What do real ghost hunters do? Amazing profession: ghost hunters Documenting the activity of spirits.
Illustration copyright Sony Pictures Image caption New 'Ghostbusters' movie expected to spark interest in spirits
When the people who worked at the Italian restaurant Nido decided that their building was haunted, they knew exactly who to turn to for help.
They called local - 100 percent real - ghost hunters.
A few days later, a team from Dead of Night Paranormal Investigations arrived in Frederick, Maryland.
After talking with the cooks and waiters, who all claimed that some invisible creature was stomping up and down the stairs, the team got to work.
The hunters wore identical black T-shirts with the company logo. They installed video and thermal cameras throughout the restaurant, hoping to capture the movements of the ghost. And then they turned on the main apparatus, called the “sound box”.
This device, about the size of your palm, quickly scans a variety of radio frequencies, which - if you believe in such things, of course - create the source of energy used by ghosts to make sounds or speak.
Shortly after this, the device recorded how the ghost (whose name was supposedly Malcolm) said: “Help!”
"Paranormal activity manifests itself in many different ways," explains Dead of Night ghost hunter Leanne Baur.
A new version of the Ghostbusters movie was released this week, and ghosts - whether you believe in them or not - are once again on everyone's lips.
Image caption Dead of Night uses all sorts of equipment to detect otherworldly aliensAnd although this Hollywood film is an obvious fiction, real life thousands of people work as ghost hunters.
ParanormalSocieties.com calls itself the largest directory of paranormal organizations. According to the data published there, America is ahead of the rest: in the United States, more than 3,600 organizations investigate paranormal phenomena. There are only 53 of these in Canada, and 57 in the UK.
Reviews for the film are positive - most likely, it will bring considerable income to its creators. And besides, it will certainly excite the imagination of many viewers, which will play into the hands of companies like Dead of Night.
"Serious Business"
"It's just wonderful," said Lian Baur, who works as a school teacher by day.
"When you consider how many television shows deal with ghosts, it becomes clear how much the general public is interested in this issue," she says.
Illustration copyright Ghosts Of Shepherdstown Image caption Ghostbusters take their job seriouslyHowever, she reminds us that ghost hunting in reality is much less exciting than on screen.
"We do it a little differently," she explains. "It's a serious matter. We don't capture ghosts and we don't have proton traps. We want reconciliation with spirits."
No specialized training or license is required to become a ghost hunter. You don't even have to believe in the existence of ghosts.
Illustration copyright Dawn Till Dusk Events Image caption Dawn Till Dusk organizes tours of abandoned buildingsBut before you decide to turn your car into a ghost hunting van or start designing a uniform, it's worth remembering that virtually all real ghost hunters work for free.
They don't charge money because the results of their research can be interpreted in any way (either you believe in ghosts or you don't), and they want to meet the client's expectations.
"Usually people call us because they really want something out there, but they don't always get the answer they like," says Spencer Chamberlain, founder of East Coast Research and Investigation of the Paranormal, based in Rockville. , Maryland.
Because they do not charge money for their services, such organizations can claim to be meticulous and scientific.
Money on TV
Ghost hunters make money in another way - by giving public lectures or leading tours of streets where spirits have allegedly been discovered.
Leanne Baur and the rest of the Dead of Night team have been guiding tourists through the streets of Old Town Ellicott City for the past year and a half.
Illustration copyright Sony Pictures Image caption Real Ghostbusters look much more ordinary and not like they do on screen.Tickets cost $15, and each group averages about 10 people or more.
According to Baur, she and her colleagues try to both amuse tourists and educate them about paranormal phenomena.
In England, such tours are conducted by the Nottingham company Dusk Till Dawn Events (“From Dusk to Dawn”).
They organize two or three such tours every weekend - visiting a closed hospital in Liverpool or a former underground military base in Worcestershire. They say there are ghosts in both places. The cost of the tour is from 15 to 64 pounds (20-85 dollars).
The founder and owner of the company, Jessica Gladwin, says that people come to them different people: “Among the regulars, there are many who hunt ghosts themselves. Others are brought by friends and acquaintances, but they themselves don’t believe in ghosts. Still others just really want to see something.”
Illustration copyright Ghosts of Shepherdstown Image caption Ghostbuster Elizabeth Saint (center) begins her television careerAdditionally, some paranormal investigators in America make money by starting their own television shows. That's exactly what Elizabeth Saint did, who claims to have often seen ghosts as a child.
Last year, she starred as one of three paranormal investigators in the series The Haunting of Shepherdstown.
