Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

Not too long ago, I had a fun afternoon visiting Potter County with Swartz Paranormal Investigations.

Swartz Paranormal Investigations is run by my good friend Tim Swartz, and consists of mainly himself and his family, plus a few close friends. They have all the equipment, uniforms, and even a Facebook page. Go look them up—I’m sure they’d be happy to have you follow them.

Tim had heard about the Germania Hotel in Potter County. Built in 1856 by the Mueller family, this place is said to be haunted by at least three ghosts, all on the second floor. Now, if you’re reading this and thinking that ghosts aren’t just for Halloween, get with the program—Places are haunted all year long. So we decided to ride up and have a meal there, and maybe talk about planning an investigation sometime.

The hotel lies along Germania Road near Galeton, a little over an hour from Lock Haven. When we walked in, it was like one of those old wild west movies where the guy walks into a tavern, the music shuts off, and everyone turns to stare at them.

And then all the customers smiled and greeted us. “Ghost hunters!” they all cheered. “Come on in! You find anything yet?”

Apparently paranormal investigators are not an unusual occurrence in the Germania Hotel.

Tim began asking the bartender about maybe scheduling a time we could come and do an investigation—It’s rude and unprofessional to just show up and assume you can investigate, so you want to talk things over with the owners and find a good time for them. The bartender, though, didn’t mind us being there, and casually waved a hand toward the stairs. “Sure, go ahead. You got the run of the place.”

So we went upstairs. Currently, the place is being renovated, so nobody lives up there. We had the whole second floor to ourselves, and we did the usual thing and took some readings. EMF detectors, cameras, digital recorders, laser thermometers, infrared cameras, we pulled it all out.

It was a fantastic time. Almost immediately, I got some EMF readings in two of the rooms. EMF stands for electromagnetic field, and it’s a way of measuring electricity. Now, there shouldn’t have been any, because all the power to the floor was shut off. But I got some interesting and suspicious readings, which is a good result.
And Tim got a photo.

Now, over the course of a paranormal investigation career, you see lots of things that could be evidence. Recordings with little sounds in them. The occasional weird photo. A lot of it is pretty open to interpretation, but every once in a while, you get a prize—A bit of evidence that really stands out.

I was standing in one of the rooms with Tim when he took it. The photo was taken with his infrared camera, which shows heat. Now, again, the heat was turned off at the time. So you can see shades of blue and green where the cold is leeching out the windows, a little change in the walls and floors, and so on.

And right there, in bright pinks are oranges, is the shape of humanoid legs, walking where nobody was standing.
It’s a pretty impressive piece of evidence, and I’m pleased we got it. And after the investigation, we went down and had dinner. If you happen to get up that way, make sure you stop by—The food was excellent, and the ghosts were great, too.