Yet unexplained things sometimes really do occur out there in the woods at night. Here are some true tales of the paranormal reported by campers. Ghosts, strange creatures, UFOs and mysterious phantoms - encounters that are sure to creep back to mind the next time you’re camping.

White Mountains Creature

K.H. was camping at a National Forest campground in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. On night, after his wife and daughter had falled asleep, he was sitting by the fire when he heard a noise…

• This was different than the usual bear grunt. It was more like someone sneaking in the trees. I immediately grabbed the flashlight. What I saw haunts me even now. I saw a being in the trees. It was naked. It looked gray. And this sounds crazy, but it looked like a person, but not really. It was hunched down, very muscular and its legs were backward, like a bird’s. Then it quickly turned and bounded off down the hill. I couldn’t even follow it with my light. We left the next day. We went back to the same campground this year. Back to the same site. Again, I stayed up late poking the fire and reading. It was maybe one or two in the morning when I heard a noise. I shined the light in that direction. That same creature, being, whatever, was there. It looked exactly the same as I’d remembered from last year. It just sat there, crouched at the small tree line that separates the campsites. I slowly walked toward it. I tried not to make any threatening moves or gestures. I got to within 20 feet when it just jumped backward and disappeared. It looked like it might be five to six feet high if it stood up. It was definitely gray. It had human features, but more leathery. And its face was very wide. Its eyes were so big, and, even though they reflected light, they still looked black, like two intensely black marbles. Its legs were very muscular, but turned backward. I know what I saw. It was real. - Kevnh

Phantom Campers

Nightraven and friend Todd were camping at a cabin in the Upper Peninsula Of Michigan. They were waiting for other friends to arrive when they had an unexplained experience…

• At about 9:30 p.m., it was getting dark, and we were beginning to worry about Randy and Tommy. Only a few moments later, we saw car lights at the front of the cabin. We were in the middle of nowhere, so it had to be them. We heard the car doors open, heard Randy and Tommy as plain as day. I yelled. “We’re on the deck.” The car doors closed, we heard footsteps rounding the corner… and at the point that someone would have rounded the corner… it was silent. I looked at Todd. He was looking at me. It was quiet. I yelled, “Hey, Randy. Hey, Tommy.” We got up and walked around front, and… nothing. No car, no people, no sound. Ninety minutes later, the phone rang. It was Todd’s mother calling to inform us that at 9:30 that evening, a fatal traffic accident involving Randy and Tommy took place 30 miles from the cabin. It’s almost as if they just wanted to keep our tradition alive.
• Northern Michigan is also the location of this strange event. R. Bassil and a friend were at a river-side cabin one night, relaxing. They were about to retire to bed when…
• I had just stretched out when a huge crack erupted from the woods. Both of us thought it was a branch or old tree that had fallen. After he turned off the living room light, we noticed that the light coming from the windows was abnormally strong. This sent our nerves to a new high. The light seemed to pulse several times and got so bright at one point you could have read a book by it. It couldn’t have been a car as we were almost a mile off the road on a dirt trail. Plus, the light came in from all the windows equally. Every so often we would hear a strange humming noise that penetrated that cabin. This lasted almost half an hour. We talked about just running out to the car and leaving but neither one of us wanted to go outside. After the light went out, we sat on the couch, occasionally putting forth theories on what it could have been. Around four o’clock in the morning, there was another loud crack. We worried that the light might come back but nothing happened. - R. Bassil

The Blue Specter at Camp

Devin was away at summer camp in Quebec, Canada where there were the usual camp stories of a ghost. One night, however, he may have encountered the real thing…

My friend and I were walking just outside of the circle of cabins. It was a bright night with all the stars shining and the moon was well lit. There was a campfire going, and in one of the big cabins there was a party going on with music and so on. We were walking, and we both got a really weird feeling, as if we were being watched. We both turned toward the sea… we saw a blue figure, very tall - about 7 feet - walking through the trees. It made no sound at all. It was a bright blue and glowing figure walking through the forest. It was emitting a shimmery aura, and my friend and I both became very frightened. We shouted at whatever that thing was and we were asking it what it was. We got no reply, of course, but we expected one. We stared as it walked away and out of our vision; we didn’t dare follow it. We then ran back to the group of people at the camp fire, screaming and describing what we saw. Another friend of mine claimed he was watching it from a distance not far from were we were and was just as frightened as I was.

The real name of the family involved has been kept secret to protect their privacy, but the investigators for the Psychical Research Foundation provided them with the pseudonym of Berini. First names have also been changed.

The Berini’s unsettling clash with the paranormal started after the father, Joe Berini, moved the family into his ancestral home located in a New England town. The house had been in the family for many years: Joe’s father grew up there, and several family members had died in the house. All seemed normal, at first, as Joe settled in with his wife Rose and her two children from a previous marriage, John and Daisy. It was one night in May, 1979 that Rose began to hear a disembodied voice. It sounded like that of a little girl, Rose said, and the first time she heard it, it said, “Mama, mama, this is Serena.”

No one knew who Serena was or what the voice might mean. It wasn’t until a later investigation into family history that Joe learned that his father had a sister named Serena who died in the house at the age of five more than 50 years previous. But what was Serena’s message trying to convey? It turned out that Serena’s voice would be a forewarning of family danger - on more than one occasion. The very next day after Rose first heard Serena’s voice, Daisy was taken for a scheduled appointment to have her tonsils taken out. Something went wrong during the surgery, however. Daisy’s heart failed and she nearly died.

The girl’s voice was heard on several more occasions, once on a June night before Joe’s grandmother suffered a stroke, and again in November just before the old woman passed away. A fourth time, Joe was awakened by Serena’s voice to find Rose choking in her sleep. Upon being roused from sleep by Joe, Rose said she had been dreaming that her ex-husband was strangling her.

