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Who Ya Gonna Call? Ghost Hunters & Hunting

norton51 said:
linesmachine said:
...I've always wondered what stops anyone with a vaguely old building offering "Ghost Hunting" nights....just by saying some odd shxt happened (not that I'm suggesting this in your friends case drbates!).
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Given the methods used by many ghost hunters, like seances, EVP, use of mediums, EMF meters etc, I think they'd get much the same results as in a building with plenty of well witnessed haunting phenomena. These sort of methods will work equally well anywhere, anytime.
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Your response has interested me norton51. Every year a friend and I go Paranormal Camping in an effort to witness "something". To increase our chances we have always gone to well known hot spots in the UK. Now, if I go by your theory then I'm wasting my time travelling to these places and might as well do it in my garden... and I'm not sure if I disagree with that! What do other people think?
 
When people first started EVP research, they did it in their homes and it worked perfectly well there. Similarly, mediums usually hold private 'circles' in their homes. It is only in recent years that many people have felt the need to bring mediums along for ghost research. As for EMF meters - since they react to all sorts of things, including static electricity and moving bits of metal, you can get 'weird' readings with them anywhere.
 
Regardless of any ... er ... faith in the abilities of mediums, I can't see they're a productive "tool" or participant in a ghost hunt, especially in "popular" sites. As far as I can see, they can supply an interesting and mildly thrilling narrative to a ghost hunt, especially when nothing seems to be happening. Someone may attend a hunt who is known to have mediumistic powers, of course, but you find many of the others hanging on their every word - instead of attending to their own perceptions and experiences.

I would suggest that ghost hunts may be rewarding for participants in locations with "previous" or a large amount of local reputation, even going by the idea of something is more likely to happen than, say, in your front room (as long as your front room isn't known as a ghost hot-spot!) However, take heed - anyone can take an old (or apparently old) location, declare local rumour to have it haunted then make a charge for anyone hoping to experience the uncanny. They're charging you for the ability to stay for the night ... not for what you may experience!

The popularity of Most Haunted has made it incredibly lucrative for legendary haunts to hold vigils, ostensibly to pay for security, damage, inconvenience etc. I've nothing against most locations charging for the outright inconvenience of having a group of hopefuls camp out in your building but this means the groups really must have some form of level-headed judgement in where to go and how to pay.

Finally, consider some outdoor locations with the reputation of being haunted and the potential for free, if chilly, ghostwatching.
 
So on Saturday night I was at The London Tombs for 9 hours carrying out all sorts of vigils and experiments. A great location given there are still many bones of bodies buried beneath the concrete and the Tombs themselves date back to the 1600s. Also the figurines and waxworks placed around the Tombs added to the general spookiness of the whole night.

7 of us had a few hits on a Ouija board apparently talking to a child of 6 named William...then encountered something that told me to f*ck off. The glass moving in the board seemed quite difficult to do with just a finger on it and when I tried to pull it the other direction it was traveling there did seem to be some force stopping me.

We had table tipping which I can't explain. The table was a low, x legged table that rose up on two legs and then one before spinning making all 7 of us circle with it. Couldn't get my head round how it was faked.

Sat for a while by myself with a maglite that was going on and off on command and through a series of elimination questions it appeared I was talking to a man who died in 1741. We had another maglite flick on and off as well in another room.

All very entertaining, not conclusive proof, but very, very interesting. Am I convinced that ghosts exist....still on the fence I'm afraid.

I was taken aside at one point and told by a white witch that I'm sensitive to such things and should look further into it.

I'd recommend it as a fun night out for Forteans...in fact if anyone is up for it...I'd do it again with you. Costly at £70 a ticket but as I said kicking around the London Tombs in the dead of night...it was worth it.

mooks (I see dead people allegedly) out
 
i would be up for that..but friday nights is the only time i could do it
 
I'm a member of a Swedish Paranormal Group and we carry out investigations on a regular basis. We do some for our own interest and to try out new equipment(public buildings, places said to be haunted) and others for private persons who Contact us to say that they or their homes are being haunted.

