LARAMIE — When the green light flashed on the triangle-shaped device set on the floor, there was a pause in the conversation between a small group gathered for a late-night ghost hunt in the historic Laramie Plains Civic Center.
According to the ghost hunters of Way Out West Paranormal, a green light indicates a “yes” answer from spirit.
Is It Haunted? Depends On Who You Ask
Had a ghost responded positively to somebody’s question? Or had the light simply been triggered by a slight change in air pressure or ambient vibrations in the immense old building?
That could be up to the beholder
Cowboy State Daily joined Way Out West Paranormal for several hours chasing ghosts in the Civic Center at 710 E. Garfield St., one of Wyoming’s oldest and most celebrated buildings.
The guide that night was Ben Anderson, the Civic Center’s director of building operations.
He probably spends more time in the building than anyone, at all hours of the day and night. And he’s unconvinced that the building is haunted. Instead, he said, the supposedly paranormal activity has mundane explanations. That said, he also said he understands why some think the vast 167,000-square-foot building is haunted.
Odd sounds and vibrations coming from the boilers in the basement, the voices of live people traveling through the network of ductwork and other such things account for most, if not all, of the ghost stories surrounding the Laramie Plains Civic Center, Anderson said.
Arron BlackBurn, who founded Way Out West Paranormal, has a different view.
By the end of the ghost hunt, he concluded that there is at least one unearthly presence in the Civic Center, and that it had likely been following the group as Anderson took them to nearly every corner of the place.
He couldn’t surmise much about the ghost, other than it was friendly, probably just curious and a little shy.
Indeed, there doesn’t seem to be anything wicked or frightening going on in the Civic Center, BlackBurn and the other ghost hunters agreed.
If there is any supernatural energy within those old walls, it’s overwhelmingly positive, they said.
Anderson said he wasn’t concerned about ghosts before, because he doesn’t think they exist. And if there is ever any proof presented to him that would overcome his skepticism, he still wouldn’t be worried.
“Even if there are any ghosts here, evidently they’re friendly and they’re not going to bother me when I’m working,” he said.
The Perfect Setting For A Ghost Story
Believers and skeptics alike agreed that if there ever was a perfect setting for a ghost story, or perhaps even a spooky blockbuster movie, the Civic Center would be it.
To say the place is huge is an understatement. At the north entrance, the lobby for the Gryphon Theater is grand. It feels like stepping back into the 1920s.
Especially when there are shows or other events in the theatre, it’s crowded and full of activity.
BlackBurn and his wife, Gina, said the lobby seemed to be one of the most “active” places in the building for spirits.
That makes sense, said Gina, who is intuitively sensitive to spirits.
While the living might imagine that ghosts hang out in spooky, dark nooks and crannies — and the Civic Center has plenty of those — many ghosts like being around people, she said.
They’re just as active during the day as they are at night.
“It’s just at night, when everything is quiet, we’re more likely to notice them,” she said.
The theatre itself was inaccessible that night because of remodeling work, but it’s impressive.
Across the hallway from the theatre doors is the Kenny Sailors Gymnasium, named for the famed University of Wyoming basketball player.
But the lobby, theater and gym combined are just barely scratching the surface of what’s in the Laramie Plains Civic Center.
Three full floors of hallways seem to go on forever, and because it was built in sections over time, many parts of it can feel like a maze, all too easy to get turned around in.
There’s another larger gymnasium on the south end and an old band room that makes up the partial fourth floor. And there’s a gigantic basement in three sections that include an old indoor rifle range and a full-sized swimming pool that was never used.
