[IGHS] Newsletter, December 5, 2004 Wickenburg, Arizona

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Mission Statement:

The Ghostweb is the official Web Site of the International Ghost Hunters Society. Membership in the IGHS is always FREE. The IGHS is an international society dedicated and committed to the research and study of ghostly phenomena recorded through EVP, digital, film and video photography. The IGHS is a society of ghost believers, ghost hunters, and ghost researchers with over 15,000 members in 87 countries worldwide.

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International Ghost Hunters Society Newsletter

December 5, 2004 from Wickenburg, Arizona

Dr. Dave’s Notes:

We have decided to offer a Christmas Special on our Home Study Courses. We have discounted each of the home study programs now through the New Year. If you are thinking about certification through the International Ghost Hunters Society, check out our specials today at http://www.ghostweb.com/mainhsc2.html.

Ours is the oldest certification program for ghost researchers offered on the Internet. We were the first to offer our home study programs back in 1998 to help beginners in this field. Many sources now try to copy us by offering their own home study programs, but they offer only the inexpensive and basis Ghost Hunting 101 package, not the in-depth comprehensive professional material that represents thirty years of our combined experience as the only two full time ghost hunters in this field. We have no day jobs, we are not parapsychologists on the weekends and paralegal clerks during the week, but we are full time committed to this research, traveling across America as we investigate some of the most haunted sites in this great land.

One such haunted site we found in our travels that we keep coming back to is the mining ghost town of Congress, Arizona. The gold rush of 1849 at Sutters Mill in California started the search for this precious metal. Where ever gold was discovered, miners flocked to the scene resulting in an over night explosion of a town. Most mining towns started over night and grew to several thousand people; mostly miners with their pick and shovels, but along with the miners came those who got rich off of the miners.

The saloon and brothels lined the dirt streets, each beckoning to the miners to spend their gold dust, offering to take it out in trade, their gold dust for their goods and services. These towns did not boast of brick and mortar, but their construction was in a make-shift manner, often the lower walls were of stone, and the roofs were of canvas. Some of the homes were nothing more than a hole with a canvas roof over it. These earthen homes used the earth as insulation against the desert heat and cold.

The above ground homes had floors of packed dirt, while some stores had wooden floors. The miners toiled long hour's underground digging for gold. They would enter their dark pits at daybreak and climb back out at dusk. These men would be thirsty and want a diversion from their harsh environment. The saloons and brothels offered them their own form of recreation. The saloons were often tents with a plank between two barrels holding the bottles of spirits for sale. The saloon keeper would toss his empty bottles into his refuse pile behind their saloon.

Even the miners who lived in and around the main street tossed their cans and bottles into their private refuse heap, usually behind their stone cabin or makeshift home. Drinking hard spirits made the miners forget the harsh desert weather, blazing hot, or the chilly winds that cut to the bone. Miners would discard their empty whiskey bottles out behind their homes. These broken glass refuse sites survived the weather and wind for a hundred years, until we discovered them.

Today, Sharon and I roam around this old mining town site recording EVP, or ghost voices with our digital recorders. All that remain are a few stone foundations and walls, and the scattered debris of rusted cans and smashed glass bottles. It is here that we record the ghost voices from the past, as these ghostly miners still hunt for their precious yellow metal known as gold.

We have picked up broken shards of purple, green, yellow, and brown glass and tumbled them for a week to take off the rough edges and leave a smooth finish. Sharon silver wire wraps the tumbled glass into beautiful colored glass pendants, a keepsake from a real ghost town of the Old West. Each pendant is unique and one of a kind. The size varies with each piece of shard. Sharon has also wire wrapped pieces of milk glass she found during her investigations of these old ghost towns. This is your chance to own a piece of western history. We are not relic hunters, we do not dig holes, but we simply pick up the broken shards of glass as we record for EVP ghost voices. Check them out at http://www.ghostweb.com/glass1.html.

The old prospectors claim that if one will stare at gold long enough that the gold will begin to glow. This is what gold fever is all about, staring at gold and ignoring everything else. The miners who flocked to Congress, Arizona were seeking their fortune. One of the ghost voices we recorded was of an old miner who said he had a partner who was gone and in reverse speech, this miner clarified what happened to his mission partner. Apparently, his partner fell down the mine shift. Even in death, the gold miners continually search for that which they sought for in life, gold. Their gold fever anchored themselves to this earth plane as they continue to seek their “glory hole.” Death contains emotions, just as life has emotions.

