When Sharon Leong conducts field work, she packs a digital camera, a thermometer and an electromagnetic field meter. She isn't a private detective or an electrician. Leong, a legal secretary by day, is an avid ghost hunter by night.
With those gizmos and many others in tow, Leong treks to reputedly haunted homes, battlefields, bars and hotels, gathering what she thinks may be evidence of a world beyond this earthly one.
The pursuit of ghostly evidence has been a popular pastime for centuries. Now, instead of Ouija boards, ghost hunters are increasingly turning to high tech gear to assist in their search.
Such ghost hunters rely upon digital equipment to document potential signs of hauntings. Cameras and voice recorders pick up eerie sights and sounds, while handheld gadgets measure electromagnetic radiation and odd drops in temperature. Jumpsuits like those from the movie Ghostbusters are unnecessary, but pocket-laden cargo pants and fishing jackets are handy for stashing all of the gear.
Hobbyists like Leong find equipment either in pedestrian electronics shops or at custom online emporiums, such as Ghost Mart, which specializes in "discount paranormal research equipment." Although most of the equipment is built for more ordinary purposes, others, like a $30 electromagnetic field (EMF) "ghost meter," are clearly targeted at amateur ghost seekers. Complete kits can be ordered at a wide range of prices, between $250 and $2,000.
"We'll probably seem medieval to people in the future, running around with our cameras, but you've got to start somewhere," Leong said. "Something is causing these instruments to go cuckoo, but we're not sure what or why."
Leong has traveled to famed spooky sites, like the Alcatraz prison, with fellow members of the San Francisco Ghost Society. It is one of hundreds of ad hoc paranormal groups that together comprise many tens of thousands of members in North America. The International Ghost Hunters Society has members in more than 90 countries.
The Internet allows enthusiasts to share footage they've captured instantly and anonymously, finding like-minded souls while escaping public ridicule. Ghost Village is a top hub for this community. It receives 80,000 unique visitors each month, twice that around Halloween.
Web 2.0-era social-networking tools enable ghost hunters to hook up via large Web communities, such as MySpace, and on niche sites including I Am Haunted. Live chatting, blogs and user videos on that site attract 30,000 monthly visitors and several dozen new members each day. Some ghost-club Web sites offer real-time "haunted cams" of notorious locales. YouTube has become a warehouse for tens of thousands of videos claiming to show lonely ghouls and other apparitions.
The craze has even reached the iPod; Apple iTunes lists more than 1,000 paranormal podcasts. Among them is the talk show of the San Francisco Ghost Society, led by group founder Tommy Netzband. He and his associates make free house calls to investigate what they believe to be three types of hauntings: "residual," "intelligent" and "inhuman."
"Ninety percent of these things have a reasonable explanation," Netzband said. "When people call me and say, 'Shadows are chasing me,' I automatically think they're crazy. We're not here putting ideas in people's heads to make them think this is a glamorous job. I've experienced shadow people, residual hauntings, and I've been tricked by ghosts, but it took me years and years."
Netzband finds that most hauntings fall into the "residual" category, understood as impressions of past events that remain ingrained within a place, replaying in the present time like a stuck record. These could be sensory traces of acutely emotional moments in someone's life, such as anguished last breaths, a song, or the scent of perfume. For instance, Netzband leads ghost tours of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood past a sidewalk said to be haunted by the sound of running boots worn by a teenager shot to death in the 1970s...
For the full story and more, clicky here for the source
Full Version: Believe it or not: Ghost hunters go high-tech
Good find "G",
thanks for posting...
Theirs always going to be new gadgets and gizmo's for paranormal research.
Some appear useful..while others seem not much more than ghost hunting toys.
Im sure there is something(s) out there right now
that if used in the proper conditions.. may change the whole outlook of the paranormal.
We just need the right person or organization to find and announce it.
The thread our "Luna" posted on
"Paranormal Related News"
"Proof of Paranormal Intelligence? "This NASA researcher thinks so...
That could be a great help for ghost hunters and paranormal research.
Found this bit at wickepdia about the beginnings of ghost hunting..
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pliny the Younger recorded what has been regarded as the first story of a ghost hunt in 100 AD.[2] The story was already a century old when Pliny told it, and concerns a haunted house in ancient Athens being investigated by a philosopher named Athenodoros Cananites.
The Ghost Club, founded in London in 1862, is believed to be the oldest paranormal research organization in the world. Famous members of the club have included Charles Dickens, Sir William Crookes, Sir William Fletcher Barrett and Harry Price.