"Profession"
While ghost hunters are willing to help people or businesses determine if they are haunted, they do not "clean up" or exorcise spirits.
Clairvoyants or spirit seers promise to help get rid of ghosts and claim that they can communicate with other world. And these people usually work for money.
Illustration copyright Marjorie Rivera Image caption For $150, Marjorie Rivera will banish a ghost from your home.Marjorie Rivera, 47, from Pittsburgh, comes from a family of clairvoyants.
"We pay electricians to fix the wiring because we don't touch things we don't know about. I work with energy, just like an electrician," she says.
“I realized that clearing spirits from buildings is a professional job that requires training, just like if you wanted to become an electrician or a plumber, and I decided to charge the same prices as plumbers and electricians,” she continues.
If you want to clear your house of ghosts, Marjorie Rivera's services will cost you $150 - no matter how many sessions she has to do.
According to polls public opinion, approximately a third of the population of the United States and Great Britain believes in the existence of ghosts.
So if you suddenly hear strange noises in the middle of the night, who will you call?
Actually, I was preparing an interview with a successful entrepreneur for my newspaper. However, my interlocutor, Vladimir, casually mentioned that in the mid-90s he moonlighted as a “ghost hunter.” Of course, this was pure quackery, but I became so curious that I persuaded Vladimir to talk about it in more detail.
The entrepreneur, who was about forty-five years old, was embarrassed, trying to remember his sinful youth, but it was noticeable that he himself wanted to chat about his fraudulent part-time job.
Tell us how you hunted ghosts? - I finally asked.
They were foolish, he answered, laughing. - They placed an ad in three newspapers and indicated the phone number.
So they wrote: “Catching ghosts”?
Funnier. "Ghostbusters". Taken from the movie. Below in small print are listed types of services, such as cleaning apartments, offices from negative energy and other nonsense.
And they called you?
Ha! After perestroika, newspapers were bursting at the seams from mystical stories. People read them with pleasure and many then really decided that a poltergeist had settled in their apartments.
How many of you “hunters” were on the team?
Two, it seems like... - Vladimir said not quite confidently. - Me and my childhood friend - Mishka. Such a funny, fat, incompetent guy. I remember how he overturned the desk of the director of some publishing house when he crawled under it to look for a drum...
I smiled.
So did you go to the houses of those who called you and sprayed the corners with holy water or?..
No! Everything is “according to science”! They imitated the heroes of the same film. We had “anti-ghost” equipment - all sorts of hissing devices with a bunch of wires. We made some of them ourselves. Bear loved soldering circuits more than anyone else...
Well, what about the clients? Weren't these just simpletons? You mentioned the director of the publishing house.
Do you think there are no fools among directors? It's full! But basically - yes, either very strange or very suspicious people applied. It happened that they were simply lonely. One day, an elderly artist called Mishka and me, claiming that the portrait of her mother, painted by herself, was following her with her eyes. When we arrived, the artist said two words about this portrait. The rest of the time she showed us other pictures and gave us tea. She paid generously and thanked her for the company. But it’s worth saying that several times we encountered a real poltergeist... or what should we call it? In short, with something inexplicable. True, we couldn’t help here.
What? Seriously? Have you seen how things fly around the house? - I teased Vladimir with feigned skepticism.
Believe me, yes. I myself never believed in this nonsense, but when you see it with your own eyes... In short, it happened.
What about more details? Tell us the most interesting story!
Well, well,” Vladimir drawled. - I’d better save the most interesting case for later. But for the first time the hair on my head started to move when we visited a guy. He claimed that in his apartment the TV and radio lived their own lives. The channels on the TV switched by themselves, the sound became louder and quieter, and sometimes the screen flashed in different colors, not at all similar to normal interference. The radio showed strange voices; the peasant was especially frightened by the rough male bass, which forbade him to turn the wave tuning knob. Moreover, the guy was adequate, he didn’t give the impression of being crazy, but he trusted us as specialists.
Has the radio spoken to you too? - I asked.
What in Lately Interest in paranormal phenomena has sharply increased, and this has given impetus to the development of special organizations in the world offering services in the field of parapsychology and the unknown. Back in 1984, American director Ivan Reitman shot the comedy-fantasy film Ghostbusters, which was a great success. It is interesting that, when inventing the equipment for the actors who caught ghosts, Dan Ackroyd (who starred in the role of one of the hunters) took as a basis the clothes of real-life ghost catchers of old England.