The Boy in White

Then, as mysteriously as Serena’s warnings came to the Berinis, they ceased. Through the end of 1979 to March, 1981, the family encountered nothing more out of the ordinary. But in that spring of 1981, a new series of haunting phenomena began when Rose was startled by the apparition of a small boy, dressed completely in white, walking along the upstairs hallway in the dead of night. “It was almost like looking through a milk bottle,” Rose later told researchers. “It was a very peaceful experience. It stayed for about two hours on and off, coming and going.” The boy’s spirit appeared again a week and a half later, and this time spoke to Rose, innocently asking, “Where do all the lonely people go? Where do I belong?”

The boy in white also appeared before Joe, who says he saw the spirit go to each of the bedrooms and then kneel in the hallway, as if looking for something that lay hidden beneath the carpet. More than curious, Joe later took up the carpet and the floorboards at that spot and found a religious medal with a broken chain. Had it belonged to the boy? Who was he? Joe then recalled that another child had died in that house - his father’s younger brother, Giorgio, at the age of eight. Again checking family history with other relatives, Joe was told that Giorgio was buried in his all-white First Communion suit.

Giorgio began to appear frequently to Joe and Rose over the next few months. The spirit would respond to questions, but seemed distressed over something. At one point, Giorgio accused his twin brother Carlos (who was still alive and living nearby) of taking something from the house, but no one, including Carlos, could figure out what the boy’s ghost was referring to. On one nightly visit, Giorgio’s spirit said, “My oldest brother is the only one who can help me.” This statement caused the Berinis to wonder if the spirit was confusing Joe for his father - Giorgio’s oldest brother. And as the apparition vanished that night, the telephone next to Joe and Rose’s bed was thrown off the night table by unseen hands.

This was the beginning of the poltergeist activity that would terrorize the Berinis in the weeks and months to come.

More than a dozen times, Joe and Rose’s bedroom phone was thrown violently off their night table. Joe took this, along with Giorgio’s last message, as a sign that he should call his parents and warn them that the little boy’s spirit might be paying them a visit. He did so, but each time Joe uttered Giorgio’s name, the phone line went dead.

The Berinis had had enough. They sought the advice of a local priest who said they should merely ignore the spirit if it should appear again. Not good advice, as it turned out. The next time the boy in white appeared to Rose, she did as she was advised and paid it no attention. Immediately, a closet door began to slam open and shut repeatedly. On subsequent days, unexplained running was heard in the house, and box of macaroni was yanked from Rose’s hands and dashed to the floor. Again taking their plight to the Church, the Berinis invited two priests to visit the house, where they blessed it and said mass.

Giorgio’s spirit finally seemed to give up its mission, whatever it was, and appeared no more. But the Berini’s paranormal troubles were far from over. Giorgio’s disappearance only seemed to make room for another entity to enter their home and their lives - one that was not so innocent or benign.

The Dark Hunchback Entity

In June, 1981, the Berinis began to see a sinister hunchbacked male figure clad in a black cape. Throughout that summer, the hunchback, which the Berinis described as having large feet and a gruff voice, appeared regularly in the house. The Berinis tried to get the entity to identify itself, but it only told them it was “a minister of God.”

The dark figure hardly acted like a denizen of Heaven, however. It frequently made its presence known, for example, when Rose was praying with her rosary, trying to distract her with various obscenities. The poltergeist-like activity increased in frequency and intensity. Joe, Rose and 15-year-old John reported that they had been struck by thrown objects. The bedroom telephone continued to fly off the table. A bedside lamp “fell,” striking Rose on the head. Furniture in several rooms were on occasion found overturned or moved: Daisy’s bedroom desk was somehow transported down the stairs. The retractable attic stairs were open and shut repeatedly and with such violence that it cracked the hall ceiling. Several religious objects were removed from walls or broken.

Rose, it seemed, was in particular the object of the entity’s violence. The door of the freezer was swung open, hitting her in the head. During an evening meal, her arm was twisted behind her back and her head pulled to one side with such force that she began to choke. On more than one occasion, Joe testified, he saw Rose pulled out of bed at night, levitated into the air and then dropped to the floor. After one of these attacks, bruises were found on her arms and legs, as if from a powerful grip.

Two months after it first appeared, the dark, hunchbacked entity became its most violent. Not long after Joe left the house to work the night shift at his factory job, a loud banging shook the bedroom walls. “The bed was raising off the floor,” Rose said. “I tried to scream and the door slammed so I could not get out of the room. The dog was growling and the door opened.” Rose struggled to get to the children’s bedrooms, but their doors slammed shut and she was dragged by the unseen force back into her room. Invisible hands began to choke and scratch her. She managed to call Joe. He rushed home and ran upstairs to the bedroom where he saw the bed jumping as high as two feet into the air, and found Rose crouching in a corner clutching a crucifix.

Remarkably, the Berinis still refused to abandon their home. Their minds changed, however, when one morning they awoke to find a heavy carving knife stabbed into the kitchen table.

Fearing that their lives could truly be in danger, the Berinis moved out of the house for a month, putting most of their belongings into storage. Once again, they sought help from a priest, who went to the house and performed a kind of exorcism. When the Berinis returned to their home, the evil seemed to have been vanquished. They no longer saw apparitions of any kind or suffered any more poltergeist activity.

Ironically, it was only after the haunting activity stopped that Joe Berini invited an investigation by the Psychical Research Foundation, based in Durham, North Carolina. (The organization is now the American Institute of Parapsychology, based in Gainesville, Florida.) The investigators were able to corroborate some of the Berini’s claims through friends, neighbors and their priest, all of whom testified that they witnessed poltergeist phenomena in the Berini home.

