Not All Ghost Stories Have Ghosts

As I have said before, I was on a professionally organized Paranormal Investigation team. We conducted pre and post investigational procedures and such. I am posting this as sometimes our stories get a little intense and we just have to step back and laugh at ourselves a little and not take things too seriously.

In my observations, many investigations at peoples houses reveal many interesting things. A lot of people that see ghots tend to have things that sort of invite the concept in and create doubt at the legitimacy of a real positive haunting vs. Over active imaginations or (even stranger), the want to be haunted.

Sometimes the concept of someone being haunted is simply someone that has a very over active imagination that simple things like shadows on miniblinds cause fear. Often times we find people on medication tend to see things more than other people. Contributors to the paranoia include finding books on shelves of ghost stories, or even several seasons of Ghost Hunters or (my favorite), someones been using an Ouija board. Good grief.

Also, note, people who tend to be pack rats and hoarders also claim to be haunted. Not sure what the correlation is, but it happened enough times for me to take mental note of it.

... Just sayin'...

So upon pre investigations, we keep our eyes open for all contributors and ask many questions.

On this one pre investigation, our team went to the apartment of this family. Reportings of shadows in the front room and something growling in the childs closet.

As we sat in the front room talking, someone walked by outside. The blinds were those verticle ones so when someone walks by going, let's say, to the left, the shadows go to the right. You look out the window and of course nobody is walking that directly so they kind of flip out. So we were able to knock that issue into the dirt. It didn't look like this was going to be a very good investigation and I was doubtful about any paranormal activity.

So while our lead investigator and one of our team members sat in the front room, myself and another investigator walked down the hallway to take simple readings and make some notes. As I walked down the hallway with my equipment out taking readings of everything my toys would allow, I walked past the sons bedroom. The other investigator ahead of me with her clip board scribbling readings I called off.

Suddenly, I heard a growl. My heart went into my throat. I wanted to scream like a girl and hop onto my fellow investigators head and run run run away!

Instead, because I was a big bad ghost hunter, I swallowed my heart and froze - only my hand dug into the fellow investigators shoulder like a steel claw of death. Luckily she heard it too. We stopped like deer that just smelled a hunter. I turned and walked into the bedroom and my co investigator stated we heard the growl. As we sat on the bed facing the overly cluttered closet full of unfortunately treated toys, I felt that if I were one of them, I'd growl too. We poked around looking for Godzilla or something that might have gone off. Nothing. I retreated back to the foot of the bed, unsure of what was going on. I almost jumped out of my socks when I heard it again. This time though, I was able to fix on the sound. I looked out the window next to the closet.

What was going on was there was a trash bin outside the window. It was cinder block on three sides with a grate doorway. The large steel trash bin goes inside with the doors shut so the trash is hidden - supposedly. Being the 'not so high class' apartment complex this was, the trash bin had been left ouside of the enclosure. This created a hollow space and when this one particularly riced out car came by and the driver released just right, it made this lovely growl that echoed into this trash bin area. In doing so, the bin was angled perfectly enough to somehow shoot the echo so it sounded like it came from the closet. It happened three more times while we sat there.

Now, had I reacted and screamed and ran like I wanted to, I believe the outcome of this situation might have been a lot more different. Good thing I made myself hold it together and look into it instead of pulling my skirt up over my head and skittering out the front door!