Dark World: Into the Shadows with the Lead Investigator of the Ghost Adventures Crew (2 page)

I’ve had many experiences with the afterlife
and believe there are forces of nature that we simply do not yet understand. I know that ghosts exist. I know that spirits of the dead roam the physical world. I know that there’s another realm beyond death that cannot be ignored, which is why I’ve dedicated my life to understanding it. The irony is that I was a skeptic myself until a paranormal experience changed my life irrevocably. I have now transformed into a sensitive; a person who is able to detect when spirits are present. It’s a skill that’s evolved over hundreds of paranormal investigations and has taught me that the human body is the best means of paranormal detection. I’ve become a fine-tuned instrument of spiritual sensitivity.

Although I’ve made believers
out of many people, by no means do I want a following of sycophants and gullibles; in fact, I respect your right to question everything. There are those who will not believe in the afterlife, no matter what I provide as evidence in these pages or on TV. Those are two-dimensional mediums that cannot convey the senses of touch, taste, or smell and are limited in realistically capturing sights and sounds. That’s why I like to take people on investigations personally to let them feel the forces at work there. Nothing can replace the feeling of actually being there when a spirit makes its presence known.

Many people are taught from an early age
that the idea of spirits walking the Earth is impossible, and therefore won’t even entertain the prospect of it, despite the evidence. You might be one of those people; if so, I only ask that you open your mind and realize that there are many forces on Earth that we simply don’t yet understand. I’ll be the first to admit that not all of those forces are paranormal, and could be perfectly explainable by physical and cognitive means. But before you go hiding behind the walls of scientific dogma, let’s remember that science was once convinced that the world was flat and disbelievers were burned at the stake as heretics. Science is continually evolving, and the goal of paranormal investigators should be to augment scientific discovery to better understand the world around us. Scientific researchers readily admit that they only understand about 25 percent of the world around us, and only about 50 percent of the human brain. That leaves a lot to be discovered and explained, including the paranormal.

I’m not writing this book from the standpoint
of someone who wants to convince you that the paranormal exists. Instead, I want to present the evidence for you and let you draw your own conclusions. Although I’m a believer in the afterlife, it’s only through hard work and determined investigation that we as a people can endeavor to discover which side of the “do ghosts exist” question is correct. For that reason, I prefer to work with scientists rather than against them. Throughout this book, I will give the skeptics their time on the pulpit to promote their position. After all, that’s only fair.

Here we go.

think all adults tend to look back
on their childhood and think they were a little strange. I’m not that naïve, so I’ll break it down into more pragmatic terms—I had be visited by a large, dark creature that didn’t look human. It rifled through my drawers and tossed my belongings around my room as I watched from under my covers. Still to this day I can draw an exact detailed sketch of what this animalistic apparition looked like.

It sounds silly and I never revealed it until I was an adult, but it happened. As a kid, I had no idea what the paranormal was and didn’t care. All I knew was a supernatural intruder visited my room, so I remained scared and motionless out of self-preservation until it left. It could have been the product of an overactive mind, a true Elemental trying to force me to leave his house, or just a mischievous elf who needed underwear. It even left me items under my pillow like some maniacal tooth fairy. Truthfully, at the time, I didn’t care what it was as long as it didn’t harm me.

Little did I know that one day the paranormal would
become
my life. But how could I know? Few children know what they want to be when they grow up, and I was no different. I was born in Washington, D.C., and moved to Clearwater, Florida, as a young child of divorce with a pacifier in my mouth and still months away from taking my first steps. I was raised by my mother and stepfather as a typical Florida beach kid; crabbing, fishing, boating, and surfing. It was a normal family for the most part. I collected football and baseball cards, read comic books (my favorite was
Ghost Rider
, ironically), was obsessed with Dracula, and had a good relationship with my older sister. My mother was an interior designer and my stepfather worked in law enforcement as a deputy chief of police.

In high school I got my first car. An ugly, four-hundred-dollar, 1982, two-toned blue Ford Fairmont with home speaker cabinets in the back seats. I knew the car would never be taken seriously, so I converted it into a beach wagon by dumping sand on the floorboards. It seemed like the right thing to do because I spent so much time at the beach. I loved surfing, but with so many surfers becoming shark snacks each year, I had a natural affinity and healthy respect for the dangers of the ocean. The thing that scared me the most about the ocean was the feeling of being out in the open water, at the mercy of something uncontrollable.

Sitting on the beach was my release, my anchor that I could always turn to when things got bad. I loved the feel of the sand, the song of the waves, and the allure of the salt water. When thunderstorms rolled in, I would head out to Dunedin beach and watch the water go from light blue and recreational to a mean, dark, sinister attitude that reflected the weather. I don’t know what it was, but watching something turn from docile to dangerous, and watching people leave while I held my ground, made me feel strong. But in addition to my anchor, these moments were also something more to me. Seeing the surface turn gray and creepy made me want to go out into the water even more than when it was blue and calming. As I’d leave the beach behind and venture out into the open water, I’d experience a whole new bag of emotions. Every time my toes touched the water, my nirvana instantly turned into my nightmare. While sitting in the murky water while everyone else ran from the beach was an adrenaline high and my moment of Zen, it also opened darkness in my mind. So you could say I’ve had a lifelong love-hate relationship with the ocean. It’s been my anchor, but not always in a good way.

A part of this dark feeling stemmed from a recurring dream. I’ve always had a vivid dream of being a deckhand on a Colonial- era ship crossing the ocean. The dream never changes. I’m never me, but rather someone else in eighteenth-century ruffled garb caught on the deck in a roaring nor’easter. Though I try to hold on, I always fall into the water and watch as the ship carries on without me. Alone and adrift I tread water as long as I can before the irresistible force of the ocean eventually drags me under and I wake in a fright.

Maybe the dream is a past-life memory. It wouldn’t surprise me, because I’ve had other past-life messages. To this day, I’m convinced I was once a gold miner. I don’t know how I feel about reincarnation, but for as long as I can remember, I have always felt a strong allure to the hearty nineteenth-century lifestyle of setting out on your own to strike it rich digging for gold. When we drove to North Carolina for family vacations, I couldn’t pass a creek or cave without wanting to jump in and start panning. I had no idea why this urge was so strong as a kid, but I felt an incredible pull to creeks and mountains. They were places where I felt I belonged. Later in life I found myself walking through Virginia City, Nevada, getting flash images of me mining. I tasted the dust from the desert and knew I had been there before. I could see my coworkers, guys with beards. I could feel the vibrations of the pickaxes hitting the walls of the mines.

Is it just coincidence that my ghost adventures began in a mining town where we captured a full-bodied apparition?

Although I now have a deeper understanding of what my dreams and visions mean, as a child, I wasn’t seeing any connection to what panning for gold and the ocean meant in my life. In high school I was still undecided on what I wanted to be. I was attracted to meteorology and broadcast journalism, but all I really knew was that I didn’t want to be labeled. I was restless and grew easily tired of just about anything—classes, girls, places, hangouts—except my friends. They were always constant. I’d like to say I had attention deficit disorder, but I got good grades and knew how to focus myself when I needed to, so that’s probably a lame excuse. I simply wasn’t the type to let life pass me by, so adventure and conquest was always in the back of my mind. I didn’t want to be Indiana Jones so much, but Batman? Absolutely.