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I have always been fascinated by ghostly activity, and as a small boy growing up in a haunted house I wanted to understand what these whispers and footsteps in the halls when no one was present were. I read everything on ghosts and hauntings I could get my hands on and when I turned eighteen, I founded The Searcher Group — a paranormal research group dedicated to finding these answers. This year will mark our thirty-fifth year of ghost investigations.

How We Do What We Do

I get asked a lot of questions about the work we do in paranormal research and investigations, and one of the biggest questions is why it takes us so long to write our books. The work we do is extremely labour intensive. First we must find a suitable location, one that will interest the reader. Not all locations are haunted and even in some that are, activity may be sporadic or the historical back story just doesn’t make for interesting reading. It can take months to find a place that has all the right ingredients for a good story. Once we do find the right location, it takes many more months of investigating, researching, and interviewing to bring you the most complete story possible. We handle these projects like a criminal investigation — verifying information from various sources and making sure we are delivering the facts. This is not always an easy task, as some of our investigations take us deep into history and all witnesses to an event are long dead.

Why We Do What We Do

Why do we investigate the unknown? Academia and mainstream science tell us that ghosts don’t exist: we can’t see them or bring one into the lab for testing and therefore they can’t be real. Sounds simple … except for the hundreds of thousands of eyewitness reports that have been recorded that suggest ghosts do exist. One has to wonder if something else is going on. Is the topic too sensitive for science to tackle? Or more likely, is a lack of funding for this type of research in the scientific community forcing scientists to deny the existence of spirits? What’s interesting is that science has no problem believing that dark energy, dark matter, and, most recently, dark lightening, not only exist but make up the majority of our universe. These are things scientists predict should exist but they have no tangible proof of. So why can’t ghosts exist too? To all the skeptics out there that insist ghosts do not exist we say (as my brother Paul nicely summed up), “We don’t believe in Skeptics.”

I have always liked mysteries and the search for answers, and exploring the mystery of life after death has occupied me for most of my adult life. This has brought me great rewards — making contact with people who have died and remained here to tell their stories, being able to write about what I have discovered, and bringing a small piece of history about someone’s past forward to share with you, the reader.

What keeps us going in an investigation is the evidence we gather: events we witness that have no reasonable explanation, recordings of Electronic Voice Phenomena (voices from spirits), and photographs depicting strange phenomena or an apparition. We do this work despite the many hours of work and travel, and the cost. We do it because we feel it is important.

But there is another side to paranormal investigations, the side most don’t talk about, and that is the threats and acts of violence from the dead, which may take the form of a sudden onset of sickness or pain (such as the all-too-real sensation of being bitten, kicked, slapped, or scratched) in certain body parts. Though these attacks are, thankfully, short-lived, they can be serious and I have seen seasoned investigators call it quits and never investigate again after a physical attack. I have taken my lumps and continue on my quest to solve these mysteries because people want to know — I want to know — what lies ahead for all of us. Oh, and because I can maintain my presence as a royal pain in the backside of mainstream science.

How We Get the Facts

The Searcher Group uses mediums in its investigations. The mediums we use are all independent — with the exception of one pair of mediums that work as a team. Other than that pair, the mediums do not know each other and do not communicate with each other. Information gathered by one medium is recorded in our notes, and at a later date another medium will be used and their data will be compared to that of the first medium. We do this comparison to look for similar data. Even when we have cross-referenced remarkable information from two mediums we still use historical information, witness testimony, and/or Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) to further verify what they have said. When all these sources start to come together and form a factual imprint of what may be happening, we start to form the story of a haunting.

EVP, for example, is believed to be sounds and voices of the dead captured on digital or analog tape. (Sounds or voices that are heard by the living in real time are considered “disembodied voices.”)

One of the biggest problems we face when we do this work, especially when we use audio surveillance, is that we don’t know what we have in the way of EVP until the footage is later analyzed. After it is analyzed, we can use that information to better plan our next visit to the site. (In this story, EVP recordings are set in italics.)

Instrumental Transdimensional Communication, or ITC, is an experimental technique using electronic equipment to capture voices or images on video. One method is setting up a camera facing a television and recording a screen that is set to snow or just white noise. If successful, the investigator will capture ghostly voices and images using ITC.

Spirit Box SB-7 is an AM/FM radio that sweeps frequencies extremely fast, between 100 milliseconds to 250 milliseconds per channel. It can also sweep forward and reverse depending on the user’s presets. It is believed that if multiple words are recorded over several frequencies then we could possibly be dealing with something paranormal.

Another useful device is a pendulum — a weight suspended from a pivot so it can swing freely. These ancient and very simple items have been used for centuries. The theory behind it is a spirit can use the holder’s energy to manipulate the pendulum in either a clockwise or counter clockwise direction. Typically clockwise means a “yes” answer and counter clockwise indicates a “no.” A neutral position could indicate no spirit present or one that is unable to provide information to the question asked.