Ghost Investigator Volume 5: From Beyond the Grave
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About this ebook
The fifth book in the Ghost Investigator series of true stories of haunted places. Author and ghost investigator Linda Zimmermann is at the site of a double murder on the anniversary of the crime and experiences the sound of a dying breath, delves into a bizarre haunting that may be the result of a body buried in the basement, and encounters a spirit that tries to leave in her car. As one reader has stated, "If you want to know what it feels like to be on a real ghost hunt, read these books!"
Linda Zimmermann
Earning a B.S. in Chemistry and a Master's in English Literature made it obvious early on that Linda had wide-ranging interests. After working as a research scientist throughout the 1980s, she decided to pursue her real passion—-writing. Today, Linda is the author of over 30 books, is a popular speaker, and has made numerous appearances on television and radio. She has received honors and awards for her books on American history, and has lectured at the Smithsonian, West Point, and Gettysburg. Astronomy and the space program are also favorite topics for her books, articles, and lectures. In addition, Linda has appeared at major science fiction conventions for her science fiction and zombie novels, and is internationally known for her "Ghost Investigator" series of books and UFO books and film.
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Ghost Investigator Volume 5 - Linda Zimmermann
Introduction
The popularity of all things paranormal, and ghosts in particular, appears to have greatly increased in the past few years. As evidence of this, I was recently in Gettysburg where you can’t walk half a block without someone trying to sell you a ticket to a ghost tour. And where battlefields were once deserted after dark, you’ll now find crowds of people hoping to catch a glimpse of a phantom soldier.
This is all well and good, but it does present some problems. For example, one group of people at the Triangular Field in Gettysburg was conducting an investigation
in a rather unique manner. They were sitting in lawn chairs while music played on their boom box and every once in a while someone would lift a camera over his head and snap a picture of the field.
They seemed quite pleased with the results of their armchair investigation, too, as they kept announcing the number of paranormal orbs
they were photographing. The fact that the air was filled with lightning bugs, countless other insects, dust, cigarette smoke, and that there were dozens of people and multiple flashes from other cameras didn’t faze them. They were convinced they were capturing images of the spirits of Civil War soldiers, accompanied by appropriate patriotic background music, and nothing was going to convince them otherwise.
Therein lies the dilemma—while it’s great that so many people have enthusiastically embraced the possibilities of a spirit world, a whole lot of nonsense is now flooding the field of paranormal research. It’s so tempting to think that every fuzzy orb on your flash photo is a ghost, or that scratchy sound on your old cassette recorder is a voice from the grave, but resist temptation and examine the evidence critically and honestly!
For example, orbs have bothered me for years. If you have read any of the other books from my Ghost Investigator series, you know that I have included photos of those fuzzy, round spots, but that I have often questioned their validity as evidence of the paranormal. I didn’t know what they were, and no one had been able to provide a rational explanation. Then a few months ago, I found an interesting article on the Fujifilm website. There was a picture of a teddy bear in a chair, with several classic fuzzy white orbs
around it.
This was not a haunted teddy bear the Fuji experts had photographed. This was an example of a common problem caused by, Flash reflections from floating dust particles.
The explanation went on to say:
"There is always a certain amount of dust floating around in the air. You may have noticed this at the movies when you look up at the light coming from the movie projector and notice the bright sparks floating around in the beam.
In the same way, there are always dust particles floating around nearby when you take pictures with your camera. When you use the flash, the light from the flash reflects off the dust particles and is sometimes captured in your shot.
Of course, dust particles very close to the camera are blurred since they are not in focus, but because they reflect the light more strongly than the more distant main subject of the shot, that reflected light can sometimes be captured by the camera and recorded on the resulting image as round white spots. So these dots are the blurred images of dust particles.
You can reproduce this problem relatively easily by taking a picture right after you put away goods that create a lot of dust, such as feather bedding. In actual photography, this problem frequently arises in shots taken at construction sites, etc. It may also occur when it is raining or snowing. Compact cameras in which the flash and the lens are close together are particularly susceptible to this problem."
