Seiter still scary

COEUR d'ALENE - If a haunted building is renovated, is it still haunted?

Apparently so.

Seiter Hall on the North Idaho College campus is long believed to be the home of one of Coeur d'Alene's oldest non-living residents, an apparition described by night custodians through the years as an old soldier.

The 36-year-old building was closed for a multi-million dollar overhaul earlier this year. Students and staff moved back in for the fall semester.

"There are some people that believe that when the science people moved to another building in 2005, the ghost took a holiday," said John Martin, NIC's vice president of community relations. "Once the new Seiter was reopened, there have been strange occurrences again. It's either the ghost of Seiter Hall, or just a building settling in."

Mike Beck, director of the International Paranormal Reporting Group's North Idaho team, said that's not unusual.

"There is the belief out there that renovating a building can actually increase paranormal activity, or it can reactivate it for a period of time, stir things up a bit," Beck said.

The IRPG approach to ghost hunting, Beck said, is science-based. IRPG volunteer ghost hunters use electronic devices and scientific protocol to uncover paranormal activity for homeowners and businesses experiencing unnatural events.

Bob Trueblood, a former NIC custodian, knows what the college's current night caretakers are in for. It has been 15 years since Trueblood had his own experiences with the ghost of Seiter Hall, but he remembers them well.

"You'd hear people talking, and nobody was in the building but you," Trueblood said.

Lights would go on and off, and doors would open and close without explanation.

"You'd know you shut all the lights off. You'd leave the building pitch dark, and walk down the sidewalk toward the gymnasium, and bingo, a light would come on in the building," said Trueblood, who worked at NIC for 11 years.

Sometimes, Trueblood said campus workers would drive up onto "the dike road" that runs along the college's lakefront near Seiter Hall. When they looked up at the building, they would see a couple standing in one of the upstairs windows. The man was dressed like an old soldier.

Trueblood said the ghost didn't scare him.

"I knew he was there. He didn't bother me, but he'd scare the bejesus out of some people," Trueblood said.

A chemistry professor who worked in the building during Trueblood's tenure spoke to reporters at the time, and described the ghost of Seiter Hall as "benign," "protective," and "like he was making rounds."

It is believed the ghost could be that of a Union soldier from the days in the late 1800s when Fort Sherman was a real fort protecting the North Idaho frontier.

"It's just one of those quirky stories," Trueblood said.