A Peek into the Spirit World: My First Investigation

On October 10th, at 9:30 pm, the Plymouth State Paranormal Research team went into Samuel Reed Hall to find evidence of supernatural beings here on campus. Armed with the proper equipment, a stellar team, and open minds, we tried to take a peek into the spirit world. 

It was a chilly night when we first arrived at Samuel Reed Hall, we met out front of the building and discussed a little about what we would be doing throughout the night. After we went in and set up our “basecamp”, we got all our equipment and started our investigation. 

Our night started very eventfully, as we set up to prepare for the night's investigation our EMF (Electromagnetic Field) meter started to indicate that there was a possible ghost in the area. Julia Parker, a student here at PSU and a new member to the team, said, “I've never seen an EMF detector before and it started going off a lot.” Members of the team started talking to the EMF meter, asking questions like, “are you a male”, or “did you die here”, all questions can be answered with a yes or no. 

I do wonder though, what are some of the things that could have given us false evidence? Electromagnetic Fields can be given off by moving electrical currents, or things like microwaves, televisions, projectors, and computers. So, is it possible that some of the answers that we got were from something as mundane as a computer, or did we really communicate with a ghost? 

There were some other gadgets used throughout the night that helped the team investigate possible spirits, one of which was a device called a “spirit box.” A spirit works by scanning through AM radio frequencies in search of EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon). While using this we heard a few different things come from the spirit box, but what most caught my attention was that any answers that we got through EMF where matched by yes or no answers in the spirit box. However, Parker did bring up a good point saying, “I heard the word run, I also heard the word Socks, which I knew the Red Socks were playing so we might have just gotten some radio signals.” That’s something that I am keeping an open mind about because as a skeptic I don’t believe in ghosts, but could multiple corresponding answers just be mere coincidence?

One of the stranger things that I noticed was that some of the investigators had physical reactions to spirits throughout the night. Lauren Pearce, a student at Plymouth State University and seasoned paranormal investigator, said, “I noticed in the heritage commons room I got a headache and became very on edge. Which usually doesn’t happen for me.” Another investigator, Sarah Lempicki felt something touch her saying “I was taking pictures of a hallway when I felt something grab my head, at first I thought I had just touched a wire or a pipe or something, but when I looked around I wasn’t close enough to anything for that to happen. It didn’t feel like that either, it felt like a hand grabbed my head.”

The final thing that caught my attention that night was as we were packing up to leave we started to hear a series of bangs that shook the entire building. At first, it sounded like one of the investigators was hitting a pipe in the hallway below Samuel Reed Hall. After a review of the footage of what was going on in the hallway at that time, the investigators in the tunnels not only didn’t hit the pipe, the investigators were actually leaving the hallway. 

My first investigation was interesting because I hoped that it would answer some questions about spirits. Honestly, I hoped that I would be able to find proof or disprove is all together. Instead, though I only have more questions than when I began, questions like why would a ghost talk to us, or how do we know that the EMF meter is legit? With all these questions and more I invite readers to follow along and take a peek into the spirit world.