Preparing for an Investigation

This weekend my group is investigating a haunted lodge. Today it is an upscale spa, restaurant and hotel. But back in the day it was a traditional frontier stop. The place has many floors and outer lodges that are now upscale guest accommodations. 

So we are busy preparing our equipment.

We have both a haunted tower room to investigate as well several guest rooms that have been very active over the years. 

The lodge’s haunted history includes two very prominent female ghosts that have been seen over the years. Guests often see items in their rooms being moved; recently a female guest spotted her purse being moved off the head of the bed to the floor. 

Another room is notorious because the phone often rings in the room and no one is on the line. This phone has rung even when it is disconnected.

I keep my investigative group small. There are several good reasons I do this. First we emphasize “quiet” investigations. This means we keep in mind we do not want to contaminate possible evidence with our own footsteps, voices etc.

It is important to mention here--we have captured evidence when we joke around--I feel this happens because the spirits want to join in—so we choose moments to be quiet other times we are just ourselves.

We don’t wear shoes so we can move around quietly. To keep things quiet we send in only two people at a time to investigate specific areas. 

An exception to this is when we do EVP sweeps where we have many recorders going at the same time. 

We also do photo sweeps, where everyone on the team is taking pictures at the same time, this allows us to use our hand-held IR lights and IR illuminators wisely since these have limited charges. We do this in hopes that if we do capture evidence we can collaborate it on several cameras.

We also have IR illuminators that we can plug into outlets and then mount with our Nightshot and IR camcorders that we place on tripods. 

We use these cameras in areas where our DVR cameras do not reach. If there is no power available then we use our smaller IR lights that run off a charge.

Another important reason I keep my group small is so when we do have an investigation everyone on the team who wants to come, can come. 

This is important because in the past I was with a group who allowed a large number of people to join—this group provided great training but the downside of having such a large group is most of these people didn’t have the opportunity to go on the investigations.

Happy Ghost Hunting!