A Haunting in Hartly, Delaware Part II

Lilburn Manor; Another Chapter in a Haunted Past

By Robin M. Strom-Mackey

Author of Anatomy of a Ghost: A Guide to Analyzing the Dead

"But it was five years later that I just started having this gnawing feeling that I just had to get there.”

Overlooking historic Ellicott City, Maryland is the stately Lilburn Mansion.  Already notorious for its haunts, the aging mansion built in the likeness of a castle has a tragic past of loss and sadness.  Enter a young, impressionable woman with a love of history and you have a recipe for a ghostly obsession that lasted years.  

In my collection of interviews I came across a case where a person became an unwitting mouth piece for an entity.   This case doesn’t appear to be a case of the more sinister form of possession, but a case of spiritual obsession.  Obsession by a spirit is somewhat different from possession. In this case a living person can become obsessed, or fixated on an idea or behavior that is obviously out of character and sometimes self-destructive. They can be urged to do compulsive acts, but they don’t lose sight of themselves. In other words they may feel the need to do something, but they don’t black out or lose control. They realize what they’re doing, and understand that the compulsion comes from without and not within themselves.  In Judy’s case she remained aware of what she was doing, and understood that the compulsions she was experiencing were not of her own choosing. 

Now retired and living near the beach in Maryland, Judy had been a hardworking career woman all her life. She ran a restaurant and a catering service for many years before giving up the long days and nights in the kitchen for semi-retirement as a book keeper. She recounted for me an episode in her life in which she seemed to be obsessed by the tragic spirit of a woman and the stately remains of an edifice of tragedy.

In an interview I conducted with her, Judy recounted how it began. “I was between eighteen and twenty-five at the time when this happened, and it was really what started my interest in the paranormal. But you know you grow up, you raise kids, you have a job and you just don’t have the time to pursue it. I know this is going to sound weird, maybe not to you because you deal with this, but it certainly sounded weird to all my friends at the time. I used to live in Clarksville at my brother’s. I used to love to walk in Ellicott City. There used to be a place called the Phoenix which was right on the corner of Cranberry Avenue and Market Street. My girlfriends and I used to go down there and have lunch all the time. One day we just decided to go riding around and seeing what the houses were like. So we drove up there and that’s when it started. This house looked like a Castle, it was up on Cranberry Avenue, up where the railroad used to be. You’d have to go up a hill to get there.”

“We were up there and I thought, wow, what a cool house. At the time it wasn’t inhabited but there were no trespassing signs everywhere. And we thought, we can’t go in here. So we took a couple of pictures of the outside of the house which is really cool. Around six months later we saw an ad in the paper that the house was for sale. They were asking a million –three at that time and that was 1980 to 1982 maybe. I certainly didn’t have that. Not too long after that it sold to a person, I don’t remember who but I have it on my timeline. Then after that it sold to the doctor who owned it for a long time. So we took a couple pictures of it, as I said, and then we drove back down to Ellicott City, and I said I want to go back to the Phoenix and ask about that house.”

And I did, and they said, 'Ooh. That’s the haunted house in Ellicott City. So I asked, ‘well what happened up there?’ They said, ‘oh, well there’s someone up in the tower. There was a fire there and children had died, and it’s had many owners. But everyone stays away from that house because it’s supposedly haunted.’”

So captivated by the house did Judy become, that over the course of the next couple of years she would research the property extensively. The following are from the notes that she made and kept all these years later.

The building is not a house in actuality, but a mansion of some 7000 square feet. Built in the 9^th century Gothic and Romanesque Revival style with stone and granite, it boasts twenty rooms, a four story medieval style tower, twelve foot ceilings and seven fireplaces with marble mantels and surrounds. The property also boasts a three-story carriage house and the only three-story smoke house ever built in Howard County.

It was built in 1857 by Henry Richard Hazelhurst. Originally from Abington, Berkshire England, who moved to Ellicott City after making a fortune in iron works. Henry had lost his first wife in 1848, but remarried a second time to Elizabeth Virginia McKim. The family moved to the area around 1857 with their two children, Maria and George. Soon after the mansion was finished a third child, Catherine, was born. Soon after Catherine’s birth, however, tragedy struck the family. Maria, aged three years, died of a childhood illness. Throughout the course of the next five years Elizabeth delivered three more daughters, Margaret, Julia and Elizabeth.