Do I now think that every suspicious spot on a photograph is dust? No, but this illustrates how important it is to exhaust all rational avenues before rushing headlong down the paranormal highway. All of the evidence at a scene needs to be considered, and things such as orbs and EVPs (electronic voice phenomena) can easily be deceiving.
All this being said, I am very excited about this past year’s investigations. The cases have been extraordinary, and I have personally experienced some mind-blowing phenomena. I have also been fortunate to meet psychic Cyra Greene, who has been able to add a fascinating new dimension to some of these cases.
I hope you will enjoy reading these adventures From Beyond the Grave…
The Paranormal Passenger
As a rule, I only take the time to investigate a place if the owner agrees to allow me to write about it. Then again, even a ghost hunter’s rules are made to be broken, and I will occasionally look into a case with no expectation of ever publishing the results.
In November of 2004, I went to check out a house where a woman had died under tragic circumstances. While several family members had since experienced unusual phenomena, they did not want any details of the case to be revealed. I respected their desire for privacy, and was fully resolved not to write a word about it. However, something so remarkable happened that the owner agreed to allow me to relate that part of the story, and that part alone. (So please, don’t even try to ask me for any other details on this case!)
I had concluded my investigation, and the owner—let’s call her Mary—and I walked to the driveway. My car was parked on the left side of the driveway, and Mary’s SUV was parked on the right, with the front of both cars facing the house. As she went to the passenger side of her vehicle to get a piece of paper to write down her email address, I opened my passenger door. I put my large case of equipment on the seat and gave the door a shove to close it.
Suddenly, from inside my car, came a loud, but muffled sound of a woman crying out! My brain had a split second of disconnect, and I tried to grab the door, thinking that someone was yelling because I was about to close her arm or leg in the door. The door slammed shut, and reality slammed against my brain—there wasn’t anyone in my car! Yet the voice was so loud, so insistent, so terribly close!
My head was reeling and I staggered backwards. It was like all my neurons were firing at once, trying to make some sense out of what had just happened. This was no computer-enhanced, faint, fuzzy whispering EVP on a scratchy cassette tape. This was a clear, loud voice within two or three feet of my face!
Could there be any logical explanation? My mind raced to find one.
The tape recorders! That must be it, one of the tape recorders had somehow turned itself on. I pulled open the car door, yanked the zipper on the case and tossed equipment aside searching for the tape recorder I had used on the investigation. It was not on. My heart and head were pounding. Wait, I thought, I had brought another tape recorder, and even though I hadn’t used it, perhaps it held the answer. I pulled it out of a side compartment, but found that it, too, was not on.
Standing there with a silent tape recorder in each hand, staring at them in disbelief, I fought with the idea that I had only imagined the voice. But no, it was definitely not my imagination. With no more than thirty seconds passing from hearing the voice to standing there with the tape recorders, I thought to call out to Mary.
Did you hear that?
I shouted.
Yes, you mean the woman’s voice? Where did it come from?
she replied from about twenty-five feet away, on the far side of the large SUV.
"From inside my car," I stated, the stress in my voice clearly evident.
Mary hurried over with a stunned look, and explained that she also had heard the woman’s voice call out, and at first thought it must be someone in the neighborhood, although it seemed too loud and too close. She saw the tape recorders in my hands, and asked if one of them could have been the source of the voice. I explained that when I opened the case, I found that both of them were off. We further realized that even if the recorder we had been using had somehow switched on, it would have to have been rewound first in order to play back any sound.
The idea was farfetched—my tape recorder managed to rewind itself, then play back a brief section of tape, then turn itself off, all in the span of a few seconds? But then again, a disembodied voice in my car was not any more likely a scenario. Yet, I had to explore every possibility, so I hit the play button to see if the tape had rewound. There was the silence of blank tape. I then rewound the tape for a few seconds, hit play again, and heard the exact end of the recording I had made during the investigation—proving that the tape had not rewound itself, thereby eliminating it as the source of the voice.
As further proof, I rewound the tape back to a section where my voice and Mary’s were clear, put it back in the case the way it had been, turned the volume up to its highest level and closed the case. Although our voices were audible, they didn’t even have half the volume of the loud woman’s voice we heard, and Mary never would have been able to hear it from the distance she was standing behind her SUV.
That