After Halloween, most people set aside thoughts of spirits and ghosts until it’s time to buy next year’s costume. But for some Virginians, focusing on the paranormal is a way of life.

Rhonda Steele and her friends are one such group. Calling themselves the Supernatural Investigators of Virginia, they spend their Saturdays inspecting private homes (by request) and public property rumored to be haunted (like the Turner Ashby Monument in Harrisonburg), in search of hard evidence of ghosts and spirits. Their services are free, and their approach to the paranormal is more scientific than spooky.

“We combine science, technology and theory - and want to back it up with hard evidence,” said Gary Puffenbarger, one of the group’s six core members.

The six have been together for about 18 months, but all had an interest in the paranormal before they came together, Steele said. Puffenbarger, for example, can trace his interest back to childhood.

“I’ve always loved science … but I didn’t think science or religion had all the answers,” he said. “It’s a search for truth, of what is or what isn’t.”

For Ladona Gorham, regional director of northwestern Virginia for the Richmond-based Center for Paranormal Research and Investigation, the fascination also began early in life.

“I was a very fearful child. I had night terrors growing up,” she said. “Ironically, for some reason, I was drawn to scary stuff. I loved horror movies and books and I think what I was doing was searching for answers - is there something to be scared of?”

Gorham continues that search today. A member of CPRI for three years, her experiences are similar to those of the SIOV members, but her group is vastly different. CPRI is about 10 years old, with a constantly rotating investigative staff. They screen potential members with an application process that includes a background check, have been featured on popular paranormal investigation programs including the Sci-Fi Channel’s “Ghost Hunters” and are fairly well known within the paranormal community.

Though she’s experienced things on investigations that she can’t explain, Gorham said her three years with the center have left her, if anything, more skeptical than before.

“I will tell you that when I started doing this three years ago, I was more of a believer than I am now,” she said. “I’ve always been skeptical but I really thought that after doing this for a few years, I would be able to come right out and say, ‘Yes. There are ghosts.’ I can’t say that and I’m not sure I’m ever going to be able to say that.”

The Supernatural Investigators of Virginia are more certain.

“I definitely believe,” said Lana Fuller.

“I grew up in a haunted house,” said Tracey Burnett.

Though their beliefs may differ, the investigation process for the two groups is quite similar. When a homeowner calls, both groups ask a series of questions to pinpoint the nature of the paranormal activity in the house.

“We ask, ‘Are you hearing voices? Are you seeing objects move? What is it that you want us to verify?’ ” said SIOV member Dan Burnett.

The investigators are careful to walk a fine line between getting enough, but not too much, information. For example, said Dan Burnett, if a man died in the room where the activity is occurring, they’d rather not know his name. That way, if they hear a garbled voice on a recording later, they won’t be biased enough to immediately assume it’s the same one.

From there, the methods of the two groups differ. Gorham and CPRI are a bit more cautious, setting up a “preliminary on-site investigation” to take initial readings to determine if the described activity warrants a more in-depth investigation. If it does, they’ll conduct a “full-scale on-site investigation,” with a larger team and a longer time frame (usually overnight).

For SIOV, activity is activity. After getting their questions answered, the investigators set up shop.

In addition to the activity the homeowner has described - noises or moving objects, for example - both groups look for other evidence of ghostly presences, including disruptions in electromagnetic and radiation fields, temperature drops and any voices they can pick up on digital recordings.

To do this, groups employ a variety of scientific devices. One of the most important is the digital recorder, used to capture voices (called Electronic Voice Phenomena) that can’t be heard by the human ear. With recorders on, the investigators speak directly to the spirits, hoping for a response.

“The most powerful EVP is one that responds to a question,” Puffenbarger explained.

Both groups have had luck with this tactic. Gorham’s experience was at Sailor’s Creek, a battlefield outside of Richmond, inside an abandoned building near a cemetery.

“One of our investigators … asked, ‘Are those your children in the graveyard?’ ” she said. “And you hear a … deep male voice say ‘Yes.’ And there’s no doubt that there is a voice saying yes.”

The Supernatural Investigators’ experience was at the former West Virginia State Penitentiary. Group members Steele and Fuller were exploring a cell that had housed Red, one of the prison’s worst inmates. They asked a number of questions, trying to draw him out. The duo didn’t think they were successful, but the recorders captured a distinct male voice saying, “I’m still alive.”

