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Ghosts of Ohio Newsletter - August 2007THE GHOSTS OF OHIO NEWSLETTER What happened to summer? The end of summer means Halloween is right around the corner. As we speak, we're putting the final touches on our presentations and will be hitting the road shortly. We're really excited about our new presentation material, as well as the new towns and cities we’re visiting for the first time this year. In other news, we have been focusing on expanding and improving our capabilities and have featured several great presentations at our monthly meetings. One such presentation was about ways which we can further improve our interviewing skills, which led to the creation of a new division within The Ghosts of Ohio organization. This division will streamline and strengthen the process with which we interview and consult with our clients about possible paranormal activity on their properties. Future presentations at our monthly meetings will include discussions on genealogical research and how to take existing, readily available equipment and modify them so that they can be incorporated into an investigation. Well, that's it for now. Enjoy the last rays of summer. Hope to see you all this October! Cheers, FALL PRESENTATION SCHEDULE RELEASED Below is the current list of places we'll be visiting…with more to be added soon. Until our new web site launches this fall, the easiest place to view our calendar is on our Myspace page: www.myspace.com/ghostsofohio. And for the first time ever, The Ghosts of Ohio will be selling exclusive t-shirts that you will only be able to get at our presentations. So mark your calendars now! Saturday, Sept. 15 through Sunday, Sept. 16: 6th Annual Mothman Festival/Pt. Pleasant, West Virginia GHOSTS AT WORK We also recently began conducting historical research into the more than 300 people buried there. The way we see it, every one of those tombstones has a story to tell and we want to hear it. So if you can provide any information about the individuals or families buried in Section 50 of Green Lawn, please write to us and let us know. Next week, The Ghosts of Ohio will be gathering at Resor Road in Fairfield, OH to do our quarterly cleanup of the stretch of road we adopted in 2006 as part of Fairfield’s Adopt-a-Road program. We'll let you know in the October issue of the newsletter if we find anything strange! sMYSPACE INVESTIGATIONS THE GHOSTS OF OHIO MERCHANDISE TOOLS OF THE TRADE As I mentioned, DVR systems are highly adaptable. The system that the Ghosts of Ohio recently purchased is a DVR/monitor combo unit that has a 160-gigabyte (GB) hard drive (upgradeable to 500 GB) and can use up to 8 cameras. It came with four color-infrared indoor/outdoor cameras that have a resolution of 350 lines. With the LED, the camera can still view things with a minimum illumination of 0.1 Lux, or approximately the amount of light that a half-moon gives off on a clear night. It is not a wireless system because we felt that there was too much of a chance for interference from other wireless products. Anything from cordless phones to wireless home network systems could have caused interference. In order for the video to be considered valid as evidence we could not take the risk of any type of external interference. Having a DVR system allows you to have one person, although this is not advised, monitor multiple cameras during an investigation. The video still has to be reviewed after the investigation, but it will allow you to immediately know if something unusual is happening. The DVR also allows you to review footage while it is still recording to help make this determination. You can decide if it warrants someone going and investigating right away. This will help save time after the investigation by cutting down on the number of unexplained things that you came across during your video review. You will have had the opportunity to have someone take a look right away instead of having to go back and try to recreate the incident. As I mentioned above, only having one person watch the monitor can be a problem as it can be extremely hard to keep your eyes on four or more videos and pay attention to what you are seeing. It is best to have two people watching the monitor. That way they each only have to keep an eye on a few videos. If something comes up that is unusual, there is a second person that can take a look and decide if it should be looked into further. Another advantage to a DVR system is not having to purchase numerous amounts of videotapes and finding a place to store them all. After several years’ worth of tapes have started to accumulate, you start to realize you need to rent storage just to keep it all. With the DVR, you can transfer it all onto CD or DVD and one disc. You saved the cost of possibly a dozen or more discs and it is easier to keep track of that one disc. A possible drawback in using a DVR system is all the cable that you have to run from the DVR to the cameras. It takes some extra effort in setting things up correctly and securing all the cables so they do not interfere with any of the people in the area. The last