Guide to Ghosthunting…

I know it’s been far too long since I’ve done a blog. I actually have several ideas floating around in my head that I’ll probably be putting into action in the near future. One is even called “Fun with Sexism”. So that should be interesting.

I’m mainly blogging today to share the outline for a speech I wrote for my Oral Communication class. We were assigned to write an informative topic on any issue, and since my last speech was pretty heavy, I decided to do something a little more lighthearted that is still something I’m very interested in. So, naturally, I did a guide to ghosthunting. I’m not exactly sure how it’s going to go over, but I’m going to post my outline here, for your viewing pleasure.

Everyone’s seen or at least knows about “Ghostbusters” or has seen clips from a show like “Ghosthunters” on Discovery Channel, but few people understand exactly why people spend their time chasing after paranormal activity or things that usually scare or unnerve the average person.

I have been ghosthunting and doing paranormal investigations in north Georgia since I was a teenager. I can’t name exactly where my interest in the subject began, but the fact that I grew up watching shows like “The X-Files”, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, and “Charmed” certainly helped increase my interest in the supernatural. I’ve worked with several different paranormal investigation groups and am currently involved with one here in North Carolina.

I want to give you a brief overview of the why and how paranormal investigators (or ghosthunters, I will use the words interchangeably) do what they do and give you some tips for if you ever choose to venture into any haunted locations to do some hunting of your own.

1. Defining two types of hunting…
   1. Ghost Hunt – going to a place were there have been no sightings of ghosts and trying to catch some on film (video and photos), sounds, eyewitness, etc. (graveyards are the number one place to start, churches, schools and older buildings too)
   2. Ghost Investigation – going to a known haunted place and recording data (video, photos, audio, temperatures), notes, interviews and other evidence to prove/disprove the haunting and to assist the owners and the spirits in moving on and leaving the place if they want that. The assistance can be either you directly assisting the owner with the situation or putting them in contact with experienced groups or individuals that will try to resolve the situation. Your assistance can be something as simple as educating them on what is going on and their options.
2. What you might encounter…
   1. One type of haunting was a human at one time and it has remained on this level for some reason. It may not know it’s dead, may be held here by unfinished business, guilt, etc. These spirits are like the person was when they were alive, so they could be good or bad, just like the living, but not normally dangerous. This human spirit is the type you will encounter 95% of the time. Most investigators believe these are caused by energy left behind when a person dies.
   2. You could also witness a residual haunting which is just a playback of a past event. This is just like watching a video from the past playing over and over. Also called a “death echo”. There are different opinions on what exactly causes these to occur, but many are similar to the ideas of leftover potential energy.
3. Equipment
   1. A 35mm camera with at least 400 speed film for capturing photographic evidence.
   2. A digital camera as well. They are useful because they can take photos in limited infrared range of light.
   3. Flashlight with spare batteries. This is common sense, as you will be walking around in the dark.
   4. A notebook and pen for recording times of any activity you might experience as well as a watch.
   5. People on professional investigations will also have an Electromagnetic Field Detector for locating and tracking energy sources. These are pretty much standard procedure for investigations nowadays. I have an example of a low tech one that I usually carry with me.
   6. A tape recorder for recording EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena).
4. General Tips for Ghosthunting
   1. Never go alone. Another common sense idea. Also make sure you’ve checked the area out in daylight so you can watch out for dangerous places and obstacles.
   2. Look for ‘No Trespassing’ signs. I speak from experience that you should make sure the area is not patrolled by law enforcement or off limits to trespassers. Sometimes you can get a permit if you still want to hold an investigation.
   3. Make sure you bring your ID in case you do run into problems with law enforcement.
   4. The best times to investigate are between 9pm and 6am, but you can check an area out at any time.
   5. Be familiar with the history of the area you are investigating. It can give you an idea of what you might encounter and it’s usually pretty interesting either way.