During the Civil War the Hazelhurst’s allowed the mansion to be used as a hospital for wounded soldiers. Following the war, the family’s financial interests may have taken a down-turn, as Henry apparently was forced to sell off several acres of land surrounding the mansion, which was distressing to the family. The original plot of land was 2500 acres, eventually it was whittled down to eight.

Elizabeth reportedly suffered bouts of depression for twenty some years. Judy’s notes suggested that the depression was brought on by the loss of daughter Maria. The loss of a child is a tragedy beyond words, even in an era when such losses were common. The birth of later children apparently did nothing to assuage the loss. Elizabeth passed away in 1887. She was fifty-nine years old when she died of an unspecified illness.

Her daughters would be even less fortunate. Indeed, none of Elizabeth’s daughters would live to reach the age of forty.

Catherine the third child, and the first to be born in the mansion, was reportedly very close to her mother. She died only four years after her mother’s death. She was thirty-three when she passed in 1891.

Only two years into her marriage, Julia died in childbirth in 1893, at the age of thirty-one. She was laboring in the tower of the mansion trying to deliver her first and only child when she died.

Not much is known about Margaret, only that she died in 1895 at the age of thirty-six. Henry, who was losing his family one by one is quoted as saying that the mansion was “A place of tragic memories.” Still Henry lived to old age. Accounts vary, but he either died in 1890 or 1900, either at the age of seventy-five or eighty five. He was laid to rest at St John’s Cemetery of Howard County next to wife Elizabeth. The last and final daughter, Elizabeth, followed her father to the grave five years later in 1905.

The first born, and only surviving child, George sold the mansion in 1906. He moved to Catonsville, Maryland and died in 1919.

A waspish man by the name of Wells bought the mansion next, and inhabited the mansion with his family into the early 1920’s. Apparently a bit of a character, Wells earned a reputation with the town’s folk for his petulant demeanor. He was known to snap at anyone that attempted to speak with him. One who valued his privacy, Wells had a seven foot hedge planted around the front of the property. The Wells family stayed mainly in the house, emerging only on Sunday mornings to attend church. Wells was found dead one day in the mansion’s library.

John McGinnis and family were in residence in the mansion by 1923, when a devastating fire destroyed much of the interior. The family managed to escape the blaze, but were forced to rebuild. During the renovation they added the medieval style battlements to the roof of the tower, replacing the steeple gothic roof that had been the original design.

Apparently the mansion earned its haunted reputation with the town around that time. According to Judy’s research, activity in the mansion included the sounds of a small child crying in an upstairs bedroom, and an apparition of a young girl wearing a chiffon dress who was reported as playing in several rooms of the mansion. There were also reports of an apparition of a man and a small child walking hand-in-hand down the hallway. A male apparition was also reported standing in a doorway. The aroma of cigar smoke, a habit not uncommon in Hazelhurst’s era, was smelled and sometimes witnessed in the library, a curling cloud of smoke wafting toward the ceiling in an otherwise empty room. The chandelier in the dining room was said to swing with vigor at times, once during a family gathering. Footsteps, sometimes heavy footsteps, were at times heard around the building, and on the tower stairs. And once, a vase full of flowers was said to elevate off its stand, pouring water and flowers out onto the floor.

Windows in the manse appeared to be uncooperative, refusing to stay closed. This was especially true in the tower. One owner attempted to tie the errant windows down with rope. By the time he got outside to inspect his handiwork, however, the windows of the tower were open again, the ropes lying on the floor beneath.

Judy commenced her story, upon learning that the mansion was up for sale. “Right then I thought I want to buy that house. But I couldn’t.”  The one-million dollar asking price was inconceivable to a woman who waited tables.  Her dream mansion was such that, she had to concede, just a dream.

