Ramblings On...Saturday's Ghost Hunt

As you may know, I am an investigator (still sans bio) in the Agawam Paranormal Society.  I joined last fall after going to one of their Ghostology 101 sessions at the local library.  My training was “on the job” so to speak, investigating a fellow investigator’s newly inherited home!  My second one I wrote about earlier in the blog, so last Saturday was my third investigation with the group!  Between it being my third investigation, and me getting my official Agawam Paranormal windshirt, I really feel like I’m part of the gang now!

That being said, I want y’all to know more about the gang, too!  Our group is nearly 30 investigators large, so our lead investigator, Rob, has plenty of people to choose from!  This past weekend, there were actually two hunts.  I was invited to both, but didn’t commit to Friday night, only Saturday.  It was a good thing I didn’t go Friday night because I was sick all week!  But by Saturday I was much better and ready for action.

As per usual, we met up at Rob’s house at 7pm Saturday night.  Lucky for me, I only live a couple streets over from Rob and Hope.  Hope, Rob’s wife, also joined in the investigation Saturday.  We were joined by Kevin and Karen.  They are new to our group and came from another ghost hunting group.  In their old group they had to have all their own equipment, so Kevin and Karen have tons of great stuff that I’m sure cost a pretty penny.  Rob has tons of ghost hunting gadgets, but having the extra set means there is a lot more to go around!  It means that when we have multiple teams out, we don’t have to share too much with the gadgets.  Some of the cool ghost hunting stuff will be familiar to my Supernatural friends...

Electronic Voice Projector (EVP): fancy name for a little mp3 recorder.  While we are in the house, we will “record” what are called EVP sessions--we will ask questions and allow time for an answer.  The recorder can pick up sounds our ears cannot, so there might be something trying to answer us!  Some of the questions are very general:  Is there something keeping you here?  Is there something you wish to say to the family living here?  Were you hurt in this location?  Sometimes, we get a little more specific--especially if the family is certain they know who the spirit may be: Are you so and so?  Do you have a message for a certain family member?  Is there something you need for the family to do? etc.  Sometimes, we may ask for the entity to show itself in the form of moving an object, or going near one of the EMF detectors so that we know he/she is there.

Infrared, night vision:  we have some cool cameras and camcorders that can see at night!  very cool to look at...and if you watch Ghost Hunters on SyFy you have probably seen quite a bit of this.

ElectroMagnetic Frequency (EMF) Detectors:  these are essentially known as “ghost meters” and can gauge changes in charges in the air...the belief is that this “detects” the presence of a ghost.  You do have to watch for any electrical reasons that might trigger a reading though--refrigerators, fuse boxes, electrical sockets can all give a false positive.

Heat sensors:  we use a couple different hand held sensors--we use one we point at the wall to test the temperature of various walls in the house. We also use little ones to test for cold spots within the room.  Again, this is about checking for anomalies and potential presences.  Why is a section of a warm room cold?

Walkie Talkies:  we want to make sure that the noises we hear aren’t just members of another team!  We keep in contact with other teams in the house, as well as those at our “base camp” area that are overseeing operations.

pen and paper:  ah, good old pen and paper--we want to jot down any of our findings...Also, if we heard about specific areas that the clients indicate are high activity areas, we will want to pay extra close attention to those areas!  In my case, I also will want to jot down notes to add to my blog articles...like this one...

So now back to Saturday. We met at Rob and Hope’s house about 7pm.  The last to arrive was the person who would be the sixth member of our group, Carl.  At this time, we did what we usually do--Rob gave us information about the clients and the house as he learned when he met with them earlier in the week.

The clients had contacted Rob earlier in the week very worried about the level of activity that they were having.  They had not been in the house long, but already their daughter was afraid to sleep in her own room and often times slept in theirs.  Understandably, Rob wants us to get right out in situations like this.  Usually, we will wait until after we have been able to research the house a little.  We like to know what we are getting into.  What kind of history does the house have?  Did anyone die in the house?  Since this particular house was only built around 1990, there isn’t too much of a history of the house, but that isn’t to say that something won’t be found out about the property in general.  The research end of this still has to be done.