Over the years, we have done several hundred investigations on the Gettysburg Battlefields. One year, we investigated the battlefield daily for a month, driving over a thousand miles in and around the battlefield as we investigated the apparitional warriors who are still fighting this three day war. We discovered a simple fact that all battlefields are haunted. Any battlefield, from the American Revolution, the Civil War or the West battlefields, such as the Little Big Horn where General Custer was killed. The conflict is not resolved at death, but continues on beyond the grave.

Where the courageous and brave have shed their blood for what they believed then we will find some spirits who still cling to this earth plane to do battle again and again. Any site that has had bloody conflict between two opposing groups with opposing ideologies may leave behind apparitional warriors still engaged in battle. Hauntings often result from places of intense battles where apparitional warriors are still fighting for their ideals or way of life.

We have actually recorded more EVP ghost voices from the old ghost mining town of Congress than we have ever gotten on the Gettysburg Battlefields during our last six years of hosting conferences there. It is true that on military battlefields, we can record cannons and bugles or the cries for help from wounded soldiers. However, from Western Mining sites, we can record ghost voices talking about their life as a miner where spirits still engage in the harsh task of gold mining.

We have interaction between the living and the dead. At one site in Congress, we found an old foundation of a mercantile store. Our dog BooBoo was watching and listening to something as Sharon recorded with her digital recorder. Upon playback, just before Sharon said that BooBoo was watching something, a woman’s voice clearly said. “Attention here!” Now I suspect we only captured a portion of what she was saying, it was sufficient to indicate that the spirit was talking and BooBoo was hearing, maybe even seeing her.

Some ghost hunting groups who work with white noise as an aid for recording ghost voices teach that there are no emotions in EVP voices. Apparently, they have not visited the thousands of sites that we have explored and recorded human emotions from those who have crossed over to the other side. We do not use white noise; we work directly with digital recorders during field investigations. The ghosts of those who have lived upon this earth plane will have emotions associated with the words that they speak. They are human spirits who still retain their intelligence, their personalities, and their emotions. It is most often these emotions that trap them here until they can resolve the issues and discard their emotional issues as useless baggage.

We have demonstrated for the last three years that almost all EVP recordings display emotions in their voices. We archive these recordings on our Jeff Rense page on our web site. We play a dozen new ghost voices each month on the syndicated nationwide Talk One Network program with Jeff Rense. We clearly show how the spirits of the dead display human emotions in their spoken words. Whether you believe the voices are from beyond the grave or not, the one thing about EVP that is evident is the many emotions expressed by the spirits. Each one is different from the other; each one relays an individual message. Nevertheless, whether the words are clear or not, the emotion is clearly there.

For those beginners who would like to know more about how to do ghost voice recordings, we offer the best single step by step handbook for recording and analyzing ghost voices. Check out our booklet at http://www.ghostweb.com/booklet.html. This EVP booklet is available either a downloaded PDF file that can be printed out or purchased as a thermal bound booklet, shipped by priority mail.

Happy trails.

Sharon’s Notes:

As I read over Dave’s article above, on the emotions picked up on EVP, we have always stated that we carry our emotions with us into death. That is true not only of people, but sometimes we find that dogs have emotions that we hear in EVP. I specify dogs because over the years we have picked up and listened to the mournful howls of dogs in recordings from various parts of the country. We have also picked up the happy bark of our own little Yorkshire terrier after her demise. She just wanted to let us know she was still going along on our investigations as she had in life. The strength of the bond of love between master and dog does not die when the physical body of one or the other leaves this plane.

When Dave and I lived in Central Oregon, we investigated a large cemetery in Bend, Oregon. The caretaker of the cemetery told us that one grave in particular was the site where a living dog would come and lay on the grave of his departed master, daily. That told us that the dog mourned the loss of the master he loved and he needed to spend his days close to where the physical body of his master was interred. Thinking about it, that bond didn't die between them but for the dog to know exactly where to go to be where his master was buried, was remarkable.