“And then years later, I think it was five years later when I lived with my brother, that’s when that started happening to me. I had taken other friends around and we would look at it and just ride around the streets. But it was five years later that I just started having this gnawing feeling that I just had to get there.”

“I thought at the time, this is weird, but I’ve got to go [to the house]. And I would go, and I would sit and I would bawl my eyes out.” She admitted that she had no idea why she was crying, but that she was simply overwhelmed with, “complete sadness.”

In her research she had found accounts of tragedies, any one of which she might be tapping into. The house had burned down. A lady that had lived in the house had lost three children. Owners of the property had come and gone with great regularity. For all its grandeur it hadn’t been a house of joy for its inhabitants.

“I’ve got loads of stuff, I went to Ellicott City, the historical society and I gathered so much information. I always wanted to explore this home. Years ago in the early 2000’s a couple were trying to make the house into a bed and breakfast, but Ellicott City wouldn’t allow them to do that. But it’s still, it’s lived in, but there are many, many stories about it.”

“For some reason I connected with a woman in the house, who was very, very sad. I could be at my brother’s and it could be any time. Every two or three months, it could be three o’clock in the morning or it could be noon. If I was asleep I would wake up and I’d have this insatiable desire, I had to get to the house. I’m surprised no one ever called the cops on me. Because I’d go and I’d sit outside the house in my little car and I’d bawl my eyes out for  an hour. And then it was done, and I went home. But it was reoccurring and it would happen every two or three months with regularity for three years, and then it absolutely stopped.” Judy admitted that she probably repeated the ritual a dozen times over the three year period while she shared a grief so terrible with an unknown woman that it communicated beyond the veil.

“I did, I thought I was cracking up, but the feeling was just so strong in me, and I went, and I would have this experience and I would go home, and then I was so relieved. And then it wouldn’t happen again until a couple of months later. It was weird, but it was cool. So I decided that I needed to find out more about this house, and the owners, and the timeline. The stack of papers [she accumulated] is probably this thick [around two inches] and I wrote down a timeline of when the fire was, who owned it, who built it, how many acres it was. That was so interesting for me to go and do that kind of research.”

“So that was why I did so much research on the home. I don’t even recall now the name of the woman that lost the three children, but I always felt a connection that maybe she was the one that did that. I don’t know.”

“I knocked on the door one day, there was a doctor living there, a lady, and I kind of introduced myself and I told her my story and I asked her if I could come in. But she didn’t know me, and I don’t blame her for saying no. It was just so fascinating.”

“My brother thought I was crazy, my friends thought I was crazy. So I really didn’t [share it with anyone] because it was personal to me. It felt very personal that someone was reaching out to do that. I just went with it. When it stopped, I was kind of sad that it stopped. I realized it had been six months or so and I realized, wow, I haven’t been to that house in a long time. And it never happened again.”

What is fascinating to me about this account is the fact that Judy never actually entered the dwelling, and had no knowledge of its history at the onset. She apparently made an immediate connection to the property, though, obvious by the fact that she took pictures of it on the first encounter and went downtown to inquire about it immediately.

Final Analysis

Why was she the one of the whole band of friends that was affected in this way? Can we assume that she was the only one with the empathic ability to tap into the tragic energy? I wonder also if the energy, the sadness she apparently was in tune with, was actually a consciousness or just a type of residual sadness that lingered about the property.

The episodes Judy underwent certainly didn’t seem to have had any purpose beyond the sheer expression of pain. This energy appeared to require nothing but expression. The expression of sadness, expiation, all those years after. The death of a child, three children, a woman in childbirth…Judy would go on to become a mother herself.  Did the spirit sense a bond? Was it Elizabeth still mourning the loss of Maria? Was it one of the later residents who also experienced tragedy in the mansion? We will never know, beyond the fact that death and loss left an imprint on a place that transcended the passage of time.

Where the Imaginary Ends and the Dark Begins; Children and their Unseen Friends

By Robin M. Strom Mackey

If you’ve ever been around a small child you’ll probably recall that they chatter all the time.  They chatter to their toys, they chatter to their parents, they make strange noises over and over and over again.  It’s necessary to language development of course, though it may drive you crazy after awhile!  But when and if they start chattering to a friend that only they can see, a parent may start to become uncomfortable.

