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Ghost hunting
leaves questions about the paranormal unanswered - 20081102
by Daron Williams, CT regular columnist
I have heard enough mud-slinging, moose-hunting and Joe-the-Plumber
talk. I've decided to go in a totally different direction
this week. Besides, I've got one more crack at the election,
as my next column will print on Nov. 4. As for now, with Halloween
a few days away, I decided to get a little festive and recount
my own personal ghost story.
I spent a couple of years working
for a local rag in Kentucky, and one assignment had me covering
a local ghost hunter. Armed with a mini-disc recorder, a digital
camera and a noticeable lack of "Ghostbuster"-esque
particle beams or containment devices, I set off with Patti
the Ghost Hunter and her group, Ghost Chasers International
(www.ghosthunter.com), on a real-life ghost hunt.
We arrived at a modest house on Garrs Lane
in Louisville and learned the lay of the land. Suzy, the owner,
had been raised in the house. As with any good ghost story,
there have been several documented deaths within those walls.
Both of Suzy's parents passed away in the house, as did an
elderly woman for whom her mother, a hospice worker, was caring
at the time.
Prayer over: it's go time. As the group stood
around the table getting ready, however, a tiny rattling sound
came from somewhere. No movement from the ghost hunters, no
gadgets in use, but the rattling happened again. "It's
the light fixture," Suzy said, apparently quite used
to this phenomenon.
She pointed to the chandelier over the kitchen
table, one bulb in particular. Patti first asked permission
of this apparent spirit to ask it some questions, telling
the spirit to rattle the light for "yes," remain
still for "no." This is apparently common procedure
in the ghost-hunting world.
A series of questions ensued. According to
the light fixture, we were speaking to a little girl around
the age of four, and she said that there were several other
children as well. After this "spirit" answered a
few questions, she was gone. No more rattling. I figured we
might interview a dishwasher and maybe a toaster, and then
I could be on my way home. Not so, as our next stop would
be the dreaded basement.
After a few minutes acclimating to the darkness
and learning the ins and outs of the floating "orbs"
of light that are often associated with ghostly activity,
and seeing quite a few through the night vision camera equipment
soon after arriving in the basement, we proceeded to the laundry
room. This is where most of the strange voices, visions and
happenings have taken place, according to homeowner Suzy.
It was then that Patti decided to play one
of her many ghost-hunting games. An individual from the group
sits down in a chair, while Patti invites the spirits to go
to the sucker, er, volunteer. The volunteer then holds out
his or her hand, and Patti asks the spirit to place itself
in the open hand of said volunteer.
As one of the three volunteers, I still couldn't
see anything. I was in a dark basement, sitting next to two
other women, Caroline and Suzy. Caroline held out her hand,
and I sat there, watching and taking pictures of, well, a
woman holding out her hand. All the while, the small audience
watching the event through the camcorder kept producing a
steady chorus of "Ooooh," and "Aaaah."
This was ridiculous. I had heard a light bulb rattling, supposedly
on command, but hadn't seen anything at all with my naked
eye. Again, as the skeptical reporter, I needed proof!
What I saw and heard next may not have been
incontrovertible proof that ghosts exist, but it was good
enough to tell me that something was amiss about this basement.
We checked out a room in the rear of the basement. In typical
horror movie fashion, the last person out of the room got
the short end of the stick.
Patti made an awkward sound, much like a woman
being pushed, which, as it turned out, she was. Crash! The
door slammed shut, followed quickly by two more loud crashes.
Patti was all right, as the closing door merely pushed her
out of the room a little faster than she had planned on going,
but she remained upright and unhurt.
After thoroughly checking my shorts, we checked
the camcorder footage from inside the room. The camcorder
revealed that, as Patti walked through the door, two pieces
of bed frame, standing upright behind the door, had been responsible
for the slamming door.
The two pieces then fell to the floor, explaining
the two other crashing sounds. The footage also revealed,
and this survives on digital video to this day, that immediately
after the frame pieces fell, a dark shadow moved across the
top of the video screen from the location where the frame
pieces originally stood, across the screen and out of view...
in a room that I could vouch contained no living beings. I
could easily see how one could rig some heavy bed frame pieces
to fall behind a door, but to create the shadow would have
been a much higher-level hoax.
As quickly as it had begun, our hunt was now
over. We retreated upstairs, all of us unhurt, and at least
one of us still very confused. Patti led a closing prayer,
thanking a higher power for our safety and for what we had
seen.
My personal prayer sounded something more
like "Take that, Vincent Price!" Safely buckled
in my car moments later, I decided to check my camera before
leaving. Image after image turned up nothing, causing me to
consider the possibility that overzealous ghost-hunters somehow
altered the other cameras we had used.
And then I came upon it -- a roundish, white
(some would say "ghostly") image appears right in
front of Patti in one of the random shots I had taken while
in the laundry room. There were no mirrors in the room, nothing
reflective that could explain away the image. I snapped it
myself, on my own camera.
I left the ghost hunt like I left my undergraduate
days -- amazed and confused by the experience, but glad I
did it. I didn't leave scarred for life, nor did I physically
see or hear anything that proved beyond the shadow-of-a-doubt
the existence of life beyond death. But was something going
on that I couldn't explain? Absolutely. I discovered that,
when the time comes for me to tell my son not to be afraid
of ghosts because they don't exist, I'd be saying it just
as much for my own benefit as for his.
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