Ghosts Among Us - James Van Praagh [62]
Be respectful of the dead as well as the living who are on-site. Go with your gut. If you don’t feel safe, leave immediately.
When you are about to leave, say a closing protective prayer to bless yourself, the others with you, and any ghosts you may have encountered.
Investigation
If you decide to contacts spirits in the ghost-hunter method described here, please remember that much of your success will rest on how completely you understand the process, including all the technical and paranormal terms. Also, you may not get the explanations you think you want because you are dealing with an entirely different dimension. Make sure to question everything you experience, and run it by the others who are taking part in the investigation. Make sure that everyone is on the same team and that someone with experience is involved. Do not ghost-hunt with just anyone. This is serious work.
When you research a paranormal organization, make sure it has the qualifications relevant to your investigation. Are the people involved professional investigators, or is the organization someone’s part-time hobby? Does the organization have some sort of accreditation from the scientific community? How long has it been in business? What has been its history? Has it been successful in contacting ghosts and spirits? How much evidence has it collected?
Finally, what is the organization’s reason for being involved in this work? Intention is important. Ask questions. Anyone nowadays can go out with a camera and audio equipment and say he or she is a ghost hunter. If you are investing time and money in this process, be sure to employ the genuine article. The people you work with are so important. If they don’t know what they are doing, it can be extremely dangerous for everyone involved.
SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY
Just as spirits can let us know they’re around in photographs, we can deliberately set out to take pictures of ghosts. Often during my workshops participants take pictures of me while I am onstage. Hundreds, even thousands, of orbs appear in their photos. Are they ghosts? Yes, I believe ghostly energy has been captured.
Cameras are a must on any ghost-hunting expedition. Many ghost enthusiasts have successfully captured ghostly images on film. However, you do not have to be part of a ghost-hunting group for ghostly images to appear in your photographs. When working with spirit photography, the key component is your intuition. You may have an urge to take a picture at a particular moment or to aim the camera at a certain angle. Listen with your inner voice; let your instinct be your guide. When attempting to capture ghosts on film, I recommend the following:
Designate a photographer. Only one person should take the picture. There may be several others present to help feed energy, but use only one photographer, and that person should be the same throughout the event.
Never call out to a spirit to reveal itself. You never know what may show up. Take the photo only when you instinctively feel it is time to do so or when you are instructed by a ghost.
Bring more than one camera and lots of film and batteries. Save all the negatives, or camera cards, because many times an image will form after your first look.
Let me add something that I have noticed about holding on to spirit photos. The best way to store these special photos is in a covered dark place, like a box or a book, because often such photos seem to keep developing on their own. Sometimes after several months, or even years, have gone by, a photo looks different from when first taken. You may notice light or orbs around something that was not there when the picture was first taken. This is exactly what happened with the spirit photo of my brother-in-law Dennis. At first, my sister could see only his profile, but a month later, when I saw the picture, we could see him quite clearly, as well as two other spirits in the background. One of the spirits looked like my mother.
Again, let me say that the best place to capture ghosts, lights, and orbs on