Things that go bump in the night could soon make cha-ching at Royal Oak City Hall.
Royal Oak city officials gave unanimous approval this week for a club of 15 ghost hunters to conduct paid tours of the city's oldest structure, a 19th-Century farmhouse owned by the city and said by some to be inhabited by spirits, including a spectral German shepherd.
For each tour ticket, the city is to get $20 for history programs; $5 will go to a Warren-based group of ghost-hunting hobbyists, who seem to seriously believe that the Orson Starr House, built in 1845 by a farmer and cowbell maker, is still inhabited by some form of Orson Starr — and his dog.
"We have an older man down in the basement, we've heard children laughing and there's a woman that people have heard as well," said Candace Isaacson, treasurer of the Royal Oak Historical Commission, of the house at 3123 N. Main.
Isaacson, 50, is a member of a Warren-based, 15-member club of ghost-hunting hobbyists called Into the Afterlife Paranormal. She considers herself an experienced investigator of things that go bump, or bark, in the night.
"We actually had a German shepherd caught on film, years ago, in the coal chute, if you can believe it. That's in the file," Isaacson said.
The human urge to communicate with the dead is surely ageless. But cultural historians say it rose dramatically in the mid-to-late 1800s, about the time that Orson Starr pounded out the cowbells he was known to sell in the cattle-grazing days of Oakland County.
By the 1920s, séances in darkened rooms were held by fashionable families with Ouija boards operated by professional mediums, who claimed they could communicate with the dead — a scenario pictured in this year's Woody Allen film, "Magic in the Moonlight." The phenomenon of ghost-hunting, although its roots are clearly ancient, has been popularized by the availability of low-cost electronic meters that online sites and paranormal hobbyists claim can detect ghosts.
Royal Oak's leaders said the ghost-hunting tours will add up to innocent fun plus potential revenue.
"I can't confirm or deny" whether ghosts roam on moonlit nights at the Orson Starr House, said Royal Oak City Commissioner Mike Fournier.
"Certainly, there's a market out there for this type of thing. And it gets people over there to learn a little bit about Royal Oak history, and we're all for that," Fournier said.
A memo prepared for city commissioners said the ghost tours would be "led by a guide who tells stories about the history and legends of the property (and) typically includes a discussion of the alleged ghosts on-site and prior paranormal activity reported."
The memo cited the ghost-hunters' website — www.intotheafterlifeparanormal.com/ — created by the club's founder Brian Danhausen, 42, of Warren. Danhausen, author of the month-old self-published book "Into the Afterlife: Paranormal World," said he'd visited the Orson Starr house three times. He's a believer.
"We've captured some EVPs out there, electronic voice phenomena, that we believe are spirit voices. The logbooks out there say that people have heard voices, heard footsteps, seen shadows in front of their eyes," he said.
Danhausen and his ghost-hunting partner, wife Darlene Danhausen, won't start the tours until May. But they're keeping busy.
"We have an investigation going this Saturday in Clawson. We do a lot of client houses. We try to help people if they're having haunting problems," he said.
Royal Oak's decision upset a prominent ghost skeptic.
"When you allow ghost tours to operate, you are sanctioning mysticism and pseudo-science," said Joe Nickell, former magician and former Pinkerton detective, now an investigative writer for Skeptical Inquirer magazine. It's published by a nonprofit group of scientists called the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry in Amherst, N.Y.
Nickell, author of dozens of books, said he was sorry to hear that a suburb of Detroit had approved ghost tours.
"I have investigated so-called hauntings for more than 40 years and I've never found a ghost," he said. The motive for ghost hunting is as old as the human wish for immortality, Nickell said.
"Most people don't want to believe that you actually die. This gives them the promise that your spirit lives on somewhere," he said.
But by allowing the tours, Royal Oak won't change any minds, said Keith Howarth,, 60, owner of the Noir Leather boutique in the city's downtown. Instead, the move helps the city keep its reputation of being a hip spot that pushes the pop-culture envelope, he said.
"I remember when all the cars were off the streets by 5 o'clock," said Howarth, who opened his first Royal Oak apparel shop in 1983. It attracted teens with green hair and torn jeans long before that was cool. Now, Howarth is on the Royal Oak Arts Commission, an insider who helped spark the downtown's rebirth from blue-collar backwater to hipster hub and soon, perhaps, paranormal playground.
Nearby, at Gayle's Chocolates, Gayle Harte — another Royal Oak pioneer in hip retailing — said she endorsed all ghost hunting.
"I've always thought there's ghosts in my building," said Harte, 67. "Things fall off the shelves for no reason."
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