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

 

The graveyard was in a mountain town about thirty miles away, so the five of us going on this hunt would fit into a fellow hunter's minivan. I was in the back seat with Jan. Jan was 'bubbly,' the best I could describe her. She was in her twenties, petite and, well... bubbly. She started talking before I got my seatbelt buckled.

 

"I just love going to this graveyard!" She began as I searched for a way to fasten my seatbelt without requiring us to become engaged.

 

"Oh, do you frequent it often?" I decided to forgo the seatbelt in case I needed to make a speedy getaway by jumping out of the moving car.

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"I go up with the group every chance I get. Last time, we actually captured some orbs!"

 

"Oh, really," I responded, "I'm new to the group. I didn't know they had an orb trap. What do you do with the orbs once you trap them?"

 

"No, silly, we capture them on film. Here, I have a good shot." She dug through her purse.

 

I had never understood the term 'dug through her purse' until I met Jan. As she seemed to partially submerge in her handbag, I expected she might produce a coat rack, a full-size mirror, a lamp, plants, and a tape measure. Finally, she produced a phone and scrolled to a dark photograph with a round spot of light on one side. She enlarged the image so the transparent bubble filled the small screen.

 

"It's a lens flare," I state.

 

"Oh, you silly! You are pulling my leg."

 

I ask the driver how much further as I consider my chances of jumping out of a moving vehicle on a mountain road. At least we were not traveling very fast. However, I soon discovered that the rear door had child safety locks, which prevented me from jumping.

 

It was about ten o'clock at night when we arrived. We had left the main road and drove several miles on a gravel road through the forest. The graveyard was a hike from the car, and five of us gathered our gear and set off through the pine forest. It was chilly in the mountains at night, so I had brought a jacket as well as a thermos of coffee. I must admit, the fresh air and pine were invigorating. It had been almost an hour of bubbly Jan, and getting out in the fresh air cleared my brain, what was left of it.

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After a ten-minute walk through a forest filled with sounds, smells, and scary shadows, we arrived at a gate that would be the envy of any horror movie. Two stone pillars on either side of the entrance supported an arch with the simple carved word, cemetery. A mist covered the ground, and I wondered if someone had set up a fog machine for the occasion.

 

As we stood at the entrance, the leader of the ghost-hunting group gave instructions as I poured my coffee. I offered a cup to Jan, but she said that coffee made her "hyper." I had so many replies I had to stifle that I choked on my coffee. The leader pulled some cameras and other devices out of his backpack and handed them around.

 

"Since there are only five of us," he said as he handed me an infrared video camera, "I want you and Jan to head down the path to the right." He then instructed the other two to the path on the left and said he would stay at the entrance, which I suspected was in order to block my escape. We would meet back in two hours. He finished with, "good hunting." I mumbled something about wishing I had a gun, but either nobody heard, or they had hunted ghosts with Jan before.

 

The graveyard was bordered by wrought iron fencing, and many of the markers were over a hundred years old. They were all shapes and sizes, from rocks with names carved into them to six-foot monoliths. There were fences around some of the family sites, usually wooden and falling apart with age. The site was hilly, with pine trees and, instead of a well-kept lawn, wildflowers and bunch grass surrounded the grave markers.

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I found a flat stone marker and sat down, pouring myself another cup of coffee. "I'm going to take a minute before setting up. Are you sure you don't want any coffee? It could get chilly."

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Jan said she was fine and then hesitantly asked, "Should you be sitting on a grave marker? Isn't that a little... disrespectful?"

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I looked down and answered, "I don't think Mr. Sanderson will mind. If he does, when he comes up to protest, maybe you can capture his orb."

 

"You don't take this very seriously, do you?" Jan questioned.

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"On the contrary, Jan. I take it very seriously."

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"You think orbs are camera lens flair. You make fun of ghosts. Why are you even here if you don't believe?"

 

I had to stop and think about that for a minute. I suddenly saw Jan in a different light and thought she deserved a non-sarcastic answer. "Well, Jan, I question the existence of ghosts, but I do believe in spirits. Many Native American tribes believe everything has a spirit. People, animals, even places have a spirit. On an atomic level, isn’t everything made of the same thing? Everything contains energy, and I believe that energy is not just random. However, can a spirit manifest as a ghost? That is the question in my own mind I am looking to answer.

I completed my little speech with an apology. After that, Jan (not her real name) and I became friends.