BE A GHOST HUNTER

Ok, the last time we went to Nikko, I took my camera of course. It’s an old clunky thing that really needs replaced. So when we were walking through the shrines and mausoleum areas and the battery light indicated that the batteries were drained and at a maximum low I just thought it was because the stupid camera was losing it.

Except, yesterday, it did it again, right at the same spot in the shrine where I started noticing it before. Weird. And I hadn’t used that camera much at all in the past week since I charged it last.

You know, they say that supernatural, uh, beings? draw on things like batteries to gain energy for their manifestations…

Friday, we stopped in a place called Gnadenhutten.
This is the site of the 1782 massacre of 90 Christian American Indians as they sang and prayed. The freaky thing was that the rebuilt log buildings are in the middle of the little town’s cemetery, surrounded by headstones from last week as well as ones from the 1700’s. The museum on-site was closed, of course, but we walked around, read the signs…and looked in the windows of the reconstructed cabins. One cabin was built on the original site of the house in which the Indians prayed all night…they’re not the original cabins…but when I bent down and looked in the window, I was freaked out. It was just pitch black in there and I had to move away from the window pretty quickly… Todd was way ahead on the path.
I learned about this site from a series of books called Haunted Ohio. The author said she could hear the Indians’ voices singing…
I’m kind of glad I didn’t listen that hard…

But you can’t convince crazy neighbor D of that. He wanted to go to the cemetery last night. We had been thinking maybe we’d go to a drive-in movie (it’s not too difficult to do b/c the kids will fall asleep in the back…) but we ended up packing them into the car instead and heading to the cemetery. It’s an old cemetery, with the tall, old markers. D and I walked around and took some pictures…but this is really not easy to do w/kids waiting in the car and we went too early in the evening, anyway…about a quarter til 10…
When we got ready to leave, a police car pulled in. He was kind of ineffective, though. He just told us the cemetery closed at 7 (7 is dusk?) and that he could see we weren’t doing anything. Yeah, unfortunately, we weren’t…

I wanted to do this even more after last night. The season finale of Ghost Hunters was on—an hour and a half at the Stanley Hotel in Colorado where Stephen King got the inspiration for The Shining. All those investigators said they just started out like 15 years ago on the weekends trying to find something in cemeteries etc… I think I’d start out pretty bad though. One guy was in his hotel room at the Stanley and the closet door opened and closed among other things (they got it on film). I don’t think I could sleep in there after that, no matter how good or professional a ghost hunter I was!

for orbs. The neighbor wanted to go out last night and take pictures in the dark…but it rained. I took a lot of pics Friday, Will and I walking through the cemetery, and this row struck me.

I could actually do. The neighbor wants to put together our own ghost hunting group just like TAPS. I guess the problem is that I keep thinking that it would be too similar to owning/running a business and I’ve tried that. It’s a lot of work and I don’t think I want to go there again… at least not right now. Could still look into it, though…

Again with the things we did when we were little. My siblings and I really did have an idyllic childhood. We loved ghost stories (what kid doesn’t?), loved turning out the lights or sitting on the front porch on a summer night and making Dad tell us a story or recite Little Orphant Annie. My sister can actually sense ghosts or at least sense when there’s something different in a room etc. Now there is a show on SciFi called Ghost Hunters (the new season premiere is on tonight!) and I watch it religiously. My neighbor and I want to start our own chapter of ghost hunters in our area and of course, my sisters would join. I have never outgrown that thrill of being scared, of searching for the unknown…