There are some theories to suggest that children are more open to paranormal experiences than their often more cynical parents.   Some believe that children may be more telepathically astute. The mere fact that they haven’t been told that there is no such thing as telepathy might make them more open to the experiencing of it.

They may also be more telepathically  attune because of their dependence on their parents.  The mere survival of a youngster is contingent on the adult caregiver, and thus a telepathic bond with a parent evolves, which may dissipate as the child develops skills and becomes more independent.

It is believed that telepathy is stronger in the young, dimming with age.  This has been suggested in the study of psychokinesis or poltergeists cases, where the human conduit is usually an adolescent or young adult, an age when the mix of swirling hormones and adolescent angst help spur their already innate abilities. Along those same lines of thinking, does being telepathically more attune also make children more susceptible to spirit communication?   The fact that many children have wonderfully active imaginations creates another problem. As a parent one begins to wonder, where does the imaginary end and the dark begin?   

In an email recently I received an inquiry that intrigued me.  Lindsey wrote:

I have resided in my home for a little over a year now. I have a two-year old [daughter] and a one-year old [son].  Since we have moved here my daughter has acted a little off. Since she has grown older she is now carrying on conversations with something only she can see….

Two weeks ago it [my emphasis] gained a name - Jesse. No one we know or interact with has this name. One of my brothers is named Jesse, but he does not even live in Delaware, and she has never had a relationship with him.” His name rarely comes up, so it’s odd that she just randomly started saying that name.

“I have asked her who Jesse is and where he/she is, and within seconds of me acknowledging its [my emphasis] name my dog started growling at something, which has never happened before. My dog does not have a mean bone in her body.”  She growls only at strangers, and usually only at male strangers.

My son who is one has now started pointing at things that I believe they see, and I do not. Toys will go off; singing in their bedroom when no one is in there. It doesn't seem to be anything violent, but it is becoming more frequent.

And as any mother would be I am getting a little worried about the intentions of whatever this spirit may want. I'm just wondering if you have any advice as to how I can maybe make a connection of this name with someone who may have lived here in the past or what steps I could take to do so. The property has been in my family as a rental house for a long time.  However my grandmother does not believe in the paranormal.” She is not open to listening to me or helping in any way (used with permission).

My first question was, would a child of two be too young to have developed an imaginary friend?  Consulting child development experts suggests that it was young, but not impossible. According to one source, typically children develop such friends from three to eight years of age. Yet another source suggested that children are becoming conscious beings, alert to their own identity, from the time that they can recognize themselves in a mirror.  Further, from the first time onward that a child makes a Choo Choo noise while playing with a toy train, or holds a doll and babbles out dialogue it can be assumed that the child has now developed the ability at abstract play (Turgeon, 2009).

Without any further background knowledge or an investigation into the property I wrote Lindsey back suggesting she could consider the situation in two ways, believer or skeptic:

1. Skeptic:  From a skeptic's point of view we might assume that your daughter has an active imagination and has created a friend for herself.  We may have only heard you mention your brother Jessie in a telephone call. Or maybe she heard the name on a TV program.  Perhaps she seized onto the name because she liked it. I remember doing the same when I was a little girl.  I had the names of my sons picked out by the time I was five.   Maybe she's created her make-believe friend because she's lonely?  In which case maybe some play dates with other kids could be tried, something that would let her socialize with kids her own age more and creating fictional friends less.

My son when he was younger had a lot of electronic toys.  I found they would often start by themselves in his closet, especially when the batteries were low. Try replacing batteries, or taking them out entirely if the toy is not used often.

2. Believer: From the standpoint that you might have an entity trying to speak with her.  Again I would suggest that the same thing. Try to get her out of her room more and playing with other kids

I wouldn't forbid her talking about her friend Jessie, but I wouldn't actively encourage the behavior either. In other words, don’t greet her every morning with the words, “what did the ghost say to you last night?” I’ve seen parents do this to children, thereby encouraging their children in the belief that there is a ghost and only they can communicate with it.  Or worse yet, in the case of children who are easily frightened, scaring the children by making them believe that there actually is a ghost in the house, and it’s trying to communicate with them despite the fact that they want nothing to do with it.   

