Ghost Hunters on the Scifi channel...

Before I start, I would like to state I'm an ameteur ghost hunter. Been doing it on and off for the past eight years and I'm the Texas coordinator for the Southwest Ghost Hunters Association.

So I was talking with Diffy Ogopogo yesterday about ghost hunting and the subject of the Scifi Channel show, Ghost Hunters, and the ghost hunting organization, T.A.P.S., which is featured on the show, came up. And I just started a total rant about how they are completely unprofessional and assanine...

1) You DO NOT use A/C calibrated EMF (electro-magnetic field) detectors, unless you're using them to rule out any man-made sources of electromagnetic activity, such as appliances and power lines and whatnot. If you wanna use an EMF meter as a "ghost detector", it would have to be calibrated to pick up D/C fields. And the only brand I've seen that can do that is the Trifield meter, which I never seen a member of T.A.P.S. hold. It annoys the hell out if me every time their EMF detector go off and they're all like "OMG A GHOST!".

2) Before hunting spooks, you eliminate any possible mundane causes for the alleged ghostly activity. While T.A.P.S tends to do this a little, they're still a little more quick to say "OMG A GHOST!" at the drop of a hat.

3) They employ the use of daemonologists and pagans as part of their investigations. Jesus, people, while I'm not dissing anybody's spiritual beliefs, if you want to be taken seriously in the scientific community, you DO NOT use aspects of the paranormal to prove the existance of the paranormal.

4) YOU DO NOT PLAY RECORDED EVP (electronic voice phenomena) BACK TO A CLIENT!! This is especially true if they were recorded in the client's home. That's pretty much tantamount to saying "Here's some spooky voices we recorded a few feet from your bed... sleep tight!".

5) And finally, there's the professionalism. They're dropping *bleep*'s left and right in front of clients, squabbling with eachother, and playing pranks on one another during investigations. For instance, in an episode I saw last week, two of the guys came across a room where some bats have roosted and were flying around the room. Well, they tell the other guys in the group that they found some "activity" in that room and when they walked in, the bats started swooping around and freaking them out. You just don't do that! When you're on a ghost hunt, peoples' nerves are gonna be on end and they can panic easy. And I've seen people get hurt... including myself... when they panic.

Anyways I'm done ranting. These guys are a joke. And I hope that people don't think these guys represent the ghost hunting community as a whole...

Word. That's like using the river to make an ocean wet.

More like trying to prove something in the Bible happened by referring to another event in the Bible.

Quit leaving us in suspense, for chrissakes, and tell us some RL ghost stories!

Bah. You don't wanna hear about lil' ol' me. *tease*

True.






but the ghosts, man, the ghosts!

Oi... finefine...

Back in college, one of the more frequent place me and my old group used to investigate was the old abandoned Western Hills Inn in Eueless, TX. Back somewheres around '90 or '91, there was a really bad kitchen fire and the place was shut down permanently. Not sure if anybody died in the fire, but the place was boarded up and left to rot. It was a good source of furniture for me and my friends for the longest time, as the owners of the place never bothered to take anything out of the abandoned place.

When I was in high school (between '94 and '96), it was a regular hangout for me and my friends Jacky, Samantha, and Eric on our lunch breaks. We'd hang out on the concrete bridge over the stagnant swimming pool and feed bread to the catfish and turtles that lived within.

Now, the pool patio was a stone's-throw from the entrance to the burned-out kitchen. None of my friends were ever brave enough to venture in there. I did convince them to come in with me once and it was really freaky. The entire place was laid to waste, like. And in the middle, hanging from the ceiling was a huge metal ventilation shaft with pieces of metal sticking out every which way, giving the image of a giant twisted spider.

Nobody was as freaked out as Jacky, though, as she claims to have seen people moving around in the shadows in the burned out hallway. She refused to go anywhere past that pool patio since that day.

Anyways, a few years later, I got into the whole ghost hunting thing, as well as Sam and Eric (Jacky had moved to Louisiana since then). We went various places, such as Snuffers, The Lizard Lounge, various graveyards. We finally decided to go back to the Western Hills one summer night in 1998.

This was summer... Summer in Texas.... Summer in Texas in 1998... So, yes, it was very hot and muggy, even with the sun down. We made our way through the abandoned hotel quite uneasily. Occasionally we'd hear footsteps, which normally should be a sign to leave... immediately, but we were stupid college students.

We finally reached the pool patio and we'd nealy jump out of our skins every time a frog squeaked and jumped into the pool. We almost didn't wanna go to the kitchen because we kept feeling abnormal cold spots (I remind you it was like 80 something degrees that night and very humid) around the patio area, but were determined to keep going on. We finally reached the doorway and we saw the most bizarre sight ever. The kitchen doorway was blocked with stacks upon stacks of bibles (most likely taken from the rooms, since the hotel was just abandoned with everything in it).

