June 18th, 2009 by CVPI

Source: http://blogs.pressdemocrat.com/

“The Othersiders” (Wednesday 8 p.m.) is pretty much a direct ripoff of “Ghost Hunters” from Sci-Fi Channel, only with teenagers. A team of kids goes to spooky places to try to either prove or debunk that they’re haunted. It’s so scene-for-scene similar to “Ghost Hunters” that it feels like a spoof. Lots of night-vision cameras and ooooooh-this-is-supposed-to-be-scary suspense, but nothing that hasn’t been seen before.

Popularity: 25% [?]

June 12th, 2009 by CVPI

Source: http://www.mydailysentinel.com/

Some people take up fishing as a hobby, some play Xbox 360, but for three former Meigs High School students, their hobby is ghost hunting.

Dustin Lyons of Syracuse, Brenden Black and Raven Johnson both of New Haven, W.Va., have taken their fascination with paranormal phenomena and turned it into a full-time hobby of documenting (or debunking) hauntings. Armed with a digital camera, flashlights and a willingness to walk in a cemetery at night, the three have had some strange encounters with “the unexplained” in Meigs County.

After having spent time in cemeteries across Meigs County, from Pageville to Rutland to Middleport to Pomeroy, the three have arrived at the conclusion that Pomeroy’s Beech Grove Cemetery has the most paranormal activity. Oddly enough, the three say one of the older parts of the cemetery (directly to the right) from the entrance is one of the “quietest” in terms of activity.

While documenting paranormal phenomena at Beech Grove Cemetery, the three have come up with photographs showing odd mists floating above graves, one of which seems to form a face, another forms what appears to be a dove. There are several other photographs capturing white orbs at the cemetery after dark. White orbs are believed by many ghost hunters to be spirits or lingering energy from deceased entities. Orbs can appear in many different colors with white being the most common. The three have also seen red orbs at Beech Grove Cemetery which are believed by some ghost hunters to be angry and/or demonic.

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Popularity: 15% [?]

June 11th, 2009 by CVPI

Source: http://blogs.townonline.com/

There might be something strange in our neighborhood — but we’ll have to wait until September to find out for sure.

Around 4 p.m. last Tuesday, Rhode Island Roto-Rooter plumbers turned reality stars Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, known for their popular Sci-Fi Channel Ghost Hunters television show, pulled their large black SUVS alongside the USS Salem in Quincy to investigate reports of paranormal activity aboard the ship.

Tom Ventosi of Quincy-based Mass Paranormal has been conducting investigations aboard the ship for over a year, and was on hand during the four-day filming to answer any questions the TV team had about the ship.

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Popularity: 27% [?]

June 11th, 2009 by CVPI

“The paranormal world is about to be turned upside down. Scifi’s Ghost Hunters will be challenged by three sisters who will set out on a cross country tour investigating America’s most haunted places. The sister’s begin the trip in their home town of Ann Arbor Michigan. After their first haunted investigation and once they have had their nails done, the trio set out on an insane pseudo reality adventure everyone is going to want to watch. This series is not just another ghost hunting reality show, you will have to see it to believe it! Ah yeah we do have a twist

G.A.G.

(Ghost Adventure Girls)

Hot Girls for Cold Spots

Popularity: 22% [?]

June 5th, 2009 by CVPI

Source: http://www.nvdaily.com/

They arrived at the restaurant at dusk, carefully unloading equipment from half a dozen black satchels.

Night-vision and infrared video cameras came out. A beat-up laptop was switched on. Voice recorders and electromagnetic field readers got batteries.

“I don’t want to work here anymore if anything else happens,” said Brittany Whetstone, 18, a new hostess, as part of the crew prepared to go into the basement. “I’m not going down there.”

She thought for a minute.

“I’m allowed out if I want to leave, right?”

John Allen, 38, leader of the Virginia Investigators of Paranormal Studies, looked up from the laptop. The monitor’s light masked his glasses, hiding his eyes.