But I also wouldn't take the hard-core stance that there's “no such thing as ghosts”. This suggests that whatever the child might have experienced is all in their imagination, and worst case scenario might suggest to the child that they may be punished or rebuked for admitting so. It also effectively shuts down the lines of communication.  I’ve read accounts by adults who experienced truly frightening phenomena in their houses as children.  When they tried to tell their parents they were shunned.  In some cases these same children had to endure often terrifying activity in silence.  It’s terrible to imagine a child being victimized in this manner, and even worse to imagine them doing so in isolation.

In-home Investigation

On the market now are all types of nifty surveillance cameras and equipment.  Many standalone cameras can connect to a smart phone.  I would definitely get one that also has audio.  I would suggest that you set one up in her room so that you could see and hear what's going on for yourself. That would hopefully give you some piece of mind. 

Motion sensor night lights in hallways and public spaces might also help you feel a bit more secure. They are available in both plug-in or battery operated. I've placed them all over my house.

To find out more about a property and its history I would start at a local library or historical society - if you have one in the area. Don't be surprised if you find no mention of a Jessie, however. I think that's simply the name your daughter gave her friend. These things rarely work out that neatly.

Paranormal Hypochondria

A parapsychologist acquaintance admits that with all the attention the paranormal has gotten in the media of late that many of us now have developed what he calls paranormal hypochondria.  In every odd situation we now experience we are programmed to read in paranormal.  Lost a loved one, the need becomes even greater.  I once had a conversation with a woman who wanted me to perform an investigation for her.  The conversation started with I lost Dad in 200X and my brother in 200X. She continued, I saw an orb on my surveillance camera and my toddler walked up the stairs and held his arms up asking something that I couldn’t see to pick him up and carry him up the stairs.  (First of all, don’t get me started on orbs!) All in all, I told her this was pretty slim pickings in the way of evidence.

The Third Route

Instead of actively encouraging or discouraging, I would try the third route.  If the child wants to discuss what they experienced try to calmly and openly listen to her.  Listen attentively when she talks to you about her new friend, but don’t bring the subject up with her yourself.  That's just giving her the green light that any such imaginings are just fine with you.  Young children are very in tune with their parent's opinions and will take their cue from your attitude as to how to feel about the situation. You want to be open to listening and remain calm. Ask questions and try to make no formal pronouncements.

Lyndsey’s Experiment

A client of mine, also named Lyndsey, came up with her own solution to a sticky problem. Lyndsey’s home is quite active.  Our team has actually investigated the site three times with another investigation tentatively scheduled for next summer.  Every time we investigate Lyndsey’s house we come away with multiple EVP’s, most often by a speaker who seems to be a woman.  This corresponds with what Lyndsey has told us.  She has confided that she often feels a matronly personality in the home, one that appears to be attached in particular with their very young son.  They have a baby monitor in the child’s room and they often hear the little boy communicating with someone or something that they cannot see. And they often detect strange sounds through the monitor. The activity had always been harmonious.  However, right after our third investigation in early November I got a disturbing email from Lyndsey. 

She said that the activity in the boy’s room had taken a turn for the worse.  He had awoken one night screaming that he had seen a ghost, and demanding to be let out of the room.  For long nights afterward he insisted on sleeping with them in the master bedroom and refused to enter his own room even during the day.  What was she to do?  I gave her the same advice that I’ve written about in this article, suggesting she find some way to speak with the boy calmly so as not to scare the absolute bejesus out of the tyke.  What she did next I thought was brilliant.  She made it into a game.

Using one of the pool soakers – the kind that have the noodle bodies and suck up the water only to shoot it out in a long stream – she told her son that they were going to play ghostbusters.  Walking through the house he was to tell her where he had seen ghosts and she would suck them up.  He dutifully showed her where he had seen entities and she sucked them up and took care of them.  Incidentally, the boy indicated the same spots that we had determined to be active in our investigations.