In summary, ghost hunters and paranormal investigators are people seeking to understand a little outside of the every day world. Some people do it as a hobby or other people have even formed businesses around the concept. Whether you believe in the paranormal or are a skeptic, it can be a very interesting experience to chase after the supernatural, and whether you find something or not it is usually a fun experience for everyone who goes along.

For them to be able to understand more about shows like “Ghost Hunters” and “Ghost Hunters International” and to know more about ghosts and hauntings and what causes them.

I am always available if anyone is curious or wants to share or get advice on a paranormal experience they have encountered. I’m not an expert in the field, but I’m getting there, and I love hearing about other people’s beliefs and opinions on the matter. There is no denying that there are things in this world that we cannot fully understand, and it is my goal to experience and understand some of these mysterious things.

So that’s that. I’m filming it tomorrow and presenting the video with the rest of my group in class on Monday night. It should be fun. And I promise I’ll have an actual blog sometime in the near future.

Obligatory Valentine’s Day Rant

This isn’t some essay about how much I hate Valentine’s and how it’s a holiday designed to make the single people of the world feel really bad about themselves. Because, contrary to popular belief, I don’t hate V-day.

(Why bother calling it Valentine’s when it has nothing to do with St. Valentine anymore?)

But V-Day is what you make of it.

The actual day that we celebrate as V-Day is actually Lupercalia, dedicated to the marriage of Zeus and Athena. When the Roman Catholic church was setting a date to celebrate both of the martyrs named Valentine, they chose Lupercalia so that the pagans and polytheistics would also celebrate it. The word Lupercalia comes from lupus, or wolf, so the holiday may be connected with the legendary wolf that nursed the mythical Romulus and Remus. Priests of this cult, luperci, would travel to the lupercal, the cave where the she-wolf who reared Romulus and Remus allegedly lived, and sacrifice animals (two goats and a dog). The blood would then be scattered in the streets, to bring fertility and keep the wolves away from the fields. (Really romantic, huh?) Lupercalia was a festival local to the city of Rome.

The more general Festival of Juno Februa, meaning “Juno the purifier “or “the chaste Juno,” was celebrated on February 13-14. Pope Gelasius I (492-496) abolished Lupercalia. The pope also declared in 496 that the feast of St. Valentine would be on February 14. However, no one really knows which St. Valentine the feast is for. It could be a priest in Rome, a bishop of Interamna, or a martyr in the Roman province of Africa.

In 270 AD, the Roman emperor Claudius II dragged the Empire into many wars and needed to acquire more troops. His solution was to ban marriage. One priest, Valentine, disobeyed Claudius’s orders and married people anyway. He was imprisoned where he fell in love with the jailer’s daughter. On 14 February, 270 AD, Claudius had Valentine beheaded. Before walking to the gallows, Valentine wrote a farewell message to his love. He signed it, “From your Valentine.” This is just one of the three St. Valentine’s.

Not to be a downer or anything. I really do like V-Day, no matter why we celebrate it. For me, though, it’s more about love in general, instead of anything romantic or whatever. I celebrate my family and my friends.

I could go on, really, but I don’t want to sound like a know-it-all (though I’m past that point now, I think. Especially since I do the same thing every Christmas…) I’ll hopefully have an actual blog some time in the near future.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

In my very first blog, I told you right off the bat that I was terrible at remembering to post. It’s even in the generic “About Me” I use for every website or profile I build. So of course it only follows that it’s been over a month since I’ve posted a blog. I have no excuse this time, either. I’m in Jan term, which at my college means you’re either doing an internship or taking an experimental course on campus. This year, I’ve opted for the experimental course, making lemonade over my situation with the internship in LA. The class I’m taking is called “Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghost Whisperers”, taught by the head of the philosophy department (my minor).

So far, the class is going extremely well. We finished up our first week of classes, Monday through Thursday from 12:30pm to 4:30pm. This seems like a long time, but we usually watch two episodes of a television show (either “Ghost Whisperer” or “Medium”, though so far we’ve only watched the latter) so it really goes by pretty quickly. The class has been really interesting for me. While I have my beliefs, I always keep an open mind. I believe in ghosts and paranormal activity, but my beliefs have always been based on science. This time around, I’m looking at things from a philosophical, spiritual point of view. It’s been a different experience, but I think it’s serving to broaden my horizons in all the right ways.