Dave and I had an experience at a site outside of Congress that I would like to share this week. At that time, the days were warm, in the upper 70’s, here in central Arizona and one particular day, we waited until the sun was starting to set and the temperatures were cooler before we headed out to explore. We drove from the campground, out toward a little town called, Yarnell. Along the highway sits a huge frog that is really a huge boulder than someone painted green because the boulder was shaped like a frog. We had seen this many times, as we traveled along the highway, but this evening, we decided to investigate it further. We had learned that in the same area were two marked graves, one of a miner and one of his dog.

When we reached the area of the frog, we discovered, to our dismay, there was no place to pull over and park the car. No roads led into the rocky site and there was no safe place to pull over along the busy highway. We decided to drive down a little bit farther and turn around to head back. A mile or so down the highway; we spotted a dirt road where we could easily turn the car around. But, as we rounded a curve and slowed the car to turn, we noticed something very strange taking place farther down in the valley.

Below us, just off of the dirt road, it looked like a fog hanging over a part of the desert, just off the dirt road. This area has no buildings; there is no water and definitely no fields being farmed. It is desolate country where little grows outside of the normal desert brush or a few cactus. The area we were seeing, nothing was growing, it was a flat plot of land without growth, only sand.

Before us was an area covered in a dense cloud-like substance that logically made no sense at all. There was nothing else of this “fog” to be seen anywhere else around the valley, only in this one place. It was not dust from a vehicle as there were no vehicles out there and were it a truck or car, the dust would have been more linear and would have dissipated over a short period of time. No, this was not dust and there was no wind to stir the sandy soil. The misty cloud was confined to one small area only, and clung close to the ground.

Though the fog was a mystery, it remained such as we turned around to head the other way. The traffic on the highway was light that evening so we could proceed slowly, to check out the area around the frog once again. In the meantime, the sun was getting lower in the sky. In passing the frog the second time, I was able to see that there was a wire fence all around the frog so admittance was probably not possible. Dave drove on and a short distance up the road, he applied the brake to slow the car. Dave had seen a road when coming through the first time and had planned to check it out. What we discovered was the area where a sizable home had been, had burned to the ground. He stopped the car and we looked around us in the silence.

We found ourselves down in a small glen that was surrounded by huge rock formations, trees, and cactus. It was getting dark and the area was eerie. All that remained of the structure was a blackened pile of rubble. Around the charred remains were slabs of broken concrete, rusty items that I could not identify and a single metal folding chair that sat empty, as though waiting for someone to use it. There was not a sound to be heard outside of an occasional passing vehicle on the highway.

Dave had gotten out of the car and was putting BooBoo on her leash when I opened my door. As soon as I stepped out, I noticed a bitter cold around me. It felt nothing like a normal evening coolness but was icy and penetrating. Neither Dave nor BooBoo seemed to be bothered by the intense cold I was feeling. They had walked over closer to the debris and I could see that BooBoo was alert and excited. We were not sure what we had discovered here but tragedy had struck as the house had caught fire and burned to the ground. I felt uncomfortable and the icy cold just added to my unease. Knowing that I was feeling something odd, I made a special point of watching Boo and her reactions. She has become a strong indicator for us that something or someone is near when we take her on investigations with us.

I had turned on my recorder as soon as I stepped out of the car only because of what I was feeling. I saw how alert Boo was to everything and though there were no noises around us, she would whirl around and stare at something we could not see or near, off in the distance. She would stare at the area of the folding chair for several seconds and then look around, her ears perked to every possible sound. We recorded for close to five minutes before deciding to leave. It was getting very dark now and the desert can be dangerous after the sun sets due to predators seeking food and water.

Driving back to the campground, Dave asked me if I had felt anything at the site. I told him it was hard to explain what I had felt, outside of the physical presence of a bitter cold, which he did not feel. I felt like that area held secrets, as though something unknown was waiting to be discovered there. I had sensed a male presence for reasons not known to me.

As Dave listened to the EVP on our recorders, I searched through a book on the area that included old maps of what had been here in the 1800’s. I discovered that we had found the old site of the Martinez Ranch, one of the first miners and cattle barons in this valley. Martinez had abandoned the house when his range land was burned out, and many others had lived in the house and prospected in that area since that time.

