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Ghostly phenomenon
leads DeWitt mom on new quest - 20081103
It all started with a spirit
named Bobby
J.J. Jeffres
DeWITT - A 10-year-old home in DeWitt might
not be the likeliest haunted house, but Kim Ladd said her
family was rattled by weird goings on a year and a half ago.
"My son would yell at his wall to be
quiet and leave him alone," said the stay-at-home mother
of three.
So she hired a paranormal investigator, who
said a spirit named Bobby was besieging her 3-year-old son's
bedroom. Ladd, 34, was so intrigued by the investigation she
joined the team.
In May, she hooked up with a new ghost-busting
venture in town, Michigan H.P.I. The 60-member group launched
by Carson City resident Tanya Douglas is a spin-off of a San
Francisco Bay-area organization, Haunted and Paranormal Investigations
International. About half of its members, ranging from psychics
to a private investigator, are from the Lansing area.
Douglas, a hypnotherapist specializing in
past-life regressions, and Ladd make stalking spooks sound
like fun. As it is to fans of the Sci Fi Channel's "Ghost
Hunters," which brought the supernatural out of the attic
and into the family room.
"They've made ghost hunting cool,"
Ladd said.
"People are just becoming more and more
open-minded about the realms of the impossible. It's really
a good time to be doing this," Douglas added.
Hunts can be boring
Michigan H.P.I.'s six paranormal investigations
have included an historic mansion in Ionia and a bar in Port
Huron.
An investigation works something like this:
A site will be suggested to the group, and investigators will
arrive with a battery of equipment, including infrared cameras
and voice recorders.
Douglas said hunts can be boring, as the group
waits for something to manifest itself.
The idea is that if a ghost is present, it
will leave some trace on a tape recorder, an electronic voice
phenomena - or EVP - or perhaps an image on film that the
team will discern later while analyzing the material.
That's the spine-tingling moment, Ladd and
Douglas said.
Resident skeptic
H.P.I. also has a resident skeptic: Philip
Douglas, no relation to Tanya.
The assistant professor in writing, rhetoric
and American cultures at Michigan State University said he
joined because "I'd like to believe there's something
more to life than what there appears to be. I'm hoping I'll
find something, to see what might be there."
Fascination in the paranormal flowered in
the 1970s and is making a revival today at a grass-roots level,
Philip Douglas said.
"It's interesting that it's coming back
with people who I guess you might say are ordinary folks,
but who are trying to go about investigating it in a systematic
way," he said. "There's going to be more attempts
with the technologies of today."
Systematic probe
Even more systematic is Cliff Williams, president
of the Chelsea-based Worldwide Paranormal Reporting Center,
an online database he founded in 2007. He uses statistics
to correlate reports of paranormal activity with natural and
sociological phenomena.
"If ghosts really do exist, if we can
see them, if we can communicate with them, that would be one
of the greatest scientific studies ever because it involves
life after death. We have faith in the afterlife, but we don't
know anything about it scientifically ...," said Williams,
who holds a master's degree in fiber optics.
"It could be all in people's heads. As
a scientist, I can't rule that out."
Tanya Douglas said H.P.I. doesn't overlook
the possibility that a natural cause underlies a scary story.
"We go in to debunk everything first,
and then we go toward the paranormal next," she said.
As for the ghost in Ladd's house, Bobby isn't
around these days.
"Whatever the spirit was, I told him
to knock it off," Ladd said. "You've got to get
kind of stern with them."
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