I am Haunted: Living Life Through the Dead (15 page)

This isn’t an entirely new theory. Shabti dolls were ancient Egyptian figurines that accompanied the deceased to the afterlife to carry out specific duties. They’ve been found in tombs dating back as far as 1500
BC
. Each one represented a worker to serve the dead after he left this world. Each doll was inscribed with a spell, which outlined what that worker was supposed to do when he met Osiris, the god of the dead, and was asked to carry out his duties. So it was believed that the dolls actually crossed over with the person who died.

In the present, every paranormal group I’ve ever seen uses dolls as trigger objects to attract child spirits. They do this because it’s effective at encouraging a spirit to manifest, right? Maybe, but I think there’s more to it. I don’t think that using a doll brings a spirit closer; instead, the doll attracts the spirit to possess it. The doll becomes a container for the spirit to get into and manipulate, like a person opening a car door, stepping in, and taking it for a spin. Dolls are not just trigger objects to attract spirits, but can actually carry spirits and even be possessed by them…and usually not the good type.

When we filmed the Island of the Dolls episode of
Ghost Adventures,
I knew that I was in for an uncomfortable, emotional ride. On this island that lies between the canals of Xochimilco south of Mexico City, there is a swamp where a little girl drowned under strange and disputed circumstances. A man named Don Julian Santana Barrera saw a floating doll in the canal and assumed that it belonged to the girl. He picked up the doll and hung it from a tree as a way of showing respect and supporting the spirit of the girl. But he didn’t stop there. Don Julian hung thousands of dolls around the island for the little girl and believed that her spirit possessed them. After being there, I don’t disagree.

A local psychic medium said that a snake-like negative spirit was the cause of the girl’s drowning. So many legends surround that ancient Aztec canal that I don’t doubt it. It’s a very scary place to go, whether you have a fear of dolls or not. If the girl’s spirit is truly trapped on that island and all these dolls attract her, then I think other spirits can also be attracted to her and the thousands of dolls as well. I believe that the spirits connect through the dolls, which basically makes this place my nightmare. Think about this: who knows where Don Julian got all these dolls and what kind of love was given to them by their living hosts? For all we know, it could be a network of spirits there who seek love from a human. Maybe the spirits possess the dolls in order to find a kid who gives her love to a doll and in turn gives her love to a spirit. So many possibilities…

For that episode, I brought along Harold the Haunted Doll to see if it could open up a connection with the spirits on the island. I totally regret it. This doll has been connected to death on several occasions and has bounced from family to family over the years because no one wants to keep it. I’ll never forget picking up that doll in Mexico and then feeling my arm start to itch like it was on fire. Not long after, I developed three bruises the size of fingerprints on my left arm (the one that picked it up).

The psychic medium had told us not to touch the doll or we could lose our own limbs, just like the doll was losing its left arm. We did anyway (go figure). When we took Harold out of his case, cats went crazy, and other dolls suddenly started laughing. With no electrical source at all, they laughed! On a thermal camera, we documented unexplainable heat coming off of Harold when we put him in a shed on the island. It was absolutely nuts. If anything from my travels gives me bad dreams, it’s the Island of the Dolls and Harold the Haunted Doll.

Just thinking about this makes me feel uneasy, and talking about Harold and the island creeps me out like nothing else. That investigation is the most difficult one of my career to speak about. It’s 40 degrees in Vegas as I’m writing this chapter, and I’m sweating. If you ever see me in public, don’t pick a fight with me, because you’ll get one. But come up to me with a bunch of dolls taped to your body and I’ll run like a girl.

I’M DONE.

It’s a bigger part of the paranormal than you think.

I believe that when a person dies and his or her soul remains on Earth for whatever reason, the soul becomes intertwined with the electromagnetic and geomagnetic forces of the planet. Under the right conditions, these forces, along with certain weather events, can enable spirits to manifest and be seen by the living. Even with all the tools and data we have at our disposal, the weather can be unpredictable and trick us, just as the manifestation of spirits seems random and unpredictable. But it doesn’t have to be. I believe that the two are interconnected, and that just as we can predict the weather with a lot of accuracy, someday we will be able to predict apparitions and sightings. We just have to understand all the variables and be in the right place at the right time when all the factors line up.

I hate to make this analogy, but if you remember the movie
Ghostbusters,
then you remember the green slime left behind by the movie ghosts. Like those Hollywood ghosts, I think people leave behind a residual energy after an extremely emotional event, but it’s more like a burn mark on a wood wall after a fire. This residue contains the emotions of the event, and certain meteorological conditions can reignite it. It’s like a combination lock that’s opened when certain conditions are met. What is the combination of climatic conditions that opens this lock? That’s the million-dollar question!

