Do It Yourself Ghost Hunting Part 1: Getting Started

Do It Yourself Ghost Hunting Part 1: Getting Started

Written By: James Paradie

Ghost hunting is generally not something hard to get into, and can be relatively cheap. Beginners basically need a few items to get under way and you can find them anywhere, including your home. The most important item would be a standard digital camera. Now, you don’t need to go all out and buy an expensive camera like a Canon PowerShot, most pictures that have evidence are from cameras that you can buy at any department store for a relatively cheap price.

The second important item would be an audio recorder. I started out with a basic analog recorder that took cassette tapes. It was alright at first, I got no solid evidence from it, but it got the job done…until it got very annoying. Changing cassettes happened about every half an hour and just got to be a pain in the butt. I now have a Olympus digital recorder which cost about forty dollars at Staples. Most pricier than an analog, but not as much of a pain. Just leave it on and see if you can catch some voices from the grave!

You don’t need to go online and buy stuff like dowsing rods or pendulums or anything like that, but what you need is a few people to go along with you. Sure, you can do ghost hunting by yourself, but if you catch real evidence and you try telling people, they are going to think you’re making this up. But if you bring more than just yourself and more than one person saw or heard something you did, then your story has more credibility. But who to bring though? Obviously you want to bring others who have some sort of belief in ghosts. Because if something does happen then you have witnesses, and also they can bring their own equipment as well. There’s been some cases where we’ll have two audio recorders going on at once and they’ll catch two completely different results or one will catch something and another, running right next to it, will catch nothing at all. Cameras are the same way. When we were doing the investigation in Bethlehem, New Hampshire where Nicole caught the picture of the blue mist behind Nancy on the stairs(Photo on my website), I was taking photos as well, but where she caught something, I caught nothing on my camera. It’s very tricky, so this is where more people are better than one.

Okay, you got your people, you got your camera, you got your audio recorder, what’s next? The ghosts! Now, you just need a haunted location. Graveyards a good way to start and get practice, but you just don’t want to waltz into a graveyard at night ghost hunting. Most likely the police won’t like that. The best thing to do is to check with whoever takes care of the cemetery and then go and check with the local authorities and let them know when you’re doing the investigation and how long you will be. Most of the time, they are very understanding. This is of course due to today, everyone and their brother is a ghost hunter of some sorts, and there’s groups everywhere across America now, but back say twenty years ago, they’d look at you like you were insane. It’s probably even safe to say that twenty years ago I wouldn’t even be able to write for the newspapers that I do! (Course that would make me three years old though.)

What I’d like to do is get some amateur ghost hunting stories from my fellow readers and post a few of these stories on some future editions of Scared Sheetless. Have you ever gone ghost hunting or have ghost stories of your own? Just email me atscaredsheetlessncn@hotmail.com and let me know if you have and your story could be right on here! Within the next few weeks I’ll be doing more Do It Yourself Ghost Hunting tips for those who would like to get into it. (You’re crazy, but I like that).

Until next time, this has been another Scared Sheetless. Happy haunting and keep it scary!

More scares can be viewed at scaredsheetlessncn.blogspot.com

James Paradie is a paranormal columnist as well as a paranormal investigator who has been seen in such newspapers as the Northcountry News, Littleton Record, the White Mountain Shopper, and the Trendy Times. His stories can also been seen on paranormalnews.com and mostlyghosts.com where he is a regular contributor.


Credit:    http://www.paranormalnews.com/article.aspx?id=1473