GHOST HUNTERS

I get asked a lot - what is the most haunted place you know?  Answer: Everywhere is haunted. Sure the building above looks pretty spooky, so it must be haunted. It looks old, so it must be haunted. Right?  Nope . Some places have hauntings that in baseline conditions can be perceived, i.e. anyone can have an encounter there at any given time. These conditions are likely caused by construction of the building, geology, layout of the rooms, and other factors like water table and seismic activity. If a building is placed with such ideal alchemy to leave a perceivable haunting, then Joe Schmo non-psychic can go there and have an encounter.  We have been looking at hauntings from the wrong perspective:  We look at the dead and who is doing the haunting, not at the humans who are perceiving it! Cameras and recorders might not capture what we see, hear and feel in a haunted location, but we are great receivers to perceive encounters. You have five noted senses and some tha...

I began "Ghost Hunting Theories" to try and find others who were open-minded and receptive to examining ghosts in the context of "we can't prove that they exist, and we certainly can't prove how they work," so let's start expanding the possibilities, look for instigators, repeatability, and factors involved. Why is one home haunted and another not? I went on to perform investigations in the field, read about it, write about it, and even developed my own haunted formula based on commonalities between haunted locations. It all began in 1963 when my family moved into an estate in Fairfax, Virginia. Aspen Grove was built in the mid 1700s as a fort against Indians. In the 1800s, it was taken over by the North to be used as a field hospital and during the war, wrestled back as the same thing for the South. Both sides of the war agonized and died in that home. In fact, the wood floors were still stained with their blood, and the earth littered with bullets, gun...

This is a new series. In my book "Was That a Ghost?" I discuss a good deal about how, with the right life skills tools, we can deal with the unknown and how we can use those tools for our everyday life and relationships. I'm going to apply some of those in this series. Today's lesson is how to live with chaos from the spirit world and the living world. At any given time, a person living in a haunted house is going to be dealing with the unpredictable. In fact, every single moment he lives in a haunted house, he will be dealing with a degree of uncertainty. Shit happens, but in a haunted house, shit happens any time of the day, day of the week, week of the month, month of the year... In fact, part of what I'm striving for on my team, POE, is to figure out what might trigger it to activate and conversely, what might quiet it down. For now, there are little, if any patterns, we can discern. So, you live in a home in which a dish can break, a painting can fall, a doo...

Of course, establishing one has a haunted house is the most important step and that will involve bringing in a team. I'd honestly suggest a team that was established pre-TAPS era (2004). Really look over the team's website. You want to know what their take is on the paranormal. Many teams are like TAPS and go in to disprove a haunting and then up occasion find conditions that leave them with the "haunted" option, but don't offer much for homeowners except to have a little discussion with the invisible occupants and tell them basically that their lease is up. There's nothing wrong with that approach, but if you have a religious background or are a very spiritual person, this process is one that should involve some symbolic ritual for cleansing or blessing. If this is the case, ask the team if they offer such services. I'm very rational/logical person, so when I'm stuck in a situation that I can't do anything about, I learn to reframe it in such a wa...

My book "Was That a Ghost" on Kindle and Nook helps those who believe they've had a ghostly encounter. One of the first questions is, "was that a ghost?" Then, the bigger question, "what do I do now that my life has been changed?" I not only cover these questions, but help you through the stages I take a client through to determine if you had a paranormal encounter and what type of encounter it might have been. Using my "Trinity of Relevance," I take you through context, belief system and explanatory style to determine what you've experienced. There are quizzes and lots of real life examples, explanations of types of hauntings and what you might want to do once your life has been changed by the encounter. I go through this process with people every day and I am thrilled to share it with others.

