Dewayne ‘Ryder’ Zirkle: Hauler driver by day; Ghost hunter by night

Editor's Note: This story first ran on February 10, 2016. Chris Miko now drives a hauler for Joe Gibbs Racing.

STATESVILLE, N.C. -- The night was dark, a heavy fog shrouding a quarter moon. The feeling of seclusion that comes with driving down North Carolina's winding back roads was enhanced by surrounding silence, the few houses dotting the sides of the narrow road shut down for the evening, their lights off at the early hour of 7:30 p.m.

 

And it was cold -- the balmy temperature reading of 48 degrees belying what felt like a piercing chill amid the eerie atmosphere, causing my hands to turn to ice.

 

It was the kind of night that was perfect for our evening activity: Ghost hunting.

•   •   •   "The people in the garage call me Ryder."   DeWayne "Ryder" Zirkle is our hunting guide. A full-time hauler driver for the No. 16 Roush Fenway Racing team of Sprint Cup Series driver Greg Biffle, Ryder moonlights as a certified paranormal investigator. It's the perfect nickname for someone who spends most of his time driving race cars across the country -- and who has also been searching for spirits for a decade.   "It kind of started when I was young," Ryder said. "I grew up in a house that was supposedly haunted. Mom told me about the little girl that lived there and everything.   "We had things moved around and candles would be lit sometimes when they wouldn't be lit when you went to bed," he said, raising his eyebrows with a slight smile.   Ryder and his team -- his son Dustin, along with No. 16 hauler co-driver Chris Miko -- unload the paranormal equipment from Ryder's pickup truck. They'll use everything from full spectrum cameras (that "go from 000 light to the brightest light the sun can perform," according to Ryder) to EMF and K2 meters to track down spirits.   "First (ghost hunt) we went on was in High Point, North Carolina," Ryder recalled. "… Me and Dustin, my son -- we load our equipment up, my other son goes with us -- scared to death the whole time.   "First step into the house, every piece of equipment we had died. Which is a good sign of spirits and all because they will drain the energy from your equipment … Went through the house, never heard anything.   "But a lot of times you don't know what you have until you get home. So the next day, we got home, listened to our audio, we got little things on it. But we got dozens of pictures of little figures in the window and everything.   "At one point, I do remember sitting there, we were doing an EVP session, we were sitting on the floor and I remember telling my son Dustin, 'Something’s behind me.' So, he shot a few pictures. We got a picture of the ugliest woman you'd ever seen in your life behind me in the window." With that, Ryder was hooked.

•   •   • The site of tonight's ghost hunt is a 1932 three-story dwelling amid Harmony Gardens Nursery, nestled between Harmony and Union Grove, North Carolina. Over the years, paranormal investigators have identified nearly 70 spirits in this brick building that was once a hospital called Trivette Clinic and later, a nursing home, detox center and supper club.   "I've never seen anything like this in my life ... it's a really neat little place, that's the reason we picked this one," Ryder said of the house. "... (The owners) have a relationship with these ghosts."   The owners of the property are Doug Galliher and Tim Trivette -- who is a distant descendent of Dr. William Trivette, the clinic's namesake and doctor in the 1930s. The duo leads our group of eight under the black metal arch and down an uneven stone path to the house.   "We had always heard stories that the place had been haunted," Galliher said.  "Actually, when I first started working here, my office was in the building and you could hear footsteps in the building."

The house, while charming, looks every bit its 80 years -- and is the perfect set for a good ghost story. The floorboards creak; the thin walls offer little warmth against the outside chill. Upstairs in the former operating room, a large spot of blood stains the wooden floor. Down in the basement, rusty chains hang from the walls, and several names are etched into the floor -- which is how Galliher and Trivette have discerned many of the ghost's identities. The basement is where the ghostly fun begins.

•   •   • "Majesty, are you here?"   Trivette calls out to whom they say is the ghost of a little girl named Majesty. There are mini flashlights and equipment set up all around the room that the ghosts will supposedly turn on when prompted.   All of a sudden, a light flickers on in the corner -- a ghost named Shorty, Galliher says.   Ryder and his team have brought the ghosts a few presents -- a stuffed animal, along with mini die-casts of Biffle's and Darrell Wallace Jr.'s cars.    "Ghosts like gifts," Ryder said earlier that night.   Indeed. The flashlight that the owners say belongs to a ghost named Jimmy lights up on command multiple times as the session continues. The levels on Ryder's equipment also begin to rise from green to yellow to red.   "I think we have someone sitting there," Ryder said, gesturing to the empty seat holding his equipment that continues to light up.   But there's more to come upstairs.

•   •   • "Everybody's got a sixth sense," Ryder said, addressing the group once we've made it up to the third floor. "Do you ever go somewhere -- let's say you get out of your car at a gas station and it's just not a nice neighborhood and all of a sudden you get that feeling, 'I shouldn't be here, I got to go' -- you know what I'm talking about? That's your sixth sense talking to you.   "And your sixth sense really, really works and ... if you'll just kind of use your sixth sense sometimes, sometimes you'll sense things that others don't."   He gestures to the corner. "Now, we were all up here last week, standing here and we were getting set up like this and every one of us saw a movement over in that right corner."   Each room in the house is prepared with lights, with each of the rooms belonging to different ghosts, the owners say. There's Charlotte, the elderly woman who lives in the red room; Vicky and Phillip, who were lovers in the nursing home, despite Vicky's marriage ("It was quite scandalous," Galliher says); Bill Newton, the moonshiner; and David, who doesn't like to be bothered.   "You’re not supposed to walk in there unless you’re invited in there," Ryder said of David's room. "(The owners) said David will scratch you."   He grins. "I went in there."   The light in Vicky's room illuminates multiple times when prompted, encouraging one of the group members to enter the room. Once she's in the room, the flashlight continues to light up on command, and the meter Ryder has placed in the room turns off multiple times.   Ryder is impressed.   "That's pretty big there. That's hard to turn that off and on," he said. "That's one of my tools called a Spirit Touch – it's 100 percent legit. Hard to turn on, hard to turn off. She's got 'em in there turning it on and off."   By this point, my own recorder has turned off on its own for the second time that evening. Coincidence or not, I've got chills.   "There's some nights it's really calm here and people ask if I could live here," Galliher said.    "And there's some nights when it would be very difficult to lay down and go to sleep."

•   •   • With all that's happened on our hunt, tonight is one of those nights when sleeping in the house would undoubtedly be spooky. But before we head home, Ryder has one departing message for the group.   "You might want to ... verbally tell the spirit, 'You have to stay here,' " he said. "I mean really, because if not, sometimes they will latch themselves onto you and go home and when you get home, fun little things are happening.   "It can happen. I'm not saying it will; it can. But usually for all purposes, you usually say a little protection prayer to tell them, 'Get back in the house.'   "I think I took one home the other night. I had a little experience ... It got really weird. But he went home though."   It's an unusual hobby Ryder has, one that typically doesn't fall into the wheelhouse of someone who drives haulers for a living. But even with all the eerie experiences, ghost hunting is something that seems will stick with Ryder for a while – just like NASCAR.   "Well, I guess it's like why do you want to go to the race track, too?" Ryder explains. "It's hard, it's loud, it's dangerous, it's dirty and all.   "But we go every week," he says with a laugh.