Puffenbarger said there’s no real explanation for why recorders would be able to pick up what the human ear can’t detect.

“Part of it is the uniqueness of digital or magnetic tape … they’re capable of picking up sounds above or below the range of human hearing,” he said. “That’s the best theory we have as ghost hunters right now. Approaching it from a scientific point of view, we really don’t know for sure.”

EVP can also accompany more direct contact. At an investigation of a house in Staunton, the women with Supernatural Investigators felt their hair being pulled when no one was near them.

“We were all touched. It was physical,” said Fuller.

After feeling the tug, one of the women asked, “Do you like to pull hair?” When the recordings were played back later, the group heard an unfamiliar male voice reply, “[Heck] yeah!”

In addition to digital recorders, ghost-hunting groups typically use equipment like electromagnetic field detectors, Geiger counters and infrared thermometers - none of which were originally designed with ghost hunting in mind.

A change in any of the fields they monitor could indicate a spirit, Puffenbarger said.

“When a ghost is present or manifests, it absorbs energy from that spot,” he explained. His group has encountered all types of disruptions; for example, during the Staunton investigation, one of the group members felt a cold spot and another snapped a picture that showed a strange mist in the same place. “We tried to reproduce that at least 40 times [in pictures], and couldn’t.”

Trying to reproduce and explain what they find is a key part of what paranormal investigators do. If an eerie event, like the mist, could be easily explained, it wouldn’t indicate anything paranormal, Puffenbarger explained.

“When we find something, we try to debunk it,” Puffenbarger said.

Gorham said the scientific aspect of the paranormal investigation process is perhaps the most important, separating groups like hers from less reputable copycats.

“My greatest fear is that I think there are a lot of people that misunderstand what we do,” she said. “They think we’re crazy, they think we’re dabbling in the dark arts, and it couldn’t be further from the truth. We’re just looking for answers … we’re following the scientific method.”

Following the scientific method means that the groups base their investigations not on goosebumps or chills, but on observable, measurable evidence.

“Evidence is unusual meter reads that we can’t explain as being environmental or manmade,” Puffenbarger said. “We’re the master debunkers. When we go in we apply the scientific method, we use a lot of equipment, and we say, ‘when in doubt, throw it out.’ Not every noise is a ghost. Sometimes these things are as simple as an old house creaking as the weather changes. Sixty to 80 percent of quote-unquote haunted places are not haunted.”

Gorham sees similar results on her investigations.

“In 99.9 percent of the cases, we’re able to walk away with either the conclusion that there’s a logical explanation for what’s going on or there’s an issue with the clients themselves,” she said.

But an investigation with no activity doesn’t necessarily mean the property isn’t haunted.

A ghost is “not a circus animal, trained to perform on command,” Puffenbarger said. “It might not come out while we’re there.”

Steele agreed, but took it a bit more personally.

“Or it doesn’t want to play with us,” she said.

To that effect, the ghost hunters unanimously said they’ve never felt threatened by any presence they’ve encountered - nothing spooky or demonic. In fact, they said, the pastime can even be a little dull.

“Sometimes, your best EVP is in an eight-minute period during an eight-hour investigation. It’s a game of patience,” Puffenbarger said. “You have to have a passion for and interest in this, because it does get boring.”

Gorham agreed. “Our unofficial motto is ‘hours of boredom, seconds of panic.’ And those seconds of panic hardly ever happen.”

In fact, a large portion of the SIOV’s time on investigations is spent just sitting in the dark, they said.

“There is no TV, no radio. That’s why you do this with people you like,” Steele said.

Even the investigations that yield a lot of evidence can be uneventful, since some of it - like the EVP recordings - isn’t uncovered until later.

Though the Supernatural Investigators have had success with such recordings, they long for the ultimate paranormal payoff: to have a ghost appear in front of them.

“We hope to see a full apparition,” Dan Burnett said. “We have yet to see that.”

“We really want to see something,” Steele agreed.

For Gorham, the ultimate reward is less tangible.

