Interview with a Ghost Hunter

I’m the author of (right now) 55 books on ghosts, hauntings, crime and the unexplained and I’m also the founder of the American Ghost Society, a ghost research group that I started back in 1996. I have been researching ghosts and writing about them full-time since the middle 1980s and also operate six ghost tour companies in Illinois, along with an additional company that does overnight haunted excursions around the country. The ghost tours were started in 1994, when there were a lot less of them around than there are today! In 1997, I also created the Haunted America Conference, which was the first ghost conference of its kind and we are continues to take place every summer.

That they are not ghosts, or even paranormal, at all. I believe that so-called “orbs” are merely dust, pollen, insects, refractions of light and other assorted, naturally occurring events. That is not to say that genuine “ghost lights” don’t exist and remain unexplained, but I think that what many ghost hunters refer to as “orbs” have nothing to do with ghosts. I did a pretty in-depth piece on “orbs” in the 2007 edition of the “Ghost Hunter’s Guidebook” and really can’t consider them evidence of anything paranormal anymore.

Groundbreaking ghost hunter Harry Price (who is dead, but you did say ANYONE). I would love to talk with him about famous Borley Rectory and how he managed to set the standards that so many ghost hunters follow today, even if they don’t know it.

My favorite story is too long and complicated to tell here but, in short, it’s the story of Resurrection Mary, a famous “vanishing hitchhiker” from Chicago that really created most of the stories of this kind that we hear all over the country. What makes this story different is that it includes real places, real people, actual dates and times of encounters with the ghost and much more. The legend states that Mary died while on her way home from a dance one night at a ballroom on Chicago’s southwest side and has been haunting a nearby roadway (Archer Avenue) ever since. She vanishes from cars when they reach Resurrection Cemetery. The story of this haunting is so detailed that I wrote an entire book about it and in it, revealed the identities of two girls that I believed created the story of Resurrection Mary with their deaths. I think that this – the research and the interviews involved with it – is what makes it a favorite story of mine. I’d encourage people to seek out what information they can find about this tale because I honestly believe it’s the real thing.

Most of the attention that the paranormal is getting is through the media and this can be a double-edged sword. On one hand it brings a lot of attention to the field and a lot of new people who may not have been interested before. On the other hand, it also brings a lot of people who don’t understand that the TV shows are simply entertainment and that authentic ghost research is not done in an hour, with commercial breaks. Overall, though, I think that it’s been a good thing and eventually, the people who “don’t get it” will wander away and the good researchers will still be here, doing what we have been doing for years now – along with good new people who understand what the field is all about.

I think we’ll continue to see good, quality people attracted to the field. The interest in the paranormal hasn’t really slacked off in more than 150 years and it will continue to maintain interest with the general public.

Electronic devices are only as effective as the people using them. I always maintain that we are our own best tools. These devices were not designed to “detect ghosts”, merely fluctuations in energy that may, or may not, be paranormal. The only way to effectively use such items is to use them to rule out interference from artificial power sources. If there are no power sources around, then changes in the field MIGHT be caused by something paranormal. However, only corresponding evidence can say with any kind of assurance. Corresponding evidence is when two different events occur at the same time and neither can be adequately explained. This is why ghost hunters have to be very careful with their record-keeping and their investigations if they really want to come up with any hard evidence. Running around with an EMF meter in one hand, waving it about and looking for ghosts may be fun – but it’s not authentic research.

My most important tool is a notebook and a pen, but I do like to work with temperature sensing gadgets and with the Tri-Field Natural EM Meter, which is a step above all of the other meters out there, especially the basic, low-end meters like the KII meter and some of the others. This meter is designed to measure natural earth energy field changes, which I believe would be more likely in the case of paranormal events than changes in the artificial electricity of a house. It’s best used in a stationary, active location and I have seen some very interesting results with this meter over the years.

I’m always working on new book projects and usually have several going at the same time, in different stages. While I am writing one, I am usually doing research on another, with several more in the planning stages. Writing is really my full-time job and my book output comes from the fact that I spend so much of my day actually writing. I really enjoy it and that makes it a great job to have.