Likewise, there wasn’t time to have our psychic do a walkthrough of the house.  Our psychic, Chris, likes to do a dry read of the house.  She doesn’t want to know anything about the past of the inhabitants or the house itself.  It is really cool when we know that Chris doesn’t know anything about a house but then walks in and can simply feel the “hotspots”.  It definitely gives her credibility in my book!  Well anyway, the last hunt we did that I wrote about, Chris didn’t find much in the house when she went through.  She believed that an elderly female spirit had befriended the family, but didn’t feel the presence of the deceased family member the inhabitants of the house thought they felt.

Again, we went into this one without Chris.  I for one would like to find out what, if anything, she finds when she goes through this house.

Honestly, based on what Rob told us during the pre-hunt, I thought this particular ghost hunt showed more potential than the last.  We were told that the back yard overlooked a cemetery.  The head of the house had lived in the area previously and had seen a woman in a white dress floating in the cemetery years before.  He actually seemed scared when he related the story according to the members of my team that were at the interview...

The house had a basement, the main floor and then the second floor.  With two teams, we set up a little base camp on the main floor.  We decided to do teams of “boys versus girls”.  Rob, Carl and Kevin went upstairs to check the second floor and the attic, while Hope, Karen and I hit the basement.  The basement was one large room, with two beds in one area and the couch, gamer chair and television in the other area.  The heat was uniform throughout the basement and the only EMF readings we got were from the very large fuse box located on the wall.  The house is entirely electricity, so we got quite a reading off the whole wall.  We did do an EVP session, but is seemed like there was really too much outside noise contaminating any potential reading we might get.    

Noise contamination of evidence can come in many ways.  There could be people outside moving around.  This particular house was fairly narrow, which meant that if the other group was near the staircase, they could be heard very clearly even two floors up.  Cars going by can register.  Such is the danger of trying to do a ghost hunt in the city...Probably a good reason why Sam and Dean didn’t venture to L.A., or New York, or Chicago or Boston...

It didn’t really seem like we got anything downstairs and after about 15 minutes, which was 15 minutes earlier than we had planned on being done, we were ready to go back up to the kitchen.

Next, we went upstairs, but since the downstairs was such a bust, and the clients didn’t really sense anything downstairs anyway, I don’t even think Rob’s team wound up going downstairs. 

The most activity, per our clients, was up in the daughter’s bedroom.  This is where we were told a light turned itself off, and that a door opens and closes on its own.  Again we took temperature readings, all were consistent.  Both Karen and myself took EMF readings, and both of us came up with nothing.  Karen and Hope thought they could smell burnt toast.  I didn’t smell it, but that doesn’t mean anything since I had been suffering from a cold all week and couldn’t even smell Starbucks coffee if I was deeply inhaling from the bag.  We did an EVP session, then went out into the hallway to check the bathroom (also consistent heat readings and no EMF detected), and then pressed on to the master bedroom, where we also came up with nothing.

All six of us, and some of the clients that were there hit the main floor of the house.  Again, we did not get any readings.  We did an EVP session in the living room, so that we had checked everywhere in the house.  The head of the household seemed to be getting agitated since it did not seem like we had found anything. If you don’t understand EVP sessions, asking questions that go unanswered does seem to mean that we have gotten nothing.  I explained to him that we won’t know until we go back and listen to the recording to see if sounds we cannot hear were captured.  This calmed him.

When you become a ghost hunter hoping to find some validation of the existence of the great beyond, having a hunt that seems to be a paranormal bust can be disheartening.  Of course there are some things that are very important to remember.  1)  We haven’t listened to the evidence yet and our psychic has not walked through the house yet. There may be evidence that was found! 2) Even if we didn’t capture evidence, it doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t something there.  Just nothing could be substantiated. 3) Something was bothering the people in the house enough to make them feel they needed the house investigated.  If it isn’t a paranormal problem, there still may be other problems in the house.  If no one has been in the attic, could there be a rodent problem?  could that be the reason why a flickering light, or hearing sounds or doors opening or shutting? 

What we really want to do is give clients piece of mind.  We don’t want to marginalize or minimize someone’s fear, but help them put a face on it.  When we have a face on our fears we can fight them!

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