Dark World: Into the Shadows with the Lead Investigator of the Ghost Adventures Crew (6 page)

“Something pulled my hair,” she said, doing a good job of containing her emotions. She was brave, but I could also tell something had just happened that rattled her. As she walked down the corridor, an unseen hand grabbed her hair and pulled it backward, causing her head to snap back. Her presence had the exact effect I was hoping for—a spirit, probably a male inmate unaccustomed to being around women, attacked her. Rather than run, Sarah stood her ground and called out to us, though we were slow to respond because we were also experiencing our own paranormal encounters at the same time.

Trigger objects like Sarah are very effective at enticing paranormal activity, but they’re also important for gauging the mental capacity of the spirits involved. A disembodied voice apologizing to Sarah shows responsibility, accountability, and even remorse. It says the spirit didn’t want to hurt her, but wanted to make contact and wasn’t sure how. It also made it clear that there was more than one spirit in that cellblock—one that wanted to hurt people and one that didn’t.

An alternate explanation is that there was one spirit who both harmed her and then apologized for it. Either way, the activity and captured voices give us some insight as to what the spirits are thinking. That kind of evidence not only helps the singular investigation, but also the overall cause of paranormal investigators—to help the living communicate with the dead, which is enhanced through human trigger objects.

Good Spirits

The biggest challenge when communicating and interacting with spirits is that you start off the relationship like a blind man. The people you want to know more about are a complete mystery and their intentions are not clear, so there’s a feelingout process. Who am I really in company with? Should I go in with my guard up or arms open? Is this a genuine spirit or one who wants to do me harm? Is it going to be truthful with me or lie? Does it know it’s dead?

Some people think it’s easy to make contact, but that’s only the first step. Understanding a ghost is a completely different thing. Sometimes it’s like reaching out to a cute fuzzy bunny that suddenly grows fangs and attacks you like the rabbit in
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
. The paranormal world is so camouflaged and dark. You can be lured or tricked by demonic entities, so your intuition is very important.

Even when you know the history of a building, it can be used against you. Halles-Bar Marina in Tennessee has a graveyard full of children on the property, but the spirits inside are anything but innocent. This is a place where a combat veteran was more scared than anything he saw overseas. It’s a place where I thought I was going to comfort children, but instead got attacked. So I always have my guard up. Fortunately, I don’t always need it.

I specialize in confronting evil, dark entities like the ones at Ohio State Reformatory, but there are plenty of ghosts who don’t mean any harm and just want to know what happened to them. There are spirits who can’t rest because they want to find closure for how they died or have unfinished business. Many times they’re just reaching out to communicate, which I am always willing to do. That’s one of the core principles of paranormal investigation—you have to be open-minded and walk into every situation without preconceived notions. Just because someone told you an evil spirit lurks in the basement of an abandoned warehouse does not mean you should be automatically confrontational during an investigation. You might also encounter a situation of multiple spirits with different agendas. You could be on one floor of a large building and encounter a spirit who wants to hurt or scare you, but on the next floor you encounter one who needs your help. Preston Castle in Ione, California, held just such a scenario.

Halfway between Sacramento and Stockton, Preston Castle was built in 1890 as a reformatory for young males, but long before that, its grounds had been used as a cemetery. During its time as a reformatory, Preston was witness to at least twelve deaths, including a boy who was shot in the back while trying to escape. The compound is massive and decorated in a gothic style that, along with its imposing bell tower, oozes mystery and an allure to discover its secrets.

When you look at Preston Castle, you just know it’s haunted. It’s like looking into a psychic’s crystal ball, but not one from Spencer’s gifts. It’s the real deal. You can see the history there. You can see the juveniles that were sent there for their crimes. You can see the murders, the darkness, the lives that were wasted, and why it was shoved out into the middle of nowhere away from prying eyes.

But what you can’t see is the mysterious murder of Anna Corbin. Anna was the head housekeeper who was found dead in 1957 in a basement closet. She had been dragged from the kitchen to the basement, bludgeoned beyond recognition and strangled. It was a horrible death for someone who certainly did not deserve it. An inmate was tried three times for the crime, but was never convicted for various reasons.

Before the investigation, a local reporter asked me to bring back any evidence I gathered about Anna’s death, which took the night to a whole new level. This was no longer just a paranormal investigation, but a homicide investigation as well. I took that very seriously, but at the same time tried not to let it affect the way we do things. I was flattered that this man wanted us to help him solve a fifty-year-old crime, but we also had a job to do.

I brought a bouquet of flowers into the dusty basement and set them at the place where Anna’s body was found. But as soon as I backed away from that spot, something happened that I’ve never talked about. I had an immediate and powerful emotional connection to the place where she died. The room looked different. My ears rang. I could smell something being cooked in the kitchen down the hall and I saw flash images of her life. I don’t claim to be psychic, but in that moment I felt like I was there when Preston Castle and Anna Corbin were both alive and well. It was a surreal moment and I had to physically shake my head to tear away from what I was seeing, hearing, and feeling. It’s hard to put into words, but if I had to, I’d simply say I was there . . . in the busy heyday of Preston Castle. It was like I time traveled and was fortunate enough to see how life was back then.

I kept that experience to myself until now. At first, reason told me to reject it . . . that it was not possible . . . that my senses were playing tricks on me, but I swear I was there in the moment and it was powerful. I think this is when I truly developed a sixth sense to feel their world. I felt like I was rewarded by a higher power for working so hard to communicate with the dead and ease their suffering.

This was one of the first times I realized I was more than a paranormal investigator. I had become a “sensitive”—someone who is in tune with the spirits of the deceased. It was the moment when things went deeper and I realized there was some kind of higher power that seemed to be graduating me from Mister Miyagi’s basic school of “wax on, wax off” teaching and moving me onto a higher learning platform. The calling I once heard, which told me that this was my destiny, was suddenly verified. This was the golden moment where I was in the presence of a genuinely good spirit.