And although the word “fantasy” is still used in the description of the film genre, this has long been untrue. Special services that organize the capture of any poltergeist and lone hunters work in many countries of the world, including Russia. Moreover, such companies are often headed not by amateur extreme sports enthusiasts, but by scientists and professors who lecture on parapsychology at universities and have been dealing with the problems of the unknown for many years.
To skeptics who are distrustful of such work, hunters answer: this is not a joke! They are serious people and have no time for jokes; their work is backed by thorough, in-depth research.
On the website of one Russian foundation offering its services for catching ghosts right in your home, the following is stated: “Foundation specialists<…>will ensure rapid neutralization of poltergeist phenomena that cause significant material damage to people living in the premises where it occurs.” It turns out that you can make just one call, and people will come to your home who will determine whether there is a ghost in your home, find the underlying reasons for its appearance, and immediately eliminate the troublesome “neighbor”?
One of the organizations working with paranormal phenomena at home in Russia is the Parapsychology Foundation named after. L.L. Vasilyeva (http://vasilyev-fund.narod.ru/). The extraordinary services the foundation provides are listed as if they were ordinary products on store shelves:
Unlocking parapsychological abilities under hypnosis;
Ambulance service for identifying and eliminating poltergeists;
Integrated environmental control service to identify and eliminate geopathogenic zones;
Analysis of complex life situations with the help of clairvoyance...
But why not look at such unusual services from a different perspective?
In recent years, the poltergeist phenomenon has been studied in some detail. In addition, ghost hunters in past centuries, according to eyewitnesses, often coped with their tasks - after their appearance, the activity of ghosts dropped sharply. Does this mean their half-fictional-half-real work is effective? After all, we are probably skeptical about their unusual service only because their area of work is the paranormal, something that we do not encounter every day and would probably prefer not to encounter at all...
And in reality, their equipment bears little resemblance to a shoulder-mounted nuclear reactor for a proton emitter that shoots a bright, writhing beam, which everyone saw in the movie about hunters. Modern hunters are armed with completely different devices - temperature and light sensors, computers programmed to respond to any change in the environment, etc. These devices are not so fabulous. And any action of hunters is justified from the point of view of science, and here, too, you can’t really argue with doctors of sciences and professors. And it turns out that the profession of a ghost hunter is far from fantastic. And if there is demand, as they say, then there will always be supply. Moreover, this supply is growing day by day, and they have even begun to open specialized schools for ghost hunters. Classes at the school are conducted under the guidance of experienced scientists, and the training also includes practical exercises in cemeteries and in ancient buildings.
Who knows, perhaps special schools for teaching similar professions will soon appear in Russia? Judging by the development of interest in the paranormal and the number of companies offering their services in this area, we will soon be completely normal in accepting advertisements like “Ghost hunter needed for work. A higher education degree is required. Experience in catching poltergeists – at least 3 years”...
Ghostbuster career in The Sims 3: Career Expansion Pack
Ghostbuster
If your character is not afraid of all evil spirits, then the profession of a ghost hunter is created just for him! At work, he will have to catch spirits, drive them out (both peacefully and otherwise), look for ghosts and protect the peace of the city's residents. In addition, in various establishments, you may be asked to conduct research into paranormal activity. For additional income, a Sim can always hand over the caught spirits to a scientific institute, so to speak, for experiments.
In fact, the profession is very simple and does not contain any secrets. The only thing to quickly advance the character through career ladder and high-quality performance of his duties, he must have the following character traits:
Genius - this trait, as in many cases, is useful when increasing the logic skill. After all, who, if not a genius, can cope with difficult tasks?
Eccentric. You will only need this trait if you want the character's life goal to be related specifically to the profession of a ghost hunter.
And note that a Sim does not need to be brave at all in order to successfully complete their job. For some reason, ghostbusters are not afraid of poltergeists, even if they do not have the above-mentioned character trait.
1. Tarot expert
Don’t be surprised if at first others don’t consider your “profession” a serious matter. Ghost hunting is a challenging activity in which rigorous science meets mysticism. Perseverance and professionalism will help you earn a good reputation.
Salary: 280 Simoleons per week
Schedule: from 17:00 to 03:00, Monday to Friday
Work equipment: regular ghost killer
2. Ectoplasm Cleaner
Predicting the future is much more interesting than cleaning dirty ectoplasm canisters, but in paranormal matters there is a clear line between amateurs and real professionals, scientifically savvy hunters of the undead. You are following the right course.
