Flashlights and Ghosties

Ok so I meant to write this on Saturday but other things kept coming up and now I finally have the time to sit down and write it. Although I guess you all can just read the article Jacob wrote, it's as good a description as I will write here, except he's a total skeptic and I'm a total believer so the tone will be a bit different.

ANYWAY, being the wife of a journalist has its advantages, such as when he's writing a story about ghost hunting and gets invited on an actual ghost hunt, I get to accompany him as his photographer. I've gone to plenty of things as his photographer before, but I've never been as excited as I was for this excursion.

Many of you know I have a huge interest in ghosts and the paranormal. Haven't always been that way, it comes from living in what I'm convinced was a haunted (among other things--like wet and moldy thanks to the regular flooding) apartment in Provo a few years ago. I had several experiences there, ranging from knowing I was being watched to actually seeing someone else in my house when I knew darn well I was there by myself (at which point I promptly left and spent the evening at my Mom's until Jacob got home). Living in that house changed me; I developed a need to know more, so I started reading everything I could get my hands on regarding the subject. I have an entire shelf full of various books on ghosts and paranormal phenomena, most of which I've read at least twice.

So you can understand how excited I was at the prospect of going with an actual ghost hunting team to check out a supposedly haunted site. We met at the leader of the team's house in Roy and carpooled to a hotel in Ogden...it was a pretty run-down place, with all sorts of people living there...truth be told I was more afraid of the living occupants than the dead ones. Anyway, there were 2 areas to investigate: the first was a hallway where people had supposedly heard the laughter of a little girl without seeing her. Some guests had actually reported having their hands grabbed by the child, but of course there was nobody there. The second area was one of the rooms where there had been an actual death. The cause of death was a drug overdose, but there was foul play suspected, possibly someone had given the deceased a lethal combination of drugs or what not. Jacob and I started out in the hallway...snapped a couple pictures...

...and after looking at the pics, we joked that we caught an orb (which is a manifestation of spirit energy that's invisible to the naked eye but can be caught on camera--I personally don't consider orbs proof of paranormal activity since they're just circular blobs and can be caused by various non-paranormal things), but really it's just dust.

Anyway, after we'd been in the hallway a few minutes one of the guys from the team came and reported that they were having some activity in the other room, so we headed over there, and that's when the craziness began. Here's the set up: they had a flashlight sitting on the bed and another on the floor; they were the kind you turn on by twisting the top, and they had twisted them so that they were just barely off. In this position we could still turn them on without twisting them any more, but we had to hit the bed or stomp on the floor really hard. They could not be turned on by blowing on them, or tapping them--it took a significant amount of vibration around them to get them on. So Jacob and I were sitting in chairs, and the other 2 people were sitting on the floor. At this point they started asking "the ghost" to turn the pink flashlight on, which it did. Then they asked it to turn the black flashlight on, which it did. After the lights had turned back off, they asked it to turn on the black, then the pink...which it did. We switched the location of the flashlights and requested it turn them on in sequence again, and it did. So then we designated the pink flashlight as yes and the black as no and proceded to ask questions, such as "did you die here" and "was your death an accident" and stuff. Throughout the evening, several questions were asked and answered. For accuracy, they did ask the same questions 3-4 times (not in a row), and the thing that really got me was that the answers were consistent...we did NOT get conflicting answers.

What we learned was that "the ghost" was that of the person who died in that room and he was stuck there, his death was not murder--I think he considered it to be an accident because he answered yes to hurting himself but no to committing suicide, he did not have any children, he did NOT like being asked about drugs (whenever we'd ask about drugs he wouldn't answer, and then when we'd ask if the questions were making him mad he would immediately turn on the yes flashlight, really brightly), and for some reason he really didn't like one of the guys on the team and whenever we'd ask if he wanted him to leave, he'd immediately answer yes (in fact, this was the 2nd time they were investigating this place and last time this individual was pushed to the ground by something while in that room...and let me tell you, he's not a little guy at all).

Anyway--it was REALLY fascinating. Can I say for sure it was a ghost? No, even though I'd like to believe it was. I'm just saying, we couldn't feel any vibrations on the floor, there was no timing to the flashlights turning on so I don't think it was as a result of an electrical current or whatever...and ultimately, the answers we got were consistent no matter where we put the flashlights. So that's not something I can explain. The team is going to go back to do more tests and maybe they'll figure out what caused it. I still think it was mighty funky.

So yeah, that was our Friday night. If Jacob's editor likes the story, Jacob wants to make it a 3-part series and if that's the case, we will probably get to go ghost hunting a couple more times. Although I don't know if we'll ever get to see anything like this again, according to the team nights like we had are extremely rare. Anyway, here are a few more pictures...

Creepy looking, huh?

Here's the guy that our ghost friend didn't like...as you can see, it would take a lot of force to push him to the ground.

Here's our "yes" flashlight.