By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma
It should start with a dark and stormy night as a group of of ghost hunters entered the old creepy house in search of paranormal activity but in truth, outside of a light drizzle, the weather was fairly routine as the Grand Rapids Ghost Hunters joined others at St. Cecilia Music Center for National Ghost Hunting Day earlier this season.
“Our mission statement is directed toward private families although we do investigations like this — plenty of them,” said Wayne Thomas, a member of the Grand Rapids Ghost Hunters. “But we have been to places where the people would not meet us at the house they just purchased because they were not taking their kids back and they were distraught and that’s where our passion for the paranormal comes in.”
The goal for the team is to create a better understanding of the spirits living among us by working with families and individuals dealing with paranormal activity.
“We have a process and we try to stick to that process,” Thomas said. “We have an interview and we have [Pastor Dan Schmidt] there so if there are any sensations in the house. We come back and do the investigation and we do a reveal where we present our evidence and that’s when Dan will ask them do you want a smudge or do you want to learn to live with your ghost.”
From the interview to the smudging, which is a ritual done to help cleanse a dwelling of negative energies, spirits or influences, the process is quite different from what people see on such shows as “Supernatural” or “Ghost Hunters.”
“TV can make it so dramatized, the music, the door slamming and we sit there for hours and hours,” said Grand Rapids Ghost Hunter Tammy Post. And in fact much of the group’s work is not done in the dark because as Thomas puts it, “no one ever sees a ghost in the dark.”
“We will have gone through a whole night and we won’t know if we have gotten anything at all,” Schmidt said. “We will go back through and watch the video and listen to the recordings and that is the longest part of the process.”
The ultimate goal of the group is to help people better understand the spirits living among us.
“It is easy to see the help you are giving the living – it is not quite as easy to see the help you are giving to the dead,” Thomas said. “When I got into this, I thought ‘Oh yeah, I’m going to help the dead find peace and rest.’
But in truth, Thomas said it is hard to determine if they have helped spirits move on.
“We do start with prayer and we end with prayer as we do consider ourselves a faith-based group,” Thomas said. “I consider all the praying we’ve done helps.”
To reach the Grand Rapids Ghost Hunters, call 616-541-4496 or visit the group’s Facebook page.