This activity did a number of things worth noting.  First, it pointed out to a concerned mother where her son was seeing apparitions.  The fact that it appeared to correspond with her experiences and with investigation results is validating.  Second, she took her son seriously neither encouraging him to make things up nor discouraging him from communicating with her. But third, and I think this is the most important, is that it gave mother and son the power back. I’m sure they both felt like they were much more in control after the activity.

Fourth, although some experts in the paranormal community disagree with me, I think Lyndsey’s exercise was a good way to communicate with the spirit.  I have always felt that if a spirit is in some way an essence of a deceased human, than they are bound by the same upbringing and courtesies with which we were raised.  In other words, you can communicate and attempt to set parameters with an unseen house guest.  I think Lyndsey’s game also went a long way toward doing that, indicating to the spirit that she had been seen, that she had overstepped the boundaries by frightening the boy and that such behavior was not acceptable.   

It wasn’t immediate, but Lyndsey eventually got the little tyke sleeping in his own room again, and as far as I know, peacefully.

Final Thoughts – Imaginary Friend or Other

Obviously without a lengthy interview and investigation I can’t say, or even speculate, as to whether Lindsey’s daughter is simply a very precocious and imaginative two-year old, or whether something is truly communicating with the child.   As I said earlier, it has been theorized that very young children are more open to telepathic communication with the spirit world. They may see spirits because they don't know they shouldn't be able to. The ability decreases with age

This is also an age when children are developing the ability of imaginative play.  And this is not something to be discouraged.  The same child development sources suggested that imaginative play has some very positive outcomes. Recent studies have indicated that children who developed imaginary friends weren’t, as had been speculated, lonely and isolated children, but highly creative.  Those that developed these “friends” were both more creative and socially adept than other children. In language studies such children were found to use complex sentence structures and developed advanced vocabularies. Overall, they were more socially adept at getting along with their classmates. The explanation seems to be that children with a developed imaginary friend got a chance at role playing both sides of a conversation. They developed better abstract thinking skills and were better at creating original ideas. The recently released book, Nurture Shock even cites research that seems to indicate that children who spent extended time in abstract play often demonstrated leaps in school achievement (Turgeon, 2009).

Resources

Turgeon, Heather (2009).  Imaginary Friends.   Babble.com (A subsidiary of Disney Inc.) Retrieved November, 27, 2016 from https://www.babble.com/toddler/imaginary-friends-early-child-development-imagination/

Musings of a Paranormal Investigator

The author on an investigation. Notice the mist in the right side of photo. It wasn't present in the picture before, nor in the picture after.

by Robin M. Strom-Mackey

"What is it like to be a paranormal investigator? Well, honestly, it's a lot like fishing."

A few years ago I took up a new hobby. As a middle aged woman with a career and a child at home you might expect me to take up golf, as my husband did. After all, it’s easy on the joints and it would allow me to enjoy well-manicured nature while sporting cute outfits and coordinating clubs. But I went a different route, I became a paranormal investigator

 

Say you’re a ghost hunter to the uninitiated and images of proton packs and near fatal slimmings come to mind. You probably envision Dan Akroyd and Bill Murray playing high-tech ghost busting conquistadors. That unfortunately is not the reality of paranormal investigating. I’ve not been issued a proton pack to date, and no ghost, according to my research, has ever slimed anyone.

 
So what is ghost hunting like, you ask? I have to admit, I’ve found ghost hunting to be more like…fishing. Just like fishing, when you’ve got a ghost “on the line,” it is an adrenaline rush like little I’ve ever experienced before. But most of the time, and I mean most of the time, you’re merely casting into the dark. Back home we used to fish for muskies, (short for Muskellunge) an elusive fish that fights like the dickens when hooked. The fisherman’s motto is that a fisherman has to cast 100,000 times before catching one of these beasties. It’s no wonder that one lucky enough to catch a Muskie usually has it stuffed and mounted versus eating it for dinner.
 