I would love to spend the night on Alcatraz. I have been there during the day but would love to spend the entire night there. I have done this at a number of former prisons in the country, but not Alcatraz.

You’re talking about two very different things. EVP is a recording that is made of voices that are beyond the range of human hearing (in most cases) and the so-called “ghost boxes” are nothing more than radio sets that randomly change channels and pick up snippets of conversation that are concocted into messages. As you might guess, I don’t put a lot of stock in them because the messages that seem to be direct that come from them are so open to fraud that they cannot possibly be seen as legitimate. Believe it or not, they are nothing new and these types of devices have been around since the early 1900s. Unfortunately, in all of those cases they were determined to be fraud, which is what makes me skeptical of the modern incarnations. I am also dubious of the way the “boxes” are being used, with people charging huge amounts of money for sessions to contact the dead. Sorry, but as an avid researcher of the fraud involved with the Spiritualist movement in our history, that smells phony to me.

Recording EVP is a much more legitimate device for ghost hunters, although it can often be hard to authenticate. However, done correctly, it can be very interesting. It’s my opinion that the reason that voices and sounds are recorded rather than heard directly is because they are on a sound level, or wavelength, that cannot be deciphered by the human ear. It takes the buffer of the recording device to make the sounds distinguishable. That’s just my opinion, I certainly can’t count myself as an expert on it.

My most difficult case had nothing to do with ghosts, but involved poltergeist-like activity that was attached to a young woman. She and her mother believed that their house was haunted until we were able to document a wide variety of phenomena that only occurred in her presence. It was tough to document and perhaps even tougher to convince the young woman that she was the source of it. In the end, it worked out well and things were settled.

Not much – what do you say? It’s not my goal to try and argue with and convince people. I really don’t get a lot of hassle from people because of the way that I conduct my investigations and present my books – from a historical standpoint. It’s hard to argue with history and hard to argue with cases that involve different people who don’t know one another but who see the same ghost over a period of many years.

I would have to say that I was most frightened (and yes, I do get unnerved!) the first time that I actually saw a ghost that appeared to be a person. It happened at the old Waverly Hills TB Sanatorium in Kentucky and a friend and I actually saw a man walk across a hallway ahead of us. Assuming that he was a trespasser, we were going to tell him to leave but he had impossibly vanished. We were alone in the building at the time. And we didn’t stay around for long! I have no idea why this chilled me so much but there was just something in the atmosphere that you didn’t have to be psychic to feel (I’m as psychic as a doorknob!). I have never forgotten that!

Don’t get caught up in all the hype of the TV shows and the pressure of needing 1,000 gadgets to be a ghost hunter. As I mentioned earlier, YOU are your own best tool and it’s going to be your common sense, knowledge and insight that makes you a good ghost hunter.

I guess it would have to be the “Ghost Hunter’s Guidebook”. I started it out as merely an outline and guide for beginning ghost hunters and it’s been expanded through several editions and has reached thousands and thousands of people all over the world. It’s really gratifying when people contact me and tell me how much it has helped them out. I never meant for it to be a final word on anything, or a be-all and end-all guide on how someone MUST do investigations. It was meant to be adapted for use by anyone and I think that’s what’s made it so helpful to people. I’m just really glad that people have enjoyed it so much.

The importance of history to ghost research. Hauntings cannot exist without history and the only way that we can actually prove that a location is haunted (at this point in time) is through history, not science. I take cases that involve different people who don’t know one another but who see the same ghost over a period of many years and that’s hard to discount. In addition, using history, we can actually link ghosts that might be present to previous occupants of the location. We can’t do that with gadgets – that may, or may not, show evidence of a haunting in the way that history can.

Hopefully, my books will outlive me by many years and if nothing else, I hope that people will say “too bad he’s dead, I really liked his books”.

It would have to be writing. That was what brought me to this field in the first place and, as much as I enjoy all of the rest of it, it’s the thing that I love the best.

I love to sit outside and read for pleasure in the fresh air. I am an avid reader and go through several books each week. In addition, I’m a big movie buff and can often be found in the theater or in front of the big screen.