Ghost Hunting (2 page)

He’s since become a part of our primary investigative team, but he still runs New England Paranormal as a member of the T.A.P.S. extended family. Steve’s a real down-to-earth, dependable guy. As you’ll see, we trust him one hundred percent—even if he does have a few inconvenient phobias. Fortunately, one thing he’s not afraid of is ghosts.

Donna LaCroix, another mainstay of our organization, came to us about four years ago. An environmental engineer, she had gone to high school with Grant and was looking for help with some paranormal experiences she’d had growing up. Grant talked her through her issues on the phone. Before he was done, she was asking to join the group.

It was a good thing. Donna turned out to be a whiz at case management. She came in and reorganized the whole process. She’s also accompanied us on quite a few cases. She doesn’t like to hold equipment, and it’s a constant struggle to move her into the realm of the scientific, but she looks after us when we’re on the road, making sure we eat right and that we go to bed when we should.

Donna has shown a clear sensitivity to the supernatural, so she gives us another perspective in an investigation. She’s also a terrific interviewer, not only in terms of her ability to sympathize with the victim but also because she can smell a fabrication a mile away—and we’ve run into our share of fabrications.

Of course, there’s more to T.A.P.S. than the team I lead with my buddy Grant. We have another fifteen members in Rhode Island and probably the same amount conducting investigations for Steve Gonsalves in Massachusetts. They’re the ones who work behind the scenes, taking care of the confidential cases we would never show on television.

The arrangement works for them because their jobs prohibit them from being publicly associated with a paranormal group. These people work for NASA, the CIA, and the FBI. They include a forensic scientist, a nuclear physicist, and even a Secret Service agent, but they’re so dedicated to ghost hunting they don’t mind doing it anonymously.

So T.A.P.S. has plenty of talent we can bring to bear, and plenty of experience. But the heart of the organization is still my partner Grant, whom I affectionately call G.W. He’s the one who designed our investigative protocol. He’s also the one who gets the lay of the land in each case, making sure before we set anything up that we know where cold drafts may enter, where noises may originate, and what obstacles may exist. After all, we have to operate in the dark, and expectation and excitement can make people careless.

Grant’s always questioning what people think they see or hear. One thing he notices in the correspondence we get is how often people claim they’ve captured the faces of demons in their photos. This is often the result of “matrixing,” or the tendency of the human brain to see familiar features in complex shapes or colors. (That also goes for hearing voices in ordinary sounds.)

Pictures that contain complex shapes and variations are the most likely candidates for the overactive imagination, Grant’s discovered, as are “features” that look like those of cartoon characters. He has art training, so he can tell right away if something has the right proportions to be a face. He advises others to keep this in mind when trying to decide if a mysterious image in a photo is a human expression.

And of course, there’s always the possibility that a photo has been faked. Digital photography has made deception easier and more prevalent, so we’re extra careful about reportedly demonic or apparitional photographs.

Grant’s driving passion is to make paranormal investigations more scientifically acceptable. Me? Even with the evidence in front of me, I’m pretty skeptical. So we balance each other out.

“What makes us click,” Grant once observed of our partnership, “is that we’re total opposites.” He sees me as the doer—the brawn of the team—and the stick to his carrot. We’re at different ends of the interpersonal relations spectrum. When I’m annoyed with someone, he can show up and mix in some understanding. And when he’s soft with people, I don’t hesitate to say so.

Grant and I are also partners in a different way. We work together as plumbers for Roto-Rooter, the largest provider of plumbing and drain cleaning services in North America. If you own a home, there’s a good chance you’ve used Roto-Rooter at some time in your life.

I got into the business first, then brought Grant in as well. At first he was reluctant because he was trying to build a career for himself in computers. Now he’s grateful that I got him into the right kind of hardware—the kind that involves a wrench and a long copper pipe.

Come to think of it, that’s
two
good turns he owes me for.

BY JASON HAWES

T
hroughout this book you’ll hear us talk about the scientific approach to ghost hunting, so let me explain what that means. Scientific knowledge comes from systematic and objective observations, which help us make deductions we can trust. It also means we have to test those deductions through controlled experiments that can be repeated by others under the same conditions. After subjecting phenomena to recording, measurement, and experimentation, we may realize that our initial observations were in error, or we may see more evidence to support our hypothesis. But the point is to try to debunk it first.