Maybe more. Animals not only may appear as ghostly forms, they may also be more sensitive to the proximity of spirits. Barbara S. tells of a stray black-and-white cat that her family adopted in the Queens section of New York City. They lived in an old attached house that had no history of strange activity, as far as they knew, but this high-strung kitten seemed to be able to see things Barbara’s family could not:

• She would look at the stairs, her gaze slowly moving from the bottom to the top, as if she was observing someone walking up the steps. At other times, her green eyes would be transfixed upon a certain spot on the ceiling above me. While I couldn’t see anything, the cat was definitely watching something. After my son went away to college, I decided to put the house up for sale. One evening, shortly after the real estate agent that I contacted had looked at the house, I sat in my favorite chairwith my little cat nearby excitedly looking at the ceiling above me. I heard people run down the stairs in the house next door. Maybe the noise triggered what happened next, which was truly horrible. What I heard sounded like the heavy, thumping steps of a big man with real heavy boots walking on my living room ceiling upside down. The cat was absolutely frantic. She looked at the ceiling, hissing and spitting. After about ten seconds of deafening noise, there was silence. The cat stopped looking at the ceiling. I checked the upstairs rooms, but, of course, there was no one [else] in the house.

Dogs can be just as sensitive as cats when it comes to sensing the unseen. Elven M. tells of ghostly figures in her home that made their presence known so often that her family actually named one of them: Bill; the other was the ghost of a little girl. Elven believes that her dogs — a seeing-eye trained German Shepherd, Haywood, and a blue healer, Tuscon — were the first to notice them. Elven was on the phone one day…

• Haywood was lying at my feet and began to growl. Tuscon went and hid behind the stereo in the corner. As Haywood stood up, I felt a gust of cold air brush past me, and he continued to growl. He moved to the top of the stairs that led into the family room, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up as he growled and snarled into the dark basement. I feared that someone had broken into the house. I turned on the downstairs light as I stood directly behind Haywood, ready to let him run and attack whoever it was in the basement. I saw nothing, yet he continued to growl. I stayed on the phone and went across the room and pulled into the corner, scared to death. My boyfriend at the time was consoling me, telling me there was nothing there. At that moment, a little girl’s voice came from the vent in the floor next to me. Haywood came and sat beside me as though he was protecting me, growling across the room the whole time. By the time my parents returned home, I was very upset and very scared as the voice continued.

“There is an obscure superstition that goes something like this: Knowing that animals can see ghosts, when an animal sees a ghost one can, from behind the animal, look between their ears toward where the animal is looking and see the ghost that they see,” says Scott P. Yet he tried this very thing and discovered that the superstition is not true. He had the opportunity to test it as a young boy on a winter’s day in his family’s 100-year-old home,which had previously been a funeral home:

• I, with my cat and dog curled up for warmth, sat on a heater vent wrapped in a blanket. I was in the living room with a perfect view of the entryway. From here I heard some footsteps upstairs. The cat’s and dog’s ears both perked up at the sound of the footsteps as they seemed to go down the hall toward the top of the spiraling staircase in the entryway. Both animals watched some invisible presence slowly walk down the stairs and through the living room then into the dining room. I, quite apprehensively, looked between both my cat’s and my dog’s ears as their heads and eyes seemed to follow someone walking though my house. Both animals’ heads moved in tandem and the acted very much aware of the presence. Yet I could sense nothing aside from the sound of steps and the reaction of the animals. I was somewhat disappointed.
• The ghosts of animals may be as common as the ghosts of humans. There are many reports from people who have sensed, felt, smelled, heard and even seen the spirits of recently departed pets. Nina I.’s daughter, for example, had such an experience with a cat named Andy, which was her companion for 19 years. Like human ghosts, animal ghosts can sometimes appear to lend comfort:
• My daughter has suffered with rheumatoid arthritis since age 12, so spends many times in discomfort. For the past couple of years, she began telling me that a ghost visited her on her bed when she was feeling really bad. One morning, she commented that her “friend” had joined her on her bed. “It’s strange, he is always felt just to the right of my feet. Just in that little place. I can feel the mattress depress.” I had an instant brain hit. I told her, “It’s the cat! It’s Andy.” I reminded her that Andy had always joined her in bed when she felt bad. She and I feel Andy is still around offering comfort to her.

In some cases these ghost animals are not particular whom they cuddle up to. Paul N. didn’t own a cat, yet reports these visitations:

• Early in the morning, while still dark, I sometimes have a feeling as though a cat is walking around on my bed. It happens usually when in bed, although it has happened while lying down watching TV late at night, too. The sensation is very clear and definite, exactly like the footsteps of a normal-sized house cat walking gently around on top of my bed linen, sometimes on top of me too, patting around for somewhere to lie down. Eventually it finds a spot, usually lying up against me, but not always. If I move too much while it is walking around the sensation will disappear. It will not be repeated twice in a night.

Ghosts sometimes appear to the living to let their loved ones know they are alright in the next world. That’s the feeling Dennis G. and his wife got from a cat that he was forced to put down because it was severely ill. Sydnie was one of a litter of cats that contracted feline leukemia, but made its presence known after its death:

• I felt like I had lost a child when we took Sydnie home to be buried where she was born. For about a month afterward, I felt depression and grieving for Sydnie. Then one night, while lying in bed waiting for sleep to come, I heard and felt the distinct thump of a cat lunging from the floor and landing on the foot of the bed, which was Sydnie’s custom. I thought it was one of the other cats, but it was their custom to sleep in other parts of the house. I felt with my foot for a cat, but there was nothing there. This went on every night for a week, so I know I was awake and not dreaming. The impact was solid and real, right down to the little grunts cats give when they jump — but nothing was there! I knew it had to be Sydnie’s way of telling me everything was all right.