Suddenly, I felt two arms slide underneath mine, pick me up, and guide me away from the room. I don’t remember the walking part at all and even after watching the video later, I don’t remember it. I only remember moving through this giant, dark place with nothing to light my way like I knew exactly where I was and where I needed to be. Nick and Aaron called to me and asked where I was going, but their words echoed off the empty walls and I didn’t respond. I even left my camera sitting on the floor, which I never do.

I walked through the castle to Anna’s apartment on the third floor and sat in the middle of it, feeling a blanket of reassurance cover me like I never had before. I felt at peace in her room and really didn’t want to leave. I felt like an old friend was watching me, and the room was full of teddy bears, ice cream, and Kenny G. I sat there as long as Nick and Aaron would let me, comfortable in the safety of her presence.

I think this was Anna’s way of communicating. She didn’t have enough energy to be heard or seen, so her way of communicating was to transfer her emotions onto me. I think she was a good person and wanted me to feel welcome instead of scared and did that by feeling at peace herself.

The common term for this interaction is emotional transference. It’s the sudden feeling of a certain emotion that the observer was previously not feeling and which comes from an outside source. In the paranormal world, it’s believed that a spirit can transfer its emotions onto a living person as it passes through or by them. If a spirit is angry, the observer suddenly is filled with rage, as happened to me a few times. If the spirit is sad, the observer will be, too. If you learn to identify this type of interaction, you can use it to help detect when spirits are present, especially if you have an EMF detector handy that can verify a jump in electromagnetic fields at the same time your emotions change.

Ghosts Changed My Life

I felt different after leaving Preston Castle. There was a shock factor to that investigation that I’ve only experienced a few times. It was like having a near-death experience and not looking at the world in the same light afterward. I was affected by the experience with Anna, but in a good way. Ghosts like this one empower me. It isn’t well known, but I once had a severe social phobia. I couldn’t be around people. I couldn’t eat, write, or speak well with people. But after emotional events like this with spirits, I feel cured. I look at the world differently because I know something that most people either don’t or won’t accept. Moments like this at Preston Castle have made me stronger and I wish the same were true for others. Too many people look at paranormal encounters negatively. They’re scared by the unknown and perceive a meeting with a ghost as frightening or evil when the opposite could be the real truth. Many times a spirit wants the help of the living or is trying to offer a human assistance, as it was for me with the spirit of Anna Corbin.

Another interesting thing happened in Anna Corbin’s room that I didn’t know about until after the investigation when I reviewed the video footage. A ball of light that had a very intelligent flight path clearly shot into my head while I sat in the middle of her room. This was not my first experience with this. At the Goldfield Hotel, a ball of light slowly followed the contour of my forearm at the same time that the temperature dropped and my skin became very cold. These were my first experiences with orbs, and I could not deny that they were connected to an increase in paranormal activity. Is it just coincidence that these balls of light (that are clearly not bugs or dust) are accompanied by emotional changes in myself and happen at the same time paranormal evidence is captured? The connection cannot be ignored.

Orbs

I do agree that approximately 95 percent of what people speculate to be “paranormal orbs” captured on still cameras and infrared camcorders can be debunked as environmental conditions and photographic error. However, I also strongly believe that the remaining 5 percent really are orbs of energy, partial manifestations of spirits, or visual and residual hauntings.

Many times light can bounce back directly into the lens of a camera and cause a perfectly round ball of whiteness on the exposure. Even more common are dust, moisture, pollen, snow, rain, cigarette ash, or a microscopic particle that gets in front of the lens and causes a reflection. We’ve all seen it happen. Video is different, though. The orbs I’ve captured on video move in random and intelligent directions and disappear into our bodies at the same time that physical changes occur. The consistent presence of orbs during other paranormal activity has led me to believe that they are indeed spirits, at least as far as video is concerned (I still think many orbs from digital and film cameras are easily debunked).

Unexplained lights are common during paranormal investigations. Many times I’ve seen flashes of light at the end of a hallway or in another room and was too slow to catch it on film. As I stated before, spirits are composed of energy. Energy frequently gives off light or transforms into light, so by the substitutive property (if a = b, and b = c, then a = c), it’s easy to see how spirits can manifest as light. Knowing this, we have to ask the question, “What shape would that light take?”

When you think about it, the sphere is the perfect shape of the universe. A sphere represents equal pressure being exerted in all directions and is the primary shape of the cosmos. A bubble is a good example. A soap bubble floating through air forms a perfectly round shape (except for those huge wobbly bubbles you see courtyard entertainers make with their overly wet ropes that create a mess on the concrete where severe pedestrian accidents can occur by slipping . . . damn, am I rambling again?).

Anyway . . . the air inside the container is pushing outward with an equal and uniform amount of pressure in all directions, causing the bubble to take the shape of a round sphere or orb. If spirits are pure energy, then it stands to reason that they could also take the shape of a sphere with a thin layer containing them.

When I capture an orb on film, I go through all the possibilities to debunk it. As a young investigator, I would put the video through an oscilloscope to ensure it was not tampered with by an outside source or damaged en route from the investigation site to the studio. But as I became more experienced, I got to the point that I could visually discern an orb from an insect or dust by its physical characteristics. The composition and behavior of the object in question always gives it away.

Dust is fine and appears like snow on film, while bugs look more like rods with pulsating wings as they move into and out of frame. The movement of orbs is different. They have intelligent flight patterns. They go back and forth, side to side, and interact with humans, even hesitating before crashing into us. They have very discernable, identifiable patterns of behavior— and that’s what always interests me.