Jennifer Redfern has always been interested in the paranormal activity in South Lyon.

But researching it on her own was not easy.

In February she contacted Cameron Johnson, another interested local resident, and they came up with the idea to start the South Lyon Area Paranormal Society. The goal is to reach out to others in the community with the same curiosities, and find answers about why ghosts exist in certain places.

“We wanted to provide a place where people could go without being laughed at or thought they were crazy,” Redfern said. “And we know there is a lot of activity in this town.”

As a member of the South Lyon Area Historical Society, Redfern has a vast knowledge of the history of many buildings and homes in the area. She uses that information when the group goes on ghost hunts to determine who the ghosts might actually be.

“Ghosts to me are a part of history, and we want to help them if we can,” she said.

But one thing the society does not do is exorcisms. “We are not the Ghost Busters,” Johnson said.

The group’s focus is on finding out why the ghosts are there, what type of ghosts they are - good or bad - and gathering evidence of their presence through sounds or pictures. They have conducted about 11 investigations since February, at places like the South Lyon Hotel, the New Hudson Inn, the Gallery Cafe, the South Lyon Cemetery and more.

The historic South Lyon Hotel, Redfern said, “Was one of the most extreme investigations” because it was built on property that was once a cemetery. When they did their investigation in July, the group heard doors slamming and scratching sounds, and the downstairs television turned on when everyone was outside. They used digital cameras and voice recording software to get Electronic Voice Phenomena’s - recordings of voice or voice-like sounds that are not audible to the human ear.

Despite their evidence, doubters of whether ghosts exist or not remain. But Robert Farrand, a member of the society, said people need to come see for themselves.

“Look at our evidence, we aren’t going to put something out there that is false,” he said. “But if you do not believe, then don’t come out.”

The society already has 25 members and is constantly looking for new places to ghost hunt. All the hunts, whether at a business or home, are free.

For more information, visit www.freewebs.com/south-lyon-area-paranormal-society or call (248) 912-7231. The group meets the fourth Tuesday of every month, but will meet on Dec. 16 because of the holiday.

Source: http://www.paraurl.com/?TFVTu

They want to be ghost busters — they just have to find some of the wayward spirits first.

It isn’t for a lack of effort that John Young and Mike Cavanaugh haven’t seen any ghosts or spirits yet. They bought all the equipment, they know what to do and they don’t mind putting in the time and effort it takes to track down paranormal phenomena. So far at least, they just haven’t been in the right place at the right time.

Young and Cavanaugh, both Dubuquers, started The Dubuque Paranormal Society earlier this year. They offer to investigate your inexplicable hauntings, ghostly apparitions and mysterious happenings free of charge.

“We’re not in it for the money,” said Cavanaugh, 47.

The two cousins hope to compile proof of supernatural activity from their investigations.

The cousins work well together — Young believes in the paranormal because he has witnessed it; Cavanaugh pooh-poohs the idea that the spirit world can manifest to and affect the human plane.

When Young was growing up in Dubuque in the 1970s, his family’s home was haunted, he says. He saw lights go off and on by themselves, he heard strange noises and his parents once saw an eerie figure at the foot of their bed.

“I was pretty scared. I hid under the bed a lot,” said Young, 37.

Cavanaugh is a self-styled skeptic, who rolled his eyes in exasperation when his cousin first brought up the idea of seeking out the paranormal.

“But my curiosity was piqued. Too many people have had weird experiences for there to be nothing to it,” he said.

Years ago, paranormal investigators were considered flaky at best, the men said, but the ethereal times they are a changin’.

“People used to think you were crazy,” Young said. “The subject is a lot more open now,” due in part to popular television shows like the Sci Fi Channel’s “Ghost Hunters,” Cavanaugh added. So when they tell folks they’ve seen a flashlight turn on and off by itself and recorded vocal sounds when no one was in a room, people tend to believe them.

One night recently, the two men and another member of the investigation team, Dave Langas, of Dubuque, hunkered down in Dubuque’s Grand Opera House. They hoped to hear from the ghost so many people have seen over the years in the 1890 building. Supposedly, she was an 18-year-old actress who was first jilted, then murdered about a century ago. Witnesses have reported strange lights, unexplained female voices and feelings of an unseen presence, although most of the otherworldly activity seems to have stopped after the theater’s extensive 2007 renovation.

The men spread out to corners of the massive stone building, running long cable lines and setting up powerful cameras in likely spots.

“People on stage have reported seeing a woman in these windows,” said Young, as he positioned a camera in the light booth. While Cavanaugh sat in front of a monitor, eyes glued to images flowing in from all eight cameras, the other men slowly swept through the theater with meters to measure electromagnetic fields.

The team left the theater before 3 a.m. Thanksgiving morning, not having seen or heard anything out of the ordinary. But it will be days before they have a chance to review the many hours of video footage they recorded during the night. They are hoping to find some images or sounds such as electronic voice phenomena which only show up on the electronic recording equipment.

If not … there’s always the next spooky spot.

Source: http://www.paraurl.com/?BQN9M

A film crew from the SciFi Network show Ghost Hunters wrapped up filming a segment at Kimball’s Castle in Gilford on Friday and may do some filming around town on Monday.

According to a representative of the show, the crew is looking for someone who is willing to talk about the building’s history on camera.

According to Thomas D’Agostino’s Book, “Haunted New Hampshire,” (May 2007 Schiffer Publishing), Kimball Castle, which sits atop Locke’s Hill on Belknap Point overlooking Lake Winnipesaukee, is haunted.

