This past weekend I was down in southern Ohio for a paranormal investigation. I mentioned in a post last fall that Kylan and I are investigators (our team is Ohio Pirates). We don’t get as much opportunity to indulge our paranormal interests as we used to, but we do try to get out once or twice a year to someplace interesting. So I thought I’d share a few details on what an investigation entails.

On Friday night we were down at the Sedamsville Rectory. Built in the late 1800s, it’s a great building located next to the now-abandoned Our Lady of Perpetual Help church. The rectory has two main floors, an attic and a basement. The history of the building is a bit dark and includes child abuse (yes, by a priest) and dog fighting (during a period the building was abandoned). There have been reports over the years of negative activity in the building and one of the owners stays away as much as he can because of what he’s experienced there.

Nothing dark occurred while we investigated and the rectory did not even have a heavy feeling while we were there. (It’s something you get used to picking up on when you do investigations.) One investigator was using an Ovilus, a device that coverts surrounding energy into words, and we got a couple of interesting hits including “unholy” and “eerie” – and we hadn’t been asking questions at the time. We also had an interesting group session in the basement using a laser grid, spirit box and flashlight.

For those who don’t know much about how investigations are conducted, there are typically group and individual sessions using different equipment in the hopes that something will trigger a response from whatever may be in the area. In the basement we set up a laser grid – it’s the size of a small flashlight but emits hundreds of dots of light and assists in making movement more visible in the dark. We also had a spirit box, essentially a hacked radio that creates white noise but allows words to come through at times. And the easiest to acquire, most basic piece of investigation equipment: a flashlight. In particular, it should be a Mag light (or similar) that turns on and off with a twist – you twist it so it’s almost on then set it in a spot where it won’t be disturbed.

During our basement session we got a few words on the spirit box, most sounding like they came from a young boy. At one point we ask him to yell something so we would know he was there and we got a very clear greeting in reply. There was never, however, any movement within the laser grid, meaning nothing manifested itself physically. But after about 10 or 15 minutes of asking questions, the flashlight came on. It would dim and brighten as we tried to convince whoever had turned it on to turn it off. And after probably 10 minutes, it did turn off, then a few minutes later came on again. None of us touched the flashlight the entire time, nor was the surface it was on disturbed in any way – so it’s something we can’t explain.

So that’s just a tiny glimpse of what happens during an investigation. We still have a lot of hours of audio recordings to go through on this one, so there might be more to share (which will be posted on the Ohio Pirates Facebook page). But trust me, it’s nowhere near as exciting as they show on television – it’s mostly a lot of hours of sitting in the dark talking to yourself. But every once in a while, something cool comes out of it.