The paranormal team stops briefly in the south gym of the civic center while conducting their investigation. There is an occupied apartment with a door inside the gym that often confuses visitors with various noises. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
The paranormal team stops briefly in the south gym of the civic center while conducting their investigation. There is an occupied apartment with a door inside the gym that often confuses visitors with various noises. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
The paranormal team stops briefly in the south gym of the civic center while conducting their investigation. There is an occupied apartment with a door inside the gym that often confuses visitors with various noises. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
The paranormal team stops briefly in the south gym of the civic center while conducting their investigation. There is an occupied apartment with a door inside the gym that often confuses visitors with various noises. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
The paranormal team stops briefly in the south gym of the civic center while conducting their investigation. There is an occupied apartment with a door inside the gym that often confuses visitors with various noises. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
Building operations director Ben Anderson sits on the floor during a paranormal investigation of the civic center. Anderson does not believe in ghosts and provided various explanations for paranormal phenomena in the building. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
An unrenovated room on the third floor is used for storage and other uses. Building operations director, Ben Anderson, has been restoring and renovating various rooms throughout the civic center during his time there. A large number of spaces still remain original, however. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
A maintenance corridor is seen at the Laramie Plains Civic Center just outside the boiler room. Rooms like these often produce noises that are thought to be of paranormal origin, said building operations director Ben Anderson. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
A set of boilers is pictured in the basement of the Laramie Plains Civic Center. The boilers originally used coal and were fueled by coal chutes just across the room. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
An asbestos hazard sign is pictured in the basement of Laramie Plains Civic Center. Asbestos was used throughout the original building and has slowly been removed since it was converted into a civic center. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
Wyoming’s Oldest Brick School
The building dates back to the 1870s, and for most of its existence it was a school.
The original Laramie East Side school, built in 1878, was Wyoming’s first brick schoolhouse.
Though it now sits in what would be considered the middle of Laramie, at that time it was quite a way east of anything else, hence the name, Anderson said.
The original, square two-story structure still makes up the heart of the Civic Center. There was an addition in the 1920s, and another in the 1930s.
For many years, it was the Laramie High School, and Sailors was a student there. Then it became the Laramie Junior High School, which shut down in the late 1970s.
For several years, the building sat more-or-less abandoned until it was rechristened as the Civic Center in the 1980s.
Activity there has grown over the decades. Until even 10 years or so ago, much of was still empty.
Now it’s buzzing with life every day, Anderson said.
Nearly all the old classrooms and other spaces are occupied. Some have become studios for artists. There’s also a couple of radio stations, two churches, nonprofit and government offices, a day care and various other small businesses.
A family also rents an apartment in one corner of the building in space that used to be the caretaker’s living quarters.
Save for the visitors and their guide, the building seemed completely empty on the night of the ghost hunt. But Anderson said that almost certainly wasn’t the case.
“You’re almost never completely alone in this building,” he said. “There’s always the artist who feels inspired to come in and work at 3 a.m.”
Such activity at odd hours might also account for some of the “ghost” stories,” he added.
Let’s Go On A Ghost Hunt
Some ghost hunting outfits are campy and flashy, but Arron BlackBurn said his group takes a more measured, low-key and respectful approach.
“We’re not here to conjure anything up. We’re here to investigate and see if we get any response,” he said.
He and Jason Smith take the “gadget” approach. Using devices that invite ghost to trip lights, or otherwise make their presence known.
A device called a “spirit box” scans rapidly between various radio channels. It’s thought that ghosts can give voice responses through the white noise between stations, BlackBurn said.
Gina BlackBurn and Jackie Suntrup take the intuitive approach, as “sensitives,” or people who can pick up feelings, or perhaps even mental messages from spirits.
Gina BlackBurn said the activity seemed low-key that evening. The only clear message she got was down in the basement boiler room, which she felt that a child told her “you’re so brave.”
There were a couple of occasions during the hunt when lights seemed to turn on with no plausible explanation. And the spirit box seemed to render a couple of intriguing responses.
Such as, “maybe,” when the question was posed in the old rifle range whether anybody spirits hanging out there had been a good shot back in the day.
Despite the lack of anything too dramatic happening, Arron BlackBurn said the night’s hunt was far from disappointing.
It’s not unusual for the group’s first go-around in a new place to be fairly quiet, he said. After all, ghosts, just like living people, need time to adjust to new company.
“We’d definitely like to come back here and do more investigations,” he said.
Anderson agreed that would be fun.
“I would like to see them come back here and see what new evidence they might find,” he said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
