Ghost Hunters Guide DIY Ghost Hunting And Hauntings

Hunting for ghosts is not that difficult. If your hunting real life ghosts many cities have groups of people who do just that and go out weekly or monthly with their tools and electronic gear to hunt or detect ghosts, orbs or paranormal activity. Equipment usually consists of EMF meters, film or digital cameras, cassette or digital voice recorders, video cameras and sometimes more exotic equipment such as a thermal imaging camera or Faraday box. Usually just doing a search for a local ghost hunting group for your area will bring one up.

Consider this page as a very basic beginners ghost hunting guide or a free ghost hunters guide. If you need more detail please consider the ghost hunting books available further down. You may also want to consider searching ghost hunting forums for the latest information on hauntings and equipment.

Ghosts are more likely found in older buildings and cemeteries but this is not always the case. The reason is that the older the location the more likely it is to have "history" a place where more people have passed through.

If your looking for the perfect companion to your ghost hunting kit or ghost hunters group check this book out.
This book talks about ghosts, doppelgangers, spirits, entities, poltergeists, malevolent entities , ghostly parasites, orbs, mist, warps, OBE's and vertices's. It covers mediums, psychics, past life regressions and so much more.
It also covers the pros and cons of cameras and talks about photography.
If you want to know about what the basic ghost hunter kit includes and how to set your equipment up and do a paranormal investigation this guide is it. This guide also includes the forms you need to do a proper paranormal investigation.

A Ghost in Every House - A Guide to Ghost Hunting, Hauntings, and the Paranormal is available for download.

There are possibly many reasons why ghosts may exist. It is suggested that a ghost is a spirit that never moved on. Often during a very tragic or violent event the spirit may not realize it is no longer here or is stuck in time. Sometimes ghosts exhibit themselves as a movie always playing the same script and other times they may seem to interact with people and the environment such as turning on/off lights, cold spots or a phenomenon know as EVP better know as Electronic Voice Phenominon. This is another great reason to have a good digital voice recorder with an external microphone.

Ghosts can appear as transparent forms or people, mists, shadows, plasmas or orbs. I believe that most orb photos can be explained as dust or as a photographer that has been in the hobby of photograph for over 25 years an orb can just be a lens defect especially if your camera is using any sort of zoom lens.

Ghosts can also be felt as cold spots or touch or even tingling like static electricity this is where the EMF meter comes in handy.

There are several types of hauntings that ghost hunters investigate. There are residual hauntings, one that are like an event played over and over without any interaction with the observer.

The next type is an intelligent haunting. This is a type of haunting where the ghost or apparition interacts or responds to the observer.

Most people have the minimum equipment they need to get started.
- A pen and pencil
- Small notebook or pad
- Flashlight and extra batteries.
- Digital camera or film camera.

Extra equipment that is nice to have is a digital video infra red camera, digital audio recorder and an external microphone and a EMF meter or better known as a Electro Magnetic Field meter. An EMF meter can detect changes in minute magnetic fields that we are surrounded by. Portable motion sensors are nice to secure an area and location. Often a group of club will share these to help with costs.

Other pieces of equipment worth having but are often too expensive for the weekend ghost hunter are remote wireless microphones and a thermal imaging camera.

Some people are also having some good results with ghost hunting equipment such as white noise generators or a faraday box. A faraday box is just a smaller version of a faraday cage read further down to find out more.

Now if you have to ask what are the best two pieces of electronic equipment I would have to save a digital camera. Then the next would be a TriField Electromagnetic Field Meter or an EMF meter sometime it is referred to as a TriField Electromagnetic Frequency Meter but the first reference is correct.

The next would be a digital recorder.

I think the analog meter is the best EMF meter. The best way to use an EMF meter is to hold it at the base. It should be cupped in your hand this way it does not obstruct the sensitive sensors towards the top of the meter. For the best readings it is highly recommended that you remove all jewelry such as rings, bracelets and watches that sometimes can interfere with the meter.

To get use to your meter I highly suggest that you use it around your home to measure electrical wiring, outlets, and yes even light fixtures. While your at it get use to measuring other electronic equipment such as stereos, clocks and microwave ovens when in operation. This gives you a good idea of the background levels of Electromagnetic pollution these devices generate. Even measure stray electromagnetic fields that can be induced into copper or iron pipes that carry water will give you the a good idea of how sensitive these meters can be.

Why do you want to do this? Well so when your out ghost hunting you can deduce or decide whether you have a false positive reading!

