Some of those who work late at the Garde Arts Center believe that a handful of spirits may be keeping them company — former Garde employees, perhaps, and residents of the long-gone Williams Mansion.

Wayne Taylor of New London was one of the founding members on the project to revitalize the Garde in the late 1970s.

"Before renovations, the old location of the Garde's box office was at the head of the stairs," Taylor said in an e-mail. "At approximately 10 p.m. at the end of each night's showing — and no matter who was my assistant — as we tallied the gate's receipts, we would hear footfalls continuing up the stairs.

"I would announce to my assistant, who could clearly see that no one was approaching, 'There is nothing to fear. It is just time to tell them to go home.' At which time all footfalls fell quiet."

The property at State and Huntington streets has been home to several establishments over the past 200 years, beginning with the Williams Mansion built in 1798 by Joseph Teel of Preston. Designed as a hotel, it was originally named Teel House and was known for its theater, or exhibition hall.

In June 1800, the hotel was turned into a boarding and day school under the preceptorship of William Woodbridge. It was purchased in 1806 by Carder Hazard, a retired merchant from Newport who sold it in 1813. The Garde building was erected there in 1926.

So, is it haunted?

"This is a place of impressions, communications and community celebrations," Garde Executive Director Steve Sigel said. "The imagination is as real as anything." But if the allegations are true, he joked, "we may have been grossly underestimating our attendance."

Investigators invited in

Regional Investigators of the Paranormal, a ghost-hunting team led by Ed Bird of Waterford, visited the Garde last October. Jeanne Sigel, Garde development and marketing director and Steve Sigel's wife, invited them after she learned they had investigated Hanafin's Pub across the street.

"I wanted to see whether they were really there or if they were figments of our ushers' imaginations, or a tech person who has been working crazy hours and doing load-out at one o'clock in the morning and their eyes are playing tricks on them," she said.

As a former board member and a staunch believer in the Garde and its role in the local community, Sigel is fully aware of how all of this might sound. So when Bird, who had been across the street investigating Hanafin's, called to ask if he could investigate the Garde, she feared he was just looking for a sensational story.

But, she came to realize, "he wasn't that kind of investigator. He explains equipment, he introduces himself, he shares information about what he's doing so everybody feels comfortable with the process," she said. "The people who work with him are enthusiastic, but they don't try to make up something that's not there."

Who was that?

In a visit in May, Bird made electronic voice phenomenon recordings.

In one, he is heard saying: "I think I'm gonna kill that ghost light if you guys don't mind."

A halting, whispery male voice replies, "I-I don't."

"He responded to what I said about the ghost light!" Bird exclaimed to the small group listening to the recording later.

In another clip, Bird and his team members are talking and a gravelly voice sounding like it belongs to a man from another time cuts through. "Yeah, we'll all just like, take a seat then." It went unheard by Bird and his team at the time and they continued to talk.

"Normally with EVPs you'll get one or two words; you won't get much out of them," Bird said after he played the clip. "That's why I love to get one like this."

Some skeptics argue that EVP are usually recorded by raising the "noise floor" — the noise created by all electrical devices — in order to create white noise. When this noise is filtered, they say, it can produce noises that sound like speech.

Bird says he merely amplifies and compresses the recording to bring the voices out. "If I can't hear it flat off the recorder, I leave it alone," he said. "I had many things you didn't hear because I wasn't sure."

FYI

Ed Bird hosts a weekly cable show on the paranormal on Friday nights at 10 p.m. on Metrocast Channel 24. Snippets of the show are available on Bird's YouTube channel. Type "deadbirdism" into the YouTube search field to hear recordings from the Garde visit and other R.I.P. investigations.