Ghost Hunting Equipment - by Pat Jones

Do I really need all this fancy equipment to hunt Ghosts?  Well... yes.  Sort of.

For most of us, ghost hunting is merely a hobby. Only those fortunate few, like those crazy plumbers on Sci-Fi, can actually make a living at it. Just kidding of course. We love Jason, Grant, and the entire TAPS team. In fact, they themselves have inspired a great many people, including myself, to further pursue hunting ghosties on a more serious level. A lot of us have watched the TAPS team and thought, “I want to do that too!” In fact, if you mentioned you were a ghost hunter several years ago (pre-“Ghost Hunters” on the Sci-Fi channel) a lot of people looked at you like you were insane. Mention it now, and you are one of those cool ghost hunters just like they saw on TV! Continue the conversation and give the listener about three seconds to soak in the fact that they are talking to a person who is crazy enough -- or should I say enthusiastic enough -- to spend an entire evening in a dark, cold location looking for something that is scientifically unproven, and the following question will most certainly arise: Did you ever see anything? Wow, really? Cool... show me! And that is where it gets interesting.

The way I see it, as a ghost hunter, we have two choices:

1: JUST INVESTIGATE! (with a friend of course)
You can visit potentially haunted or known haunted locations with little more than a notepad, a batch of enthusiasm, and a friend who provides you clean underwear and who "has your back" when it gets scary. If the location you chose truly has some paranormal activity going on, you might see or hear all kinds of interesting and unexplained things. When you make it home, you will hopefully have at least a few personal experiences to relay to all of your friends, family, and coworkers. For some ghost hunters, this is enough, and understandably so. Having a good first hand personal experience with anything paranormal leaves a lasting impression and is something that is not soon forgotten. Telling and re-telling the story of what you experienced can be just as fun as the actual hunt itself. Most people get very excited when they hear about the paranormal, especially when it's relayed first hand. The only problem with this scenario is when that inevitable question is asked: "Can you show ME?" Obviously when you have nothing to show anyone, that is, nothing to back up your story, it is somewhat of a letdown. In fact, it may even remove a bit of your credibility and people start to look at you in a different light. Perhaps they may even be wondering to themselves if everything you're saying is 100% true.

We've all experienced that "yeah, whatever" look or attitude from a non-believer. It is very frustrating and almost impossible to take what's in your head -- what you know you experienced -- and relay it to someone else and have them understand, much less be emotionally affected by it the same way it affected you. If you're fine with the fact that you experienced it alone, and if you don't care if anyone else believes you, then you can probably save yourself a lot of money and hunt ghosts with the bare minimum and just have fun! For the rest of us, we must move to option 2, and it certainly does have its benefits!

2:  SPEND A SMALL FORTUNE ON EQUIPMENT
Sad but true, a lot more of us fit into this category. Some of us feel that what we've experienced is simply too incredible to not share with anyone who will listen. You may get an awful lot of people to listen to you once, or perhaps twice, but without physical evidence to back you up, a third story might fall on deaf ears. The use of infrared cameras, audio recorders, EMF meters, and other devices will boost your chances of being a credible paranormal storyteller. If you're out to prove to your friends, family, or even to yourself that ghosts really do exist, then you will need some evidence, and that evidence can only be captured with a little know-how and some good quality ghost hunting equipment. The major downside is, of course, that this equipment is expensive and most often cannot be bought locally. 

Equipment such as cameras and audio recorders are certainly useful for capturing evidence. That is why we purchase equipment, right?  But there is another great reason to use such equipment, perhaps an even more important one...disproving evidence. Capturing an image or apparition on tape is certainly a very exciting thing, and it is what we ghost hunters live for. But what exactly is it that you've captured?  Sure, you could just blindly believe it's a ghost and spread the word to everyone who will listen, but that's not the way a good self-respecting ghost hunter goes about it.  No one, at least no one I know, wants to parade around claiming they've got evidence of something paranormal when in fact they have a video of a reflection or a piece of dust. Only when all "worldly causes" have been completely ruled out can you pin the paranormal label on a piece of evidence. This is extremely difficult but not always impossible. How do you do this? Use your equipment! Your equipment has tons of information contained within. Don't be blind to how much information is really there! Don't assume that because a ghost didn't saunter in front of your video camera that there is nothing else useful on the recording.  I'll give you an example:

During one of our investigations we heard voices. Days later, when we later played back the audio recordings, we could hear the voices on the tape. We were in a very large house with only two other people. Those two people were located at our base station which was way on the other side of the house. Not only was this a large house, but there were three closed doors between us and them. Furthermore, they have investigated with us before and I know that they use a low tone of voice when speaking to each other. All this seemed to add up to possible EVP's.  BUT WAIT! All of our equipment is synchronized and time coded, so when we listened to the voices on the audio recorders, we noted the exact time that the voices occurred. We then went back to our video footage and pulled up the video of that exact moment from each of our six DVR cameras. What we found was that the three doors that we insisted were closed the entire evening were all open. Further review of the evidence showed a very tired paranormal team accidentally leaving three doors open for that brief time. This, of course, allowed a direct path for the sound of two people chatting on one side of the house to freely travel to the other. Had we not had this video footage to go back to, we probably would have incorrectly chalked this up as an EVP. 

Using video and audio equipment during your investigations can surely increase your chances of catching paranormal activity. But perhaps even better, it can help you to disprove supposed paranormal evidence. The more equipment you have in the house sucking up information, the better. The boatload of collected data you will have at the end of the night will later help you determine "worldly causes" for an awful lot of evidence that would normally -- and falsely -- wind up on a paranormal web site. After eliminating these normal happenings, you will be left with the things that are truly unexplainable, and those are the things that are worth sharing!  

I know it can be downright heartbreaking to throw out a cool photo or a neat sounding audio recording. But it is the right thing to do if you even suspect a worldly cause. Equipment can give you great evidence to share but can also eliminate nearly everything you thought you had at the same time.  It can be frustrating, but at least you will have proof. Proof of a flashlight reflection or dust being kicked up by an investigator walking by 30 seconds before is still proof. Were we disappointed that we didn't capture a real EVP that night? Of course we were, but the evidence really saved us a lot of mental anguish. Being a little disappointed now sure beats being devastated later when you realize that you believed in something that didn’t happen the way you perceived it.