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Jewish Settlers get dragged around
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hippie explodes in our basement
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Left Lane Law Confusion is alleviated
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2003 in 2003 heats up
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Bicycling: Remembering a weird guy from SIU
Asheron's Call: The best ten dollars a month you'll ever spend
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GHOST HUNTING A VIABLE HIATUS EXCLUSIVE
I have decieded not to name names in this article in case anyone would be offended or not find it advantageous to have it publicly posted that they hunt ghosts. If you are offended that I didn't name your name if I am writing about you then I am sorry, but at least this way I can't be sued, I think?
SO a good friend told me a while back that he went ghost hunting. I can't lie about it I have to tell you how ridiculous I thought this sounded. I mean a grown man running around somewhere at night looking for ghosts. Of course my friend is the skeptic of the group who is only going along to make sure things are scientific and no one falsifies any data, so he says. Anyway as time went by the stupidity of it seemed to fade from my mind and was replaced with curiosity. Let me say this now and make it very clear. Never once have I considered that ghosts really exist. Let me make something else very clear, I am by no means an expert on the subject. Anyway lets proceed to paragraph two:
I asked my friend if I could come along on a ghost hunt, I mean what do I have to lose I'm a teacher and it's summer it's not like I have anything to do. So I figured that one night of my life I could use to satisfy my curiosity about why these people do this. So off we go to the Ghost Hunting HQ, my good friend's, friend's house (I'm starting to regret the name thing). She is the person seemingly in charge of the local ghost hunting league. Along with her, me and my friend there was another young man, a couple of young ladies and a couple of less young ladies. So our numbers look something like this MEN: 3 WOMEN: 5 seems like a good turnout to me for such a fringe activity.
I was informed we were heading to Pleasant Hill cemetery out in the wilderness of Harden county because there was a haunting story that went along with a grave that has an errie inscription. I noticed at once just how serious this whole thing is, before we left the women made plans for the next several ghost hunts in their date books and discussed future hunting locations. And now were off, it's 8:30 almost dark and we have a map, some directions and a lot of gear. Now lets take a little break from the narrative and focus on the gear.
THE GEAR: So the number one piece of gear that you have to have to go ghost hunting is a flashlight, but flashlights come in all kinds of varieties. There are Flashlights you carry, flashlights that fit on a headband, flashlights that are made from plastic and flashlights that are made from aircraft grade aluminum. Then all these different flashlights can emit white lgiht, red light, or blue light or even green light. My good friend uses a headband mounting light that can be switched from all of these colors. Apparently red light doesn't cause your pupils to dilate and therefore keeps your night vision going strong all the time. I can't imagine what blue light is for, but the young man said that green light didn't disturb the spirits or at least I think that's what he said. I of course was unprepared and had no light but was able to borrow one.
The next item is a camera, now of course this is to document any weird stuff that happens during the hunt, but pictures are snapped constantly at most everything that people see out in the field. I guess the theory is that the necked eye can't detect super natural activity as well as film in a camera can. The problem is that pictures at night taken with or without flash can produce some very strange results, whether you are in a cemetery or in your backyard. As a fairly accomplished amateur photographer I have made some very bizarre images at night using flash or ambient light. Anyway it seems ghosts hunters usually find the proof of the super natural in their photographs which is hardly proof at all.
Along with the devices to make light and the devices to capture it there were thermometers, magnifying glasses, audio recorders, notebooks, clipboards, logbooks, and walkie talkies, now there is an item that can cause paranoia in the dark. If I was a ghost I would tap into someone's walkie talkie and mess with them by masking my voice as a fellow ghost hunter then leading them into a trap, like a hole covered over with sticks and grass that when stepped on would cause my hapless victim to fall onto sharpened sticks. Pardon me I'm digressing.
So we arrived at the cemetery without much trouble and all gathered together for a non denominational group prayer, which I found somewhat interesting and amusing. Seems like if I was a god or a spirit for that matter and someone offered up a prayer for all gods, goddesses, deities and general greater powers that exist I would be ticked off. It would be like your hungry and you haven't ate in a real long time and someone gives you a TV diner. But not a name brand TV diner, a generic TV diner. Or an even better analogy would be like your a god and you go to your mailbox and you see your Publishers Clearing house sweepstakes letter where Ed McMahan says you've already won 10,000,000 dollars, you would be happy but you know that every god on the block got one too and none of you are going to win it so you don't feel all that special. Pardon me I regress.
After the prayer we all looked for the odd grave and found it, it's a small grave that says the following: Friends Beware as you pass by as you are now so once as I as I am now you soon should be prepare for death and follow me. The story said something about repeating this phrase 3 times and something spooky happening. Well nothing happened. This was conveniently explained away by saying that there were too many people here for it to work. But the real story here is that saying, I mean that is spooky, it's as if the dead guy is talking to you and reminding you that you will die. Even though nothing happened I think every one of us felt something a little strange after the third reading of that poem.
After the reading several pictures were made of the grave and we all walked around to do our own thing. I was equipped with my big Metz flash and my Pentax Camera. While everyone else was using small point and shoots with little wink light flashes I was blasting away the darkness with gusto. We wandered around and examined the graves which were very old, special attention was given to the more intricate gravestones and graves of children. I wandered around taking pictures of things that interested me and trying to make good compositions. Overall I found out how hard it can be to compose and focus in a nearly zero light situation. Things were starting to get boring until someone said they were accosted by an entity, which caused a bit of a stir and caused everyone to take a picture in that general direction to see if they could catch the entity.
Well things wound down and turned a little sour when we were looking a grave and talking about how fresh it looked. I ended up stepping up on to it and dancing a little jig, Why, as a Pentecostal might say, I felt the spirit move me. Actually I didn't do it on purpose I just did it, maybe I was trying to entice an entity into accosting me. But that kind of went against that whole vow of no disrespect that was in the nondenominational prayer, so I think I lost a few points with the ghost hunters on that one.
At the end of the night when it was all said and done I felt grateful for the experience, I still don't believe in ghosts, but I see why they do it. Exploring a graveyard is like walking back through our history, doing it at night is just a little more dramatic. And who knows maybe one day they will find a ghost, I just hope it doesn't devour their souls or something.
