Who Ya Gonna Call? or My Experience as a Ghost Hunter

 

Chapter 16 : A Haunting We Will Go

 

I once read a book about a medium in England that said ghosts or spirits, should they decide to remain on this plain for some reason, would tend to "haunt" a place that they enjoyed during life. This makes sense to me since, in life, I tend to gravitate toward places I enjoy rather than where I have had bad experiences. For example, I tend to go back to restaurants that give me a good experience and avoid those that are bad. There was, however, that one exception at a Sambos that was so bad I had to go back a second time to see if it was even possible to be that bad. It turns out it was. In order to find out where to hunt ghosts, I consulted my old friend Google, and he didn't hesitate. According to my friend, the top five hunting haunts are (1) Graveyards, (2) Churches, Hospitals & Nursing Homes, (3) Battlegrounds, (4) Schools & Universities and (5) Museums.

Just imagine some recently deceased person floating over their body and thinking, "That light seems mighty bright, and I am not certain I want to go that way just yet. Maybe I will just hang around in this hospital that I have always hated going to because, hey, I'm already here!" Or imagine after a funeral, the person that followed her casket to the grave thinking, "I might as well stay in this spooky old graveyard for eternity answering questions about why I am here from deranged ghost hunters."

It is my personal theory that ghost hunters would have much better luck if they frequented a strip club or a Beach Boys concert.

Ghost hunter, "Why are you still here?"

Ghost, "Are you daft, man? I get all the free beer I can catch from the tap, and look at those dancers! Never had anything like that when I was alive!"

Instead, ghost hunters stumble around in some dark old graveyard and take pictures of 'orbs.' The theory among the ghost-hunting crowd is that orbs are "spirits" of dead people. When I die, I don't want to be an orb (which sounds like a good title for a book, by the way). When I pass on, I want to be something like Beetlejuice and get even with that neighbor who is always mowing his lawn at seven on a Sunday morning!

My initial reaction is that orbs are dust bunnies. Since ghost hunters tend to hunt in old creepy places, it sort of makes sense that there would be a lot of dust bunnies. My house is not terribly old and only sometimes creepy. Still, if I were silly enough to videotape in the middle of the night, I would probably catch lots of 'orbs.' I might also see a dog drinking out of the toilet or a cat sniffing the cookie I left out on the cupboard.

If we buy into the theory that orbs are spirits, then my question is, "What do orbs do?" Let us pretend that I am deceased, which my dear wife has threatened me with on many occasions. Do I just 'float around' being caught in the flash of a camera? If I am deceased, I want to do something, like scare the hell out of my cousin Denny to get even with all those times he put a worm down my back. What can an orb do besides mess up a perfectly good picture of a crumbling old house? Can orbs levitate objects? Now, that would be cool, but to my knowledge, nobody has caught an orb on camera lifting up a television. If they have, a burglar is probably on the other side doing the heavy lifting.

So, where do you go to find a ghost? How about starting at home. Dr. Kim Penberthy from the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia states that approximately 1 in 3 people report after-death communications at some point in their lives, typically within a year of the death of a loved one. These experiences occur in cultures all around the world. After my father-in-law passed away, my wife had a dream in which he told her where to find a piece of equipment that he had purchased from another farmer but had not retrieved. Nobody else in the family remembered, but they found the farmer and the piece of equipment upon investigation. Knowing her father, my wife said that is precisely what he would have worried about. So, although orbs are verifiable evidence, the better approach to ghost hunting may be in the mind.

Quote from the book Spirit Talker;

"The spirit world is separated by a door that you do not want to open from this side," her mother counseled. "When necessary, they will open the door."