Once we have some patterns that support our hypothesis and lack patterns that would contradict it, we can proceed with our next step. If an experiment can’t be brought into a lab to control for all possible variables (obviously, ghosts fall into this category), the subject must be carefully observed in different types of settings and under different conditions. In doing this, we’re trying to accomplish several things:

• Determine the causes of certain events
  
• Eliminate all possible natural explanations
  
• Define a core essence for the phenomenon from regularities
  
• Define specific situations involving the phenomenon
  
• Learn what the phenomenon does under other conditions, such as after prayer or when it is clearly addressed with questions
  
• Predict what the phenomenon might do if it were moved away from the venue in question
  

In every investigation, we collect a wealth of data through different types of cameras, meters, and voice recorders, and from observations and reports of strange experiences. We sift through all of this as objectively as possible before we begin to draw conclusions.

We understand that ghost hunting isn’t an exact science. We have to accept the fact that we’re working in a real-world setting. However, we’re determined to come as close to scientific accuracy as we possibly can. That’s the only way we’re going to produce reliable evidence and advance the study of the paranormal.

BY JASON HAWES WITH GRANT WILSON

POWERFUL FEELINGS JANUARY 1996

S
ometimes it’s not just a supernatural visitor that’s plaguing a residence. In at least one case we came across, the problem was also someone else.

Mary and David Green, who owned a house in western Massachusetts, asked T.A.P.S. to help them with a spirit that kept moving objects in their home, creating unwanted light shows, and making pennies appear on the floor of their younger son’s room.

The couple also told us that they were hearing noises, as if people were going up and down their stairs. They would find themselves sitting upright in their beds in the middle of the night, having been awoken by wild laughter or the sound of a toy piano being played in their attic—even though they didn’t own a toy piano. On occasion, they saw a shadowy figure standing at the foot of their sons’ beds.

Sometimes they would leave the house and have to go back because they forgot something. When they returned through their basement door, they would hear what sounded like a party. But when they checked it out, there was no one around.

Grant and I took along two of our investigators, Andrew and Rich, to Massachusetts. David Green, we found, was an imposing six–and-a-half-foot-tall, 300 pound rock crusher. As we interviewed him and his wife—who seemed to snipe at each other a lot—we set up cameras and audio recording equipment in all the house’s reported hot spots.

Our first inkling that there was genuine activity in the house was when Grant and I saw the figure of a man walk by an interior doorway that led to the kitchen. When we got up to see who it was, we couldn’t find anyone there.

It wasn’t long before the pennies materialized in the younger boy’s room. Six of them, scattered on the floor, just as Mary had described. Try as we might, we couldn’t figure out how they had gotten there.

Later, at around 3: 30, Grant and I were sitting in the living room with Mary when several faint blue lights from about three feet to six feet in height began to whip around the room. We watched them, spellbound, until they faded away.

Before we could discuss what we had seen, we heard a clunk and saw a good-sized rock come bounding down the stairs into the living room. It kept rolling until it was right in front of us, then stopped like a trained cocker spaniel. Mary had witnessed the light phenomenon before, but not anything involving a rock.

Deciding that this would be a two-night investigation, we packed up our stuff and said that we would return the following evening. When we came back, we brought along Jodi Picoult, a writer friend of ours, to see if she would experience what we had experienced.

Once again, six pennies appeared on the floor of the boy’s bedroom. Then, while walking up the stairs, Andrew felt something move by him. The temperature in that spot dropped ten degrees. Later, Grant heard footsteps following him.

By four in the morning, we had accumulated dozens of hours of video and audio footage and were almost ready to leave. We were assuring Mary that we would call her as soon as possible with our findings when Andrew’s flashlight, which had gone missing, rolled into the room—and turned itself off. As we tried to understand what we had seen, the batteries for the flashlight rolled in after it.

Clearly, there was something going on. We were eager to get back to Rhode Island, go over our recordings, and see what we may have picked up. As it turned out, it was quite a bit.

First of all, there were EVPs that coincided with each appearance of the six pennies. One of them sounded like a voice saying, “Fine, take it.”

But the most interesting evidence we found was in one of our infrared cameras, with which we had recorded a conversation with Mary in her attic. She’d been talking about her husband, and it had been clear that she wasn’t happy with him. As she spoke on the video, bright lights began to swarm around her, multiplying until we could barely see her face.

Then the subject turned to her kids and she seemed to relax. At the same time, the lights faded away. But when she spoke of her husband again, they returned—with a vengeance.