We went ahead and cleared the doorway of the bibles and headed in and found the place completely cleared of rubble. The only thing recognizable from before was the "spider" on the ceiling. On the floor, was some very intricate graffiti of a cross and the words "Get thee behind me, Satan". We took a couple pictures and went on our way.

Anyways, on the way out, we were having a good laugh about the whole thing when we were passing by the pool. Eric's EMF detector started beeping (His was the kind that beeped after the needle went after 2mg) and I look to the bridge above the pool and saw a group of man-shaped shadows standing on top, looking down at the water. Sam took a picture and I blinked cuz I didn't expect to see the camera flash. Next moment the shadows were gone.

We decided to leave right then, right there. Eric made fun of us extensively, especially since the photos didn't turn up anything at all, not even orbs. But I know what I saw and Sam claims she saw it too, so I know it wasn't a hallucination.

Too bad I can't go back there, though. They tore it down back in '99 and erected a courthouse where the hotel once stood.

Yes, tell and do it now!

My CPU fan just kicked on by itself, OMG it's possessed

I just did.

Heh, my husband and I watch that show just about every week; it's good for a few laughs and one of the few "reality shows" I can tolerate. I don't particulary believe in ghosts or the paranormal, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

I figured the unprofessionalism of the show's cast was played up by the people who film the show, as is done by most of the producers of reality shows. I was happy to see them jettison a few rather obnoxious cast members, including the guy who was always on the phone with his girlfriend (I think his name was Brian).

I notice that the show's crew has a new office this year. Also, the Roto-Rooter logo is featured prominently in the intro to the show and in some of the episodes (the two main cast members work for Roto-Rooter). I wonder how much of this show Roto-Rooter has funded as some sort of advertising.

The bottom line, for me, is that I view this show in about the same vein as some other "reality shows," such as "American Chopper" on the Discovery Channel and "Dog The Bounty Hunter" on A&E network: They've got a lot of exaggerations and manufactured character conflict, they try for some characters/situations that are "larger than life," and they are mostly unrealistic and unrepresentative of their respective fields as a whole.

In other words... entertainment... not reality.

Do you still have pictures of the creepy room?

.

Roto Rooter - ghosts in the plumbing?

coco

Wish I did. Sam has all the old pictures. And I haven't talked to her in years. And most of my recent pictures, I have to dig offa zip disk, if you'll be patient.

But I do have more stories.

And I thought I'd toss in another story...

My stepdad, Maurice, used to own the Santa Fe Country Club Apartments out in Santa Fe, NM and used to live there with my mom for several years while their house was being built. Every summer when I was a kid, I'd come visit and I'd run around with the kids that lived in the apartments.

This was back in the 80's when a majority of the land around the apartments was mostly undeveloped. Me and my buddies would go around wandering the sprawling fields or catching salamanders in the arroyos every time they'd fill up with rain.

But there was this one place that neither me nor my friends would dare go near. It was this dilapidated two-story house that looked like it would fall apart at any given moment sitting in the middle of this field. It had a grass lawn (A very uncommon thing in Santa Fe) and it looked like it was a nice house back in it's day.

We'd stay as far away from that place as we could since urban legends abound of that place and it's former (or possibly current) occupants. I'd hear stories ranging from a serial-killing hobo to satan worshippers and just about everything else in the book.

Anyways, in the summer of '97, I was visiting my mom in New Mexico between semesters at college. I stupidly spent the money which I was supposed to use on a zip drive (Which I needed for college), I instead bought an EMF detector. So, by myself, armed only with a a camera, flashlight, and my expensive new toy, I set out for the dilapidated old house.

The place was looking particularily worse for wear and inside, it looked even worse. It was a mess. There was rubble everywhere. Broken furniture, collapsed beams from the ceiling, and chunks of collapsed wall. And the stairs leading upstairs were completely demolished.

Wandering around and making my way through the obstacle course of rubble, I'd occasionally catch something outta the corner of my eye or, hear thumps from upstairs, catch the occasional blip on my EMF detector. I captured a few photos of orbs, but god only knows where they are nowadays.

In the kitchen, I found another stairway leading up to the second floor and took them up. Upstairs, it was blacker than night. The windows were all boarded up and the only illumination was either from my flashlight or the cracks between the boards.

I was really on edge when I started to hear the thumping again and then nearly jumped out of my skin when I felt something touch my shoulder. I tell ya, I ran as fast as I could towards the demolished staircase from the entryway and took a flying leap fifteen-foot towards toe door, managing to twist my ankle and severely cut up my leg in the process. Also dropped my EMF detector, which I never had to guts to go back and retrieve.

The moral of this story? Ghost hunting... as well as going into dilapidated buildings... alone is a baaaaaaad idea.

TV show.