thing you want to happen is have someone trip over a cable and break the system, camera—or worse—personal property of your clients. All in all, a DVR system is definitely an investment, but can be worth it. You just have to keep some of the drawbacks in mind. As with all equipment used in the paranormal field, it is best used in conjunction with other tools and your own common sense. JOIN THE GHOSTS OF OHIO BOOK REVIEW We all need to start somewhere. There are many books that we could point to and say that we had found the beginning of paranormal research and investigation as we know it. Though they produced no texts as an organization, we would probably have to begin with the Cambridge Ghost Club, started in 1855. Though the group was chartered primarily to facilitate the telling of ghost stories, it also undertook real-world investigations into reputedly haunted houses. And then there is, of course, the long history of the Societies for Psychical Research (in both the U.K. and the U.S.). The Society and its members engaged in some of the first and most enduring, full-scale, and systematic research into paranormal phenomena. I have written elsewhere about Deborah Blum’s admirable book The Ghost Hunters and its account of these early years of scientific forays into the occult. Truth be told, though, neither the Ghost Club nor the Society look very much like the paranormal investigation groups of today. If you want to see where today’s movement really got its start, you ought to first look into the life of one man, Harry Price, and his most famous investigation, that of Borley Rectory in Essex, England. Price is a controversial and dramatic figure in the history of paranormal research. Some thought him a tireless adventurer on the farthest edges of human and scientific knowledge. Others attacked him as a shameless self-promoter and utter charlatan. For our purposes—as modern paranormal investigators—it matters little which he was, or even whether he fell somewhere in between. Harry Price is important to us chiefly as the creator and purveyor of a process of paranormal investigation. As a “ghost hunter” of independent means, he was able to devote his time to the questions that the rest of us tinker with only in our spare moments. He pioneered many, if not most, of the techniques that we use today. Troy Taylor explicitly singles out Price as the inspiration for his methods of paranormal research, devoting a whole section to Price in his multi-edition Ghost Hunter’s Guidebook. Consider this description of how Price packs for an investigation: Setting aside the question of just how large Price’s large suitcase must have been, if you compare his packing list with the packing list of any serious and well-equipped paranormal investigators, you will find a near one-to-one relation between the two (taking into account modernized versions of some of Price’s items). Technology has made some of our tools smaller, lighter, and more widely available, but with the exception of sound-recording devices and tools like EMF meters, Price used everything in 1929 that we use today and some things that we don’t. Though Price had many interesting cases throughout his career (which were all recounted in the many books he wrote), the one that made him famous the world over was the decade-long investigation into Borley Rectory. The Most Haunted House in Englandis a marvelous account of how Price developed and employed his standard investigatory procedures, in addition to being a gripping account of the investigation of the ‘most haunted house in England’ (for the ‘most haunted house in Scotland’, to which Price’s title implicitly refers, you’ll want to find The Alleged Haunting of Ballechin House, published in 1897). Price followed up ‘Most Haunted’ with The End of Borley Rectory, a book that covers much of the same ground, but adds some subsequent investigation surrounding the exhumation of mysterious remains on the grounds of the rectory. Unfortunately, The Most Haunted House in England is out of print. However, it was most recently reprinted as a fine hardcover volume as part of the 1991 Time-Life Collector’s Library of the Unknown. These copies are still available used on Amazon Marketplace, Barnes & Noble, etc. A look at multiple sites will probably bring up a number of copies at less than $10 (though some are going for much more). INVESTIGATE THIS! **The Ghosts of Ohio organization does not condone or encourage trespassing or the breaking of any laws in order to obtain photographs. We will not post any photographs on our site that appear to have been obtained by such means. In addition, we will not post any photographs of private residences unless you are either the current owner or have obtained written permission from the owner(s). GHOSTLY WHISPERS Dead Man's Curve/Spook Hollow (Oregonia/Warren County) ADMINISTRATION The Ghosts of Ohio collects your name and email address for the purpose of sending this mailing. We will never share your name or email address with advertisers, vendors, or any third party, unless required by law. The Ghosts of Ohio will never sell, trade, or rent your personal information. |