“You’ll be all right,” he said.

Allen and five of his colleagues were at the Cork Street Tavern in Winchester for the second time to investigate otherworldly activity at the fabled city pub. Allen was eager to get started.

The first time the group provoked spirits here, he said, he was physically grabbed on the shoulder by an apparition. And of all the places he’s brought his team to, “nothing holds a candle to Cork Street.”

There’s no shortage of legends explaining how lost souls got trapped during the building’s hardscrabble past. Many tales trip over the plots of others or involve the same characters.

The tavern, at 8 W. Cork St., was built in the 1830s and took fire during the Civil War. Equally agreed upon is that it once was a brothel, or at least a speakeasy. Waitresses, cooks and barflies have heard rumors that bodies are buried in the basement.

Some of the stories “almost were a part of employee training,” said Joel Smith, a longtime co-owner who left the restaurant in 2008. Extinguished candles would frequently relight. An enormous crash in a vacant kitchen would reveal nothing out of place. Lights inexplicably would turn on. Others, too, have said they’ve been touched.

They say only the “old side” of the restaurant, which opened in 1932, is haunted. An adjoining building built about 1960 became part of the eatery in 1995.

Sightings come and go.

“If something happened to me, it might make me not so skeptical,” said Tara Rutherford, 23, a waitress. “I feel like I haven’t personally seen something, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

Allen, of Millwood, is just the most recent ghost hunter to poke around. Cork Street allowed him and his team to explore the restaurant after he approached them. A tool and die maker by trade, he is friendly and quick with words.

His method is simple: Cut off the lights. Ask the spirits questions, and expect answers. But most importantly, record everything. Most EVPs — electronic voice phenomena — only can be seen or heard on the recordings, he said.

“You get a lot of good responses to questions. You do get answers,” he said. “Everybody says, ‘No, I don’t believe any of that.’ But you get them one on one, everybody’s got a story to tell.”

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Popularity: 8% [?]

May 26th, 2009 by CVPI

Source: http://www.slipperybrick.com/

Sweden-based development studio A Different Game has apparently been watching too many Ghost Hunters episodes. I thought everyone knew that show was fake by now. They pull the same scams every week. Anyway, looks like the company is preparing Ghostwire, which is a game that uses your Nintendo DSi to hunt down spirits in real life.

No, I’m serious. You too can be a ghostbuster using the Nintendo DSi’s camera, microphone, and touch-screen. The idea is that players will locate ghosts in real-world places and figure out what those ghosts need to be at peace.

Which is most likely just you leaving them alone. We don’t have a price or release date yet. Probably comes with a preloaded EVP that sounds a lot like, “You are a sucker”.

Popularity: 22% [?]

March 25th, 2009 by CVPI

Source: http://www.marshallnews.com/
Listen: paranormal-task-force-educates-on-ghost-hunting-history

The Paranormal Task Force’s Saline County Career Center-sponsored class on ghost hunting Saturday night, March 21, started with some “mood music” before presenters began to give attendees information on classifications of hauntings and the possibilities within each.

A haunting, explained Investigator Jeremy King, is a “repeated weirdness in one location.” Such occurrences might include a strange sight, sound, smell or an emotional or physical feeling. Visual stimuli are the least common and auditory the most, he said.

They are not always associated with ghosts, he said, and each haunting is a unique instance from any other, “like snowflakes.”

King, who said he had grown up in a haunted house, gave the audience a brief history of humanity’s belief in the supernatural. It began, he said, with animism, the theory that souls dwell not only within humans and animals, but also plants, rocks, water and anything else from nature. Then came the unavoidable question, “What happens to these souls once their home becomes destroyed?” Gods offered afterlives for their flocks, but King said Pliny the Younger was the first, around 200 A.D., to write a story documenting what people had reported for millennia — a spirit trapped on Earth.

