I have been part of a paranormal investigation group, the Paranormal Researchers Of Ontario or proo(f) for the last two years and had been on a few investigations before that.
Proo(f), the (f) stands for fear, is currently made up of five members. The co-founders, Brad and Katie Mavin, and Paul Silliphant, along with newer member Rob Di Venanzo and skeptic, me, Ben Stacey.
Wait, what? Skeptic?
Yes, I am a skeptic when it comes to the paranormal. I do not believe in ghosts or spirits or any of those things. So why am I with a paranormal investigation group?
There are multiple answers. First, ghost stories are cool. A good story about ghosts or a haunting can be really scary and enjoyable. Most ghost stories are even better when they are purported to be based on a true story. So why not investigate those "true stories".
Second, and probably more importantly for the group, I think it is very important to have a skeptical viewpoint in a team of investigators. It helps keep objectivity. There are many groups that are made up of only whole hearted believers, or people that want to believe. For a group like that it is too easy to jump to the conclusion that anything that happens on an investigation is paranormal. Just because you hear a bang or a bump, does not mean that it is caused by something supernatural. If you are really interested in discovering if something is paranormal, you absolutely must look at all evidence objectively and skeptically.
Proo(f) is very good at that. Even those who have a strong belief in paranormal activity will question every bit of evidence that we gather.
I also think that as a skeptic, I have to be open to being skeptical about what I believe. If we were to ever get some evidence that we could not explain or debunk, I must at least remain open to other explanations.
Thirdly, I am a film maker have been documenting our investigations and producing web episodes of those investigations. You can see some at http://www.youtube.com/proofcanada
And of course it is a lot of fun.
I should also be clear that, even though I don't believe that anything is paranormal, it is obvious that people have had experiences that they attribute to the paranormal. Also the fear that you feel when walking alone in an empty, dark, supposedly haunted building is real. The emotional responses that some of the members of the team experience are real. Even when we have worked with mediums, I believe that to them, what they are doing is real. I don't for a second doubt that they believe they are doing what they think they are doing. I do doubt that what they are doing is paranormal. And most importantly I trust that no one in the group will ever fake anything. It serves no purpose. And if anything ever was faked it would eventually be discovered.
As I said, the fear is real regardless of whether it is caused by anything paranormal or not. The excitement on an investigation when something strange happens is also real.
So I wanted to share just a few of the experiences we have had as a team that we found to be either scary, emotional or exciting.
The Curse of Valentia
In the hamlet of Valentia, Ontario, there is a horse farm that has had some strange activity. In 1804, at a trading post that was on or near the property, Ogetonicut, of the Ojibway tribe killed the post operator, John Sharpe in a revenge killing for him having murdered his brother Whistling Duck. Ogetonicut was killed while being transported to stand trial when the HMS Speedy sank in a storm. It is rumoured that Ogetonicut may haunt the property.
There is also the story of the "Lantern Lady", a women who lost her husband and infant son in a house fire approximately 150 years ago. She was returning up a laneway from running errands into town when she discovered her house on fire. People claim to see a woman carrying a lantern along this laneway.
At this investigation we had a medium with us. While in the laneway he suddenly sat down and began to channel the "Lantern Lady". Katie questioned him/her. We were unable to verify any of the information that she got while questioning. The interesting thing was what happened as the channelling session came to an end. Upon saying good-bye to the "Lantern Lady", Katie broke down in tears. She was sobbing uncontrollably. She felt the emotions of the woman. She felt that the woman had her arms wrapped around her.
You can watch what happened here:
The Haunted Museum
Our investigation at the Scugog Shores Museum gave us two really interesting pieces of evidence. The first was also an emotional response. The church has a room at the back known as the weeping room or the moaning room. During funerals, that is where the casket would be for people to say good-bye to the deceased. People report hearing crying and moaning from that area of the church.
We had one of the museum interpreters, Rosie, with us. While conducting an investigation in the moaning room Rosie suddenly began to cry.
