Who Ya Gonna Call? The ARC
Carlotta Cooper
Special to TriCities.com
Sep 20, 2:00 PM EDT
On a pleasant Saturday evening in Erwin, Tennessee, a group of some twenty citizens from the Tri-Cities area gathered together in the local library to hear the latest news. Such meetings, devoted to special interests, are common everywhere. But this one is a little different. The subject of this meeting is "alternate realities," and topics include mysterious lights in Mosheim, Bigfoot sightings, UFOs, cattle mutilations, abductions, and ghost hunting. The meetings are held by the Alternate Realities Center (also known as "the ARC"), an international organization presided over by Stacey Allen McGee, with help from Michael Combs. They're not ghostbusters, but they do carry out investigations into the paranormal, and starting October 1, they'll be offering paranormal tours of the region.
The Alternate Realities Center has been around for ten years and they are celebrating with an impressive Tenth Year Anniversary Conference. According to McGee, this will be the biggest and best conference the organization has ever presented. The 2004 conference will be held at The Centre at Millennium Park, adjacent to the Carnegie Hotel in Johnson City on Saturday, September 25. There will be vendors, live music, and beautiful art displays to enjoy before, during, and after the conference. And, there will be an optional guided tour called "Haunted ETSU," examining the haunted history of one of Tennessee's oldest universities, on Saturday evening.
Speakers at the conference include Donald M. Ware, LTC (USAF) presenting two different lectures entitled "Planet X A Philosophical View" and "The Spiritual Hierarchy: Many Forms of Intelligent Beings." Leah Haley will be speaking on the content of her new book Unlocking Alien Closets. Haley, whose book is reportedly in the top ten percent of sales on Amazon.com, will also be autographing copies. Bill Stanley will present a feature on Zecharia Sitchin. And Stacey Allen McGee, founder and director of the ARC, a native of upper East Tennessee, will present a preview of his forthcoming book to be called Time, Space, and Thought...Journeys In Metaphysics.
The conference will also feature "ambient electronic music" by The Amaranth Signal. The Amaranth Signal is a group of three East Tennessee musicians on the cutting edge of today's music. They are connected with musicians in different parts of the world, but at the same time have never lost their connection to their immediate environment, "to the valleys and hills, and to the simple but profound music of Appalachia."
Another first for this year's annual event will be an exhibition of limited edition Space art prints from the private collection of Mike Chesman, Director of Bays Mountain Park's Planetarium in Kingsport, Tennessee. Conference-goers will be able to browse beautifully unique and inspirational Space art prints which will also be available for purchase. The artists represented in the exhibit include Armand Cabrera, Michael Carroll, Dennis Davidson, Don Davis, Dan Durda, Bob Eggleton, Dr. William K. Hartmann, Kim Poor, and Joe Tucciarone.
The cost for attending the one-day conference, which includes access to all speakers and presentations, is a minimum donation. There is a twenty-five percent discount for students with their school I.D. if registration is received in advance. Advance registration is strongly recommended for this year's event as seating is limited. For more information about the ARC's 2004 Conference, please visit
http://Www.AlternateRealities.orG/thearc2004.html.
A special feature at this year's conference is the optional "Haunted ETSU" tour on Saturday evening. East Tennessee State University is located immediately across the street from the Carnegie Hotel, so it's an easy walk for conference-goers. The walking tour is the first of its kind for the ARC and will take participants on a ghostly tour of one of Tennessee's oldest universities to share the legends, stories and unusual happenings of the university's past and present. The tour can be a fun and exciting way to learn about the area's past and a chance to experience the unexplained.
Due to the interest the tour has already elicited, multiple guides will be conducting simultaneous tours on Saturday evening, September 25, but the groups are limited in size, and advance reservations are required. The tours are open to people not attending the conference. Check-in for the tours is at 7:30 pm, and they will leave at 8:00 pm. Tickets for the tours are for both conference-goers and non-conference attendees. Tickets for children 12 and under at .
In addition to the upcoming tour at the conference, the ARC is branching out to offer haunted tours throughout the East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia region. Created by McGee, the ARC tours will initially focus on ETSU in Tennessee and on Abingdon in Virginia, a town well-known to ghost-lovers, before expanding later to other towns, including historic Jonesborough, Tennessee, and Gatlinburg. McGee and the ARC's Executive Vice President, Michael Combs, along with Vice President of Operations, Susan James, have been researching the haunted homes and sites of the region and will be relating the legends connected with the stops on their tour. What's unique about their tours, however, are the paranormal investigations they carry out on haunted places.
At the September meeting in Erwin, McGee and Combs demonstrated an impressive array of ghost-hunting apparatus, including a handheld electro-magnetometer to measure electro-magnetic fields, an infrared laser device to take thermal readings in a room, an infrared video camera to document orb phenomena, a digital audio recorder with a broad spectrum microphone to record "electronic voice phenomena," as well as old-fashioned dowsing rods and a good digital camera.
McGee and his staff seem to be more than usually qualified to conduct tours of the paranormal. McGee attended school for Airline Travel and Tourism at the National Career Institue in Tampa, Florida, and has worked extensively in the travel industry for many years. He and his staff have also taken accredited classes from a community college in Lexington, Kentucky, and studied paranormal investigation techniques to become certified paranormal investigators. They plan for the ARC to offer courses in paranormal investigation in the future. The ghostwalks offered by the ARC will feature discussions of the evidence obtained from their first-hand paranormal investigations of current haunting activity within suspect sites on their
tours.
McGee and Combs have already carried out paranormal investigations at the Martha Washington Inn in Abingdon (16 spirits -- one female, 14 years old; 15 males in their 20s and 30s from the time when The Martha was a Civil War hospital, according to McGee), and the Netherland Inn in Kingsport. They were heading to The Tavern, said to be the most haunted building in Abingdon, after the meeting. They did return, apparently unscathed (at least in body), from The Tavern, and they'll be discussing their experiences at the next ARC meeting on Saturday, October 1, at 6:00 pm at the Unicoi County Public Library, located at 201 Nolichucky Avenue, in Erwin, Tennessee. The meetings are free and open to the public.
The ARC's Abingdon tour will include detailed discussions of McGee and Combs' investigations at the Martha Washington Inn, the Barter Theatre and The Tavern. According to McGee, the ARC plans to offer all-inclusive packages with their tours in the near-future, which will include dinner and hotel accommodations at haunted sites. Check the organization's website,
http://www.alternaterealities.org/thearctours.html for more information about the ghostwalks or for links to information about the 2004 conference or upcoming meetings. You can email Stacy Allen McGee at
[email protected]. The hotline for extraordinary experiences, sightings and information is (423) 943-6477.
Was it something that was supposed to have happened a long time ago?