Bless their hearts! I love this one! Researchers at London's Goldsmith College decided to create a haunted room to test some theories about infrasound and EMF. Now, we're talking! We've long been talking in the field about EMF and infrasound (levels with frequencies so low our ears can't hear it, but our body can--kind of like that bass sound in surround sound systems that you feel in your body). So, they set out to design a room where people would be, in certain areas, bombarded with EMF and infrasound and other areas would be clean. After an hour in the room, three quarters of them reported at least three of these symptoms; dizziness, tingling, disembodiment, dream-remembrance and “a presence.” Several felt sexually aroused. Here's the catch: None of these symptoms had anything to do with where they were standing in the room! It only showed a slightly higher chance that those who experience transcendental experiences(like those with temporal lobe epilepsy and unst...

This is a hairy and upsetting question. If I have a house call and I know the people have children, I request that they have the spouse take the children out while I’m there. There’s no need to bring children into an investigation and interview them. With the recent onslaught of popularity in ghost hunting by every Joe and Jane on the street, there have been some very questionable methods. I’ve heard of some teams using children as bait for activity. It makes my stomach turn. If strange occurrences happen around the house, it should be a lot like your sex life. You don’t sit down at the table and start talking about your bedroom antics in front of the children, nor should you be talking about strange unexplained noises and sights, fears and concerns. There are times and places and age-appropriate circumstances for handling the paranormal in your own home. We begin with the first concern; have the children unprompted approached the parents with issues? The explanation of the paranormal ...

When I moved from the east to the west, one of the things I learned over time is that, although many buildings are haunted in the east, the land in the west is very haunted. You feel it especially standing in places like South Mountain Park and Sedona, but even on a recent excursion with Julie to the Congress Pioneer Cemetery in the middle of the high desert, you could feel it in the hills all around, as if eyes were studying you everywhere you go. There are some awesome ghostly legends involving the land in Arizona. Here's just a few of them: La Llorona: The most famous haunting in the west is a repeated story of La Llorona, the “weeping woman.” This legend varies depending on where you are in the west, but the premise is the same; a woman drowned her children because her new lover didn't want them. When she killed them, he was repulsed by what she did and she realized she had killed her children for nothing. Now, she is a crying/screaming banshee figure in the washes and bas...

I've been doing this blog for over 3 years now and one thing I've learned is that everyone who reads this really has a good angle on ghost hunting and hauntings in general. This is the beginning of a new series "What Would You Do?" in which I give you a hypothetical situation for a ghost hunt and you tell me how you'd approach it. The home is a 30 years old. It's been lived in by two families. One lived there for 27 of those years. A nice family with a blue-collar working father, a mother who stayed home and two perfectly healthy and happy children. Nothing unusual occurred in the home. Nothing that would warrant a haunting, but the new tenants who had been in there for just over 2 years, but things began to fall apart six months ago when their 8-year-old daughter began to have trouble sleeping. She complained that there was something in her closet, shuffling around, making noises. Her parents had gone way out of their way to try and ease her fears, use logic ...

I’ve been asked this question quite a few times. Why does only one person in a family experience haunting issues while others don’t? Logic tells us there are a number of reasons which can include; Location issues —only their room is troubled Qualities —something particular about him/her, his/her sex, age, or sensitivity that is attractive to a spirit Latent psychic qualities coming forth —an emerging psychic medium Purposeful isolation —to keep him/her separated from the others in the family Poor explanatory style —attributing explainable things to ghostly events Mental illness —from paranoia to schizophrenia Attention-seeking behavior —finding a way to get help by having something wrong A great deal of haunting experiences occur when a person is alone. However, in a typical “haunted” house, several members of a family have experienced similar things at different times, on rare occasions together. The case of an isolated haunting particular to one family member is a difficult one to ta...

"The Stone Tape" was a 1972 BBC television play about an electronics research group that sets up in an old manor home to come up with a new recording medium to beat the Japanese's growing market. One of the researchers in this fictional play, a computer programmer, sees an image of a woman running up the steps in the room and falling, apparently to her death. Inquiring with the local villagers, they learn that a young maid died in that room during Victorian times. They realize that somehow the stone in the room has preserved an image of the girl's death – this “stone tape” may be the key to the new recording medium that the team is trying to develop. Since that time, the stone tape theory has been one that involves residual hauntings being recordings held by natural causes. I felt this ever since I was a child where I grew up and noted places that were haunted and common features. I had never heard of the BBC series until I was already into ghost hunting and was pleas...