Yes older buildings buildings tend to collect more ghosts but older buildings also have older electrical systems that sometimes have bad wiring, unshielded wiring or ungrounded wiring thus leading to more false positive. Using an EMF meter is just a tool. Once you get use to the meter it is more of an art that a science when drawing conclusions on a ghost hunt.

Electronic voice phenomena is another method to help detect ghosts. What you are trying to capture is whispering, disembodied voices, laughter or other sounds that you may have not noticed during the investigation. A digital voice recorder is more commonly becoming the tool of choice to record EVP's. The reason for using a digital voice recorder over a cassette recorder is that a digital recorder has no moving parts. A cassette recorder is one that has moving parts and is likely to produce noise that can be mis interpreted as an EVP!

Digital voice recorders are relatively inexpensive and it is a good idea to have several of these on a ghost hunting expedition. You may want to use one for taking notes and a few others for to place in suspected remote locations so you can later evaluate those recordings.

One investigator I know is using a faraday box and is hearing some interesting results when combined with a voice recorder and a faraday box is relatively inexpensive and he makes them himself and sells them cheap!

One tip or secret I can give the new ghost hunter is to buy a digital voice recorder that has a USB cable that allow you to download the recordings on to your computer for later analysis.

Another tip I can give you is that if your looking for free software to analyze the EVP recording Audacity is the software of choice. It can filter out background noise and help you better analyze your EVP's, its free and the options it has it too many to list here. Just visit the site.

Once you have your digital voice recording file downloaded to your computer you can analyze the EVP with Audacity.

In residual hauntings an EVP may be easy to get. In an interactive haunting that may involve a malevolent spirit or poltergeist you may need to provoke the spirit to get and EVP. This may include asking for proof that they are actually there to suggesting that they do not exist to going as far as a little name calling to provoke the spirit. Use your imagination to provoking an EVP.

There are many signs that a place or location may be haunted. Here are just a few tips that a haunting may exist.

• Doors slamming or furniture moving.


• Footsteps or knocking especially at certain times.


• Objects move or dissapear to show up somewhere   else such as keys or personal items.


• Phantom odors or sweet or putrid odors with no obvious or natural cause.


• Objects moving out of the corner of your eye or dark shadows or mists.


• Feeling of being watched or followed.


• Feeling of being touched or pushed.


• Unexplained cold spots where there are no drafts.


• Pets acting strange such as your dog watching an activity in a room or barking into the dark.


• Whispering or your name called out and your dog notices when no one else is around.


• Devices or lights randomly come on or turn off with no explanation.


• Batteries drain quickly on camcorders or voice recorders. Spirits sometimes need energy to manifest.

We all remember the movie Ghost Busters. Well modern day ghost hunting is much more serious. The ideas are the same you go check out a haunting with your electronic gear. This is serious stuff though. With the correct ghost hunting gear one is hoping to find orbs and mists or something indicating that a place or object is indeed haunted or has activity. An active haunting where objects move are considered the most serious and are a sign of poltergeist activity. A very good ghost hunting group will try to disprove or dispel a haunting and will try to explain the activity as normal events.

One could argue that both types of recorders create archival noise. The current sampling rate of digital recorders is good enough to make this not such an issue.

The problem with analog magnetic cassette type of recorder is the noises the motor can produce. The other issue is the recording head. Is it clean? A dirty recording head can create noise and hiss. A misaligned head can also create a garbled effect due to bleed over from the other track and this can sometime sound like talk.
The die hard analog type will say well I use a new tape on every hunt. Still even with a new tape there are too many issues not to want to use the digital audio recorder. With a digital you also are less likely to need a remote mike to isolate the microphone from the cassettes motor noise.

Any recording system or media can create archival noises. The suggestions here are to minimize those noises.

When you do find and EVP on a recording on that has been transfered to a computer you may want to save the original recording on the recorder until it can be verified.

Some computers can introduce some noise and this way if you do find and EVP you can again download the audio off of the recorder to another computer to verify the EVP.

A Faraday box is a new piece of ghost hunting equipment that is being used to help capture or for recording EVP's that are clean.

What is a faraday box? It is a smaller version of a faraday cage. Read the definition of a faraday cage. Its is a larger version of a faraday box that will shield any object placed in it from stray electromagnetic fields or energy. For example if you were to put a radio or cell phone in one it would be useless and would not transmit or receive any radio waves or electromagnetic radiation.

How would this apply to ghost hunting? For one if your were to place a voice recorder in a faraday cage or faraday box one it would not be subject to stray radiation or false man made signals so it would possibly reduce the chance of interference from stray radio waves or electromagnetic energy thus providing a possibly clean recording regarding electromagnetic interference. If you looking to buy a faraday box check here >>> Faraday Box