In many instances, the owners of deceased animals feel that their beloved pets are just returning briefly to say goodbye. In this remarkable case, Robin S.’s black Labrador, Mutt, might not even have been dead when it’s spirit appeared to her. Robin had to give Mutt away because she and her husband had to move and weren’t able to take the dog with them. But five years after the move, Mutt hadn’t forgotten Robin:

I was in our living room and my husband was going out the door with the trash. A black mass was wiggling around his legs and as it came into the living room, I saw it was Mutt. He was wagging his tail a mile a minute and had what looked like a big grin on his face. He sat down stared at me and I heard, “I haven’t forgotten you. I have to go now.” Then he faded before my eyes before I had a chance to pet him! I knew he was gone from his body, but he still loved me enough to come say goodbye

As with human-like apparitions, not all animal apparitions are positive experiences. You have no doubt heard of encounters with shadow people… but how about shadow animals? Kamala relates these peculiar experiences, which began after a real bird became trapped in her house:

• My mom released it outside and it flew away. Our dog, Casey, started following something not sensed by us in our living room. She started acting strangely and continued to sniff and bark at things that were not there. My mom sensed a bird flying over her head. There was no earthly bird to be found. A phantom “cat” has joined our home recently. My mom, my sister, and I have all “seen” it. It is like a dark shadow. I actually thought it was a cat running under the kitchen table! The last thing to join us is a “black lizard.” My sister spotted it in our basement. My mom also saw it there. It was very clearly defined, not a shadow like the cat. There are no lizards around in the middle of winter where I live. They are there one-second and vanish the next. Could these “animals” be manifestations of a negative energy?

Another reader has even reported seeing chicken shadow ghosts.

Stranger still is this story from Neal T. about a very real-looking bird that had some quite unreal abilities, causing Neal to wonder if it existed in some other dimension:

• My father and uncle were sitting in the living room, one side of which is enclosed floor to ceiling by two large French windows. It was about three in the afternoon, and as they were watching television, a bird — possibly a wren — flew against one of the glass panes. They both heard the noise and turned to observe the bird flutter for a moment, then appear to flatten itself out and squeeze through between the frame that encases the top of one of the panes! It flew to the opposite side of the room to the open door of the patio, where it flew away. This, I think we can all agree, is contrary to our conventional perception of reality and reason. The panes are firmly in place, without so much as a crack. So what we’re talking about is what appeared to be a solid form — the bird — pushing itself through another solid form — the glass — without damage to either one. There are two witnesses who saw this. So the trite explanation of “it’s your imagination” can be ruled out.

I am a traffic officer. On this particular night I was on patrol and had just come back from the hospital where I had escorted a perp for stitches. I pulled into a gas station convenience store parking lot to get a cup of coffee and a pastry. I looked ahead of me and saw a tall, young man walking by the side of the road. He was Caucasian, mid-twenties, about six feet tall, with a yellow shirt and blond hair that bobbed and weaved as if he were off in la-la land or high on something. I sat in the cruiser just detailing the guy as he came into the overhead light of the gas station.

Then I noticed the strangest thing… and I am not even sure if I can describe this well. There were forms of people walking with him. They were transparent, but I could see them all silently walking. Tall things, but hard to get a fix on. At first I thought my windshield was dirty and I was seeing a glare, a double image or something.

The young male walked on the other side of the Hess station out of my view as I got out of the car. I shook off what I thought I saw and blamed it on exhaustion or driving too many hours. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something come out of the light where the young man had passed and seemed to follow him. It was big, but again was transparent. This sounds fantastic, but it was shaped like a rhino, but with spindly, bowed, reptile legs. It was on a chain. Behind it was a transparent figure of a large male, approximately seven feet tall with a strange head that I couldn’t quite make out, silently drifting and moving his dog-like jaw, like the face was laughing. I blinked a couple of times and it was gone.

Again, I brushed off this vision as a hallucination due to weariness and went into the convenience store to get a few things. Of course I was just seeing things. How could it possibly be real?

As I was talking to the cashier at the register, I glanced out the front window and saw the young man crossing the road. He was in a hunched-over position, which was strange… then he laid down in the road face down!

The Accident

I immediately rushed out the door and began to yell at that dumb fool to get up and get the hell out of the road. I ran toward where he was lying in the middle of the lane. Two truck headlights were barreling directly toward him. I yelled louder as I rushed to the scene.

The truck approached and its driver slammed on the brakes. The trailer truck slowly began to turn sideways. I panicked and my adrenaline pumped because I knew it was ready to flip. Then the whole truck jack-knifed and the trailer swiveled out into the other lane and collided into a short blue bus in the oncoming traffic, crashing it into the guard rail. The front wheels of the truck then rolled over the young man’s body. The blue bus flipped on its side over the guardrail as the truck came to a complete stop.

I called for backup and a medical unit. I ran out in the road and saw that the truck driver seemed fine. I ran toward the flipped school bus. I ran around to what was the top side of the bus and to the front to the smashed windshield. I looked in and couldn’t see anything. I was still radioing it in as I grabbed my flashlight from my belt. I shined it in to what was left of the windshield and could see the driver. He was still buckled in and half of his face was missing, and he was slumped toward the door, now on the roadside. I yelled in and there was no response. I looked into the back of the bus I could only see a leg and a woman’s shoe dangling over a seat.

Within seconds there were cruisers on the scene and medical units. I filled them in on what had taken place, leaving out the part about my strange vision. I only told them of the young man and how he laid down in the road and was subsequently run over. They notified a coroner and a team began a search under the truck for his body.

I was still in shock from witnessing the tragedy as I walked back to my cruiser with two fellow officers. Something caught my eye - the silhouette of the young man who had laid down in the street! I could see his yellow shirt! For some reason, it was hard to register at first because I thought he was dead. But then it clicked and I notified the other officers that this was the guy.