Salary: 344 simoleons per week
Schedule:
3. Poltergeist Specialist
The floorboards creak in the attic, the pans rattle in the kitchen, the wind howls wildly outside the windows... And so on every night. The residents of the house are driven to despair. Drive out the naughty ghosts or at least convince the residents that there is nothing scary in all these sounds.
Salary: 400 Simoleons per week
Schedule: from 17:00 to 03:00, Monday to Friday
Working capabilities: convince residents of the safety of spirits
4. Spirit Whisperer
It’s one thing to hide in a cemetery, hoping to see a lost ghost, and quite another to go alone into dark buildings and come face to face with an evil poltergeist!
Salary: 520 Simoleons per week
Schedule: from 17:00 to 03:00, Monday to Friday
5. Staff occultist
Spirit detection technology has come a long way in the past few years, and you, the resident occultist, have been tasked with testing the experimental device, the Horror Meter. The device will allow you to accurately detect any ghost. Found - destroy!
Salary: 640 Simoleons per week
Schedule: from 17:00 to 03:00, Monday to Friday
Work equipment: new spirit detector and the ability to search for them
6. Ghost Catcher
By providing professional services to combat paranormal phenomena, you have earned the respect of the townspeople. Even the most stubborn skeptics believed that it was possible to get rid of the annoying undead. Good luck and success in your work, ghost catcher!
Salary: 840 Simoleons per week
Schedule: from 17:00 to 03:00, Monday to Friday
Work equipment:"Darkness 2" uniform
7. Psychic Detective
Some supernatural beings are particularly vicious in nature. They will stop at nothing to stop you from doing your job. But you, as a true psychic detective, will not spare yourself, track down these nasty ghouls and send them where they are supposed to go.
Salary: 1144 simoleons
Schedule: from 17:00 to 03:00, Monday to Friday
8. Medium
No amount of clever devices or modern technology will convince a lost spirit to melt away forever. Success in difficult cases is guaranteed only by your personal charm and classic persuasion techniques. And for other cases, you have the improved ghost killer.
Salary: 1480 Simoleons per week
Schedule: from 17:00 to 03:00, Monday to Friday
Work equipment: advanced ghost crusher
9. Eminent occultist
Few people (living) know more about ghost hunting than you do. Your keen mind, fierce courage, and attention to detail have made you the go-to expert on all things undead. You are now a world renowned paranormal expert.
Salary: 1840 Simoleons per week
Schedule: from 17:00 to 03:00, Monday to Friday
10. Paranormal Expert
You are the eradicator of poltergeists, the persecutor of banshees, the deliverer from evil! You not only free the town from terrifying monsters, but also save unclean souls (both living and dead) from suffering. You are a real hero!
Salary: 2480 Simoleons per week
Schedule: from 17:00 to 03:00, Monday to Friday
Reward: perfume detector
A creepy reward given for 15 captured spirits
Experts in contact with ghosts have come to an unexpected conclusion: “There are no bad ghosts!” So what do they want from us, coming from the “other side”?
The list of exotic professions seems to be filled with one more. No one is surprised by professional sorcerers and magicians, now ghost hunters have appeared. They arm themselves with special equipment, crosses, stock up on holy water and spells and boldly go into battle, where the devil does not joke.
To work
I met “ghost hunter” Nikolai Gromov at a closed youth party. As it turned out, the guy came for a few days from the Belarusian Mogilev. Why - he never said. But he didn’t refuse to “test” the apartment of my friend, Ruslan, to see if there were aliens from the paranormal world or, simply, ghosts.
In each corner of the room Nikolai placed church candles. I lit them one by one and turned off the light. Then he took out two metal frames from his bulky travel bag—something like crochet hooks, only bigger—and went to slowly measure his steps.
- There is little negative energy from the outside, try to communicate less with the short old lady in a colorful scarf. There are no ghosts. The movement of shadows at night is just a play of light from a street lamp,” the guy finally said to the owner of the apartment. Then he pulled out a small jar from his bag and poured some water into his palm. And then he lit an incense stick. The pleasant but harsh smell of lavender hit my nose.
Cat from nowhere
The “hunter” left only a few minutes to talk with the curious, “while the candles were burning.” Allegedly, internal secrets can only be revealed with “open fire” - it takes away dark energy.
