Dark World: Into the Shadows with the Lead Investigator of the Ghost Adventures Crew (28 page)

It’s been proven that when the human brain thinks it is in danger, it can speed up its processing ability so that each second seems longer than normal. This is so it can determine what is happening and find a solution to the danger it faces. How many times have you heard someone say, “It seemed like time stood still,” referring to a catastrophic event like a car crash?

The point here is that time is relative to the situation and the observer. It may be constant to an unbiased timepiece, but to those of us with brains, it’s a flexible, constantly altering force of the universe and may be one of the reasons we experience residual hauntings.

Attachment Theory

Attachment theory is the belief that a spirit becomes attracted in some way to a living human and begins to coexist with (or even within) that person. It is believed these spirits find something comforting about someone and attach themselves to the person. Living people who share a building with the spirit of a deceased person can develop a relationship, and the spirit becomes intertwined in the life of the living. This is what happened to me in Trenton, Michigan, when I met my first ghost and she made a point of screaming my name every night.

I was fortunate that the spirit in Michigan left me alone after a week, but some spirits attach themselves and won’t leave until they’re forced to. They’ll follow you from place to place and even to your home, no matter how far away it is. At two different locations in Nevada—Virginia City and Goldfield— I’ve captured the same voice speaking to me, which leads me to believe that the ghosts of the Old Washoe and Goldfield have either attached themselves to me or know when I’m in town. After my first investigation in the Old Washoe Club in 2004, I had heard from many people that the ghosts there were calling my crew and me out by name. On several occasions paranormal investigators have captured threatening and scary EVP recordings that said things like, “Nick, Zak, they’re coming, kill.”

How does a ghost know that I’m coming to town? How does the same spirit travel 250 miles from Virginia City to Goldfield? Does this mean they are not trapped in buildings, as we commonly believe, but choose to reside there because it’s more comforting than wandering outside? Is there a network through which ghosts communicate with each other, or do they actually become part of our lives such that they can see and hear everything, including my calendar? Why do they become attracted to us and attach themselves in the first place?

I don’t want to think the spirit world is so dark and confusing that ghosts need to anchor themselves to me or anyone else to in order to have hope. I don’t want to think that the living is their beacon of light and that’s why they can’t let go of us. I believe instead that the spirits who attach themselves to the living are just confused and unaware of their surroundings and want someone to tell them what’s going on. I think they’re different from the good spirits like Anna Corbin and evil spirits like the ones in Bobby Mackey’s. Those ghosts know who they are and have decided to stay here for one reason or another.

Whatever their motivation, spirits definitely become more active when you figure out what they’re attached to. This is why trigger objects are so important. If you can figure out what entices the spirit and use that to lure them out, then you can make contact, but this is always a tricky situation. Attachments are more common among paranormal researchers because once we open the door and make it known that we’re receptive, spirits seem to flock toward the light (the “light” in this case being the sensitive paranormal investigator, like me). It’s a hazard of the job for sure and not one to be taken lightly. As I mentioned earlier, I’m convinced that spirits have followed me home from investigations and have even attacked my girlfriends in my home. I’ve had a few odd encounters with spirits who wanted to get rid of any woman that gets close to me.

Attachment theory can work in reverse too. I believe humans can also become attached to spirits and form a bond that they have difficulty breaking. Especially if the spirit is that of a loved one, humans can have a hard time tearing themselves away from a haunted building. The caretaker of the Ancient Ram Inn, Old Man Humphries, was probably under a state of oppression by the succubus that resided there or he would have moved years ago. He has an attachment not only to the spirit inside it, but the building itself, like Bobby Mackey has an attachment to his music hall.

The Burden of Proof

I’m always astounded when people ask me to prove that ghosts exist because I think in the opposite direction. I think the disbelievers need to prove that they
don’t
exist. In a courtroom the burden of proof is on the accuser, not the defender, because everyone is innocent until proven guilty. When it comes to ghosts, the world is a nonbeliever and we have to prove them wrong, which I’ve always thought is backwards.

Normally the person making the extraordinary claim has the burden of proving to the experts and to the community at large that his or her belief has more validity than the one almost everyone else accepts. You have to make your opinion known, get a following, and then gather experts who agree so you can convince the majority to support your claim over the one that they have always supported.

This has happened many times in history. For millennia the accepted theory on the creation of the world was that God made it according to the Bible. But then Charles Darwin came along and convinced a majority of people that evolution and natural selection was how we got to where we are today. The burden of proof then switched to creationists, who found themselves in the minority for the first time and still are today. It is up to creationists to show why the theory of evolution is wrong and why creationism is right, and it is not up to evolutionists to defend evolution. The rationale for this is that mountains of evidence prove that evolution is a fact and until God rides a lightning bolt into St. Peter’s Square and proves that he exists, creationism will be a minority belief.

There are people who believe that
Apollo 11
did not land on the moon in 1969, that the Holocaust never happened, and that Jim Morrison is still alive. But those people are such a small minority that they have to prove their case, since the overwhelming majority of humans believe the opposite. In other words, it is not enough to have evidence. You must convince others of the validity of your evidence. And when you are an outsider, this is the price you pay, regardless of whether you are right or wrong.

So are those of us who believe in the paranormal really the minority? A 2005 Gallup poll revealed that about three in four Americans claim at least one paranormal belief. The most popular belief is in extrasensory perception (41 percent) followed closely by belief in haunted houses (37 percent). Thirty-two percent believe that ghosts and/or the spirits of the dead can come back in certain places. When it comes to haunted houses, another 16 percent are unsure, bringing the total to 53 percent of Americans who either believe in ghosts or are unsure. That means those who do not believe (47 percent) are actually the minority. A special analysis of the data shows that even more Americans (73 percent) believe in at least one of ten listed paranormal activities.