I began to give chase as he just walked slowly away. I drew my gun and told him to place his hands on top of his head. There was no response. I instructed him again to place his hands on top of his head. A cruiser pulled around in front of him and another behind me. At this point, I rushed in to tackle the man and dove on him; we had him in cuffs in no time. A female officer and I pulled him up to his feet. We then escorted him back to the cruiser and threw him over the hood.

We searched his pockets. He had an I.D. bracelet from a psych medical center where he was getting treatment. His name was Johann something; I can’t recall right now. I made sure he knew he had caused the accident out there. And he said to me the spookiest thing…

“I serve Adonai.”

I said, “What? You do what?”

“Adonai’s minions - they came,” he said slowly.

“What is an Adonai? Who’s Adonai? Huh? Answer me!”

“They were picked for the sacrifice.”

“How did you get out from under the truck?” I asked.

“They are laughing now - see?” He smiled and turned his head toward a burned out chapel on the side of the road. I looked and saw nothing, but three or four officers went and searched the church, thinking perhaps he had co-conspirators.

The full story came out later. The blond young man was an abortion activist who had flipped out and was institutionalized, and had been recently released. His mother claimed he was hearing the voices again and that he claimed God was talking to him.

Riding in the small blue school bus that was hit was a church choir returning from a concert. Seven were killed, plus the bus driver.

How did the young man survive being run over by the truck? What of the vision Elliot saw that night? Was it a hallucination, as he first thought, a premonition of the tragedy… or a manifestation of “Adonai’s minions”? Note: I have done an Internet search to verify that such an accident took place in Florida on this date and could find nothing, so we have only officer Elliot’s (not his real name) word that this incident really took place. (If any readers can provide verification of this accident, please notify me.)

Why? Have ghosts really earned the reputation of being harmful to humans?

If you were walking unarmed in a dense tropical jungle that you know is inhabited by tigers and large snakes, you’d undoubtedly be petrified. The threat to your life and well-being is quite real and your fears justified. Tigers and snakes can and do kill.

Now place yourself alone at night in a house that has the reputation for being haunted. Most people would probably experience the same fear. Yet, according to most authorities on the subject, the fear is not justified. Ghosts, by and large, are harmless. The true behavior of ghosts, as evidenced by many thousands of investigations and case studies conducted by paranormal experts, overwhelmingly contradicts the common idea that they are to be feared.

Maligned ghosts

Veteran ghost investigator Hans Holzer, in his book Ghosts: True Encounters with the World Beyond (Black Dog & Leventhal, 1997), emphasizes “…the need to forget a popular notion: that they are always dangerous, fearful, and hurt people. Nothing could be further from the truth…. Ghosts have never harmed anyone except through fear found within the witness, of his own doing and because of his own ignorance as to what ghosts represent.”

Loyd Auerbach, another respected ghost hunter of many years, agrees: “In many cultures and religions around the world, ghosts are thought to harbor ill will towards the living. This is unfortunate, since the evidence from thousands of cases…suggests that people don’t change their personalities or motivation after death… nor do they turn evil.” (Ghost Hunting: How To Investigate the Paranormal, Ronin Publishing, 2004.)

Roots of fear

So why do we fear them? There are probably two main reasons.

Fear of ghosts – also known as spectrophobia or phasmophobia – most obviously stems from our fear of the unknown. This is a deep-seated fear that is hard-wired into our genetic makeup. The primitive parts of our brain that respond to instinct – a holdover from our cave-dwelling ancestors – flushes our bodies with adrenaline when we encounter a threat, preparing us to fight or flee. And when that threat is something unknown that might leap out of the darkness, we’d just as soon flee.

There’s another component to this fear when that something in the dark is perceived as a ghost. After all, a ghost is the manifestation of a person who is dead. So now we are confronted not only with what we think is a threat to our lives, but a representative of death itself. Not only is it an entity that we don’t understand, it is also a resident of the place many of us fear the most – the mysterious land of the dead.

The second main reason we fear ghosts is that we have been further conditioned to do so by popular culture. Almost without exception, books, movies and television shows portray ghosts as evil, capable of mischief, injury, even death. If the media are to be believed, ghosts actually enjoy scaring us out of our wits.

“What Hollywood and television portray is very inaccurate and cannot be relied upon as truthful,” say Lewis and Sharon Gerew of the Philadelphia Ghost Hunters Alliance in their article, Co-Existence. “They show these spirits of the dead as being evil in nature, filled with malice and harmful intent. I assure you that this is not the case.”

Creepy, rotting, vengeful ghosts may make exciting movies, but they have very little basis in actual experience.

Scratching, slapping and biting

Ghost and haunting phenomena are harmless. As much as they may unnerve and mystify us, there is really nothing to fear. Haunting phenomena seem to be recordings of past events on a particular environment. This is why haunted houses can “play back” the recordings of footsteps on a stairway, for example, or even the voices of an argument that took place many years previous. Apparitions can sometimes be seen performing the same task over and over again.

True ghosts or spirit apparitions may be earthly manifestations of those who have passed on. They are sometimes able to interact with the living and relay messages. (See “Ghosts: What Are They?”.)

In neither case does the phenomena pose any real threat. Voices captured through electronic voice phenomena (EVP) techniques can at times be rude or even downright abusive, but again there is no real threat of harm.

So then how do we explain those rare cases in which a person is apparently scratched, slapped or even bitten by some unseen entity? Such instances have been documented in the famous Bell Witch case, the Esther Cox case in Amherst, Nova Scotia, and the terrifying “The Entity” case on which the film was based.

These cases, and others in which people are “attacked” and objects are thrown around, are considered by most researchers today as poltergeist activity. Although poltergeist means “noisy spirit,” current parapsychology theory suggests that they are not spirits or ghosts at all. Poltergeist activity is psychokinetic activity caused by a living person. Usually that person is a teenager undergoing hormonal changes or someone under extreme emotional or psychological stress.

