To understand the living, you got to commune with the dead.
—Minerva, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
I am a paranormal researcher and have been for a number of years. That means while most normal people are off for a walk or mowing the lawn, I’m in my house behind a computer screen perusing long hours of video, listening to audio, researching, or writing. I miss a lot of family time. My rosebushes are woefully overgrown, and we end up eating more meals of takeout than I like to admit. It’s not glamorous. I wish I could say, as an author, that I got into the paranormal because I’d been terrorized by an evil demon as a child or had grown up in a haunted house, fighting for my very existence. But my formative years were peaceful and joyous. I had my own first paranormal experience when I was in my early thirties, and that wasn’t terrifying either—just mystifying, as so many paranormal phenomena tend to be.
However, I’ve always had a taste for the macabre, enjoying ghost stories as a child and scary movies as a teen. For me, that’s all they had ever been—just stories. I don’t know that I ever fathomed that the paranormal could actually be real until that first time I experienced it. And I certainly never considered that I might be able to study the paranormal until that one fateful night I saw my first Ghost Hunters episode.
Certainly, I got into paranormal research seeking to experience something. But the reason I think it bit me so hard and fast was the fact that at the very bottom of all this work and time was the pursuit of fundamental answers. Is there life beyond death? Are ghosts real? If so, what are they? The quest for those answers has kept me going all these years.
I can say that I now know that odd, frightening, and unexplainable things happen to people, perfectly normal people, every day. People of all ages, socioeconomic levels, education levels, and religious backgrounds. Experiences with the paranormal are universal across cultures and societies. And people have paranormal experiences more often than you’d expect. Recent polls suggest that three-quarters of the American population believe in the possibility of the paranormal, and nearly one in five claim to have seen a ghost.1 Still greater is the number of people who report that they have felt that they had been in touch with a loved one who had recently died (29 percent). These encounters don’t necessarily involve witnessing an apparition, but they can include hearing the voice of a deceased person, feeling a touch, smelling a distinctive odor associated with the deceased, sensing a presence, or witnessing what they interpret as a sign. Further, over one-third of the population believes in life after death, and nearly as many believe that a building can be haunted.2
Our Approach
As I said earlier, I got into paranormal research because I was searching for answers. As a result, I try to remain unbiased when I approach an investigation. I don’t want to delude myself that a place is haunted if it’s not, and I certainly don’t wish to mislead my clients. They contact me for help, and I can only help them if I give them the most accurate information I can. Delaware Paranormal Research Group therefore uses a more scientific approach to paranormal investigation than the vast majority of my paranormal colleagues. To be brief but clear, we don’t use psychics to give readings of a location, we don’t hold séances, and we don’t use Ouija boards or ghost boxes. Instead, we use an arsenal of electronic equipment in order to record and detect anything that’s going on at a location.
I have had clients who really didn’t want us to employ a scientific approach to an investigation. Many of them really just want me to bring in a medium to give them a reading. And I understand where they are coming from. But I can’t verify a feeling or an impression—it isn’t solid material proof—and I begin my own journey looking for that proof.
To obtain that proof we basically use three broad categories of equipment: measurement devices, recording devices, and detection devices. Our measurement devices measure environmental changes, monitoring temperature, barometric pressure, electromagnetic fields, vibration, humidity, and so on. Of course, the most prosaic device is the electromagnetic field (EMF) detector. Electromagnetic fields are everywhere around us all the time. The human brain is powered by electromagnetism, and so are the muscles that move our arms and legs. There’s a natural EMF in both the core of the earth and your household lamp. Ghosts are believed to be willful energy, a consciousness without a body. In order to have an interaction with us or to fuel activity, they need to feed themselves with energy just as we eat food. It’s long been supposed that they can do this by draining energy from household electrical devices (AC power) or from battery-powered devices (DC power). When they do something like bang on a wall or speak into a recorder, they are expending that energy. Hence, the EMF detector is an essential in every tool kit, just as a carpenter always has a hammer.