We've had mixed results. Mostly, we've found perfectly rational explanations for what people are experiencing. We have a lot of people contacting us looking for help and we have found that most of them are in need of a different kind of help. One recent case was suspected alzheimers - the lady was convinced that things were moving in her home.

We have had other more interesting things happen including objects moving and operating by themselves.

Regarding Ghost Hunting as entertainment - I don't see why people can't charge for an organised activity. If someone wants to pay for the experience and get access to a location and Equipment, then why not? As for charging for a serious attempt at investigating, then that reeks of exploitation.

We do not charge for investigating and we do not take along guests - paid or otherwise.
 
The cat's behavior is something that's often mentioned when people complain about their homes being haunted. If I were an engineer and a ghost hunter, I would try to develop a video camera or goggles that allows us to see just what the heck cats are watching when there's nothing there.

This article mentions that cats can see and process quicker movements than we can, have a kind of night-vision, and that they're trichromats like us, but in a different color spectrum.

Maybe cats are just crazy, or maybe they see things we don't. And that includes non-paranormal things... like maybe they can see the heat rising out of the vent on a cool evening in the same way that we can see the air shimmer when it's rising off the stove. There could be a play of light on the wall from a passing car that we don't perceive when the lamp's on, but the cat does.

Or maybe they see ghosts flitting across the ceiling and out the door. :shock:

These images show just how differently cats and humans see the world

"The increase in rods also enhances their “refresh rate”, so that they can pick up movements much faster (very helpful when dealing with small animals that change direction very quickly during a chase). These differences also help them to have great night vision, an excellent ability to pick up and follow quick movements, but at the cost of less vibrant color, with less detailed resolution."

"That said, there is some research out there that suggests cats may also have a third cone type that peaks at 500-520 nm (green area). This would indicate that they are trichromats, but not in the human sense (the cones aren’t as spread out and all fall in the violet-yellow range)."
 
We left our old house in March 2010, but did not sell it until September of the same year. Unbeknown to me at the time, my three daughters arranged for a local psychic group to conduct an investigation of it. The results (which I saw a couple of weeks later) were interesting to say the least. One photograph certainly convinced me that something strange was taking place there, and probably had been doing for the whole of the 20 or so years that we lived there. I won't describe the photo yet, as I would like to get around to posting it on here one day and asking viewers what it is that they think they are looking at.

As far as cats (and dogs) are concerned, then I would like to add this. My wife and I were sat in the living room of our old house one evening when we heard what I can only describe as a groan rising to a howl. It seemed to come from the kitchen, which was directly behind were I was sitting. At the time we had two cats and one dog, all three of which were asleep in front of the fire...none of them moved when we heard the noise. My daughter, who was in the bathroom above the kitchen also heard the noise, and came down to ask us what we thought it was. We told her we didn't know, and the incident was more or less forgotten.

I find it interesting that none of us, pets included, found the incident particularly noteworthy...as though we were somehow immune to something which would normally have terrified me, my wife and daughter, and set the animals going crazy! But it happened.
 
I'll be investigating this place in a few weeks.

Venngarn Castle, Sweden

It's a 3 Day investigation and we're holding a workshop on Day 1 that's open for everyone. We'll be giving a brief talk about our work, the castle and what we are hoping to achieve and then the public will be let loose with some of our gear to have a look around. The castle is not normally open to anyone.

After a few hours, we'll kick them out and get down to the investigation. It's really cool actually. The buildings owners are giving us full access for 3 days, temporarily halting renovation work.
 
Just thought I'd show you guys something strange which we captured on video from our investigation in June.

A flash of light comes from the hallway, to the left hand side of Camera 2. The light also shines through the doorway into the room where Camera 1 is positioned.