We also have to remember that we’re talking about forces no one understands just yet. If we have to prove to a group of experts that we are right, then what makes them qualified to say that we’re wrong? How is a traditional chemist, biologist, or physicist qualified to say that there is no life after death? Have any of those disciplines proven that there is not? This is something the paranormal community will certainly struggle with for a long time.

Imprint Theory

Another paranormal theory is that energy left behind by a living person leaves an imprint on the universe the same way a paintbrush stroke leaves a mark on a canvas. We are all made of energy. We’ve established that. Now let’s take it a step further and ask, “what it’s the universe made of?” Imprint Theory states that everything in the universe is stored on a repository field the same way a computer chip stores data. This field is the very fabric of the universe and everything, including you and I, make an imprint of our energy on that field. As you read this book, you’re making an imprint on the field. Therefore when a person encounters an apparition, he or she is actually getting a glimpse of that person on the field from another time. So the receiver of the paranormal energy is accessing another level of reality.

With the proper equipment we can see a similar phenomenon in the physical world. Place your hand on a table or a wall for thirty seconds and then pull it away. With the naked eye you won’t see any physical remnant of the hand ever being there but with a thermal camera you can see the heat signature of the hand for ten to fifteen minutes until its energy dissipates. That’s twenty to thirty times longer than the original placement of the hand. By that reasoning, a person who lived fifty years could have an energy imprint on the field for three thousand years.

But why does one noise, such as a scream or a voice, leave an imprint while others don’t? Every scream, fit of laughter, and squeal of screeching tires doesn’t resonate through time and echo for years to come, so what is special about the places where card games can still be heard, prison doors slam shut, and Slag still walks the yard?

Let’s go back to the hand on the table. If the person leaving the imprint is upset, angry, or even in love, the heat signature that he leaves behind can last even longer. With emotions causing his blood to run faster, he will have a higher temperature in his hands and the impression will be deeper and last longer. So we can take that example and apply it toward the paranormal. Moments of extreme emotion can leave a longer and stronger impression on the universe than nonemotional ones.

I believe supercharged emotions have some sort of reaction with the universe that everyday life does not. We know that fear causes a release of adrenaline and gives the body the energy and strength it needs to overcome seemingly impossible obstacles (if you’re into comic books—remember Dr. Bruce Banner and his work to release the body’s inner strength that resulted in him becoming the Incredible Hulk?). When the human body is in peril and is afraid for its own survival, it becomes flooded with emotions that can leave a lasting impression on the very fabric of space and time. These emotional hotpots could validate imprint theory and be the places where paranormal activity occurs.

But imprint theory has a downside. It does a great job of explaining residual hauntings, but falls short of explaining intelligent hauntings. If paranormal activity is nothing more than the imprints of residual energies of life caught in a space-time loop, then how do you explain spirits who talk back to us and hold entire conversations? How do you explain the intelligent ghosts that know who they are and where they are? Imprint theory falls short of explaining a ghost that still has an identity.

Stone Tape and Water Tape Theory

Stone tape theory is almost the same as imprint theory. It says that certain natural materials can act like tape recordings and store the energies of the living. According to this theory, an event, usually one that involves a great deal of emotion, can somehow be captured in the stonework surrounding it and then replay like a tape recording in the future. The circumstances of release are usually inconsistent, meaning the stone lets go of the event at certain times and to certain people (and maybe even under certain weather conditions). For example an apparition of a miner running down a tunnel yelling “Cave in!” could be an event that was recorded by the rocks themselves. The energy from that event is stored and released at any given moment, resulting in a playback just like a tape recording. The spirit usually acts out the event with no regard to the living in its presence.

It’s similar to imprint theory in that it explains residual hauntings, but differs in the material that stores the energy. Imprint theory states our energies are stored on the fabric of the universe, which is composed of time and space by a process that we have yet to figure out. Stone tape theory states that certain types of rock store the energy of significant emotional and traumatic events inside them.

This theory has some validity when you remember that iron oxide is the main component of audiotapes. Iron oxide is everywhere and the Earth’s core is made mostly of iron and nickel. It has also been proven that certain crystals, like quartz, can retain information and are found almost everywhere and even within some rocks. Computer chips, used to store memory, are made from silicon, which is the second most abundant element on the planet next to oxygen and is found in almost every form of rock. So it’s not a stretch to imagine that certain natural materials can store traumatic and emotional events. The puzzle we have to solve is why these materials record only moments of increased emotional states instead of everything that happens around them.

Of course this theory has challenges. To playback the recordings on audiotapes, you need a strong electromagnetic field, which is rarely present when residual hauntings play out (unless the spirits themselves are providing the EMF). With silicon-based computer chips, an integrated circuit and millions of transistors are embedded onto the chip, which are needed to recover the information stored on them. So it’s not enough to say that past events are stored within rocks. There also has to be a mechanism to play them back. The real challenge is in finding that playback mechanism.

An example of this theory is the Hoosac Tunnel in western Massachusetts. The tunnel saw an incredible amount of tragedy as it was being bored out of the mountains in the nineteenth century. Over two hundred people died, many of them in violent explosions and other mining accidents. The extreme emotions of those deaths could have been stored in the rocks of the tunnel, and today, it is very active with paranormal energy.