King asked the audience what they believe causes hauntings. They answered, “Energy,” and “A suspended soul.” To their list, he added residual energy, a disembodied spirit, an inter-dimensional being or even an alien life form, a theory that King said he does not disbelieve.

Whatever their cause, most reported hauntings can be grouped into five categories, King said, listing “traditional” hauntings, residual hauntings, poltergeists, demonic hauntings and portal hauntings.

Traditional hauntings are the least commonly reported, he said, and the most commonly shown on television or in Hollywood movies. “Intelligent” ghosts that interact with humans are quite rare, King told the audience.

Most common are the residual hauntings, what King called “an imprint of energy … that just keeps recurring.” He related the theory that such hauntings are caused by energy being stored by a location and “played” later.

King explained that poltergeists are caused by emotional people who probably do not realize what they are doing.

Demonic possession is quite rare, King said, though he added that PTF President Greg Myers had at least one experience dealing with a demonic force, and even experienced an attack while filming for the upcoming documentary “The Haunted Boy.” Using thermal imaging cameras, said King, the crew captured on tape a spot of heat on Myers’ neck that increased to over 350 degrees Fahrenheit, the hottest level the cameras would measure.

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Popularity: 11% [?]

March 2nd, 2009 by CVPI

Source: http://www.tribune-democrat.com/

Listen: paranormal-investigators-plan-portage-seminar

Rege Huschak wasn’t afraid of rousing the goblins when he told the ghost hunters they could investigate the Portage Station Museum.

Heck, he figures, taxes and the recession are a lot scarier.

“Of all the other things that are happening, I’m not worried about someone who passed through the station

70 years ago,’’ he said Friday.

Huschak is president of the Portage Area Historical Society, which operates the museum – an old train station.

Huschak told the Southwestern Pennsylvania League of Apparition Technologists it may address the public

March 15 at the museum, speaking of its findings and taking questions.

One of those who will speak will be Walter Hutsky, 26, of Windber, an IT worker for Zamias Inc. and hobbyist ghost tracker. He has gone on more than 25 spectral investigations and hasn’t come upon any firm evidence of paranormal events thus far.

Yes, the ghost guy is a skeptic.

“I’m still open to the possibility. I like being involved in the scientific aspect of it and local history,’’ Hutsky said.

SPLAT is booked solid on requests to do its free investigations.

Hutsky said all kinds of callers are dialing them up.

“Basically, there’s unexplained phenomena that happened at their house or to themselves,’’ he said. “They have to prove to others that they’re not crazy.’’

Even after subtracting out the large number of flakes who call, Hutsky said, plenty of promising situations remain.

That’s when SPLAT investigators march in with their audio and video recording equipment, temperature sensors and infrared gear.

Investigators sometimes find that’s what’s behind so-called paranormal events are such things as the wind, an electrical short or radio wave interference. Most often, the unexplained occurrences remain so.

“We haven’t been able to catch them using multiple electronic devices,’’ Hutsky said.

One of the spectral sightings that has gained some credence is the spirit of a young child wandering what is known as Dane Castle in Strongstown, Indiana County. That report, as the others, has not produced proof.

Huschak said the team came up empty at the museum despite old tales of footsteps and toilets flushing. Another person saw shadowy movement on the stairwell.

“You always hear stories,” he said. “It’s just like anything else. It’s a matter of people wanting to know.’’

Though spook tales don’t creep Huschak out, SPLAT itself gave him the heebie-jeebies.

“I once called them ghostbusters and I regretted it,” Huschak said.

“They don’t like that.’’

Popularity: 9% [?]

February 27th, 2009 by CVPI

Source: http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/
Listen: bethlehems-sun-inn-is-haunted-lehigh-valley-paranormal-group-says

Sun Inn Preservation Association founder Hughetta Bender put her heart and soul into saving the Main Street historic site.

And some believe her soul still remains in the former 1758 hotel.

