New Ghost Hunting Equipment

When I first started delving into the supernatural, Aunt Belle and I only used our senses, especially hearing and sight. These days, there is all sorts of equipment out there to supposedly help you identify a paranormal entity if it comes around. Initially, neither Aunt Belle nor I cared to use any of it. Shoot, she didn't even allow a camcorder when we stayed in a haunted room. But more recently, I've actually started believing some of the things paranormal "inventors" have come up with do what they're supposed to do. I've even seen Aunt Belle "play" with some. ;-)

Timmy Smith is the Equipment Tech for my group, Supernatural Researchers of Texas. He knows our equipment in and out, and he's always looking for new things we can afford. Many times, he even trades back and forth to acquire something he wants for the team. Since he and I both love garage sales (or as I sometimes call them, garbage sales), we do run across some deals now and then. I've bought three small hand-held camcorders for $2.00 and $3.00, and two of them even have night vision. Two were good cameras; Timmy took the other one to work on.

I also find some interesting items now and then. My latest is a set of reeds and a vase, the liquid supposedly something to ward off mosquitoes. Since we're in West Nile country, I’m anxious to try it out. I also watch the sales and save my Ghosthunter Store coupons. The discount is usually enough to pay for the postage, as it did with my favorite piece of technology, my Raggedy Ann trigger object, Anna Lee.

Timmy's latest acquisition is a rempod. It has really cool bright lights on it, like a KII, and a neat alarm, both of which seem to indicate the presence of paranormal energy. We like to use any new piece of equipment along with things we have proven before in active haunted locations, so this past Friday and Saturday, we set up the rempod in my house and Angela's. We also took it out to Dry Creek. The topic for our Psychic Development Class on Friday was working with the rempod. Unfortunately, life interfered with half of my group, so only Timmy, Amanda and I were here.

Along with his new rempod, Timmy had also brought along SRT's other overall favorite piece of equipment, his two-foot-tall robot, which we (natch) call R2. We filmed, starting out here in my office using the rempod beside Anna Lee. Nothing much happened on the rempod or Anna Lee. My ghosts are more the apparitional sort, although sometimes they do indicate their presence with their strong energy. I cajoled them, but they still stayed back, although I could feel them hovering. I even saw one hanging around the office doorway, but pretty much as a misty shape, not a recognizable resident ghost.

R2 appeared to be aware of something/somebody, however. We haven't even seen the robot outside of a haunted location, but Timmy kept saying, "He never does that at home. Something is controlling him besides me."

Or: "I didn't give him that command. Look what he's doing. Someone else has control of him."

We hung in there for a while in my office. "Remember," I told them, "it usually takes at least a half-hour before things start happening. Even out at Dry Creek, we don't see much activity until we've been there a while."

But eventually, we grew tired of not much going on except R2 moving here and there. We moved into the guest bedroom, where there has been quite a bit of activity from Teddy the past couple months. There, we got the activity we were after, not only in R2, but with Anna Lee lighting up. There was also a faint hint now and then in the rempod. The lights low on the scale flickered a few time, and the meter climbed upward somewhat. I think the highest it indicated, though, was a little over 1.3, from a baseline of 0.0.

That night, Timmy, Angela and I went out to Dry Creek. We found out again that we shouldn't try to predict the paranormal. We didn't wait the half-hour that night. We left R2 at home, since he wouldn't have been able to navigate on dirt and grass, but we placed Anna Lee and the KII beside a grave near the back where we'd had previous activity. Immediately, Anna Lee lit up. Timmy didn't even have the camera set up yet. By the time he did, we'd had numerous "hits" on Anna Lee and the KII. We were so excited at first, we forgot to put down a flashlight.

Initially, Timmy held the rempod, and again, it didn't show much on it. Then we remembered the flashlight and an EMF I'd recently acquired and added them to the equipment. For the next half hour or so, we had quite a show of flashing lights, except not that much on the rempod. Timmy eventually put it on the ground, and it showed something close a few times, but not with the strength of our other gadgets.

Still, we were very happy with what we got on film at the cemetery that night.

The next day, we managed to get over to Angela's house for a while. We had wanted to let her resident ghost, Alan, play with the equipment. However, I think Alan was out visiting again. We did encounter some other activity, one a ghost that was personal to Angela and who wore some beautiful perfume. And R2 seemed to be having a lot of fun with whoever was playing with him, even though Alan wasn't around.

The rempod again didn't flicker much in her living room, but I noticed something moving around in the kitchen (we were all in the living room) and carried the rempod in there. We got some nice spikes on the meter in there, some up to 4.0, although the alarm never sounded.

All in all, we're pretty satisfied with most of our equipment. Timmy is disappointed in the rempod after what he paid for it, but I told him we needed to keep using it. I've been around this new technology long enough now to have seen it work at some places, not work at others. We'll be doing many other "hunts" and I imagine the rempod will eventually prove itself.

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We were notified this past week that the owners who are remodeling an old house want us to come in and do an investigation. As far as we know, no paranormal group has ever explored this home. It might be a while before we get to do this one, but we have other things on the agenda.

Next class, Angela has agreed to give our group a lesson on how to work with the computer technology and refine and isolate our evidence ourselves. It's way too much for her to do alone, and I love learning new things, as do the others in SRT. We're looking forward to that, and hope to be able to upload some short clips of our experiences and evidence.

In the meantime, thanks for buying Living With Dead Folks and all the nice feedback about how much you enjoy it. I'm working on both Silent Prey and the annual Halloween story. No name yet for the Halloween one. It's still tumbling around in my Muse. Just a hint: It's a story about a monster slayer and a half-human demon. Sound intriguing? I hope so. :-)

Stay safe, and….

Boo!

T. M.