Ghost hunter's Diary

A few of you know that I've been ghost hunting for far longer than I'd like to admit to. While rumaging around for a story outline today in my files, I found some articles that were published while with my ghost hunting group in Washington, D.C. years ago. I thought it would be fun to share what a bit of this investigation was like:

XXX House, Maryland 2003

I went on an investigation last month to a house that my group had been to previously. I had heard the stories of full-body apparitions, whispers and hot spots and now wanted to see what all the fuss was about. The night was perfect, an electrical storm had been brewing for days making the air crackle and the night sweaty. The house was a stone's throw away from a marsh in the Chesapeake, the smell of rotting vegetation adding to the ambience. If there were spirits to be found, how could they resist?

Lights flashed in this house. The owners blamed it on the spirit of a woman murdered there over a year ago in their basement bedroom. They showed me where they had replaced the bloody carpeting next to their bed and I had to quell my imagination from seeing faces stare back at me in their mirrored closet doors. We set up infra-red cameras in the hallway, where the owner had encountered her several times and waited. We interviewed the family again. And waited. A bulb in the kitchen track lighting flashed off and on, the other six in the track remained steadfastly bright as I grilled the owner about faulty wiring. And we waited.

At first, a few members of the investigative group, including myself, had felt something in the house. Some felt a tickle on their skin; it skimmed and played with our senses until we almost scratched ourselves to get away from it. Another had the sensation of pressure around his head. As we busied ourselves for her possible appearance, our most sensitive investigator felt her watching from a corner. Now we were both waiting.

The children of the house went to bed, the owners stayed up as long as they could trying not to be in the way but still curious about the tools we had brought and how to use them. They were looking for answers more than we were, they needed to understand what was happening. Around 11pm, the house cleared. The air was not as heavy though the storm still rumbled in the distance, the faint caressing of our skin faded and we suspected that she was not going to give in to a command performance. Waiting until after 2am, her usual time to wander the house, we packed up for the long journey home to another state. We know this game well by now, it's on her terms and we're just following the allure of the mist.

Haunted objects

What creates a haunted object? What saturates something that has no soul so that it carries with it the pain of a broken heart or the violence of a death? Call it cursed, call it blessed, these items frequently bump into our lives creating phenomena that can’t be explained by the cat. Haunted cribs, chairs that doom people to horrible deaths or dolls that you thought only existed in bad movies, the mundane creates its own horror through the memories forced on it by former owners and passed on to new ones. You may think twice before hitting the next garage sale.

I have a friend that collects haunted things; it’s become an obsession for him. He travels to New Orleans and brings back authentic voodoo dolls for my children. One of these dolls he also gave to a lady who put it away in a cupboard so as to not tempt the cats as a plaything. That same night, she developed a headache and went to lie down on the couch. Upon awaking a few hours later, the doll was sitting on the table next to her head. Returning it to the cupboard, she now periodically hears scratching coming from the cabinet. She was also given babysitting duties to my friend’s haunted doll bought at an auction. The doll, while innocuous looking enough, gives everyone the creeps and was relegated to the same cupboard. Again, the scratching. I’d be setting very large mousetraps…

A painting has come into his possession, bought at an estate auction of a man who killed himself after the murder of his daughter by his wife and her subsequent suicide. An abstract of blue and red, it hangs in Al’s apartment in the living room. Since the painting arrived, he has been experiencing a multitude of incidents. Each night, between 1-2 am, he feels a weight sitting on the edge of his bed. The television switches channels by itself, objects disappear and return later into plain view. He bought a ghost along with his artwork. One of the items that has developed a wandering streak is a clown doll bought at auction, it has gone missing for weeks only to turn up again on a bookshelf. Small, cheerful and harmless, we wonder if it has anything to do with the television as well since when it’s sitting atop it, it changes channels, but it’s getting hard to tell who’s doing what in that house. Since the clown has entered the picture, Al has been subjected to phantom knockings at the door…ones that are only a few feet off the ground.

Can objects be haunted and passed down to another? Just ask anyone living in a haunted house.