So what we generally consider the scariest aspects of ghosts – objects moving by themselves, TVs turning on, pounding on walls and very rarely a person being injured – are most likely caused by the unconscious working of a living human mind. We can’t blame ghosts.

For those of us researching ghost and haunting phenomena, we must resist our fearful instincts in the face of the unknown. Fear can only inhibit our examination and understanding of one of the most intriguing aspects of the human experience.

These may be indications that your house is haunted. True hauntings are rare occurrences, and it may be difficult to determine whether or not any strange phenomena you are experiencing in your home might be due to a haunting. For one thing, no one really knows what a “real” haunting is - what causes it or why it starts. There are many theories, of course, which we have discussed in this space in the article “Ghosts: What Are They?” But if you think your house may really be haunted, what can you do about it?

The Signs of a Haunting

The first step is to determine, as best you can, whether or not you truly have a legitimate case of a haunting. Not all hauntings are alike, and they may exhibit a variety of phenomena. Some hauntings feature a single phenomenon - such as a particular door slamming shut that occurs repeatedly - while others consist of many different phenomena, ranging from odd noises to full-blown apparitions.

Here’s a partial list of phenomena that might indicate that your house is haunted:

• Unexplained noises - footsteps; knocks, banging, rapping; scratching sounds; sounds of something being dropped. Sometimes these noises can be subtle and other times they can be quite loud.
• Doors, cabinets and cupboards opening and closing - most often, these phenomena are not seen directly. The experiencer either hears the distinct sounds of the doors opening and closing (homeowners get to know quite well the distinctive sounds their houses make) or the experiencer will return to a room to find a door open or closed when they are certain that it was left in the opposite position. Sometimes furniture, like kitchen chairs, are perceived to have been moved. Very rarely will the experiencer actually witness the phenomenon taking place.
• Lights turning off and on - likewise, these events are seldom seen actually occurring, but the lights are switched on or off when the experiencer knows they were not left that way. This can also happen with TVs, radios and other electrically powered items.
• Items disappearing and reappearing - this phenomenon, which we have dubbed “the DOPler Effect” (DOP = Disappearing Object Phenomenon), has been examined in the article “The DOPler Effect.” Others have called this “the borrowers” phenomenon, and it’s the familiar experience of not being able to find a regularly used item - say, your set of car keys - which you believe you placed in a spot you routinely place them. But they’re gone and you look high and low for them with no success. Some time later, the keys are found - in exactly the place you normally put them. It’s as if the object was borrowed by someone or something for a short time, then returned. Sometimes they are not returned for days or even weeks, but when they are, it’s in an obvious place that could not have been missed by even a casual search.
• Unexplained shadows - the sighting of fleeting shapes and shadows, usually seen out of the corner of the eye. This phenomenon has also been discussed in some detail in “Shadow People.” Many times, the shadows have vaguely human forms, while other times they are less distinguishable or smaller.
• Strange animal behavior - a dog, cat or other pet behaves strangely. Dogs may bark at something unseen, cower without apparent reason or refuse to enter a room they normally do. Cats may seem to be “watching” something cross a room. Animals have sharper senses than humans, and many researchers think their psychic abilities might be more finely tuned also. (See “Animals and Ghosts” )
• Feelings of being watched - this is not an uncommon feeling and can be attributed to many things, but it could have a paranormal source if the feeling consistently occurs in a particular part of the house at a particular time.

Those are some of the most common experiences of those who think their houses are haunted. Yet even stranger things can happen Stronger Evidence

The following phenomena are more rare, but could be stronger evidence of a haunting:

• Mild psychokinetic phenomena - hearing a door open or close is one thing. Actually seeing it happen is quite another. Similarly, actually seeing a light go on or off by itself is greater proof that something unexplained is happening. Do you see the TV or radio turn on? Or perhaps you’re present when a child’s powered toy begins to operate on its own. Doors and windows are locked or unlocked. Some people report that when they are in bed they can feel and/or hear something sitting on the bed.
• Feelings of being touched - the feeling of being watched is one thing, and actually feeling like you are being touched is quite another. Some people feel something brush past them, something touching their hair or “a hand” on the shoulder. Some feel a gentle poke, push or nudge.
• Cries and whispers - on occasion, muffled voices, whispering and crying can be heard. Sometimes it’s music from some unknown source. People hear their names being said. This phenomenon, as is true for the one above, gains more credibility if more than one person hears or sees the same thing at the same time.
• Cold or hot spots - cold spots are classic haunting symptoms, but any instance of a noticeable variance in temperature without a discernable cause could be evidence.
• Unexplained smells - the distinct fragrance of a perfume or cologne that you do not have in your house. This phenomenon comes and goes without any apparent cause and may accompany other phenomena, such as shadows, voices or psychokinetic phenomena. Foul odors can happen in the same way.

Rarer still are more extreme phenomena, some of which have been called poltergeist phenomena, and can be quite strong evidence of a true haunting:

• Moving or levitating objects (severe psychokinetic phenomena) - dinner plates sliding across the table; pictures flying off walls; doors slamming shut with great force; furniture sliding across the floor.
• Physical assault - scratches, slaps and hard shoves. This kind of personal assault is extremely rare, but obviously highly disturbing.
• Other physical evidence - unexplained writing on paper or walls; handprints and footprints.
• Apparitions - physical manifestation of a spirit or entity. These phenomena are also very rare and can take many forms: human-shaped mists or forming mists of some indistinguishable shape; transparent human forms that disappear quickly; and most rarely, human forms that look as real and solid as any living person, but that disappear into a room or even while being viewed. Rule Out Rational ExplanationsA person who has experienced some of these phenomena might have cause to believe that his or her house is haunted. But maybe not. In fact, according to most experts, probably not. The human mind and human senses (as any magician will tell you) are easily fooled. And people can often mistake explainable (if unusual) occurrences in their homes for the paranormal.