Early "ghost hunter" Harry PriceIn the mid 1880's, William James, philosopher and founder of the American Psychological Association and brother of Henry James suggested applying scientific method to paranormal questions such as the existence of ghosts or spirits. He found allies in England such as Alfred Russel Wallace, Cambridge philosopher Henry Sidgwick and his wife, Eleanor, Edmund Gurney, and others to form the core of the Society for Psychical Research to collect evidence concerning apparitions, haunted houses, and similar phenomena. The investigators gathered case studies, attended séances, designed tests of claimants' veracity, and ran what came to be known as the Census of Hallucinations, which counted apparitions of persons who were said to have made spectral appearances on the day they died.[3]
Similar investigation into hauntings was undertaken by Harry Price through London's National Laboratory of Psychical Research during the 1920s, and later in the 1950s and 60s by American independent researchers such as Hans Holzer and Ed and Lorraine Warren. Other paranormal and parapsychological investigators like Loyd Auerbach, Christopher Chacon and William Roll were each independently conducting field and laboratory investigations in the 1970s and 80s, long before reality TV cast a spotlight onto this subject matter.
Ghost hunting among part-time hobbyists began to be popular in the late 1970s with the founding of the Chicago area Ghost Tracker’s Club, which became the Ghost Research Society (GRS) in 1981. The popularity of the Ghostbusters movie of 1984 may have boosted the proliferation of such "ghost clubs".
In the last decade, the term "paranormal investigation" has increasingly been adopted by hobbyist and professional groups who do not investigate any other aspects of the paranormal such as Extra-sensory perception and Psychokinesis, but whose sole purpose is ghost hunting.
Heres the Full page ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_hunting
thanks for posting...
Theirs always going to be new gadgets and gizmo's for paranormal research.
Some appear useful..while others seem not much more than ghost hunting toys.
Im sure there is something(s) out there right now
that if used in the proper conditions.. may change the whole outlook of the paranormal.
We just need the right person or organization to find and announce it.
The thread our "Luna" posted on
"Paranormal Related News"
"Proof of Paranormal Intelligence? "This NASA researcher thinks so...
That could be a great help for ghost hunters and paranormal research.
Found this bit at wickepdia about the beginnings of ghost hunting..
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pliny the Younger recorded what has been regarded as the first story of a ghost hunt in 100 AD.[2] The story was already a century old when Pliny told it, and concerns a haunted house in ancient Athens being investigated by a philosopher named Athenodoros Cananites.
The Ghost Club, founded in London in 1862, is believed to be the oldest paranormal research organization in the world. Famous members of the club have included Charles Dickens, Sir William Crookes, Sir William Fletcher Barrett and Harry Price.
Early "ghost hunter" Harry PriceIn the mid 1880's, William James, philosopher and founder of the American Psychological Association and brother of Henry James suggested applying scientific method to paranormal questions such as the existence of ghosts or spirits. He found allies in England such as Alfred Russel Wallace, Cambridge philosopher Henry Sidgwick and his wife, Eleanor, Edmund Gurney, and others to form the core of the Society for Psychical Research to collect evidence concerning apparitions, haunted houses, and similar phenomena. The investigators gathered case studies, attended séances, designed tests of claimants' veracity, and ran what came to be known as the Census of Hallucinations, which counted apparitions of persons who were said to have made spectral appearances on the day they died.[3]
Similar investigation into hauntings was undertaken by Harry Price through London's National Laboratory of Psychical Research during the 1920s, and later in the 1950s and 60s by American independent researchers such as Hans Holzer and Ed and Lorraine Warren. Other paranormal and parapsychological investigators like Loyd Auerbach, Christopher Chacon and William Roll were each independently conducting field and laboratory investigations in the 1970s and 80s, long before reality TV cast a spotlight onto this subject matter.
Ghost hunting among part-time hobbyists began to be popular in the late 1970s with the founding of the Chicago area Ghost Tracker’s Club, which became the Ghost Research Society (GRS) in 1981. The popularity of the Ghostbusters movie of 1984 may have boosted the proliferation of such "ghost clubs".
In the last decade, the term "paranormal investigation" has increasingly been adopted by hobbyist and professional groups who do not investigate any other aspects of the paranormal such as Extra-sensory perception and Psychokinesis, but whose sole purpose is ghost hunting.
Heres the Full page ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_hunting
QUOTE(SammyTerry @ Jul 24 2007, 02:48 AM) 
Good find "G",
thanks for posting...
Theirs always going to be new gadgets and gizmo's for paranormal research.
Some appear useful..while others seem not much more than ghost hunting toys.
Im sure there is something(s) out there right now
that if used in the proper conditions.. may change the whole outlook of the paranormal.
We just need the right person or organization to find and announce it.
The thread our "Luna" posted on
"Paranormal Related News"
"Proof of Paranormal Intelligence? "This NASA researcher thinks so...
That could be a great help for ghost hunters and paranormal research.
Found this bit at wickepdia about the beginnings of ghost hunting..
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pliny the Younger recorded what has been regarded as the first story of a ghost hunt in 100 AD.[2] The story was already a century old when Pliny told it, and concerns a haunted house in ancient Athens being investigated by a philosopher named Athenodoros Cananites.
