Dark World: Into the Shadows with the Lead Investigator of the Ghost Adventures Crew (31 page)

question I get all the time is why do I continue
to do this? After all the stuff I’ve been through—all the attacks, nightmares, sickness, and near-possessions—why is paranormal investigation something that I can’t stop doing? Again, I like to look at things from a different angle. Instead of asking why I do this, I ask everyone else why they
don’t
do it. Why doesn’t everyone want to unlock the secrets of the universe and discover what’s on the other side? Why isn’t everyone interested to know what happens when we die?

I think there are people like me who like to explore the great unknown and just find different ways of doing it. Some explore space, the depths of the ocean, or race to the north and south poles on sleds. Some explore the inner workings of the brain. I explore the world in between worlds and try to chart a course for those who can’t find their own way. I try to communicate with those who are lost, confused, and angry. And I try to find ways to protect those who are being victimized by evil. That’s my calling in life and what I will continue to do until I can’t anymore.

So what does the future hold for the field of paranormal investigation as a whole? Here’s what I think can (or will) happen:

I envision a day when EVPs can be used for law enforcement. As it is, police departments are generally skeptical of mediums, psychics, and ghost hunters even though we provide them with some great evidence. I think one day they will not only accept what we give them, but also make it a standard part of their police investigations.

Crazy? Well, how about this case—in 2007 a group was conducting a paranormal investigation in upstate New York when they captured several voices and a struggle on their digital recorders. It was clearly a fight between two people that sounded very desperate. It turned out that this particular room had been the location of a murder over a hundred years earlier, so it’s possible that they captured residual energy from that moment. Let’s imagine for a moment that a name had also come through on that EVP like “Stop Colonel Mustard!” Could that be used one day in a court of law? I think it will be.

Remember the Villisca Axe Murder House? While investigating it, we asked “who killed you?” and got a response that was “Andy,” the name of one of the suspects in the killings that occurred there. Think about the implications of that. Is it possible that someday we can just ask a spirit who killed them? Will we be able to put a spirit on the witness stand in a court of law? Think about how dramatically crime would drop if everyone knew the spirits of the dead were watching and could identify them in a crime.

Of course for that to occur, the communication between the living and dead would have to be very good. Much better than it is now. If we could communicate flawlessly with spirits, then I also see a day when we actually help people cross over to their final destination. I think we’ll be able to provide a spirit closure so they can be at peace and move on. That sounds like an ambitious goal, but just two hundred years ago medicine had no answers for polio, scurvy, chicken pox, and scarlet fever. Now they’ve been virtually eradicated by hard-working scientists and breakthrough immunizations. I like to believe in human ingenuity and creativity.

Visual means of making contact are getting better and better all the time. We’re constantly trying new ways to capture apparitions like full-spectrum cameras, infrared cameras, and ultraviolet cameras. I don’t think we’ll ever find a spectrum of light that makes our world like the movie
Thirteen Ghosts
, where the characters had special glasses they wore that illuminated all the spirits around them, but we’re getting closer to the time when they just can’t hide from us anymore.

I think one day we will discover the best weather conditions that enhance paranormal activity and will be able to predict when it will happen. I stated earlier that I feel that the conditions have to be right to capture an ectoplasm mist or a truly paranormal being. The climate, humidity, moon phase, energy source, portals, and any other variables that we don’t understand have to be in place and in the right sequence. It’s like the numbers of a combination lock being in line, and once they are, we get a peek into the world beyond. When spirits have these variables in line and an energy source, they appear and disappear as quick as a flash of lightning in the desert, so discovering the conditions that allow them to manifest is a huge step toward communicating with them. I think one day we will.

It’s one of the reasons paranormal science still involves a lot of guesswork—we still do not fully understand the conditions that need to be present for paranormal activity to occur. Once we do, though, we’ll be able to accurately predict when spirits will appear and might even be able to use that small window to communicate with them. Imagine the things we will learn when that day comes.

I see a day when we have a central location to post all paranormal evidence so we can compare notes and detect patterns of paranormal activity. Almost every field of science has one, so for us to be taken seriously we need a central research center for everyone to bring their evidence, compare notes, and make new discoveries in the field. If we had a “Bagans Research Center” (hey, I can dream big) that held every EVP, recording, picture, video, etc, then we could make real breakthroughs in paranormal exploration.