Dave, in the meantime, had heard a male voice on the recorder that said, “Get me out!” Our feeling upon hearing the voice was that someone had been caught in the fiery inferno when the house burned down. It was chilling to hear such a cry and to realize that help probably never came to the man.

Happy Hauntings

Southwest Ghost Conference in 2005:

The IGHS is holding its 9^th annual ghost conference in 2005. Registrations are coming in for our Southwest Ghost Conference for March 25-27 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. More information can be found at http://www.ghostweb.com/swc.html regarding this conference. Book early, as we will again have limited seating available to us. We are planning on a meet and greet on Friday night, sessions and hands on investigations on Saturday and for those staying Sunday, we will have a list of haunted sites they can investigate in the Santa Fe and Albuquerque area.

Ghost Charm and Ghost Town Jewelry:

We have added our line of ghost town glass pendants. Check them out at http://www.ghostweb.com/glass1.html. Sharon has created six different designs for her sterling silver ghost charm necklaces, with both carnelian and turquoise or carnelian and hematine stones. The sterling silver ghost charm measures about an inch in length. She also has created some beautiful jewelry by wire wrapping stunning carnelian nuggets that we found in the desert near Deming, New Mexico. The carnelian nuggets were tumbled for five weeks to bring out their natural beauty. She also has earrings with carnelian and combinations of either turquoise or hematine. Get your orders in today by going to http://photos1.ghostweb.com/carn2.html.

Digital Ghost Photography Handbook:

Are you confused about orbs? What are dust orbs and how do they relate to real ghost orbs? Read our 20 page thermal bound book or download the PDF book and discover how digital photography is the wave of the future. We have been using digital since 1994 and we share with the reader, which are the best digital cameras on the market today. We also share what to look for when purchasing a digital camera and provide some protocols to avoid falling into the dust orb trap. Check it out at http://www.ghostweb.com/booklet2.html.

How to Record and Analyze Ghost Voices:

We have shared the hidden techniques that enable us to be tremendously successful in recording the voices of the dead. If you need a step by step booklet to help you achieve the same success as we enjoy, including which software to use to analyze the EVP recordings or what cables to use to hook up the recorder to the computer, search no further, check out the booklet at http://www.ghostweb.com/booklet.html. We ship via Priority Mail through the Post Office or download it as a PDF that can be printed out on your end.

CD Version Home Study Courses:

This is the premier certification program for ghost researchers and paranormal investigators, written by professional full time ghost researchers, Drs. Dave & Sharon. Part 1 deals with ghosts and the psychology of earth bound spirits, and Part 2 deals with working with people who are haunted by loved ones. We teach the scientific approach specializing in ghost photography and etheric voice phenomenon with 30 years of combined experience in this field. Read the recent testimonial. More information is available about our Christmas Specials at http://www.ghostweb.com/mainhsc2.html

Password Memberships:

We offer a special membership in our Ghostweb Ghost Galleries. Due to the size of these ghost galleries, we have to limit the number of people because of the bandwidth consumed by downloading the photos, spirit voices, and ghost videos in this area. If you want to view the largest collection of ghost photos, EVPs, and videos, check out our membership program at http://www.ghostweb.com/pass.html.

Life Time IGHS Member Certificate:

Instead of renewing every year, IGHS members can now purchase a Life Time Membership for $60 or a Life Time Membership and Life Time Clip ID Badge for $75. This is available through PayPal and through our online Secure Order Form at http://www.ghostweb.com/memcert.html.

IGHS ID Badges for Investigations:

We have received many requests for some kind of Identification Badge to wear while conducting field investigations. We have created a laminated ID Badge with a metal clip that snaps onto your shirt or other piece of clothing. It says that you are a Registered Ghost Hunter/Paranormal Investigator in good standing with the International Ghost Hunters Society and it has our signatures and web address. Order the ID Badge at http://www.ghostweb.com/id_badge.html.

IGHS Membership Certificates:

The IGHS offers a beautiful Membership Certificate. The membership certificate is valid for one year Check it out at http://www.ghostweb.com/memcert.html for more information.

Kind regards,

Dave, Sharon & BooBoo

International Ghost Hunters Society