “Kinect SLS camera” that scanned for energies which appeared on screen as stick figures. “As long as I can remember I believed in the unknown,” says Jeri, “but when I started seeing shadows and things happening in my home I wanted to learn.” She says she signed up for Rhonda’s paranormal class and the rest is history.
Trisha Wilkison, quick to laugh, has been with the team for more than a decade. At our investigation, she held onto a large instrument that projected a laser field of dots onto surfaces. She said when a spirit moved through, the dots would be disturbed and we’d know an entity was nearby. “I usually operate the infra-red/night vision camera, watching the room for changes in temperature or general unexplained spots in and around everyone,” she explains. “I will also carry other equipment that we need for specific locations.”
Rhonda says her team came together over the course of a few years. She met Cathy around 2004 when both were part of a different team: “I know her from all the way from the first. Linda, of course, I met through Curran Hall because she was working there,” says Rhonda. “Trish is like a daughter.” Jeri is perfect for the group, she says, because of “her energy and sweetness.” Rhonda says she met Cheryl at the Paranormal Expo about a decade ago. “She’s like a walking radar.”
The Investigation
Cheryl set up motion sensors and Rhonda set up her EVP recording system. An EVP is a sound found on electronic recordings that is interpreted as spirit voices and is generally accepted as proof of spirit contact.
Several of the devices that enable EVP scan radio stations, so broadcast fuzz and random bits of chatter are amplified through small speakers while an investigator asks questions and listens for answers in the radio hiss, all the while recording the entire cacophony. Motion sensors were screaming and radio sounds buzzing—it all got a bit overwhelming and I’ll admit to grabbing my coworker’s sweater in fright when I learned the unrelenting shrill alarm we kept hearing was two motion sensors taking turns going off at either end of an empty hallway. As if someone unseen was walking up and down the hallway. Yep, I’ll admit that part gave me a start.
The investigation moved around the space as members of the team took turns asking questions and listening for answers. Cathy took photos, Linda used her dowsing rods and the team worked together to sense responses from “spirits.” The group combines old school techniques like historic research, psychic abilities, and dowsing rods with high tech equipment for their paranormal research studies. The tools the women use are impressive. Take a look at their equipment list here.
I’ll have to wait to share the Arkansas Ghost Catcher team’s findings because the team is still filtering through the data they gathered. “The work after the physical investigation takes so much time,” says Rhonda.
It was such a pleasure watching the women interact and share inside jokes about people… and ghosts. “We all have a special bond,” says Jeri. “We like to have fun, but get serious when sounds and shadows start happening.” Linda says they have so much fun because they are friends who share an appreciation for the unknown. “We have the best group of girls and we absolutely enjoy each other’s company,” says Trisha. “We do get creeped out and some situations get intense but we all work together to get through it. We always try to keep things light and positive. We do not want to attract bad energy.”
“We’ve been together now for about 15 years,” says Rhonda.
Rhonda says they are like “work buddies” who have become friends.“We know each other so well.” Cheryl says it’s hard sometimes for the group to coordinate schedules, but they talk all the time. “We just work really well as a team,” explains Cheryl. “We don’t go bowling. We go ghost hunting.” Jeri says it best: “We all have trust in each other.”
Meet the Team at the Expo
If this ghost talk has you curious, you can meet the Arkansas Ghost Catchers in person at the Arkansas Paranormal Expo, Saturday–Sunday, October 25–26, at the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History at 503 East 9th Street in Little Rock. The event runs from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. both days. Admission is $10 per day (kids under 12 are free), and tickets are sold at the door. You’ll find keynote speakers, vendors, psychic readings from Cheryl, a raffle and silent auction, and even a Bigfoot-calling contest at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday. The Arkansas Paranormal Expo benefits the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History, each year the event raises funds to help preserve the haunted, historic building. Learn more: https://www.arkansasparanormalexpo.com
Final Thought: Linda shared a paranormal coffee experience too good not to share. “It was late one night at Curran Hall,” Linda sets the scene. “The meeting was about to break up. I was with another employee in the room… when the coffee maker began to make coffee! It was turned off, unplugged and had no water or coffee grounds, yet coffee was coming out. And it smelled like coffee! We were mesmerized to say the least. Would you have drank the coffee? I didn’t want to. I rushed it to the kitchen to pour out because it was overflowing. I just knew that when I poured it down the sink, a green mist would come out, but nothing happened. I guess the ghost went down the drain!” I can’t say for certain, but I think Linda may have been holding a flashlight under her chin when she emailed me this story.
Jessica Crenshaw serves as Editor in Chief and Director of Programming at Arkansas Strong. A self-proclaimed “Arkansawyer,” she enjoys writing about interesting people and beautiful places in her home state. She was the Independence County 4-H BB Gun Champion in 1988 (date unconfirmed) and at the age of 12 was awarded a Grand Champion prize at the Independence County Fair for her cornbread-making skills.
