Tuesday, August 24, 2010

TONIGHT: Ghost hunting tour in Bath

Investigators from the Maine Ghost Hunters Society will join “The Lady in the Red Cloak” for a special Haunted History Tour in Bath on Tues., Aug. 24.

The special Haunted History Tour with the Maine Ghost Hunters Society investigators will be on Tues, Aug. 24. The tour is by reservation only by calling (207)380-9912 or redcloaktours@gmail.com. Once a reservation is made, the starting time and location will be given out. “We do this so that we’re able to control the number of our guests so that everyone will have a fun and comfortable experience,” Lobkowicz said. The cost of the tour is $17.50 per person, a portion of which is donated to the Maine Ghost Hunters Society.

The ghost hunters will come equipped with specialized equipment used to test areas on the tour for the possible presence of paranormal activity.

“We’ve had plenty of unusual things show up in photographs taken by guests on our Haunted History Tours over the past 4 years that we’ve been in business,” said Sally Lobkowicz, Director of Haunted History Tours. “These include ‘orbs’, bolts of light, strange mists and more, but all that we’re really able to say about them is that we can’t explain why they appear in the photos. We’re researchers and story tellers – not paranormal experts.”

That’s where the investigators from the Maine Ghost Hunters Society come in. “This is a great group of people with a solid background in paranormal research dating back to 2007, and the ability to use equipment to enhance their investigation,” Lobkowicz said. “They have just completed an in-depth investigation of the former AMHI mental hospital, and their work has been widely published and televised. They have just started their own show, Maine Paranormal Radio on Maine Public Radio.”

The Bath special tour will be the first time that Haunted History Tours has conducted a collaborative effort with the Maine Ghost Hunters Society, which Lobkowicz feels is appropriate since 2010 is the first season for Haunted History Tours in Bath. “What better way to introduce something new than on our newest tour?” Lobkowicz asked. Haunted History Tours with “The Lady in the Red Cloak” already have venues in Camden, Damariscotta, Boothbay Harbor and Wiscasset. Special tours with the Maine Ghost Hunters Society will also be scheduled in those areas in the coming weeks, according to Lobkowicz.

Both the Maine Ghost Hunters Society and Haunted History Tours are hoping that the special tours will provide guests with an educational experience. “Watching the investigators use their equipment and explain how it all works will just be the first part of the experience,” Lobkowicz said. “Following the special tour, they will post the results of their investigation regarding that tour area on www.maineghosts.org.”

Julie Velez, co-founder of the Maine Ghost Hunters Society agrees. “Education is a primary part of our mission,” Velez said. “We look forward to introducing people to our investigation methods, and perhaps better understand what we do.

To help accomplish this, the Maine Ghost Hunters Society will provide a two-person team for the special tour comprised of a Lead Investigator and an Investigator equipped with devices that help see the unseen, whether by image, sound, or even electromagnetic activity.

First on the equipment list are two items that are sensitive to electromagnetic activity, which is associated with things both seen and unseen. In the everyday world, most living things generate an electromagnetic signature, as do (of course) electronic devices and wires that carry electricity.

What’s unusual is when the devices pick-up electromagnetic activity where it shouldn’t be. To observe this, the investigators from Maine Ghost Hunters Society will carry a K2 Electromagnetic Field (EMF) device that registers the activity on an LED meter. According to Velez, this device is particularly noteworthy in that it can instantly record changes in the EMF, which sometimes appear to be responsive to spoken questions and other input.

A second EMF device, the Electromagnetic Field Detector, will provide investigators and tour guests with a much more sensitive device for recording EMF signals. However, this instrument has a read out with a needle, making the K2 EMF device a more immediate and visual instrument.

Use of both these devices at once literally provides the “best of both worlds” to record any potential paranormal activities, according to Velez. The two devices, working simultaneously, tend to corroborate each other’s EMF observations.

The Maine Ghost Hunters Society will also carry two pieces of equipment well known to most of the public – a digital camera and a digital sound recorder. The digital camera will be used to record scenes for later examination, as sometimes things will appear in the images that were unseen by the human eye at the time that the image was recorded. Likewise, the digital voice recorder has the ability to pick up on sounds that cannot be heard by the human ear.

For more information on Haunted History Tours (and photos taken by guests of unusual phenomenon) check www.RedCloakHauntedHistoryTours.com (there is also a page on the website discussing orbs under “Ghostly Sightings”). For more information on the Maine Ghost Hunters Society check www.maineghosts.org.

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