The problem is that:

1. There were no people on that floor at the time. We were all two floors below.
2. There are no electric lights in the corner where the flash came from.
3. There are no windows in that corner and from the footage from Camera 1 you can clearly see that the light comes from the room containing Camera 2.
4. The light illuminates the near side of the balustrade and therefore cannot have come from the windows behind.
5. The door into the room to the left of the hallway was closed (and the light in tat room was switched off).

Here are two links:
This one is a sketch of the floor we were on.The numbers show the camera positions. X marks the spot where I think the flash came from.

This one is the video captured from all 4 cameras. Camera 1 Top Left, Camera 2 Top Right, Camera 3 Botom Left, Camera 4 Bottom right (Camera 4 is not on the sketch as it was one floor above in the attic) We slowed it down a bit to make to easier to see.

More stuff happened that night but this is the only thing we captured on video.
 
Nice video, Ringo!

From the camera footage, it looks as if the light originates from the room, shines through the doorway and illuminates the balustrade. But it was near the balustrade that the light actually originated? Shining toward the windows, not away from them? That's pretty spooky, then. :shock:

What else happened that night?
 
It is weird, isn't it? We can't explain it.

The light seemed to originate from the "hallway". As I showed in the sketch, imagining the hallway as a square, then Camera 2 was in the bottom right corner of the room and the light seemed to come from the left/bottom left.

All that was there to the left was a closed door to a small room and in the bottom left was a doorway into the room where Camera 1 positioned. There are no windows behind Camera 2. The light illuminates the balustrade in the "hallway" from the same side of the room as the camera - towards the window.

On Camera 1 you can see the light shine thorugh the doorway and create a shaft of light on the floor pointing to wards the windows in that room.

It seems to be towards the warm end of the light scale - not a camera flash or cold halogen bulb. Nor a LED flashlight. Ruling all of them out however was that we were the only people in the building and were not even on this floor. This was all on the 3rd floor of the building (which consisted of cellar, 3 floors and then attic). We were on the ground floor at the time.
 
Other things that happened:

During the Workshop, two different people reported seeing the same apparition at the same time. A woman who entered the room and stood listening to our presentation before leaving through a locked door. These two different people were completely independant of each other and didn't hear the other's story.

On the first night, once everyone had left us, we couldn't figure out how to close and lock the front door properly. We learned the "knack" of locking it - which required lifting the weight of the door to allow the bolt to slide home.

Cue the second night and all 4 of us went outside for some fresh air. An IR movement detector in the cellar started beeping and two of us ran inside. After we had reset the detector we went back up, only to hear the other two banging on the outside of the door. The door had been locked - from the inside. Somehow, the door had closed, had lifted itself up and the bolt had been pushed home.

The IR detector in the cellar gave us our best results. It is a point to point device and if something breaks the beam, then the alarm sounds. It did this a few times (every two hours or so) and in the end we waited in the cellar for the next alarm. When it did go off, we reset it and asked for it to do it again. Which it did immediately. I then reset it and asked for them to give us another sign. The detector then fell over on the chair. Or was it pushed...
 
Cool, Ringo. Sounds like a quite a bit of spooky activity in that castle!
Thanks for the update. :D
 
I am off to the clink prison on the night of the 15th november, i just hope i am let out again.
 
Back from my time in the clink, i was pleasantly surprised by the absence of most haunted shenanigans, there was just a little bit of most haunted when we where holding hands in a circle "raising a vortex of energy" and a lot of ppl started saying they could see dark shapes, egged on by the medium.


The medium asked spirit to raise somebodys hands, i was holding her hand and could feel her hand gently trying to raise mine up,i gently held it down,but the women on the other side of the medium felt her hand raise.


there was a lot of people saying they felt cold or that somebody was tickling them, but i felt and seen nothing all night. But i was joined in one room by a couple, one of their cameras batterys drained right at the start of the vigil and in my presence the women took a photo on her phone that showed a distinct monk like face, close to the camera, all three of us took pictures standing in the same spot, facing the same way but nobody got anything similar.