Watch here:
Afterwards, Rosie was fine and we continued to investigate the room. This time we were using two tools. The first is a spirit box which scans through the white noise between radio stations in the hope that spirits may be able to communicate through it. The other tool was an app called the "Ghost Radar". It has a large database of words and the idea is that a spirit can draw from these words to communicate. Nothing happened with the spirit box, but the "Ghost Radar" did give us a couple of interesting responses. The first was the word "husband". Interesting because there were likely many widows saying good-bye to their husbands in this room.
The second was the name, "Lee". This is interesting for two reasons. Joseph lee was a circuit minister in the area and could very well have preached at this church. And, the Lee House, Joseph Lee's actual house is part of the museum.
Watch here:
The Asylum
This is my favourite place. It is an abandoned former mental institution. If any place looks like it should be haunted, this is the place. It is dark, creepy and falling apart. We have investigated this place on three occasions.
In one room, Paul, who is quite sensitive to spirits, although not a medium, felt the presence of a young boy. Meanwhile the medium who accompanied us was sensing a different spirit. Paul left the room and we asked if he was okay. He said, "no". I followed him into the hall where he began pacing, trying to get the spirit to leave him alone. He asked for help from the medium. The medium, not realizing that it was a different spirit with Paul wasn't able to immediately help. It wasn't until we got outside and Paul became more forceful with the spirit that he was left alone.
The kitchen area of the Asylum is reported to have a lot of activity. Upon walking into the kitchen, the team's K2 meters (the sense electromagnetic fields) started to go crazy. I should point out that there is no power in the building so they could not have been influenced by bad wiring. What I found most interesting was that the audio on the video camera was also receiving interference and it was in sync with the meters spiking. So we had a bunch of unexplained things happening then suddenly some real world fear. Coyotes. A large pack of coyotes began howling very close by and it was getting closer. The building has many walls down so being inside would not offer any protection. We quietly moved on.
Watch here:
Finally, here is a good example of why it is important to be skeptical of all evidence. On our third visit we were accompanied by a TV crew, We had a host, producer and camera guy. At one point we left the host alone in a room for a few minutes to conduct a solo vigil. She was scared, as I would be. In fact at one point I had to walk back through the building alone to get extra batteries for my flashlight. I don't mind admitting it was scary and I felt like running. Anyway, she did fine.
It was after that that the producer discovered a voice message on his phone from an unknown caller. The message was the sound of screaming and moaning. Then the host checked her phone and also had a message. Hers was even creepier. She was scared by it. Genuinely scared.
Now as paranormal investigators, what do we think? Well, it was creepy and made for a good story, but that is not evidence of paranormal activity. What was it then? There are people that say spirits can leave messages of voice mail or answering machines. Could it really be that? Our first thought was that it was a prank. In fact the host also thought so, she thought we might have played a prank on her. We didn't. We wouldn't. When she realized that none of us had her cell number she was even more scared.
If it was a prank, who could or would have done it? The most likely culprit would be one of her co-hosts. One is a total skeptic and often makes fun of her for believing in such things.
Over the next week we tried to figure out who may have done it. I questioned her co-host and he denied it. He even offered some other possible suspects.
At this point we looked a this piece of evidence as something cool and creepy but not likely paranormal.
Watch here:
A few days later, her co-host admitted on air that he did prank her. She seemed a little annoyed at this.
Much of the team were also upset that a prank was pulled.
This represents one of the big problems with anything paranormal. Those that believe or want to believe tend to be very eager to accept any evidence as proof of the paranormal without question. They get upset when someone tries to debunk that evidence or if that evidence is proved false.
Proo(f) always questions the evidence. Whether it is an anomaly on video, an EVP (electronic voice phenomena), a photo or like in this case, a voice mail, we question it. We look for the real world and more likely explanation first. We suspected it was a prank and it turned out that it was. I think it is a great example of doing a paranormal investigation right, that we questioned the evidence and made no conclusion one way or the other until we had proof.
Be sure to check out www.proofcanada.com
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