  Before you decide there’s a ghost in your house or move out from fear, do your best to find rational explanations for what you are experiencing. Virtually all of the phenomena listed on the previous page could have perfectly natural causes:

• noises could be house settling, plumbing or even vermin such as mice and squirrels
• opening and closing doors could be faulty hinges or caused by drafts
• DOPler phenomena could just be carelessness and forgetfulness
• shadows could be just that - shadows caused, perhaps, by a passing car’s headlights
• as real as some of these things might seem to you, they really could be just products of your imagination

Of course, the more extreme the phenomena, the harder they are to dismiss. And, as noted above, if multiple witnesses experience the same phenomena, they are likely to be taken more seriously.

Get help in finding rational explanations for the phenomena. A plumber might help you find the cause of that banging. A carpenter can fix that door from closing on its own. A friend or neighbor might be able to look at your particular experience in a different way and offer a reasonable explanation for your “haunting” that you might not have though of. In short, make every possible effort to prove that your house is not haunted.

Keep A Journal

If you feel you have ruled out rational explanations for the phenomena that are taking place in your house, and they are still occurring on a more or less regular basis, document them. Keep a journal of the phenomena as they happen. For example:

• June 2, 2002; 10:30 p.m. - Was sitting watch TV when the bathroom light switched on by itself. Went in and turned it off again.
• June 10, 2002; 9:14 p.m. - Was in the kitchen and heard the footsteps crossing the upstairs hallway again. No one was up there. Went up to investigate and could find no cause.

A journal such as this could help with any formal investigation of the phenomena by experts.

If you hear unexplained noises, attempt to record them with a portable tape recorder. If there are physical phenomena of any kind, photograph or videotape them. Keep your journal, recording and camera equipment readily available so you can document the phenomena as it happens.

Call the Experts

When should you call a paranormal investigator? Only when you have ruled out any rational explanations for the phenomena you are experiencing and are thoroughly convinced that your house is truly haunted should you contact the experts. Of course, if the phenomena are extreme and you feel that you and your family are in any kind of physical or psychological danger, you should call for help right away.

Who are the experts? There are hundreds of paranormal investigation organizations across the U.S. and Canada. You can find a state-by-state listing of many of them here, although I cannot vouch for the expertise of any of them. Most certainly, they vary in expertise and in the degree of their practical experience, so you should be careful in your choice. Troy Taylor, in his article “What Do To When Your House is Haunted,” provides some very good advice for choosing paranormal investigators, including the qualities they should have and specific questions you should ask them before inviting them to check out your home.

Despite whatever strangeness you are experiencing, your house probably is not haunted. But if it is, perhaps it is a benign spirit or phenomenon that you can live with. Usually, it is something you need not fear.

Ferdinand Waldo Demara was a real life con man the movie, The Great Imposter, was based on. During Demara’s “careers,” he was, among other things, a surgeon, mental health professional who used applied psychology principles to resolve issues in other psychological disciplines, cancer researcher, hospital orderly, child care expert and lawyer. Imagine being one of his patients or clients! Why be the victim of people in the paranormal field? There is documentation of emotional stress caused by paranormal frauds.

Debunking Imposters Posing as Paranormal Investigators and Exposing Paranormal Hoaxes

Warning signals:

• Websites featuring their self-created false definitions. Cross reference their definitions using the American Society for Psychic Research’s and the Parapsychological Association’s glossaries. Some definitions may differ because parapsychology is a primarily theoretical science.
• Feature their investigations that are to incredible to be true, like the debunked Amityville: Scamityville!
• Answers to valid questions. What makes you qualified to investigate? “I’m psychic,” “I like ghost hunting” and “Ghosts are interesting.” If there are other credentials such as doing it for research, experience and the desire to prevent people from being scammed coupled with the listed answers, no problem. Be very wary of those who claim to have ghost hunting certifications. Google search websites they claim they got their certificates from. There appears to be no accredited paranormal organizations offering these.
• Question “Why do you offer free investigations?” “For the experience, as part of our research and to help people avoid hoaxes” are the answers to look for.
• Members of paranormal groups who claim to have accredited ghost hunting certificates. A Google search for “accredited ghost hunting certification” lists approximately 58,700 websites. There none on the first 50 sites, some of which don’t even mention ghost hunting.
• Base their “claim to fame” on involvement with sites featuring ”cases” debunked as hoaxes and/or scams.

Con Artist Writers and Lecturers Unmasked

Red flare and warning siren:

Writers and lecturers who admitted to changing significant details and embellish on them to make the hauntings more interesting and scarier. One scamster wrote an article that appears on a legitimate website admitting he was a story teller who wrote books and gave lectures because he “likes to scare people.” Didn’t he realize he was debunking himself by such a confession?

“Psychic” Scamsters Debunked

These scamsters have their tricks:

Miss Cleo, née Youree Dell Harris, is the perfect “poster child” for con artist psychics, as Ted Bundy is for serial killers. She performed on “infomercials” for several psychic lines, cheating innocent people for money by offering free readings, then keeping them on the line as long as the scammers could, past the “free time”, to make $5 a minute! Another trick they used was to give callers an 809 area code number to call. While other Caribbean Islands share the area code, the Bahama-based one are “pay per call,” like 900 numbers. Many people aren’t aware of this, so they call and pay dearly. Miss Cleo and her co-conspirators were sued by the FTC and some states for fraud and other crimes. The defendants lost. All were banned from having websites and paid damages. They no longer exist, so innocent people are safe from this “psychic” and her partners in crime unless they opened other lines under new fictitious names and the contact had a different name…

Sightings

Orbsare most commonly captured on film in alleged or documented haunted places. They have been seen and recorded above fields withcrop circles, at religious services, including baptisms, marriages and funerals and in mundane daily routines. They have been seen near psychics and mediums, sometimes within or emanating from their auras. The spheres have been followed and played with by animals. Cats seem to be particularly adept at seeing orbs.

