HUNTING HAUNTINGS

Out the car window, I can't see much more than moonlight as it flashes between the treetops. The crescent moon is veiled in clouds, creating an eerie, silver glow around it that does little to illuminate the pitch-dark night. We have been driving through the woods for the past 15 minutes, and the road in front of us seems to snake endlessly onward into the dark. It is a storybook night for a ghost hunt. I'm riding with Steve Kuhn, a team leader and public relations director for the Bloomington chapter of the Indiana Ghost Trackers, and we are on the way to a well-known cemetery in the area, at least to those who are familiar with local folklore. As we continue to drive into the woods, Kuhn tells me the story of the place we are about to "hunt." According to local legend, years ago a woman lost her baby and it was buried in this cemetery next to a tree. As a way of remembering the child, her husband cut down the tree and made it into a chair. As the legend goes, the apparition of a lady in black can be seen on certain nights, sitting on the stump of her lost baby's grave. Tonight I am accompanying the IGT on their pursuit of spirits in this place. During my orientation to the practice of ghost hunting, Interim Director Mary Ellen Hammock tells me that cameras and tape recorders are the most useful tools in tracking ghosts, as they don't usually manifest themselves in forms detectable to the human eye or ear. These so-called "ghosts" are most commonly seen as "orbs" in photographs -- little white spheres that seem to have no explainable origin. Hammock stresses the importance of ruling out all other possibilities, such as dust on the camera lens or breath in cold air, before labeling something as a ghost. "If it's something that you don't know where it came from, you've eliminated all those possibilities, then odds are it's paranormal in nature," she says. "I believe it's a spirit's energy and that energy travels better in circles." Even more bizarre than orbs is EVP, or electronic voice phenomenon. Hammock says this is when ghosts communicate vocally on tape, even when they can't be heard. Before heading out to the cemetery, she plays me a few examples of this. On one recording, a wicked-sounding woman is supposedly whispering, "Somebody wants our money," under a conversation at a diner. Though I have no way of knowing whether or not the voice was doctored into the recording, I definitely heard it. As a journalist, I'm naturally skeptical about stuff like this. Up until I actually got in the car, I hadn't really thought much about my own fear or actually encountering any ghosts. But driving 15 minutes into the middle of nowhere and hearing stories of ladies in black has me a little freaked out. To make matters worse, I had been warned that ghosts will often follow people home from hunts. "It does happen. Occasionally a ghost will attach itself to somebody," Kuhn says. "Maybe they like them, maybe they see themselves in them or there's something familiar there. But they just leave with you -- follow you home and stick around your house for a few days. It's a very strange thing to have happen." Hammock told me to make sure and pray to whatever higher being I believe in to protect myself from the spirits at the cemetery, and that stuck with me. "It's up to you whether or not you want to believe it," she says, "But all I can say as a leader is that you need to be open minded enough to protect yourself, because living in denial does not heal." About five minutes later, we arrive at the cemetery. The entrance was marked by little more than a small, stone gate barred off by a rusty road block. As we step out of the car, chills run up my back and I begin to shiver, though I try to convince myself it's just the cold. The night is incredibly frigid -- 18 degrees, three with windchill -- and there is nothing to light our way except the shrouded moon and a few flashlights. Of course I didn't think of bringing my own flahslight, so I am left to rely on the light from my camera's LCD display for navigation. Kuhn opens his trunk and takes out a briefcase containing several pieces of equipment he uses to track ghosts. He has a tape recorder with a microphone (very similar to my own), two walkie-talkies, a rather advanced-looking thermometer and an electromagnetic field (EMF) reader. Tonight, I have the pleasure of operating the EMF reader on our hunt. All geared up and ready to go, I now must sign a waiver stating that I cannot hold IGT legally responsible for any psychological damage I may incur during our hunt. Psychological damage? What the hell am I getting myself into? I sign anyway -- no turning back now. At around 8:30 p.m., the nine "ghost hunters" gather and begin to walk past the roadblock and follow the gravel path that leads to the cemetery. My eyes are still adjusting to the dark as we approach the cemetery, but once they do I can see that it is basically a small clearing in the middle of the woods. The tombstones, of which most are very old and decayed, are arranged in a circle around a cluster of tress. We stop to take a few digital pictures of the tombstones as we work our way back through the clearing. "Never at rest," reads one tombstone. Before too long we come across a large stump in the clearing, but Kuhn informs me that the stump from the legend had been dug up years ago. Still, looking at the stump seems to make the chill night grow colder, and I don't want to linger too long around it. For the next 10 minutes or so, we wander around the graveyard taking pictures. I pull the EMF reader out of my pocket and wave the little sensor at arms length in front of me, making me feel like Egon from "Ghostbusters." I know I won't get any feedback, but my curiosity compels me to play with this high-tech toy anyway. "If there's a definite presence there, most people have at least the slightest bit of psychic ability to where they can pick up on (it)," Kuhn tells me. I'm sure not feeling anything but cold out here, and I'm not getting any orbs in my pictures either. When everyone starts to share my sentiment about the lack of spirits with us tonight, Hammock gathers all of us in a circle and tells us not to move or speak. We're going to try and record our own proof of EVP. She instructs those of us with tape recorders to turn them on. Then she proceeds to call upon the spirits to communicate with us. "We are here to try to capture your voices on tape," Hammock calls. "We ask that you please come to us. We are here only out of respect. We'd like to prove that you exist and speaking to us is one way we accomplish this. We ask that you lower your vibrations and your frequencies and try to converse with us on tape. We're going to ask you a series of questions. Feel free to intercede and answer at any time or pipe in with whatever you want to say, but please try to stay respectful." This is crazy. What the hell am I doing traipsing around a cemetery on a Saturday night? Do I honestly think I'm going to hear a ghost on my tape recorder? "First of all, are you upset with our presence here?" Hammock asks the ghosts. "What is your name? Why are you here?" For the next several minutes she asks a series of similar questions before finally asking if it would be okay for us to return later and thanking them. A moment of silence hangs in the air before low murmuring about "next time" fills it and we all shuffle quietly back to the cars. I can't help but be disappointed. All this, and no ghosts or spirits. It was what I had expected, but deep down I hoped differently. I'm not saying the members of IGT are crazy, though. I'm just saying that, even after my own ghost hunting experience, I can't fully buy into the "ghost" thing. "You don't walk into a cemetery and have weird stuff happen to you," Hammock says. "The majority of the time you don't. It's a very boring hobby. But that one time, after 10 hours of sitting there, one thing happens and it's so worth it." Maybe so, but I guess I'll have to keep on hunting to see for myself. *** As I suspected, I didn't hear any unexplainable voices while listening to my recording from that night in the cemetery. I guess the ghosts didn't have anything to say. But a few days later, while transcribing my interview tape from dinner with Kuhn, I did pick up on something that made me rewind the tape and listen again. Call me crazy, but after several listens, and after playing the tape for my friends and coworkers, I don't think I can deny the precense of a whisper under the conversation saying, "I know what you're thinking. We know what you want." Of course, I can't jump to any conclusions, but I can definitely say there's something there. Take a listen for yourself at www.idsnews.com/weekend. Maybe there is something out there after all...