All in all it was a very interesting experience,and i intend to go on further ghost hunts, i may even get over my fear and do the ouija board.
 
On the haunted happenings face book page the couple that took the interesting photo said last sunday they would put it on the site AFTER editing..... :cry:
 
Just back from my ghost hunt at newsham park orphanage/mental asylum/ hospital, there where the normal attempts by the staff to suggest we where feeling things, there was the ouija board that was interesting but did seem to be wish fulfillment on behalf of a bereaved couple. Considering it was freezing inside, much colder than outside and i had got soaked feet getting to the venue and was shivering with cold all night,i was thinking to myself the ragged house school ghost hunt i had booked for next year would be my 3rd and last, then.....


At the beginning of the night, while we where creating a "circle of protection" we heard distinct footsteps up stairs, a team member myself and another guest went and searched the area but we found nothing, the staff said it was definitely not the caretaker. But what really made it worth it was right at the end of the night when i went for a last walk around the venue. I went up some stairs too where i seen a notice i thought would look good as a facebook post, so i took out my phone, went to camera and prepared to shoot. With my mobile camera you line up with what you want to take a picture off, let the white box turn green then touch inside the box, but the photo took itself and i was sure i hadn't hit inside the box. A bit shocked i started pointing the camera in different directions, but it didn't take any more pictures by itself, UNTIL i pointed it back at the sign when it again took a picture and this time i am certain i didn't touch the box .


I am going to email blackberry asking if its possible for a phone to take pictures with no input from the person holding the phone, but even if it was why did it only happen when i was lined up on the notice?


At the end of the event i was breathlessly trying to tell people what had happened and why it shouldn't have happened only to be asked "did you get any orbs"
 
its no problem to post them, but in themselves they are not very interesting, its how they where taken that is puzzling me.
spookyphoto1.jpg
spookyphoto2.jpg
 
I am going to transylvania in september!! part of the tour includes a ghost hunt in dracula's castle!
 
Here's a link to a sound file which we captured on our latest investigation. LINK

The link goes to our website where you can play the first sound file called "Engsholm Slott".

After 9 seconds you hear voices. Around 14 or 15 seconds you can hear shouting/voices. Then a muffled scream at 25 seconds.

This was recorded with a digital dictaphone. The dictaphone was sitting on a large oak table in the middle of a round room. The room is one level of a tower, in one corner of a castle and is used as a library. All the windows were closed and the door into the room was closed.

There was nobody in that room or even on the same floor of the castle. We (5 persons) were 3 floors down at the time and heard nothing. We heard nothing at the time and nothing was captured on the 4 other dictaphones we had dotted around the castle.
 
so the voices talking could not have been you team? it sounds to me just like a group of friends chatting.
What digital dictaphone do you use? what one would you recommend for a very part time ghost hunter who goes ghosthunting about once every 6 months?
 
titchagain said:
so the voices talking could not have been you team? it sounds to me just like a group of friends chatting.
What digital dictaphone do you use? what one would you recommend for a very part time ghost hunter who goes ghosthunting about once every 6 months?
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We were nowhere near. It is possible (although I don't know how) that it picked us up but as I said, we were 3 floors down. The sound may have carried up the stairwell but as for the scream/shout, that was definitely not us. We were lucky in that the castle owners had turned over the whole place just to us. The only member of staff was a night watchman, in a different building on the other side of the estate.

We also picked up the sounds of wooden furniture scraping on the floor (as when you pull a chair out from a table) but that clip isn't on the website.

I wasn't sure the exact make of dictaphone but after looking it up, it is an Olympus VN5500. We sometimes use a Zoom H4N too. i'm not sure what to recommend as I've only used these two. The Olympus costs around £25 I think.
 
That scream at the end sounds unearthly. *shiver*
 
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