The Vancouver Paranormal Society ain’t afraid of no ghost.
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They enter a house armed not with Proton Packs and traps, but with digital cameras and night-vision video equipment. Their aim is not to “catch” or remove a ghost from the premises, and certainly not to summon spirits through séances, but to collect evidence of apparitions’ presence and, if possible, make contact with them.
The Vancouver Paranormal Society are “not thrill-seeking ghost-hunters looking for notoriety or profits,” their website insists; they are serious, amateur investigators fulfilling what they believe is a legitimate need for supernatural research in the modern world.
Founded in 1993, VPS is a team of five human scientists and a dog (just like on Scooby-Doo!) that never charges clients for its services. An investigation usually begins with a phone call describing a series of occurrences in a domicile or old building. The investigators descend upon the haunted dwelling, usually at night (because that’s when most hauntings are noticed), interviewing the occupants about their experiences and gaining a general history of the building and its previous inhabitants.
SPOOKY STUFF
Then they go to work with their cameras, darkening the house and taking multiple flash photographs, and checking the images for abnormalities—a random shadow here, an unexplainable splotch there. They may attempt to pick up sounds inaudible to the human ear, using an “electronic voice phenomenon recorder”; they may even call out to the spirits, hoping for a response.
The group does not publicize the results of its investigations, but its founder told the Vancouver Courier, “We’ve had members poked, prodded and goosed, and [one was] pushed along a hallway almost like she was possessed.” Whether or not a ghost is found in a particular house, she added, “Sometimes people just feel better because we’ve been there. And that’s as far as it needs to go for them.”
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