The castle was built by railroad magnate Benjamin Ames Kimball between 1897 and 1899. Kimball was president of the Concord and Montreal Railroad and was politically influential in his time.

He kept the castle as his summer retreat and lived in Concord during the winter months.

Kimball died in Gilford at the age of 86 in 1920 but the estate remained in the family until 1960 when Charlotte Kimball, Benjamin’s daughter-in-law and last heir, died.

Kimball had married his wife, Myra Tilton, in 1861, and their only son, Henry A. Kimball, born in 1864, died a year before his father, in 1919.

According to D’Agostino, witnesses, including a former groundskeeper, claim that during times when the castle has no electricity, lights have been seen going on and the sound of a machine can be heard in what was once the wife’s sewing room. Some believe this is the ghost of Myra Kimball, D’Agostino said.

Currently, the castle is privately owned. It is surrounded by the 260-acre Locke’s Hill Nature Preserve.

Ghost Hunters is a one-hour, weekly reality show featuring a group of real-life paranormal researchers from the The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) as they investigate allegedly haunted locales around the country.

Tom Thayer and Craig Piligian of Pilgrim Films, which also produced American Chopper, are the executive producers of Ghost Hunters, which is now in its fifth season.

The show airs on Wednesdays at 9 p.m.

Source: http://www.paraurl.com/?HpbNe

RENO, Nev.—An unexplained cold spot in the house, voices or footsteps coming out of nowhere and a sudden mist are believed by some to be signs of a ghostly presence.

So who ya gonna call when things go bump in the night?

Three Reno college students who recently formed Nevada Student Paranormal Investigation said they will check area homes and businesses for any wraiths in the rafters or poltergeists in the pantry free of charge.

Sean O’Callaghan, grandson of the late Nevada Gov. Mike O’Callaghan, started NSPI earlier this year with his friends Mike McLoughlin and Jacob Tipp.

The three 21-year-olds, who grew up together in Las Vegas, are more phantom finders than ghostbusters. They can’t rid dwellings of any ghastly apparitions, but they’ll use their electronic gizmos to confirm their presence.

Armed with a digital camera and infrared video equipment, a digital recorder, an electromagnetic field detector and a thermal scanner, the trio plumbs dark places for such spectral signs as unexplained orbs of light and electronic voice phenomena, known in the ghost trade as EVPs.

EVPs are voices that can’t be picked up by the human ear but show up after an audio recording is analyzed, said O’Callaghan, a political science and economics major at the University of Nevada, Reno.

“If we see an orb or something in a photograph or a video, we’ll look at it to determine if it could just be dust,” he said. “With EVPs, the theory is that ghosts are able to manipulate certain wavelengths of radio waves that we cannot hear.”

The NSPI crew spends hours playing what they have recorded through a sound analysis program to filter out ambient noises and amplify any area where they hear something unusual, O’Callaghan said.

During a recent trip to Buckland’s Station, an old stagecoach way station south of Silver Springs, the three men recorded the voice of a woman saying what sounded like, ‘Why are you here?’

“When you hear a woman’s voice—and there was no woman with us—that’s when you know you’ve got something,” said McLoughlin, a UNR student majoring in criminal justice.

O’Callaghan and his friends have detected signs of specters at Fort Churchill and in Robb Canyon west of Reno.

They also debunked a rumor that orange lights in the Virginia City Cemetery were signs of a paranormal presence after they determined they were reflections of the city’s lights off a polished gravestone.

They soon plan to check out the Goldfield Hotel, a site know for its ghostly guests.

And they welcome any new members who want to join the NSPI, which is an official member of Ghost Adventures, the reality show dealing with the unreal that is broadcast on the Travel Channel.

O’Callaghan said he believes ghostly spirits exist, but McLoughlin and Tipp are somewhat more skeptical.

“I can’t say I see ghosts, but when you do hear an EVP, I know it’s definitely something that wasn’t around us,” said Tipp, a biology major at Truckee Meadows Community College. “So I’m not convinced, but I’m getting there.”

McLoughlin said he has seen some eerie-looking things caught on camera and video.

“But I’m not going to call them ghosts,” he said. “When I see a full apparition, that’s when I’ll be convinced.”

Still, the thrill of the hunt keeps Tipp and McLoughlin interested.

With the approach of All Hallow’s Eve, one might expect the NSPI crew to be out in force on Halloween, but the three men say that’s one of the worst nights to look for phantoms.

“Halloween is a bad night for ghost hunting,” O’Callaghan said. “There are too many people out and too much noise.”

Source: http://www.ghostlycast.com/wp-admin/post-new.php

Northwest Paranormal Investigations may have the answer to unexplained noises or eerie bumps in the night.

Members of the Portland-based group will be presenting ghost hunting programs at 7 p.m. today at the Hermiston Public Library, 235 E. Gladys Ave.; Thursday at the Pendleton Public Library, 502 S.W. Dorion St.; and Friday at the Boardman Public Library, 200 S. Main St.

The free programs, part of the regional “sense of place” series sponsored by the Libraries of Eastern Oregon, are for all ages. Investigators will share their paranormal experiences through slide shows, recordings and a question and answer period.

For more information, call 541-567-2882 (Hermiston), 541-966-0380 (Pendleton) or 541-481-3365 (Boardman).

Source: http://www.tri-cityherald.com/901/story/265647.html