“It all started in 1998,” Gromov began. — My old friend Alexei Zolotarev and I studied at Mogilev University, at the Faculty of Philology. One day, our classmate Fedya Smekalov said that at his dacha he could hear a cat’s meowing for several weekends in a row. He and his parents searched the entire house, both the attic and the basement. But there is no cat! For the weekend, three of my friends and I went to Fedya’s dacha. Then on Saturday evening I heard meowing. I see Lyokha and Fyodor look at each other and both point in the direction of the bed. I crawled to the place where, as it seemed to me, the four-legged bandit was sure to sit, and sharply lifted the blanket. Empty! And the sounds are no longer meowing, but some kind of guttural rumbling. And then it suddenly became cold: an icy wave ran down my back and then lifted the hair on my head.
- That's right - a ghost! - Fedka said a little hoarsely (in principle, we have been interested in books about aliens for quite a long time, parallel worlds and other “paranormal things”). I nodded. And he began to remember how book characters acted when meeting ghosts. Have you made contact? But this is with people. What about the cat?
“Kitty-kitty,” I whispered. There was silence. And then he began to mentally ask who she was and what she came with. And then either my own or someone else’s thoughts appeared in my head.
- House second from the beginning... Last autumn... Your father... Dasha... Fedka, who lives there? — I asked Fedor.
“The Larchenkos live,” he answered. “Dashka was the name of their cat, who was strangled by dogs last fall. My dad found her and buried her on the slope. I decided not to tell the owners so as not to upset them.
“We need to rebury it or something,” I suggested out loud.
The rumbling stopped. Once again I felt a cold sensation along my back.
The next day we went to the cat’s owners and told them that their pet had died. Then they all reburied the cat’s remains together in Larchenko’s garden. Aunt Raya’s little son Andryushka built a wooden cross for the grave, Lyoshka muttered some words. The unknown meowing no longer bothered Fedka and his family.
That day - April 22, 198 - can be considered the birthday of the "Ghostbusters". At the very first meeting, enthusiasts vetoed the money and decided not to take a penny from their clients. It’s a matter of principle: they are not charlatan grabbers, but “men of science.” Soon, unbeknownst to them, the hobby became a matter of life.
“After the story with the cat that I told you about, we stopped dividing souls into “human” and “non-human,” says Nikolai. — And one more important conclusion, made on the basis of accumulated experience: there are no “bad” ghosts. If a ghost comes into a house or appears in front of a person, it wants to warn him about something.
It also happens that the ghost himself needs help, which is why he worries people. One of our clients, Irina, began to see her dead sister at night, slamming closet doors and scaring her family. We managed to find out that the girl was buried in uncomfortable high-heeled shoes. After Irina buried her slippers next to the grave, her sister’s spirit calmed down and no longer disturbed her.
Don't be reckless
Nikolai took his usual bag, took out a lilac notebook, and found the right page.
- There is one story here, read it yourself. And then I will express my opinion.
September 1, Thursday, 13.20
A friend of Vitina’s sister, Pavel, came by. It looks disgusting, as if he spent the holidays not at home, but at least in the hospital. And both months.
“You look lousy,” I told him.
“Thank you,” he smiled sadly. And he shared that for the second month he couldn’t get out of his illness—he had a runny nose, a sore throat, and even mumps. Oh well, if only it was him. The whole family is sick: my mother’s heart is bad, and my brother is in the hospital because his appendicitis was removed.
And every night such incomprehensibly strange sounds are heard in the apartment, as if someone was moaning. Pashka ran into his mother’s room several times. I thought maybe she was feeling bad. No, he’s sleeping... Pavel also complained about the dog’s behavior - he, they say, “has become completely psychotic.” This alarmed me most of all.
September 2, Thursday, 12.30
Pashka made excuses for a long time - he refused our help. Then, still reluctantly, he did not agree. And here we are in the apartment. Lyoshka took out a compass and a “thermometer”, I took out a frame, and we moved around the two-room apartment. In the kitchen, where the spaniel was watching from the corner, whining pitifully, nothing was found. Mother's bedroom is also without anomalies... I went into the brothers' bedroom first. And I immediately felt as if a weight had fallen. The air is somehow musty. The frames weakly moved apart when I stood with my back to the window. I walked to the bedside table, as if through a spider’s web, and opened the door. Between the books, textbooks and notebooks lay an old, yellowed skull. It turned out that the boys dragged him from the cemetery! After the skull was buried, everything in the house was in order.
“If a spirit comes into your house on its own, there’s nothing to worry about,” Nikolai concluded, taking the notebook. “But you shouldn’t contact them on your own.” It is dangerous to take things that belong to a deceased person: shoes that they initially wanted to put in the coffin and then changed their minds, a funeral towel, soil from the grave. With this you can “attract” “dark energy” to yourself so much that it doesn’t seem like much... Sorry, I have to go - the candles have burned out...