On a January visit to the inn, a Lehigh Valley-based paranormal investigation group snapped a photo of what appears to be a woman in a second floor window. The figure looks to have gray hair, glasses and be wearing a white apron.

“I said, ‘Oh, my God, that’s Hughetta,’” said Bucky Szulborski, a Sun Inn Preservation Association board member who joined the paranormal group on its investigation. “She wore a white apron.”

“For that to appear at the Sun Inn — it’s remarkable,” he said.

Bender’s likeness was far from the only paranormal observation Lehigh Valley Research and Investigation in Paranormal Activity made on two visits to the inn — Jan. 24 and Saturday.

The group caught on tape at least 15 unknown voices and what they say sounds like a half-hour long ghosts’ party in the dining room.

The group ranks the Sun Inn as among the most — if not the most — haunted place they’ve investigated.

“This place is as active as it gets,” said member Jim Fitzgerald, a Whitehall Township resident.

The group went room-by-room on both nights, asking if there were any spirits in the inn. They asked about Elizabeth Moore, a nurse who died in 1897 at the inn.

When they asked if Elizabeth was there, someone responded with the word, “Moore,” said member Steve Werner, of Bethlehem.

The response was only heard through audiotape, as were all the other unknown voices. Group members believe ghosts affect magnetic forces, so they can often only be heard on tape but not in person.

The group played many of the recordings for the media Thursday, including two instances of a strained voice saying “We’re watching you.”

On another recording, Werner and Fitzgerald are up in the attic, asking if any slaves were kept there during the inn’s early days. “See my back,” someone can be heard saying in response.

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Popularity: 10% [?]

February 26th, 2009 by CVPI

Source: http://www.mpnnow.com/

Listen: ghost-hunters-claim-chilling-finds-at-palmyra-museum

Phantom footsteps, whispers, a swaying chandelier and a piano that played on its own exposed the presence of ghostly spirits residing in two local museums on Market Street. Or so say members of a few ghost-hunting teams that recently camped out with some high-tech equipment.

The spook sleuths from Scientific Paranormal Investigations and Finger Lakes Area Spirit Hunters on Thursday, Feb. 19, shared their findings with a crowd of about 55.

They played recordings they said captured whispered ghostly responses to questions and faint piano playing. They shared bone-chilling stories of apparitions and chills and breezes that seemed to come from nowhere.

“A feeling of dread engulfed me,” said Rob Henning, co-founder and case manager for Scientific Paranormal Investigations of Palmyra, as he described an encounter he said he had with a young girl in the piano room in the general store. “Immediately, we were blasted with cold, dry air.”

The general store and attached living quarters, at 140 Market St., is preserved store that thrived on Erie Canal commerce and a bustling downtown back from the early 1800s to the 1940s. Some believe its visitors are not just docents and tourists but also some long-dead members of the Phelps family, including spiritualist and musician Sibyl Phelps, who lived above the store and became something of a shut-in in the years before her death in 1976.

The Historical Museum just up Market Street, meanwhile, is on the site of a 1964 blaze that claimed seven people, six of whom were children. The museum itself is an old hotel that was moved from William Street in the 1970s during urban renewal work.

Bonnie Hays, director of Historic Palmyra Inc., was contacted about a year ago by members of the Victor-based Finger Lakes Area Spirit Hunters. “They said, ‘we’ve always wanted to come to your buildings, would you mind if we came?’” she said. “Of course, I said, ‘We’d love it.’”

And so, for the past several months, the Spirit Hunters and Scientific Paranormal Investigations have surveyed the museums with video, camera, audio, high-tech night vision and thermal-vision equipment.

The investigators aren’t the only ones who’ve experienced strange happenings in the museums.

“I swear a black cat came in the front door of the Phelps Store, walked down through the store and up the stairs,” said Ralph Kommer. “Bonnie (Hays) and I looked for it, but never found anything. She left food. It was never touched.”

Popularity: 6% [?]