Hunting in the Dark of Night - Not Me!

Watching paranormal reality shows is one of my life's pleasures, even though Jim likes to say they really have nothing to do with reality.. (He's not that big a skeptic, he just likes to hassle me.) This is not news to anyone who reads this blog, even if just occasionally. So while I was musing over past episodes of Ghost Hunters, The Haunted Collector, and The Dead Files, I began to wonder: why do they do all their investigating in the dark?

Turns out I am not the only one who asked that question. I googled it, in fact, and was surprised at the number of hits that turned up. Skeptics as well as believers both agree that investigating in the dark adds to the "creepiness" factor of paranormal TV shows. No argument there. However, their thoughts take different paths immediately after that. The skeptics say that the darkness makes it easier to fake everything that turns up on camera. The believers have a whole list of reasons why they hunt -and film- in the dark, i.e., at night. 

That list includes: Less people around, therefore less interference both in general and in terms of energy; less electricity being used, therefore less interference in terms of electromagnetic fields; lots of ghost hunters have day jobs and hunting is a hobby, so there's really no choice with that; businesses being investigated can't close their doors to the public so investigations must take place after business hours; ghost hunters who have the high-tech instruments read a spectrum of light anyway, and some things are better seen on infrared; some say that since people are NOT nocturnal, their senses are on higher alert at night and in the dark, so they become more sensitive to even mild disturbances that might be ignored during the day.  I think that about covers it.

My friend Sylvia Shults is a ghost hunter/paranormal investigator, with a specialty in the Peoria State Mental Hospital. (She has written a book about it called Fractured Spirits and was even on Ghost Hunters!) All of her investigations have been at night (she has three jobs; this is a hobby.) She has also invited me along but since this is a volunteer as opposed to a high-paying endeavor (read: "I don't know if you could pay me enough to go there") I don't think I'll be going with her any time soon. She is currently working with a group that investigates all manner of hauntings, but I'd have to interview her and get back to you for more details on that.

The point is, her group also investigates almost exclusively at night. For them, the reasons seem to be the day job thing, and also the heightened sensitivity thing. I will take her word for it.

If hauntings exist, people say, then shouldn't they also be happening during the day? And the short answer is, of course they should. I know lots of stuff happened at my old house during the day, although even those spirits liked night hours. I could -and did- time the most disturbed hours in that house and they were between 10:30 pm and 1:30 am, with many and varied cameo appearances at other times. But I could count on things happening between the above-stated hours. Count on it. Despite the spirit behavior in my house, hauntings are not relegated to overnight hours. They can and do happen at any hour of the day, and people who look into these things will agree with that.

Still, the best hours for investigating the spirit world, even if just for how it looks on camera, seem to be at night. Night is the time of sleep, at one time referred to as "little death," and night is the world claimed by all the scary things, from ghosts, vampires, and werewolves to evil people doing evil things without the sun to reveal them. Night is the time I do not work on my books. Just because.

Some ghost-story writer, huh? I don't write at night. I don't read scary stories at night. And I don't watch my reality TV shows at night, either. The dark may put people on high alert and lead to heightened sensitivity, but in my case, it also leads to a heightened imagination. So I let the paranormal investigators have their day jobs and go hunting at night. I have my day job -and then I turn to the safety of mundane things and try to get a good night's sleep...

PS. Here's a pic of my favorite hunters:

What Has 1000 Heads, 2000 Legs, and Sees Ghosts?

Okay, maybe the title is an exaggeration. Or maybe it's below the mark. I have no idea how many people attended last week's 2014 Paranormal and Psychic Expo in Moline, Illinois, but I suspect the number could reach the high hundreds, at least. And while maybe not everyone who attended sees ghosts, I'll bet an awful lot of them do.

Sylvia Shults, fellow supernatural writer and paranormal investigator, invited me to share a table with her at the Expo, thus giving me a chance to sell some of my own books and read a few palms. (I will always give someone who buys one of my books a free palm-reading, so if you ever meet me on the street and you've bought one of mine online, tell me I owe you one and I'll happily oblige.) I have never been to anything like this. Normally I attend author fests and litererary book signings, so this was a first for me. And I kinda hope it won't be my last. It was terrific.

The table to my immediate right was taken by a mother-daughter team who run a company that hand-sews, knits, and crochets stunning clothes. Their ability to take beautiful fabrics and yarns and turn them into wear-ables was amazing. I wound up buying skirts, the mother half of the duo knocked some off the price to get one of my books, and then I read her palm.

Across from me was a woman who had two tables' worth of jewelry. She was just down the row from the incense/herb people, and the energy worker who works on people's scalps. Scattered throughout the gathering were various tarot card readers, palm readers, psychics, and mediums. There were speakers scheduled throughout the event -Sylvia was speaking about the Peoria State Hospital, a mental institution that was opened in 1902 and shut down in 1973, and is haunted. Extremely haunted. Sylvia has been involved in numerous investigations into the defunct facility, and wrote a book about it called Fractured Spirits. It's a great read, by the way, if you want to freak yourself out some night.

Jim came along with me and did nice things like running out to pick up lunch (the event ran from 10 AM until 6 PM), holding down the table when Sylvia and I both needed to be absent at the same time, making change for customers, and generally being a friendly face. He absconded at one point to have his aura photographed and interpreted, but hey, he earned that!

But the highlight of all of this was the ghost stories. Since Sylvia and I are in the business of selling ghost stories, the people who stopped by were quite happy to swap stories with us. I was in pig heaven, listening to tales about orbs, family members who won't go away, and other spirited manifestations. Unfortunately, I didn't get to hear the tales from a woman who grew up in Mississippi and knew a southern tubful of them, but I can catch up with that on Sylvia's podcast.

We ended the evening having dinner with Sylvia and two of her friends, and hearing still more ghost stories. Wow, I couldn't have asked for a better day. The moral of today's story is, if you get a chance to go to one of these things? Take it! I know I will.