“To be accepted into our group, you have to pretty much realize that you’re not going to see a ghost,” she said. “I think [ghost hunting] is enough in my blood that I’ll continue it until I find what I’m looking for, and like I said I don’t think I ever will, so I’ll probably be doing it forever.”

Source: http://www.dnronline.com/saturdaymagazine_details.php?AID=32899&sub=Feature

Haunted houses are not foreign territory for the woman billed as “America’s Top Ghost Hunter.”

Lorraine Warren, 81, a light trace medium and clairvoyant from Bridgeport, Conn., has been speaking at colleges for 39 years and will speak tonight in the Baker Center Ballroom.

Warren is known for her appearances on Discovery Channel’s A Haunting and her work with her late husband, Ed Warren, on high-profile cases such as the Amityville Haunting and the Haunting of West Point.

The Post’s Anna Hartenbach spoke with Warren about the paranormal, the Amityville Horror case and Halloween precautions.

The Post: What was the first memory you have of dealing with the paranormal?

Lorraine Warren: Well my husband actually grew up in a home that was haunted and it was in that home, for some reason, nothing was solved. … I believe that his searching was to see if other families experienced what he experienced at a young age, up until the age of 12 when they finally left that house.

Now myself, I had never been in a haunted house in my life, but I attended a private Catholic girls’ school (in Connecticut). I began to notice in our class that I was seeing lights around the heads of people — some of the nuns, the girls in class — and I made the mistake of telling one of the nuns that her lights were brighter than Mother Superior’s. … That was a big mistake. What I was really looking at was the aura around people — that is what I was seeing. … My first experience that was so profound was when I was in a home in Henniker, N.H., called the “Ocean Born Mary House.” In that house, I had an out-of-body experience where I could look down and see my husband sitting there and see the man that he was interviewing and see the couple that was with us but I was way above them. And I could see my own body …

Post: You said when you were about 9 is when you started discovering you had some abilities?

Warren: I didn’t know it was an ability; I thought everybody had it. I didn’t want to be different …

Post: So when you realized that you did have a gift, how did you hone it to make it more usable as a skill?

Warren: I put it in God’s hands. I put it in his hands to be guided in what I should do; of course, it has taken me into haunted houses throughout the world. We researched 27 years in the United Kingdom, we researched and worked with Buddhist monks in the mountains of Japan, and we worked in Australia. We’ve worked all over the world.

Post: So it said that your skills could be described as a clairvoyant and light trance medium with the ability to see, hear and feel things through a sixth sense and read people’s aura, which you’ve already talked about some. Can you explain some of these things like clairvoyant?

Warren: To see, hear and feel beyond the normal five senses.

Post: Can you tell me about some of your more prestigious cases, like the Amityville Horror case?

Warren: Well, I can tell you that the Amityville Horror, the Amityville case I should say, with reality we spent tremendous amounts of time with the family, with the Catholic priest that was involved with the case. We fell victim just as the priest had fallen victim and the family. I very seldom really talk about that. That is a real personification of evil, that home. I don’t really talk about it, but believe me, that was reality.

Post: How did you get involved with it then?

Warren: Well first of all the family, the DeFeo family, was murdered and then the Lutz’s moved in and they fled the house after a matter of days. So the medium got involved and Channel 5 news out of New York City — a man by the name of Marvin Scott — he contacted us. … So that’s how we were brought to it.

Post: Can you tell me about being on A Haunting and Paranormal State? What kinds of things do they have you do on these shows?

Warren: … I discern in these homes what it is we are dealing with and what it is that needs to be done to rectify it, like bringing in the clergy or things of that nature …

Post: What keeps you traveling to colleges?

Warren: … Bringing knowledge to people your age is very, very important. And bringing the true knowledge and not some of the nonsense that some of these other shows and people are doing. … And carrying on my husband’s legacy is extremely important to me.

Post: Do you have any final thoughts you would like to add to anything?

Warren: Well at this time of the year I like to tell people, you know, how to protect yourself. Don’t do foolish things. Don’t play with a Ouija board, don’t go and try to conjure spirits because it’s the Halloween season and don’t go into graveyards for the sake of going into graveyards. Because you are opening doors to an occult world and it can be extremely dangerous and have very sad aftereffects on you.

Source: http://www.thepost.ohiou.edu/Articles/Culture/2008/10/20/25956/