I’d promised myself as a New Year’s Resolution/Jan Term project, that I was going to make an effort to write more, even if it was just ridiculous short stories or something to pass the time. I’ve failed at this so far, but I still have three weeks left. Two of my friends and I are starting a WordPress site/Twitter account for something we’re getting started on called “Capslock Reviews”. This stemmed from an evening in the end of December where two of us were watching two different episodes of “Supernatural” and Tweeting our own commentaries to the episode. Little did we know, people actually liked our takes on the episodes, and we have now teamed up with another friend to embark on this project. We’re doing our first group commentary tonight with the episode “Tall Tales”. We’ll probably be sticking mostly to “Supernatural”, but I think we’re planning on commentating other shows as well. It’s something different, anyway, and I think it should be pretty awesome (or, at least, entertaining for us).

As much as I love Jan term and experimental courses, you also tend to find yourself with way too much free time. This should be a good thing for me, giving me time to catch up on reading, work on writing, and useful stuff like that. So far, I’ve managed to spend the last five days watching old TV shows, goofing off with my roommates, and… well, that’s really it. The next three weeks are going to be much more productive (I hope).

I’ve always been really big on New Year’s resolutions. Keeping them is another matter entirely. Regardless, every year, I’ve always made a long list of resolutions, which then regress from resolutions to guidelines to “Hey, this is pretty good advice, I should pass this on”. This year, now that I feel like I’ve finally found what I want to do with my life, my resolutions are very web-centric. They include blogging regularly, trying to vlog on occasion, keeping my website up, then the usual health/romance related resolutions everyone else makes.

In line with that, I solemnly swear to blog at least once a week. With all the time on my hands, I should really be capable of this.

We’ll see, anyway. If I’m not back in a week, send out a search party/team of hungry dogs.

Also, I’ve built a website at http://www.thisisbree.com. It has contact info, about me, and my Ustream live channel. Check it out.

Old habits die hard.

And by “Old habits”, I mean my tendency to forget to blog. But here I am, with some updates, amendments to my life plan.
First of all, no Los Angeles in January. I’d had a bad feeling for a while that it wasn’t going to work out, but then the final decision was made on Monday that I’m not going to be going this year. Hopefully I’ll be able to do it next year (hopefully as in most likely), when I’ve taken some Comm classes and started getting my feet wet in the industry (that’s such a weird phrase). I’m not going to lie and say I wasn’t upset about the decision, but I’d like to think I was able to accept it with a good attitude.

Luckily, I’m still going to have an awesome January. Because life loves me, there was one more spot open in the January term experimental class I was interested in taking. It’s taught by one of my favourite professors, and the class is called “Mediums, Ghosts, and Ghost Whisperers”. Professor Rushing even emailed the registrar to tell them that she really wanted me in the class just in case it filled up before I was able to get my paperwork together. So I’m officially in that class, and it will help out with the paranormal studies minor Dr. Rushing is helping me create. The minor is based in the philosophy minor, but I’m doing independent studies in the paranormal field so I can get what I want out of it.

This is why I love Salem; few schools are willing to work with you to make sure you’re learning exactly what you want to learn while you’re in college. Dr. Dykers (my advisor in the Communication department) is helping me focus my major in New Media, and I can’t tell you how excited I am about that. I’m mildly obsessed with web television, which anyone who knows me can attest to. For me, internet television is already surpassing network television. Nowadays, most of it is so much more well-written than what you see on TV. Not to mention, it’s more about real people and what real people want to see. But I could go on that subject forever, so I’ll not do that now.