With such a useful tool, why do we bother with mundane environmental measurements like temperature? Well, while a change in the EMF is often associated with paranormal activity, it isn’t always, and there are other environmental sources of energy that a spirit might tap into as well.
Recording devices are just what they sound like. The team has an essential surveillance camera system that records in daylight and in infrared at night. Infrared is the part of the light spectrum just below our field of vision. We also have smaller, independent video cameras for stationary use or carrying with us. Audio recorders are also placed in rooms in the hopes of catching an electronic voice phenomenon (EVP), which is a voice captured on the recording but not heard during the investigation.
Our detection devices sound an alarm or indicate an immediate change in a location. We employ motion sensors, and REM Pods and Mel Meters alert us if something has broken the field.
Evidence Review
First and foremost, the team is tasked with finding reasonable explanations for events. Is an EMF spike caused by a man-made device or a ghost? A cold spot is likely to be a leaky window or open flue on a fireplace. If we hear the creaking of a floorboard, we will try to recreate it. We also take into account the time of year and weather patterns. High humidity makes wood floors swell and doors stick. Changes in temperature can make them pop.
When it comes to evidence that I present to a client, it’s all about what we have captured and can verify. If we capture a clearly audible EVP, a voice that we cannot account for, that is evidence I can present to a client. If one of our detection devices sounds an alarm announcing a change in the environment at the same time we capture an EVP, that’s a stronger indication that something paranormal is going on. It’s even better if one of the team members reports a personal experience, such as feeling chills on one arm, at the same time the EMF detector indicates a change in EMF, and we capture an EVP moments later. I especially like situations where we can layer the evidence to build a stronger argument for something paranormal occurring. Certainly, there are times when we experience nothing in an investigation and capture nothing on our recording devices.
Once we have conducted an investigation, we begin our evidence-review phase, in which we check data logger data, watch all the video feeds, listen to all the audio we recorded, and carefully analyze anything we caught that was anomalous. It is a mind-numbing process that takes several people many hours to accomplish, as every bit of audio and video has to be reviewed in real time and then compared to other video or audio for verification. We conduct research into the property as well, to try to find its history. That often involves calls to town hall offices and trips to the local historical society. From start to finish, one investigation usually takes the team and me one month to a month and a half from initial contact to final reveal. It’s truly a labor of love.
In the accounts of the five investigations included in the book, I’ve added the inhabitants’ description of the paranormal activity, any history of the property that might be relevant, a description of our investigation, and the evidence we found thereafter. As a haunted building remains a haunted building even after we’ve conducted our investigation, I’ve added updates (if I have them) that describe anything recent that’s occurred at the property.
Much of what I amass in my research is anecdotal—in other words, stories from people who felt they’d had a paranormal experience. Obviously, stories shared long after they occurred are flawed as evidence: first, because our memory of events is extremely poor, and second, because events that are not recorded can’t really be considered evidence. Still, accounts of paranormal activity can be useful when looking for similarities in activity. Also, some of the most haunted locations are the most private or inaccessible. There’s no way I’ll be given clearance to a working hospital, for example, in order to access the World War I–era nurse who has been witnessed in the basement. Some people don’t wish me to intrude on their lives with a trunk-load of electronic equipment and a team of strangers. Often an event was a one-time occurrence, so setting up a full investigation would be a waste of time. But people are often willing to share their stories, and from these stories I can sometimes find correlations with other investigations I have conducted. So, while I can’t corroborate or prove a story, I feel stories still have relevance.
Many of the episodes related in this book are just such evidence, experiences graciously relayed by those who experienced them. I’ve included a few of the more remarkable stories in the book because they are similar to an investigation or because they sharply contrast. And because, gosh darn it, who doesn’t like a good ghost story?
1. David Robson, “Psychology: The Truth about the Paranormal,” BBC Future, October 31, 2014, http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141030-the-truth-about-the-paranormal.
2. Michael Lipka, “18% of Americans Say They’ve Seen a Ghost,” Pew Research Center, October 30, 2015, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/30/18-of-americans-say-theyve-seen-a-ghost/.