The Midvale House Visitor

Please bare with me as I revisit some of our older investigations for a moment. I decided to include on my blog and with the online case files my interactions or visits from the spirits prior to investigation day or even in some cases prior to the client even contacting us. Midvale which was one of the first private residence investigations we did was one of those visits that happened prior to our client interview. I was sitting in our living room while Tim was in the back office just watching some TV, to be honest I was catching up on some reality TV but you won't hold that against me right? Zero our dog was oddly fascinated with the wall that connects the living room to our bedroom. He began pacing back and forth in front of a certain section and then became highly agitated even growling at the wall. I looked over in time for him to back up rather quickly and a inky dense black figure leaned through the wall (only his torso) looked my direction and then back into the wall he disappeared. As you can imagine I was quite shaken by this and when I gained enough courage to move I quickly went to Tim to tell him what had just happened. Soon after this one time only event we were contacted by our Clients at the Midvale location and set up our interview. That night we were shown a video that they had captured and I saw the same inky black figure in the video. This was the first time I can remember a visit from a spirit that we encounter on our investigations and by far was not the last. It has been pretty consistent and only amping up as we go into our busy season. I will continue to write about past ghostly visits until caught up and then try and stay on top of new visits and new investigations.

It's Been Awhile

So I have been totally slacking in the Paranormal aspect of my life lately. And boy has Spirit been letting me know I need to get my butt in gear! We have mostly been doing Private Client based investigations lately but we do have a very busy fall shaping up and I for one am very excited to get back into the routine. Also I have noticed that my visits from spirits are getting more frequent. Usually I am visited by a spirit, have a dream about, or know information regarding an investigation prior to the client contacting us or just before the investigation takes place. I figured I would start writing about these encounters and including the link to my blog with the online case file for some of our investigations. They are becoming so frequent that I usually have a sighting 2-3 times a week. Nothing scary and the weird thing is I never interact with them, all my info comes through my spirit guide. It is almost like they just show up to say "hey you will be seeing me in the near future, just wanted you to know that".

Investigation Prep Part 2

Happy Saturday!  Today is our first public investigation so I thought it would be the perfect time to break down our day of prep work. Yesterday I posted about what we take care of the day before so you will want to check that out. Today is all about packing up equipment and gathering paperwork. First things first we finalize our layout of the location and where we want to place our cameras and other static equipment. With this being a public event we won't be breaking down into smaller teams so I came up with 3 scenarios on the flow of tonight's investigation which when we arrive and speak with the clients we can decide the best course of action or game plan if you will. Our final team member count is done, we sent out an email this morning as a final reminder and gave the game plan for the evening.  Right now Tim and I are doing our final packing and checklist of all the equipment we will be taking (note we don't put batteries in until we arrive so we don't get any pre investigation drainage). And after that I will figure out team assignments such as who will be leading which team and what equipment gets assigned to which team member.  Hope this helps any new groups that are starting out and need a little guidance. Also the number 1 thing to remember is you can do all the planning in the world however when you get to your investigation it more than likely will be different!

Investigation Prep Part One

It is the Friday before a big investigation so I thought I would break down how we prep. Today we pull all the batteries out of all our equipment and charge all of our batteries.  We use rechargeable batteries for most of our equipment and then we purchase regular batteries from the dollar store as back up for the day of. We also on this day go through all the SD Cards and make sure they are blank as well as deleting any lingering files on our digital recorders.  The day before is also the day we finalize our team guest list so I can make up the assignment charts and Tim usually finalizes the equipment set up so we have a plan before going into the day of .  Please note even though we appear and make every attempt to be prepared before arriving we have found that something always changes when we get to the investigation site. For example Tim and I went on a pre tour of the Rio Grand prior to our investigation so we could map out the equipment set up. When we arrived the security guard on site that night opened up some rooms we previously were told we would not have access to. So last minute we had to make changes to our existing set up plan.  My best advice is to go into the investigation as organized and planned out as you can but expect and don't freak out if there are changes. Well this is our pre-day of prep tomorrow morning I will post the second part giving you the run down of the day of prep!

TV Investigators

I was recently asked in an interview who my favorite TV investigator was. I have been very vocal in the past about why I have a hard time with  TV paranormal shows so this was a tough one for me to answer. Now each show has its good and bad points and each investigator has things that I hate and yet they do things that I myself learn from. After some pondering and having Tim answer this question first I said that I liked Grant Wilson from Ghost Hunters the best. Not because he is Mormon and I was raised Mormon but because out of all the different shows I watch he is the one that stands out as having the most respect for the spirits. As of late I joke that I am a spirit advocate because lack of respect is my biggest issue with TV programs. I don't really care for the shows like My Ghost Story Caught On Tape and Paranormal Witness because they usually show people who don't know anything about the paranormal doing things for shits and giggles.  Grant to me always came across that he actually cared about the spirits that they encountered, that they had stories and history to them rather than something really cool they caught on tape. That is how I look at spirits and why I say I'm "the spirit advocate" because they were living at one time, they have history, and I'm interested in hearing about them rather than what they can do to make me look good on tape.

you tube new look for videos

My new intro for 4EPI you tube videos :)

Ghost Hunting Regrets

From my experience you can plan plan plan but once you get to an investigation it will always change. So I always end up going home saying "why didn't I do that"?  One example of this and the one that I still think about was our second investigation at The Rio Grande. Tim and I were there with our GhostBuster class and we were able to go into the basement in groups. We had already been there in fact just a few weeks before so we kind of broke off from the group in the basement and ended up by a telephone with no display on it and I could not see where it was plugged in. Tim had the Ovilus out and we kept getting phone phone phone. We would then hear a faint telephone ringing sound and then nothing for a few minutes. We noted it on our recorders and moved on down the hallway. About half way we got "go back", I asked where we were to go and we were instructed to go back to the phone. When we got back we got the telephone ringing sound and then we got a dial tone. I again examined the phone but never picked up the receiver. After going back and forth down the hall and back Tim and I decided to go back upstairs and let a few more people go down. Thinking back on this I kick myself for not picking up the phone receiver. I often wonder if I did would I hear someone on the phone? Did the spirit we were talking to have a message for us?  I will probably never know but the good thing is you don't  have to investigate places only once. We have been to some locations a few times now and I hope one day to go back to The Rio Grande and seeing if I can get the message via the phone.