Let’s begin with what residual hauntings are. Many people word it differently, but it basically is a phenomenon in which an event from the past is played out in a loop-like fashion without regard to anything happening around it. It is not guided by an intelligent spirit but more like a movie replaying. Honestly, after almost 8 years officially hunting and I still can’t tell you I’ve witnessed an intelligent haunting that I believe meant I was interacting with an actual spirit. That said, I can tell you that if you've experienced a haunting event, the odds are it was residual. How do you know? If the activity occurs in one area and doesn’t seem to leave it, it’s residual. If you saw a full-body apparition but always in the kitchen, it’s residual. If the footsteps you hear are always on the stairs, it’s residual. If you tend to smell pipe smoke in one corner of your den, it’s residual. If it doesn’t react to what is going on or what you say to it, it’s residual. If the sound of voice...

Ghost hunting shows portray bad technique left and right, but my biggest pet peeve is their EVP sessions! Imagine you're sitting at home and all at once people enter your home and begin grilling you with questions: "What is your name?" "Why are you here?" "Give me a sign of your presence." "Do you know what year it is?" "I dare you to punch me, kick me, yell at me!" Would you tell them to get the fuck out of your home, you're not answering a question from strangers invading your space? That being said, there are subtle ways to begin a conversation with the other side that are engaging and possess a genuine quality. You know how dogs can sense your fear? Well, it appears to apply to spirits, as well. Your intentions show quite obviously. Enter the space and give it some admiration. " This is beautiful. I love the mantle ." Sit down with your other member(s) and chit chat about your day, the traffic, your family, and all...

Did you ever wonder where that apparition hides when you’re not glimpsing it for all of the 4 seconds you saw it? What does it do with the other 23 hours, 59 minutes and 56 seconds of the day? Here’s some options knocked around most commonly: 1. An apparition is a residual sighting of something that occurred in the past, not associated with a soul, but more like a video replaying under the right conditions ( whatever they may be ). 2. An apparition is a being in another dimension and under the proper conditions ( whatever they may be ) it is glimpsed. It might also be that it can glimpse us and wonder. 3. An apparition is a soul of a deceased person and this soul can come and go at will. 4. An apparition is always there, but only some people at the right times ( whatever these may be ) can glimpse it. 5. It takes an enormous amount of energy for an apparition to make itself visual on our plane and it will use any means to gather enough energy to show itself briefly. Depending on what d...

( *Don't forget Thursday is "Fact or Faked" on SyFy. Friday is review of "Fact or Faked," followed by another episode of LAUGH, followed by an evening for those who are lonely to post comments live back and forth as we did last Friday* ) I’ve covered shadow people on this blog several times (use the search bar on the right). For those who haven’t heard of them, shadow people are human-like shapes seen by people anywhere, any time. They are usually seen first in the peripheral vision and then when one turns his head, these figures disappear or disappear as soon as they realize they have been seen. That’s what intrigues me the most about these figures; that there are signs of present-based intelligence. This is to say that these figures appear to be startled that they have been seen and then retreat. They are interactive in the present time. They are also quite intriguing because they can be seen in cemeteries (often) and people’s homes (modern homes without histo...

**Last reminder that tomorrow is the end of the short story contest--due in Saturday the 3rd by midnight EST ** I have a tendency to look at things from an odd point of view ( understatement for those of you who read me regularly ). I often times think about puzzles from other angles instead of the path already carved by those before me. I tend to look for a window to crawl through instead of the simple easy open door. So, when I puzzle over ghostly phenomenon, I always come back to the same question; what would I do if I were a ghost? It’s easy to say that once you die, should you have a soul, you would find your final reward in a conceptual place such as Heaven or Nirvana or Valhalla... Do you think you would malinger, confused that you no long have a physical form? Would you stay to watch your kids grow up? Would you possess the house that you believe is your home for all time? I say it often, but I believe it’s true: If we suspend our imaginations to believe in the concept of souls...