We went back over our notes and reached an interesting conclusion, which we presented to Mary and David when we returned to their house. As far as we could tell, all the activity in the house was revolving around Mary. David had even mentioned he never experienced problems when she wasn’t around.

Grant and I said there was no way to know exactly what role Mary and her frustrations were playing in the house’s array of paranormal activity, but it was possible that she was acting as a beacon, attracting spirits to her home. It was also possible that she was somehow causing objects to move subconsciously, a phenomenon we had heard of but never encountered ourselves.

Having spent two nights in Mary and David’s house, it was obvious to us that their marriage was in jeopardy and the animosity in the home was adding fuel to the supernatural fire. Later, we got in touch with Mary in an effort to help her control her ability.

Soon afterward, Mary and David obtained a legal separation from each other. At that point, the paranormal activity in the house abated.

THE WOMAN IN THE CLOSET FEBRUARY 1997

S
arah and Donald Wrenn lived in a big, four-bedroom house so that their kids could have lots of room to be kids. But something was plaguing the Wrenn children night after night. The couple called in T.A.P.S. to find the source of the problem and see what could be done about it.

Grant and I made the trip to southern New Hampshire to help the Wrenns, along with a couple of T.A.P.S.’ earliest members, Paula Silva and Andrew Graham. Andrew, who had helped with the Green investigation, was a kid from New Hampshire who was going to school in Rhode Island. He had a big heart and would do anything to help. One time he got a huge splinter in his hand during an investigation and managed to finish the case anyway.

While Andrew and I set up the equipment and walked through the house, Grant and Paula interviewed Sarah and Donald. Their children were asleep, but they were able to describe the kids’ experiences.

Karen, Jesse, Adam, and Ellen, who were ten, eight, seven, and five years old respectively, were having nightmares pretty much every night. The three older kids had told their mother they’d seen black shadows in their rooms. Ellen, the youngest, claimed to have spoken with someone named “Irma,” who lived in Ellen’s bedroom closet.

Sarah and Donald were worried. They wanted to know who Irma was and why Ellen had adopted her as a friend. They wanted to know why their kids were seeing shadows in their rooms. Put simply, they wanted to know what the hell was going on.

Sometimes you can wait all night to find evidence to support a homeowner’s claims. Sometimes the evidence eludes you altogether. That night at the Wrenns’ house, Andrew and I ran into something even before we finished setting up.

We were in the hallway positioning a video camera when we found ourselves confronted by a dark mass. I tried to get it on camera, but the battery was dead—even though it had been charged a few minutes earlier. Spirits need energy to manifest themselves and they’ll take it from anywhere they can find it. In this case, it seemed to come from our camera battery.

Sometime later, as we were exploring the house in teams, the motion detectors in the kitchen went off. A moment after that, the one in the hallway near the bedrooms went off as well. Then we heard a loud bang.

When we investigated, we saw both girls hiding under their covers. Karen told us that she had been roused from sleep by a huge bang on her bedroom door. We noticed that the girls’ closet was open even though it had been closed when they’d gone to sleep.

In order to calm the girls down, Sarah told them the bang had been one of our cameras hitting the floor. Karen and Ellen seemed to accept that and went back to sleep. But an hour later, Karen ran out of her room babbling about her closet.

Grant and I went to investigate. We saw that Ellen was still fast asleep, but in the recesses of the closet, a dark shape that looked like a woman was sitting on some cardboard boxes. The air in the room was oppressive—warm and thick, like the hottest summer days.

We moved closer to the entity, confronting it. The shape seemed to tilt its head as if to get a better look at us. Then it vanished—but not before we got a sense of its all-too-human features.

We described what we had seen to Sarah, who went pale and suggested that the entity might be her great-aunt, who had passed away months earlier. In fact, now that she thought about it, the activity in the house had started at about the same time that they’d acquired her great-aunt’s belongings.

“Where are they?” I asked her.

“In the basement,” she told us.

We went downstairs to see what might have been included in the deceased woman’s belongings. As we descended, we heard what sounded like footsteps following us down the stairs. And as we approached the pile of stuff Sarah had described, Grant and I felt ourselves being pushed from behind, which was jarring to say the least.

As it turned out, the woman’s belongings were nothing out of the ordinary—mostly clothes. However, they were important enough to Sarah’s great-aunt to keep her tied to this world and the Wrenns’ house. We suggested to the family that they get rid of the dead woman’s stuff and have their home blessed.

They did as we suggested, placing their great-aunt’s belongings in storage and asking a priest to bless their house. Immediately after that, all activity in the house ceased.