The Ghost Club, founded in London in 1862, is believed to be the oldest paranormal research organization in the world. Famous members of the club have included Charles Dickens, Sir William Crookes, Sir William Fletcher Barrett and Harry Price.
Early "ghost hunter" Harry PriceIn the mid 1880's, William James, philosopher and founder of the American Psychological Association and brother of Henry James suggested applying scientific method to paranormal questions such as the existence of ghosts or spirits. He found allies in England such as Alfred Russel Wallace, Cambridge philosopher Henry Sidgwick and his wife, Eleanor, Edmund Gurney, and others to form the core of the Society for Psychical Research to collect evidence concerning apparitions, haunted houses, and similar phenomena. The investigators gathered case studies, attended séances, designed tests of claimants' veracity, and ran what came to be known as the Census of Hallucinations, which counted apparitions of persons who were said to have made spectral appearances on the day they died.[3]
Similar investigation into hauntings was undertaken by Harry Price through London's National Laboratory of Psychical Research during the 1920s, and later in the 1950s and 60s by American independent researchers such as Hans Holzer and Ed and Lorraine Warren. Other paranormal and parapsychological investigators like Loyd Auerbach, Christopher Chacon and William Roll were each independently conducting field and laboratory investigations in the 1970s and 80s, long before reality TV cast a spotlight onto this subject matter.
Ghost hunting among part-time hobbyists began to be popular in the late 1970s with the founding of the Chicago area Ghost Tracker’s Club, which became the Ghost Research Society (GRS) in 1981. The popularity of the Ghostbusters movie of 1984 may have boosted the proliferation of such "ghost clubs".
In the last decade, the term "paranormal investigation" has increasingly been adopted by hobbyist and professional groups who do not investigate any other aspects of the paranormal such as Extra-sensory perception and Psychokinesis, but whose sole purpose is ghost hunting.
Heres the Full page ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_hunting
thanks for posting...
Theirs always going to be new gadgets and gizmo's for paranormal research.
Some appear useful..while others seem not much more than ghost hunting toys.
Im sure there is something(s) out there right now
that if used in the proper conditions.. may change the whole outlook of the paranormal.
We just need the right person or organization to find and announce it.
The thread our "Luna" posted on
"Paranormal Related News"
"Proof of Paranormal Intelligence? "This NASA researcher thinks so...
That could be a great help for ghost hunters and paranormal research.
Found this bit at wickepdia about the beginnings of ghost hunting..
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pliny the Younger recorded what has been regarded as the first story of a ghost hunt in 100 AD.[2] The story was already a century old when Pliny told it, and concerns a haunted house in ancient Athens being investigated by a philosopher named Athenodoros Cananites.
The Ghost Club, founded in London in 1862, is believed to be the oldest paranormal research organization in the world. Famous members of the club have included Charles Dickens, Sir William Crookes, Sir William Fletcher Barrett and Harry Price.
Early "ghost hunter" Harry PriceIn the mid 1880's, William James, philosopher and founder of the American Psychological Association and brother of Henry James suggested applying scientific method to paranormal questions such as the existence of ghosts or spirits. He found allies in England such as Alfred Russel Wallace, Cambridge philosopher Henry Sidgwick and his wife, Eleanor, Edmund Gurney, and others to form the core of the Society for Psychical Research to collect evidence concerning apparitions, haunted houses, and similar phenomena. The investigators gathered case studies, attended séances, designed tests of claimants' veracity, and ran what came to be known as the Census of Hallucinations, which counted apparitions of persons who were said to have made spectral appearances on the day they died.[3]
Similar investigation into hauntings was undertaken by Harry Price through London's National Laboratory of Psychical Research during the 1920s, and later in the 1950s and 60s by American independent researchers such as Hans Holzer and Ed and Lorraine Warren. Other paranormal and parapsychological investigators like Loyd Auerbach, Christopher Chacon and William Roll were each independently conducting field and laboratory investigations in the 1970s and 80s, long before reality TV cast a spotlight onto this subject matter.
Ghost hunting among part-time hobbyists began to be popular in the late 1970s with the founding of the Chicago area Ghost Tracker’s Club, which became the Ghost Research Society (GRS) in 1981. The popularity of the Ghostbusters movie of 1984 may have boosted the proliferation of such "ghost clubs".
In the last decade, the term "paranormal investigation" has increasingly been adopted by hobbyist and professional groups who do not investigate any other aspects of the paranormal such as Extra-sensory perception and Psychokinesis, but whose sole purpose is ghost hunting.
Heres the Full page ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_hunting
Thank you for the Info.
Very intresting finds Sammy and Gigan.
If you read the EVP article all the way through there is a good link to hear some good EVP's!
good info!
If you read the EVP article all the way through there is a good link to hear some good EVP's!
good info!
Good stuff, thanks for the post!
I wish I could have some stuff from the TV show, like the thermal cam
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