So how often do ghost hunters experience something honestly paranormal? Opinions vary, but somewhere between 1 in 5 investigations to 1 in 20 investigations. In other words you’ll spend somewhere between five or twenty sleepless nights wandering around in spider-ridden old basements and sneezing in dusty, hot attics before you actually capture anything even considered as sound evidence. Granted, what is considered verifiable evidence depends enormously on the investigation group and how rigorous they are with what they collect.

 

When I say rigorous I’m talking about the degree to which a group or individual is willing to examine the evidence for verification, discarding any occurrences that can be reasonably explained by natural occurrences. Obviously there is a desire to advance the field of study by those in the paranormal field.  The study of the paranormal has always been resoundingly snubbed by the scientific community. Paranormal activity is, after all, unverifiable using scientific methods of study. You can’t, for example, grow a spirit in a test tube and then grow another 1000 just like it. That is not to say that organizations such as the Society for Psychical Research, which was founded by in Great Britain in 1882 by some of the greatest scientific minds of its day, haven’t made advances in paranormal studies. However, the scientific community remains a conservative and skeptical group. Hence, much in the paranormal world has fallen to normal people to investigate, and regular folks aren’t trained in scientific study methods by and large; so evidential review can be somewhat ragged.

 The Careful Skeptics

Some few groups are extremely careful in their data collection, throwing out the vast majority of the evidence they collect in the name of scientific rigor. Technology advancements are helping to make evidence collection extremely precise, at least for groups that have deep pockets and tech know-how. Some savvy teams have constructed systems that record environmental samples of many different data types simultaneously (in some cases several times a second). Such systems can sample temperature, electromagnetic field fluctuations, ion levels, radiation levels etc. streaming all the information real-time to a computer which records it.  Then, when something potentially paranormal occurs, these different types of data can be compared, giving a synchronized second by second picture of what actually changed in the environment during the episode.  The data can then be compared with any audio or video evidence, giving an investigator a much broader picture and hopefully a better idea of how to detect future potential phenomenon.
 
The Believers

Then are the groups of ambitious amateurs, who blithely call every photo of a flying bug or dust mote an orb, and post everything they catch proudly on the web.  I recently took the brunt of an argument with a woman who was convinced that every photographic anomaly was the face of a spirit.  She proudly pointed out faces and beards and hair in every dust moat captured. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that our brains automatically attempt to find patterns in illogical situations.  It has been dubbed (incorrectly) by many in the paranormal community as matrixing, actually the correct terms are apophenia or pareidolia.

 There is undeniably a certain segment of the population that is psychologically invested in finding confirmation of the paranormal. In other words they desperately want to believe in ghosts, and fully expect to find one.  I wince at these people, because I fear they make all of us look like a gaggle of superstitious charlatans.   

 The Thrill Seekers

 There is also a segment of the population whose motivation is simply to seek out novel experiences.  They want to kick around old buildings for the sheer fun of doing something different. These individuals are not terribly careful with their evidentiary findings, because all they really want is to have some fun. I’ve found the thrill-seeker portion of the population usually loses interest very quickly.  One or two sleepless nights of kicking around in the dark, and hours of evidence review usually convinces them to find another hobby. 

The Fame Seekers

 Over the last few years I’ve been saddened by the increasing number of yet another type of investigator – the fame seekers. With television shows on the paranormal becoming both popular and plentiful, the number of groups whose sole motivation seems to be gaining money or fame has risen exponentially.  Even in the tiny state of Delaware I’ve managed to stumble upon these folk.  Convinced they’re destined to be stars on the next television show, they pretend to expertise they hardly deserve while creating turf wars with other groups.

 These guys are pretty easy to spot.  They’ve got the splashy websites selling t-shirts and over-priced EMF detectors.  They’re either vehemently not accepting applications from new investigators – so please don’t inquire – or they have an initiation process that makes it harder to join the group then it is get a job with the FBI. They’re extremely proprietary about any evidence collected either on their devices or someone else’s equipment.  Whether or not this type of group will do a decent investigation depends on their actual experience (and don’t be fooled, many so called experts have very little experience). In the paranormal community, however, they sew a lot of dissension ruining any type of collegial cooperation that might actually advance the field.

