Haunted House Update...the Investigation

Four members of SPCTR came to my haunted house last night and conducted an investigation. Two were the same guys who stopped over last week for the initial interview. They arrived promptly at 8:00 pm and set up their home base in my garage. The vast array of equipment they unloaded was mind-boggling. It was all I could do to stay out of their way and not say things like, "Hey, what's that do? Can I touch it?" Really, it's the same stuff you see the TAPS folks use on the TV show.

The setup. Four infrared cameras, one in the living room, one in the main floor bedroom (my son's room), one in the upstairs bedroom (my bedroom), and one outside facing the backyard (where the little girl has been seen). Digital recorders were placed with each camera. The four IR cameras were fed to a DVR in the garage and all four views shown split screen on a large LCD monitor. They placed EMF (electromagnetic field) detectors in the three rooms with the IR cameras. Ghosts are said to emit EMF, and if one got close to a detector, lights flash and would be seen on the monitor at home base. Windows were closed, blinds and shades drawn, and then all lights switched off. They were ready. Well, sort of.

There were technical problems the likes of which they said they had never encountered before. First, the IR camera in my son's room refused to work. Then the monitor at home base started acting up. They swapped monitors and DVRs and had to run a separate video cable to the camera and eventually, got everything working. It was, according to them, strange.

One member took numerous digital photos of every room and also many outside. Then they rotated in and out of the house in teams of two, conducting EVP (electronic voice phenomena) sessions and also using the handheld FLIR (forward looking infrared) camera. The investigation went from around 9:30 pm until well after 1:00 am. Toward the end, I went in alone with a device that measures air temperature as well as EMF and conducted my own EVP sessions.

So what happened? During one rotation, one of the investigators said he felt a tug on his pant leg. Another said he felt uncomfortable and weird in my son’s bedroom, while another said the air in my bedroom felt so heavy and thick that it seemed almost fluid. The walk-in closet upstairs seriously freaked out one of them. Despite these very creepy sensations, no one reported hearing voices or footsteps. No one reported seeing apparitions or moving shadows. But in the garage watching the monitor...there were some odd things.

The problem with watching the monitor is that you have four different views to choose from, three rooms and the backyard. My eyes kept bouncing from one to another. At one point, one member said she thought she saw a moving black mass. In the view of my bedroom, there were numerous white orbs moving around. Now, as you know, 99.9% of these are dust particles. Problem is, we’d keep seeing them when no one was in there to stir any dust up and I did clean before they came. When one of the guys was lying in my bed, I saw an orb seemingly dive into his head. Later, I saw another streak down toward the floor and it looked exactly like a shooting star. The investigators dismissed most of this as dust, but I think after they review the footage more closely, they might think differently. Especially since I saw virtually no orbs in my son’s room and I hadn’t dusted in there for a number of days. So...

My session in the house alone was kind of cool. Lying on my son’s bed, I was trying to talk to the little girl. I was holding the EMF detector. It has a glowing green screen showing the temperature and EMF level. I asked the girl to come over toward the green light. Holding the detector by my side, it read 0.0. When I moved it out to where someone would normally stand if asked to come stand by a bed, it went up to as high as 2.0 but averaged around 1.5. I’d move it to the left about a foot and it dropped back to 0.0. Same to the right. I moved it down to the floor and it stayed about the same. Then I raised it up. After I got above what would the height of a child or small adult, it dropped back to 0.0. This means there was an EMF next to the bed in the shape of a person. I’ll have to wait for the analysis to see if I received a response to any of my questions.

What now? I wait. They’ll be reviewing all the IR footage as well as the digital voice recordings. They said hopefully they’d let me know by next weekend. What I found interesting was that they said in their experience, when an investigation is relatively quiet (like mine), they usually find EVPs. Again, I wait.

I want to say that the whole experience was enlightening a lot of fun. These four were as professional as can be but also personable and very funny. I swear they could have their own TV show given their level of enthusiasm and also how well they interact with each other and their clients. My roommate and I left for a while to go out for supper and I had absolutely no reservations leaving my home in their hands. And they do not charge for their services, of course. So if you’re experiencing strange things in your house, I highly recommend you contact this group. Just go to www.spctr.net. If you do, you can see the four members who came to my house: Terry, Travis, A.J., and Melissa. Thanks, guys.