go on a ghost hunt

I did this with my ghost hunting class! It was at this house mansion in a park, and fortunately there was never a time where I felt truly nervous or really threatened. When I first stepped in the house and in some rooms, I felt pretty dizzy for no good reason. But it was interesting – the place was built in the early 1800s, I believe.

Anyway, we split into groups, and my group—me, Eileen, and Kate—explored the basement first, and there was one part in the basement that didn’t feel too great to be in, but it was dark and claustrophobic back there. I lit the way with my headlamp, which looked like a Xena Warrior Princess crown. (Tee.) Then Kate took a picture of Eileen and got an orb floating around her on the hem of her jacket. (Deb the facilitator had brought in books of ghost photography, and the ghosts were represented by orbs that were not necessarily unlike dust particles, but you know when you’re looking at a dust particle and an orb. These were orbs.)

I got a picture of an orb, too, when we were upstairs in a bedroom! We were doing some EVP with a tape recorder and asking questions, and when Kate asked if the portrait of the woman that was hanging on the wall was the ghost who lived in that room and was with us then, I snapped a picture of Kate, and there was an orb floating by her head. When I told Kate that, she was so excited, and kept calling back in the room, “Oh, girl! I’m with you, girl! Girl, you’re great! Thank you, girl!” It was pretty funny.

When we were in the library, Deb came with us with her pendulum and we were asking the ghost lots of yes or no questions (Eileen really took control that one, though, which I didn’t mind because I didn’t know what to say), and learned that the ghost was part of the Civil War as a courier and had talked to Grant. It was pretty neat!

When we had our last class, we talked about our experiences, and one girl had ZILLIONS of orbs in her pictures. (I believe I didn’t get too many because I was sort of closed off to the aspect of being touched, or seeing a ghostly face, etc.) And as for the EVP, the other group asked, “Do you like the music on Buddy’s iPod?” (Buddy, a boy in their group, apparently has crappy music on it that no one likes) and there was a voice on the tape that said “No.” They also asked if the ghost had ever been in contact with Deb, and a voice said “Yes.” It was really interesting!

Last week was my first night of the “Hunting Ghosts” class. One lady was getting sassy when the facilitator said that some ghosts don’t know they’re dead, and the lady’s like, “How is that possible?!” Then when the facilitator was talking about how some ghosts might be assigned to do certain tasks, the lady was like, “This is so frustrating; I don’t want to have to work all THIS life and then go to the next where I have to do MORE work and not understand it, etc.” It was funny.

I liked when the facilitator suggested that we really meditate on the concepts of fear and evil: Why are people afraid of ghosts? What’s scary about them? I was trying to think about it last night, because I think that I’m very prone to dying of fright. I’ve decided that if a ghost can’t harm a person, then the reason I’d be scared of one would be because I would interpret it as a warning sign for something horrific to come. I’ve read a bunch of stories about how some ghosts only show up right before someone dies.

Then we talked about how a ghost can be energy, or someone who is still alive. The facilitator told a story about two people who moved into a house that used to be occupied by a couple “who enjoyed very healthy, active sex life.” So every time these new people were in the bedroom, they’d close their eyes and be “haunted” by these images to the point where they just couldn’t live there anymore. Meanwhile, the sexytime couple was off living their healthy sex life somewhere else.

One guy picked up the dowsing rods and was asking questions about them, and they started spinning around and around, and he just stopped in mid-sentence and asked, “Why are these things going crazy?” and put them down, all nervous-like. Okay, it doesn’t sound funny or even remotely interesting, but it really just was.

Then the facilitator told us to make dowsing rods, which were originally used to locate water, but are now being used to locate certain energies. How I’m going to make them, I just don’t know.

Although I have not yet been on an official ghost hunt yet, I actually signed up for a night class at a nearby school for their “Hunting Ghosts” class. Sounds intriguing enough! But is it odd that I’m really really scared of actually seeing one?