 Personal Journey

 When I first started in the field I applied for entry into a local group.  A year later, bloody and ragged from in-fighting and ego wars I left to start my own organization.  I don’t know whether all groups are as tempestuous as the one I joined, but reading articles by other investigators would indicate that such power struggles are not uncommon. Over time I reconsidered what I wanted, and decided to become one of the increasing number of lone wolf investigators, those who want to investigate without the drama.     

 
I interviewed a seasoned investigator once who told me that she felt that those who stayed in the field found it necessary to periodically examine and develop their individual goals.  Those that didn’t develop over time, she said, ended up leaving the field quickly. Personally I have found her observation enlightened.  My own journey has involved a lot of soul searching and many changed paths.  Over time I’ve decided my priority is research and writing, exploring all the topics about which I want to know more and then sharing my findings with the community.

 I got into the field because I wanted to explore the possibility of life after death, and that still remains my greatest driving force.  I started in the field as an undecided vote, and I’ve yet to find that one piece of unambiguous evidence that has convinced me to climb off the fence of skepticism yet. That’s not to say that I haven’t experienced some undeniably strange things.  But that truly profound, absolutely unambiguous piece of evidence…still fishing for that.

 
Paranormal Tourism – The Thrill Seeker’s Vacation

The gross majority of people that approach me about becoming an investigator are of the thrill-seeker type.  They drop me a cryptic email about doing some investigating but can’t ever seem to find the time to meet, or are far too busy to actually show up for an investigation. That’s just fine. If you really want to try your hand but don’t have the time for a commitment there is now a whole genre of tourism pandering to the paranormal enthusiast.  Haunted hotels, haunted cruise ships, haunted houses, haunted forts and battlefields, séances, EVP sessions, lecture series….  It’s all out there and you can experience it all for the price of admission.  If after an event or two you find you have an insatiable need for more there are organizations out there that have a constant need for new blood.

 Becoming an Investigator?

 For those truly serious about becoming an investigator, I’d say that knowledge is power. To prepare to be an investigator I began by reading, listening and watching anything I could find in the field. “How To” books certainly began to fill my shelves.  However, it soon became apparent that to understand the paranormal also required a sound knowledge in the sciences.  To date, I’ve studied such diverse topics as the makeup of the atom, how electricity works, electromagnetic energy, radiation, ionization, history, PSI, the science of sound, the light spectrum, psychology and spiritualism. I’ve read literature written for grief counselors dealing with separation, and literature put out by the medical profession about Near Death Experiences. I even read one rather confounding book on Quantum Physics. I’m still confused as to what an “event horizon” is, but I do now know the “event horizon” doubles at the entrance of a black hole. Aha! I never in my wildest dreams imagined that a desire to “hunt ghosts” would be such hard work.  But how many golfers can claim the same rigor of study? Granted   they do get the cute outfits and matching hats.

 I think perhaps it would have been easier to take up golf, as my husband had suggested.  Being a paranormal investigator is not conducive to becoming a socialite. Indeed lone wolf is far closer to the mark.  Being an investigator involves a lot of hours in dark rooms speaking to the walls. (I believe there are asylum residents that present with much the same behaviors.)  You learn quickly to share your experiences carefully.  Indeed there’s nothing like that look of horror or scorn that passes some people’s faces when you tell them what you do for a hobby.  I doubt golfers face the same scorn when they speak about their latest game. And they undoubtedly never hear the phrase, “there’s no such thing as golf!” Aside from abject rejection is the subtler form of reproof I often feel from friends and loved ones who quietly put up with my “strange obsessions” because they care for me. Big sigh.

And so I approach my anniversary of fives.  Five years of investigating, 50 online articles published and approaching 50,000 views on the blog. I still have no proton pack, I have no personal television show, and I have no unequivocal evidence proving the existence of life after death. But I do have a sense of accomplishment...almost as good as the perfect round of golf.

Definitions   Apophenia is when our brain perceives connections or patterns where there are none.   Pareidolia is when we assign significance to otherwise random patterns, like seeing the Virgin Mary’s face on the side of a potato.