Not making a debate about existance pro/con...
Becasue I really don't know ^_^

Just saying what TAPS does is good for ratings.
Personality, practices, ect.

You'll have to take whatever they do with a grain of salt and a spoonful of sugar

Now... back you *your* stories.

Well there you go. There is your proof. Urban legends are bunk. Why on Earth would a hobo live in a house

...

Write a book


sell it in SL too ^.^

The hobo was prolly just squating in between Great American Rail Adventures and eating a some recently slain ribs and baked beans heated over a green spectral fire

Ghost Hunters is pretty funny... I watch it whenever I can. I just have to like any organization whose 'headquarters' are basically a trailer in someone's backyard. I was almost disappointed when they got a real office this season. I especially liked the prison episode... with that one guy (is he the one who got fired?) who was always across the street talking to girls instead of watching his equipment. And I think that episode was also the source of the classic line, "Dude! Run!"

I was about fifteen years old, visiting my grandmother's place in Abilene for spring break. Ever since I was a little kid, I'd see things out of the corner of my eye or hear things I couldn't explain. And my sister and her kids (Who lived on the property from around 1989 to last June) would see stuff all the time there too.

Well my grandparents were gone for work one day and, as usual I was vegging in front of the TV (I brought my sega with me coz there was absolutely nothing to do there) when I heard footsteps. It was an old flimsy double-wide trailer so you could pretty much hear/feel footsteps from anywhere any time someone was walking. I was thinking "Huh. Grandma sure came home early today" and thought nothing of it.

For the next hour or so I'd hear the footsteps and just ignored them, playing my video games. Though I thought it a little odd that if my grandma was home, she'd usually ask me if I wanted something to eat or if I wanted a soda or something, but she didn't. Then all the sudden all the power in the trailer went out and the footsteps came up to the door of the TV room. And I saw a reflection on the now-black TV screen of a human-shaped... thing. I spun around and nobody was there.

I ran around the house looking for my grandparents, then went outside, noticing that both their cars were gone, so obviously they weren't home yet. I walk back inside, rather chilled about what I saw and not to long afterwards, the power came back on. I was pretty freaked about the whole thing, even to this very day since I can remember what I saw with crystal clarity.

k that one scared me!

Actually yes, TV broadcasters really put a poor light onto these things, along with many other paranormal subjects. A person doesn't have to be a pagan, let alone an off-shoot religion to understand what lies ahead and around us (though there's nothing wrong with that).

i'm quite in tuned with whats around me at all times. So, given this perspective, just don't believe everything you see. .

It is TV after all.

This happened a little more recently. Went to Abilene the weekend after Christmas a year or two ago to visit my grandparents as well as my sister and her kids. That Saturday night, me and my sister went out to Fort Phantom Hill to see if we can get some interesting photos.

Anyways, when we get there, my sister was all chickening out and refusing to leave the car, so I decide to just check out the magazine building before leaving. Anyways, I'm walking towards it, my EMF detector and camera in hand when an owl screeches as loud as it can.

Admittedly, it did startle me a little and caused me to jump, but my sister was really really really freaked, rolling down the window and yelling, "GET IN THE F-ING CAR NOW!!!"

Funny little side note. When my grandfather was infinitely amused when he found out my sister got spooked by an owl, he'd prank call my sister going "Hoooo hoooo!!" when she answered for nearly a month afterward.

Heh. Kinda funny, considering the producers of the show also make American Chopper. But yeah, I know it's just entertainment, but I fucking hate being compared to these clowns every time it's mentioned that I'm a ghost hunter.

My last semester of college, I was alone in the apartment playing Pokemon on my new fuscia Gameboy Advance. The lights were all out (I have astygmatisms and get headaches around glare) and was lying flat on the couch, stretched out. It was daylight out, so there was enough light filtering through the blinds to see clearly. There had been recent reports of burglaries in my building, but my dumbass roommate often didn't lock the door anyway despite my chastisement of him. I had been the only one home for hours. Normally I keep a machete close at hand when I'm home alone, but this time I had left it by my computer at the opposite end of the room.

It was completely quiet when I heard the door handle turn slowly. The door slowly opened a little bit at a time... creak... creak... I vaguely thought that it sure was taking my roommate a while. Then I figured that he must have been reading a flyer on the door since people often left flyers on the door. Creak... Then the door finally shut again and I gave all my attention to catching Pokemon again. Then came slow footsteps. Step... Step... Almost inaudible. And I look up to see a man rounding the corner. A real man. Weren't expecting that were you? I glanced up long enough to make eye contact and without having any reaction whatsoever, went back to playing GBA. He said, "Sorry" and stood there for a moment, expecting me to do something but I didn't even acknowledge his presence again. Then he exited the apartment, pausing every few feet in anticipation of my reaction that never came.

Scary, huh?

This is hall of fame material