This past week was pretty busy, but not necessarily stressful. I had two presentations to do in one day (Wednesday) and in the middle of all that, I got hit by a cold that’s knocked me on my butt. The presentations went well, though, one was for Music 103 on the Making of Rent, and the other for Health and Wellness on Relationships and Domestic Violence. Neither was particularly intellectual, but they were both things that interested me so I had fun with them. Well, I don’t know if I’d say the domestic violence one was ‘fun’, per se, but you get the idea.

This week, aptly coined “Hell Week” by college students across the nation, signals the end of fall term, finals, and the beginning of Christmas break. I have an English presentation on my research paper on Tuesday, a final 8-10 page paper for English that I am most definitely not looking forward to, a biology lab final, and then my history and biology finals during the exam period Thursday and Friday. Another great thing about Salem is our self-scheduled exams. We have a reading day on Wednesday, then exam periods from 8AM-12PM, 1PM-5PM, and 6PM-10PM on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday during which students can go to Bryant Hall on their own time to take their finals. It’s so much better for people like me who have the ADD and all. I’ll probably take my history final Thursday and my biology final on Friday, then drive home Saturday morning. I could take both of them on Thursday, but I think I want to spread it out a little so I’m not pressed for time.

Usually I would be starting to stress out by now, but I’m managing to keep calm. I’ve made a schedule for myself for the week, so I’m not too worried about the panic attacks that tend to hit me during crunch time. I mostly took it easy today, because tomorrow, Monday, Tuesday, etc, are going to be incredibly busy.

I’m terrible at organizing my thoughts in a blog. Maybe from now on I should write an outline or something before I start typing. That would probably be a lot more effective than just publishing a blog full of word vomit. At least I’m remembering to keep up with this blog, which is already an improvement. Should I blog daily? Weekly? Intermittently throughout the week? What do you think?

That’s my piece for this weekend. Hopefully I’ll remember to blog from some time in the week. We’ll see how busy I get. Thanks for reading.

My New Philosophy

For those of you who don’t “get” my blog’s name, here’s your explanation:

One of my favourite quotes is “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade, but unless life also gave you water and sugar, your lemonade’s gonna suck”. I’ve interpreted this quote to mean, Sure, life’s going to give you lemons, that’s what it does. It’s what you bring to the table that counts.

 

Sugar…

You’ve got to alter your attitude about what life throws at you. It’s no secret that I’m a strong Christian, which has a lot to do with my outlook on life, but philosophically, I’ve got a “What happens, happens” or “C’est la vie” outlook on things. All we can do is try, and what happens next is going to happen whether we like it or not. It’s your positive outlook on the situationt that’s going to sweeten the deal, if you get my drift (it’s not an innuendo, regrettably, just what it is).

 

Water…

Just having a positive outlook isn’t going to turn your lemons and sugar into anything drinkable. You could eat it, sure, but hello, gross! You’ve got to be willing to go with the flow. I’m a fairly laidback person, which ties in a lot to my “sugar”. I’m not saying just sit back and let life hit you, but you’ve got to accept that eventually it’s going to. Another great quote is from Eric Foreman on That 70′s Show… “Y’know life…is like a train. It’s bearing down on you, and guess what?…It’s gonna hit you! So you can either start running when it’s far off in the distance, or you can pull up a chair, crack open a beer…and just watch it come!” While I obviously prefer lemonade to beer, the point remains. You can’t escape life, but you can Deal with it. That’s all I’m saying.

 

So there you have it: my philosophy. It’s not technically new, but I couldn’t resist the “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” reference. And this is where I came up with the name for my blog. This blog is going to chronicle ME. It’s for everyone, my friends, family, business contacts, you name it. Anybody and everybody is welcome to pull up a chair, crack open a lemonade, and watch life hit me at 180 mph.

 

The main event I’m preparing for right now is my internship in January. I’ve been given an excellent opportunity to intern with Tubefilter.tv for Jan term, in Los Angeles, CA. The problem? I live on the east coast. There’s a big old country in there somewhere. But I’m working and praying and hoping on finding a place to stay (by Monday, no less, no pressure). I’ve just got to believe that it’ll all work out somehow.

 

So there you have it, my current lemons. Bring it on.