When we investigated the Old Charleston Jail in Charleston, South Carolina, we captured the wails and cries of inmates who were tortured there. I believe this is the residue of their emotional lives and/or deaths being unlocked under certain conditions. Think about the Stone Tape Theory that I described in chapter 14, “Carrying Spirits,” which says that certain materials (such as sandstone or silica) can store life events and replay them the same way a cassette tape records and plays back music. The circumstances of release are usually consistent, meaning that the stone lets go of the event at certain times of day and maybe even under certain weather conditions.

This theory has some validity when you consider that iron oxide is the main component of audiotape. Iron oxide is everywhere, and the Earth’s core is made mostly of iron and nickel. It also has been proven that certain crystals, like quartz and silicon, can retain information and are found almost everywhere, even within some rocks. Computer chips used to store data are made from silicon, which is the second most abundant element on the planet next to oxygen and is found in almost every form of rock. So it’s not a stretch to imagine that certain natural materials can store traumatic and emotional events and release them when the conditions are right.

Maybe it’s the weather that unlocks these events that are stored in natural materials. When the barometric pressure, humidity level, temperature, moon phase, and even running water (which increases electromagnetic activity) connect in the right way, I believe that the residue of someone’s life can be released in the form of audio and visual presentations. Voices and apparitions could be triggered by environmental elements when they synchronize, possibly when they match up with the weather conditions that were present at the time of the emotional event (like the death of a loved one).

Of course, this would indicate that the residue is not an intelligent spirit; it’s only a moment of a life recorded by natural materials and released under certain conditions. It’s a moment in time captured and played back like a cassette tape or computer chip. It’s just stored energy unlocked by the weather.

So how does the weather react with intelligent spirits? First, think about spirits and why they are here. I believe spirits that don’t move on to the next life either didn’t pass God’s judgment or have unresolved issues that keep them earthbound. That means they’re angry or confused and therefore want to be heard. They gather their energy to move objects and communicate, which sometimes means that they attack humans to get the attention they crave. When they can’t gather energy through electronic means (like stealing energy from computers, light fixtures, camera equipment, or whatever), they turn to weather phenomena to get the boost they need. I’ve seen this happen during investigations.

Remember the attacks at the Exorcist House that I described in chapter 11, “Heart Attacks”? Nick and I had a spirit box session during which a voice presented itself as “Diablo” twice and gave us some other information in a short span of time. Shortly afterward, Aaron went back into the room where we captured the voice and got very dizzy and felt intense heat. At the same time, Bill Chappell (who’s an amazing engineer) monitored a sensor that measured weather data in the house, and he said that there was a sudden increase in humidity when this happened to Aaron. It was around dusk, a time of day when there should be a decrease in humidity, not an increase. We were baffled because a strange weather phenomenon was happening at the exact same time as paranormal activity, but we couldn’t find the connection between the two.

During other investigations, passing storms affected the level of paranormal activity we captured. I’ll never forget when we were investigating the Hales-Bar Dam in Tennessee and a massive storm raged through, bringing a tornado that tossed an entire dock full of boats onto the shore (and us along with them!). That evening we caught an amazing image of an apparition manifesting on a thermal imaging camera—a rare event. We capture voices, EVPs, orbs, and other paranormal activity all the time, but an apparition is unusual, and this one appeared within a few hours of a massive lightning storm. I believe that it’s possible for the discharge of electricity into the atmosphere (in the form of lightning) to give spirits the extra energy they need to feed off of and manifest.

I like to use movie analogies when I talk about the paranormal because it makes things easier for people to relate to. (I’m a cinephile. What can I say?) There’s a scene in
Total Recall
where the humans on Mars are dependent on giant fans to keep them going. When the fans slow down, the humans get sluggish and weak, and when the fans speed up, so does life. I believe that spirits are the same way. When the weather is calm, they don’t have anything to energize them, but when there’s electricity in the air, they have an energy source to draw from and can manifest. I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but we don’t have the raw data to prove it…yet.

In some places the weather is unreliable, and spirits have to find other forms of energy. Hydroelectric plants and flowing water are proven conductors of electromagnetic energy, so sites like that usually see a higher than average level of paranormal activity. The Rolling Hills Asylum in New York, which is just across the street from an electric power plant that puts out kajillions of volts of power, is one of the most active places I’ve ever been. We captured every form of paranormal evidence there, all in the same night. I think this plant powered more than just the local houses. Everything that contains life contains energy, and ghosts are attracted to that energy. I think they’re even more dependent on energy than we are.