Ghost Hunting 101: Picking a Good Flashlight.

This is pretty basic stuff, but one of the most important pieces of equipment a ghost hunter can own is a flash light. It’s the one tool you take everywhere, and it gets used during the entire duration of a hunt, so choosing a good one is important.

I try to stick to name brand flash lights. Even though you pay a little more for them, they sometimes come with warranties and they hold up better then the cheap ones. I also prefer using flash lights with LED bulbs. They are just more powerful than the other ones and they last longer. Weight is another issue to keep in mind. A heavy light may be more sturdy, but carrying it around can get tiring. I personally like small, lightweight flashlights. They fit in pockets, can be attached to equipment with clamps and tape, and don’t get in the way.

Another popular trend in ghost hunting is flashlights that strap on to clothes or the person’s head. The idea is to free up the person’s hands, but I like being able to control the direction I’m shining a light in, and that only really comes with a handheld flashlight.

As minor as they seem, flashlights are important and incredibly useful pieces of equipment, so take the time to find one that suits you before you purchase one.

Weekly News Round-up 4/24/13

An author describes his run ins with a thylacine in The Examiner. You can read about it here.

Birmingham Mail posted an article about a mom calling in an exorcist after being spooked by strange occurrences at her home.

A woman in Cleveland claims to have caught a ghostly image on her cell phone. The image looks fake to me, but I'll let you be the judge. Check it out here.

Contact from Deceased Loved Ones

A ghost hunting peer posted on Facebook the other day questioning why a deceased loved one hadn’t gotten in contact after their death. They said that because they knew ghosts existed, it seemed strange that their family member hadn’t tried to reach out to them.

I do believe in ghosts, but I tend to think that the ghosts we encounter are usually there for a reason. They try to reach out because they have something they want to fix, or show someone. If a person doesn’t have any unfinished business, it makes sense to me that they would want to stay on the other side.

Sure, it would be nice if we could all get one last visit or message from the people we care about, but life doesn’t always work out that way. There are plenty of stories about people getting last phone calls or eerie messages from people, but sometimes we have to just accept the time we are given with people when they are alive.

Have any of you gotten a sign or message from a deceased friend or family member?

Weekly News Round-up 4/18/13

The Hollywood Reporter posted a review of the show Monsters and Mysteries in America. You can check it out here.

Iran announced that they did not have a time machine registered, to the disappointment of many. Read about it here.

An unusual photo taken by NASA has people asking questions. You can see the image here.

Native American Spirits

I live in an area that was once inhabited by several Native American tribes. There are still burial mounds in many areas and remnants of the people who lived here are pretty easy to find. When I go on a ghost hunt, it isn’t uncommon for people to believe that their properties are being haunted by the ghosts of these people.

In some ways it makes sense. The building of our homes and businesses has ruined a lot of land and disturbed areas that were once sacred to these groups. Burial grounds are sometimes unearthed in construction as well, so it’s not hard to believe that they could be upset with us for disturbing their land.

But in the years I’ve been ghost hunting, I’ve only run into one instance where I thought a spirit might be Native American (we caught an EVP in a language none of us recognized.)  It makes me wonder why I haven’t run into more spirits like this. Maybe they just don’t care enough about us to bother haunted us, or I’ve just be looking in the wrong places.

Do you think there are Native American ghosts still hanging around?

Weekly News Round-up 4/11/13

Huff Post has an article on a film called Sirius, which claims to have footage of an actual extraterrestrial. You can check it out here.

MailOnline has a story about a women who is asking for a new house after claiming hers is being haunted by a man named Nigel.

Two woman in Papua New Guinea were beheaded on claims of witchcraft. Read about it here.

Book Review: Fact or Fiction? The Paris & M6 Paranormal Crashes

Over the past year or so, I’ve been exchanging occasional e-mails with a man named Colin Hall who has been researching the M6 & Paris paranormal crash reports. He put together a book of his findings and sent me a review copy to check out, which made me happy since I haven’t done a book review on here in awhile. The book it titled Fact or Fiction? The M6 Crashes.

I was pleasantly surprised when I got my review copy. The book was pretty hard to put down and there was a lot of information about the incident and related events as well. It’s full of illustrations and photographs of the area, the people involved and other topics related to the crash. The chapters are fairly short and relate to different elements of what happened. It's arranged as a journal with his personal thoughts added to events that were occurring. There are also excerpts from various blogs, websites, and Twitter feeds that relate to the crash.

It’s clear that the author has spent a lot of time and energy into researching everything and anything related to the accident. It’s a quick read and fun for anybody interested in conspiracy theory, the possibility of time travel or the M6 crash in general.

I give this book 5 out of 5 ghosts

The book is available from the publisher here.

Weekly News Round-up 4/4/13

Rumors of Bigfoot DNA and a documentary video that claims to show a family of Bigfoot are being discussed here.

Is your brain being controlled by a parasite? Apparently you don't have to be dead to be a zombie. Read about it here.

A Roman ring that is thought to be cursed may have been the inspiration for The Lord of the Rings story. The article is here.

Ectoplasm

I thought I’d talk a little about ectoplasm today. Somewhere early on, people got the idea that spirits might give off some sort of physical substance. Early mediums started capitalizing on this idea by creating photographs of people who had mysterious white substance coming out of their bodies. Though the images were fake, the mediums would claim that these photos were signs of the presence of a spirit inside of someone. They called this white substance ectoplasm and the term sort of stuck around.

In ghost hunting today, people have pretty much accepted that ghosts aren’t likely to leak any sort of physical goo, but people still take photographs with white mists and swirling lines that seem to appear out of nowhere. These stuff in these photos is often referred to as ectoplasm, with the idea that a ghost may have left some sort of spiritual residue captured by the photo.

I’m pretty skeptical of these pictures in general, and I can usually pin point a number of solid scientific reasons for the creation of these types of photographic anomalies, but it’s still interesting to see how photos are still being used to try and capture evidence of the afterlife years after people first started doing it.