Many of my readers know that I grew up in a family of paranormal investigators. I'm often asked what this was like, what our experiences were, and how a ghost hunt was conducted.
The following post answers some of those questions but this post does not nearly cover all the experiences that we had or stories that I could tell.
Being a member of a ghost hunting family wasn’t always as exciting or as bizarre as some people might think it is. Our house wasn’t haunted (much), at least not until I was an adult. We didn’t go to bizarre locations every night of the week or hold seances. We were a normal family, 98% of the time. My father worked in one of the last steel mills in the region. My mom was a normal housewife, having retired from work by the time they decided to really form a ghost hunting team. I was older, working, and had kids of my own.
We had always been in the life, in some form or fashion. My father had been raised in a very haunted house and would often tell us stories of waking up with his bed levitating in the air or his brother being dragged about the room. We just always accepted that ghosts exist on some level, maybe in another dimension, parallel to ours or maybe another level of ours. We grew up watching ghost hunting shows with my father and discussing them for hours. My father read up on ghost hunting, on the spirit world, on paranormal activity, demonology and other such things. He was a very well-educated, well-read man. This was more than a hobby to him, more like a lifelong study.
When my father began talking about going on ghost hunts and doing real investigations, we were naturally all in. He began buying the equipment, studying what each one was used for, reading up on his protection prayers, demonology and other such texts to prepare for whatever entity we might cross, and he started looking for other like-minded people to form a team with, outside of our family. Before too long, Springhill Paranormal was formed.
A normal ghost hunt would take place on Fridays or Saturdays, typically due to the late-night hours or overnight hunts that we went on. My father would plan the trips to each location, sometimes old graveyards that he had gotten access to, a private home with a lot of activity as noted by the owners, private estates that were hot spots and old state asylums were the most common spots. Once the location was chosen and a time set, we let the other team members know and would meet them there.
A typical hunt would go a lot like this:
Equipment check: thirty minutes before leaving our house. My father would check his bag for all the equipment for the night. Flashlights, with extra batteries, the laser grid, a couple laser pointers, several automated voice recorders, the EMF detector, and the EMF detector speaking box. This was another type of EMF device that had a red light and a green light on the top of it. This allowed communication with a spirit by asking a yes or no question that the spirit could answer by lighting up the red or green light. This was done simply by the spirit hovering near the red or green light or touching it. We also had a speaker box that we took on some trips, but this device was never too reliable, so we didn’t use it much, only at highly active locations.
Once the equipment was checked, it was our turn to be checked. Soft clothing in dark colors, preferably black, cell phones set to “do not disturb”, our own flashlight and 1-2 glow sticks, voice recorders of our own, water bottles and snacks. Snacks and water were necessary as most of these hunts took several hours and were usually old, empty places with no running water.
Once we were done with our checks, we would set off to the location to meet the rest of the team. Upon arrival, my father would go through the equipment check with them, divvy up the good stuff in his bag, like the laser grids and pointers, and EMF devices. Then he prayed for all of us, outside the location, a protection prayer so that whatever we might encounter could not attach itself to us.
The Rules: Before we went inside, he went over the rules. Every hunt, we were reminded of the rules. Respect the property. Respect the spirit world. Respect the hunt.
First off, respecting the property is simple enough to understand, no matter the condition of the location, we would not be causing further harm, destruction by littering, breaking things or doing anything that might leave lasting damage.
Secondly, respect the spirit world. This had several meanings. Do NOT provoke any spirit, under any circumstance. Do NOT attempt to mock, anger, or intimidate any spirit that may be inhabiting the location.
And the last rule, respect the hunt. Ask respectful questions of the spirits. Do not make excessive noise when other team members may be investigating near you. Do not leave your assigned area until the noted time, unless it's an emergency. This helped keep the noise level down and made it possible for other hunters to have a more successful experience.
Building Overview: Inside the building, we would meet with the owner or caretaker, sometimes a guide, and get the history of the location, the layout, the hotspots, etc., and then we would be left alone to set up our investigation. We would normally walk the building as a group, set up voice recorders in different spots and would decide where each team would go, as we typically split up into teams of 2 to investigate different areas.
Investigation: After the initial walkthrough was completed, we would part ways with our partner and head to our spot for the next two hours. Then we waited. We would walk the hallways, and the rooms, spend some time in each one, sitting quietly, asking questions with the voice recorders, waiting for any sounds, any type of shadow, any response at all. Eventually, we got bored and would settle on the floor to eat our snacks or talk, anything to pass some of the time.
After so long in one spot, we would move on and meet back up in the break room or lobby area, fill the others in on what we heard, felt, or experienced, and then switch areas. New locations, new sets of eyes and new personalities; sometimes, certain people on the team were more sensitive to the sounds or shadows. Other times, it seemed that a spirit just liked a certain person more and would be compelled to answer their questions or interact with us. My father often received responses, and my daughter was well-liked by many spirits. She would get a lot of activity around her or responses to the EMF question box.
This was the normal routine for the night. We would look for shadow figures, listen for any possible noise in response to our actions, take steps to record it as activity and then try to debunk it. We would look around for water pipes, radiators that were still operating, signs of rodents in the walls, tree limbs scratching on outer windows or doors. Ghostly activity can often be any number of these normal occurrences. Once we had ruled everything out, we recorded it as a possible paranormal occurrence.
When the hunt concluded for the night, we would gather our equipment, meet up with the team, double-check our equipment, and gather up any other belongings that we had brought in with us. Once outside of the building, we would gather for another protection prayer, the intent of this prayer being to block any entity from leaving with us. We never left a location without this prayer. My father was meticulous about this step, and it went for everyone, religious or not.
Typically, we would head home to sleep and then listen to the voice recorders, go over any video that we had, or pictures to see if we had captured any orbs, misty shapes or shadows. We would compare notes with the other team members, go through our debunking process for the event we recorded, and we would share our findings with the rest of the team. Some nights we recorded a lot of activity; many other nights, we left empty-handed.
In spite of how boring it can be, and the lack of any true paranormal activity on most hunts, the other hunts made up for it tenfold. To feel something standing right behind you and know it's a person, a spirit, breathing on your neck. To look through a camera viewfinder and see multiple orbs bouncing through the halls or around the graveyard, but when you look with your naked eyes, you cannot see anything. To sit quietly at the end of a long dark hallway and see fully formed shadow people moving from room to room.
All these things happened to us on these hunts and more. Paranormal activity does exist, things do happen that cannot be explained, and I personally have experienced them dozens of times, if not more.
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