I envision a day when some (not all) religious disagreements are put to rest by paranormal discovery. This is one thing that many will disagree with me on, but think about this—what does the existence or denial of the undead prove or disprove about religion? Let’s say we accomplish our mission and find an undeniable piece (or group) of evidence that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt the existence of spirits that are either caught between the physical and spiritual world or who just refuse to stay quiet. What does that say about religion?

Some people will deny it no matter how good it is. Others will embrace it no matter how weak it is. Either way, proving that the afterlife exists can stop several religious disagreements and may ease some religious tensions. We can finally know what “moving on” really means.

In the future I want to plan an experiment where I bait a demon into finding me, kind of like a really weird version of hide-and-go-seek. I want to make it known where and when I will be to a demon and see if he shows up.

Crazy? Here’s why. We humans have learned to communicate instantly with each other, so why can’t they? I said before that I really believe the demons at Bobby Mackey’s somehow communicated with the demons in Las Vegas and that’s why they each taunted me in the same way. Is it possible that they’re using our own technology against us? Do our cell phones and the Internet make it easy for these spirits to track and travel to where we are?

Think about this—if all the information flying around the world every second were gnats and you could see them, the skies would be blackened out completely. The terabytes of information flying through the air at any given time are immense. There are literally highways of energy and information surrounding us all the time. Remember earlier when we discussed how quantum physics believes completely unconnected places in the universe can actually share information with each other? Why can’t demons learn to do the same?

That’s what I think the future holds for our field. I’ve invited some of the best people in the paranormal field to comment on their visions of the future as well.

Gary Galka
Electrical Engineer and inventor of the Mel Meter.

I would not have acquired the awareness and growth in my life without experiencing the trauma of losing my daughter, Mel. Given this opportunity, I would love to focus and harness my thoughts on ways in which technology, like the RT-EVP, could help loved ones connect with each other and reach some level of acceptance and closure . . . thus allowing them to heal and move on with their lives. I can tell you that “knowing” that your child is safe and happy does help you to heal at an accelerated pace.

The TV shows, events and yes, even Zak’s book have an important impact on many people. As people begin to understand and become more aware of the paranormal, they’ll start to view life from the eyes of the soul. The applied technology created for paranormal investigators and researchers will eventually open the door to many ordinary people. It will provide them with the opportunity to view life and death from a completely new perspective that encourages acceptance, strengthens our spirituality, and enables them to reflect on our true reality and that which makes up our vast consciousness.

Mark and Debby Constantino
Paranormal investigators with 20 years of experience specializing in EVP (
www.spirits-speak.com
).

Mark Constantino
—A few years ago, a young college woman was abducted from a friend’s home and found dead in a field a few weeks later. Debby and I went to the site where the body was found and conducted an EVP session. Within minutes we received an EVP that said “Mom, Mom I’m drunk.” We also recorded an EVP that said “Truck sold” when we asked about information on the person that committed this crime.

Days later we walked into the Reno police department and said, “You’ll think we’re crazy, but we believe we have some evidence in this case to share with you.” We expected to be dismissed, but in the end we felt we had captured the voice of the victim and, as Debby saw it, if we didn’t do the right thing with this EVP, we weren’t worthy of receiving it. Whether they thought we were crazy or not wasn’t important. Solving the crime was all that mattered. When the killer was eventually caught, it turned out that he had indeed sold his truck, just as the EVP suggested.

You would think law enforcement officials would want to receive help from paranormal investigators when solving crimes like this, and they have been turning to psychics for years. We would like to see a day when EVP will be utilized as well. Will this skepticism change in the future? I hope so, but I doubt it. We have to become a fully credible field and be taken seriously as a science first. That’s not easy. I hope to see a day when paranormal evidence, like the EVPs we came up with, will be admissible in court. But first, guys like Bill Chappell and Gary Galka will have to continue creating new ways to better communicate with the other side—ways that make them more reliable and consistent. We have to get over the credibility issue that plagues paranormal research. We have to hone the science to make it part of a detective’s kit. That might take more people coming forward as we did who aren’t concerned about judgements people may have about them, and want to share their tangible evidence with local law enforcement. Cold cases are usually completely exhausted, so local police departments will take any break they can catch, even if it means listening to us.

But it shouldn’t be that way. I want to see a day when a permanent paranormal investigator is on every police department’s staff. Debby sees a day when the communication between this world and the next is so good that law enforcement just asks the dead spirit who committed the crime. I hope she’s right, but I think that will take a long time and then there’s always the matter of the courts. You can’t call a dead person to the witness stand.