Faces, both humans and animals, have been found within the orbs. These balls of light have also been photographed having multiple faces, crowds of people and with buildings.

What Skeptics Say

• There is no evidence to suggest that orbs are related to ghosts, while they have often are seen in photos taken at haunted locations; they have been photographed in many other places.
• Orbs can be caused by flash reflection off of reflective surfaces, insects, glass, dust, hair, snow, rain and other moisture. In almost every case, the camera flash reflects on the surface of one of these particles and seems to glow.
• Some of the earlier, low-end digital cameras were made with CMOS chips which could create irregularities in dimly lit photographs that would be mistaken for orbs, so cameras were creating orbs which had no paranormal origin.
• Orbs don’t have to be taken with a camera flash. They can be caused by bright lights in an area where the photo is being taken, by angles of light and by many types of artificial lighting.

Theories

An indisputable fact is that orbs have shown up in many pictures, so they exist. It is equally true that they can be caused by many normal occurrences, including dust, hair and moisture and have been discounted as such. Obviously, not all of these are perfectly round as orbs are. What about those with paranormal causation? The word, “paranormal” is used in the sense that these have no current scientifically accepted explanation, therefore aren’t within scientific standards.

There is proof that some of these balls of light have electrical charges, so these have this type of energy. Many orbs are pure energy, but no one knows exactly what this type of energy is or even the definition of the words.

The fact that faces of humans and animals, crowds and buildings have been seen in orbs leads some to speculate that this orb may be a type of time warp.

There are those who call the spheres of light spirit or ghost orbs because they have been recorded in haunted places, during religious and spiritual rites and by psychics and mediums. Theories include the lights are spirits of the departed, angels or halos, and are forms of spiritual energy.

It appears there are various types of orbs. Only further research into these phenomena can, perhaps, one day, truly define these luminous balls of light.

Electronic voice phenomena is the voices and or sounds recorded on audio or video tape and are usually only heard after the tape is played back. Evp was first explored by Thomas Edison in the 1920’s and was further developed in the later 1950’s by Friedrich Juergenson. On the heels of Juergenson, Konstantine Raudive conducted similar research with similar findings: both Juergenson and Raudive reported contacting their mother’s from beyond the grave via recordings. Today evps are explored by hundreds of researchers worldwide, in an effort to both understand and master the science of electronic voice phenomena.

The skeptical arguments posed in opposition to the validity of electronic voice phenomena are numerous. What is important to remember, however, is that just because many arguments against the validity of evps exist; it does not imply that such arguments are compelling or irrefutable. By examining some of the popular arguments in opposition of electronic voice phenomena, it becomes clear that many arguments do not stand up to open-minded analysis. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular arguments posed:

Argument #1: Evps are the result of people deriving meaning out of natural noises and is a form of auditory pareidolia. Pareidolia is the false perception or misinterpretation of an unclear stimulus that is observed as something clear or palpable.

Rebuttal: Although some natural sounds may come across as evps and produce “false positive evidence”, such an argument certainly does not explain all evps. During analysis, evps are sorted into three classifications: A, B, and C, respectively. Although it is quite possible to misconstrue evps that fall under the “C” classification, the skeptical argument that Class “A” or even Class “B” evps cannot be clearly identified is nonsense. The reason for the distortion of class “C” evps is twofold. First, such evps are usually whispers, can be either heard in the background of an audio tape and/or over someone else speaking at the time. Second, upon filtering, class “C” evps often require significant noise reduction for clarity. This is not the case for class “A” and sometime class “B” evps. When classifying evps, especially those that fall into the class “A” category, such evps appear on tape as clearly as if an individual was standing next to the researcher and speaking during the time of taping. What’s more, producing similar results on a fairly consist basis weakens the argument for obscurity.

There are so many stereotypes used to label people that it would be virtually impossible to cover every kind of stereotype created in one article. Here, we will cover a few of the common labels that arise within the paranormal field and will additionally try to dispel the false impressions that form the erroneous labels in the first place!

Myth Number 1:

“You believe in ghosts therefore you must be crazy!”

Rebuttal:

No, we are not crazy, we just believe in life after death and that spirits can communicate with the living even after death. When considering how many religions in existence that embrace the idea of life after death, it is not a stretch in understanding that as ghost investigators, we embrace the same idea. That doesn’t make us crazy, it makes us firm in our concepts pertaining to life after death and sometimes, it makes us firm in our faith.

Myth Number 2:

“Rational individuals do not believe in the nonsense of ghosts and spirits.”

Rebuttal:

Nothing could be more incorrect. Many rational human beings believe in life after death and the existence of spirits. Such beliefs are often based on their own religious concepts or even on personal experiences. Whether or not an individual believes in the existence of spirits has nothing to do with their ability to think logically. In fact, most individuals who believe in the existence of spirits keep their rational thinking in check by repeatedly questioning and testing their own beliefs.

Myth Number 3:

“People who study the paranormal often spread corrupt ideas to otherwise uncorrupt or innocent individuals who are easily swayed, and fragile-minded.”

Rebuttal:

As students of the paranormal, (and we stress the word students because we deal with the unexplained and we are forever involved in the learning process) we do not sermonize our teaching and then spread the word as far as our ability allows us. Rather, we offer to answer questions and when questions arise we do not hesitate to address them. Our philosophy is: “if you don’t really want to know what we believe, then you shouldn’t ask!” We are not out to alter anyone’s point of view as everyone has the unique and inherent right to believe as they choose. We are, however, willing to educate those who desire to know about the paranormal.