In September I posted about meeting with Jo MacGugan, a paranormal investigator, as part of the research for my upcoming novel, The Haunting of Blackberry Hill. I want to have my characters bring in a team of paranormal investigators to help them figure out what is going on in their house. But I didn't know what exactly paranormal investigators do. During our conversation, Jo told me about an investigation that she would soon be doing in Worcester and suggested I attend.
The investigation was held at Salisbury House, the headquarters for Preservation Worcester, an organization that preserves the historic sites and structures of the city of Worcester, Massachusetts. It was built in the mid-1830s and is supposedly haunted. Jo and her colleague, Shannon, led the investigation. My friend, Carol, came with me and we, along with 14 other attendees accompanied them in their investigation of the ballroom, basement, an upstairs bedroom, and the attic.
We got to see several pieces of paranormal investigation equipment in action. There were electronic voice phenomena recorders, electromagnetic field detectors, a few different response devices including my favorite, the Epoch Box which actually allowed spirits to answer us with a yes or no, infrared cameras, and, Jo's favorite, a spirit box.
We didn't actually see any ghosts (for which I am grateful) but we did hear a few voices when the recorders were played back that we definitely did not hear while the device was recording. The Epoch Box got a bit of a workout in the basement. And while up in the attic, a music box started playing by itself.
The spirit box came into use in the attic. My friend, Carol, was the first to try it. I gave it a go next. The spirit box is a small handheld device, not much bigger than a cell phone. The person listening to it wears a blindfold and noise-canceling headphones that are plugged into the spirit box. The rest of us asked questions of the spirit. The person with the spirit box can't hear any of the questions because of the noise-canceling headphones. All they can hear is what's coming from the spirit box which sounds just like someone flipping radio stations at high speed with a lot of static in between. If the spirit answers, it will come through in the static at which point, the person with the box is to say out loud whatever they hear.
When it was my turn, I thought I heard a voice in the static three different times, but I couldn't make out what was being said. It was definitely the same voice each time, though.
I never thought I would take part in something like this. Though I love ghost stories and I'm fascinated by tales of hauntings, I'm a big chicken when it comes to putting myself in the way of it. Still, I'm very glad I did it. Having had that experience will allow me to write the scenes with the paranormal investigators with better accuracy and much more realistically. Thanks, Jo and Shannon!
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