Ghost Hunter Gear & Equipment

Police officers are witnesses to many tragic and extraordinary events. But “Elliot,” an officer in Port Richey, Flordia, was not prepared for the strange and unexplained things he saw on a February night in 2003. This is Elliot’s story:

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.)

THE GHOST PHENOMENON has become so closely associated with the instinct of fear that it’s almost a given that, if asked, most people would admit that of course they would be frightened if they encountered an apparition. Even many seasoned ghost investigators have been known to run like scared rabbits when they see or even hear something unexpected.

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.

You hear heavy footsteps in the upstairs hallway when you know no one is up there. Doors slam unaccountably. Commonly used items disappear and reappear without cause. The kitchen light turns on by itself. There’s the unmistakable scent of a strange perfume in the air.

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.