A Lesson in Screening Haunted Home Requests

Why Paranormal Investigators Should Do Their Own Homework

The ghost hunting team I'm a member of had a profoundly horrid experience two weeks ago. We were asked by another local ghost team to join them on a private home investigation as they were short a few members and we'd worked together in the past. It all sounded great in the beginning. 

The house had two occupants and a bevy of odd occurrences. We were enticed by stories of cupboard doors opening at the same time every morning, only to close again in front of the occupants' eyes when they entered the kitchen, perfume-y smells with no natural explanation, and missing objects appearing weeks later in obvious places. Our team, Mystic Ghost, discussed it, made arrangements with the other team, and planned to go on a Saturday night.

Our first mistake? 

We trusted the other team to check out the location, interview the occupants before the investigation and generally make sure everyone involved appeared sane, harmless, and didn't expect us to exorcise their parakeet.

Our second mistake? 

We ignored our gut feelings on the day of the investigation. No one wanted to go. From the Thursday prior to the investigation, I wanted to back out. I didn't have a good reason, so I kept my mouth shut. One team member, Michelle, developed a bad stomachache on the way to my house, and another member, Ben, was sure it was going to be a disaster. We gave each other pep talks, and still ended up leaving my house late.

The four of us met the two members of the other ghost team near the haunted home, where we learned that one of them had such an upset stomach she was chugging Pepto-Bismol. We should have headed home. Instead, we got in our cars and headed to the site, which should have been about five minutes away. It ended up taking us about twenty minutes, because the woman in the lead car, who had been by the site an hour before, got lost. She lives in the same small town where the haunted home was; it was just plain bizarre. While we were driving around lost, one of our members, Wendy, pointed at a house we were driving by and said "Dear God, please don't let it be that house."

You guessed it. Ten minutes later we were parking at that house.