Free Ghost Hunting by Grant Wilson Jason Hawes

the eye of an incredibly loud and tumultuous storm—and not knowing if you were going to survive.
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INTRUDER NOVEMBER 2000
    W hen T.A.P.S. embarks on an investigation, we look for natural explanations before we entertain the possibility of supernatural ones. We try to debunk claims of ghostly entities and occurrences. That sets us apart from other ghost-hunting groups, who go in with the preconceived notion that a place is haunted.
    Don’t get me wrong—I believe in the supernatural. I think there are ghosts all around us. I just don’t think ghost hunters are going to advance our store of knowledge, or our credibility with the public, if we label everything a haunting.
    We explain our position to our clients in advance. After all, eighty percent of the time we have to tell them they’ve got a loose floorboard and not a spirit of the dead. Usually that’s enough to put their minds at ease, and we feel good that we were able to help.
    When Deena Jackson asked us to investigate her Uxbridge, Massachusetts, town house, we responded immediately. After all, Deena had a six-year-old daughter, and we don’t like to see children hurt or victimized by fear. When we arrived, Grant and I sat down and spoke with Deena while Keith Johnson and Heather Drolet did a walk-through and set up equipment.
    Deena complained of several problems. For one thing, she felt she was constantly being watched. For another, she heard a banging in the walls at all hours. She also heard footsteps at night, though there was no one there to make them. Finally, her downstairs television appeared to turn itself on at night.
    It appeared to Deena that her home was haunted. She was concerned for the safety of herself and her little girl. It was an understandable reaction.
    In our exploration of the town house, in Deena’s bedroom closet we came across several books on ghosts and hauntings. Sometimes that’s an indication that the client is trying to fake a supernatural event, but we didn’t believe that was true in this case. Deena seemed genuinely scared by what was happening.
    The first claim we checked out was the sound of footsteps late at night. Deena’s neighbor walked his dog at night. It was possible that what she’d heard were his footsteps on the staircase outside.
    We trained a camera on the downstairs television, hoping it would turn on and give us some evidence. We also checked on it from time to time. However, it remained inactive the entire night.
    Deena had also spoken of a banging sound in the walls. We didn’t have to wait long to hear it. However, it sounded like her neighbor’s headboard hitting the wall between his town house and Deena’s.
    Of course, not everyone who lives in a town house hears what goes on in her neighbor’s home. But these homes were rather new and had walls built with metal two-by-four studs. This allowed sound to travel easily and efficiently from one residence to another.
    After a while, we called it a night. When we came back to Deena with our analysis, we had to tell her that we didn’t think her home was haunted. After all, we hadn’t been able to document any of her claims. In addition, none of us felt anything out of the ordinary there. It seemed like a secure place to raise a child.
    Deena rejected our findings out of hand. Despite everything, she was certain that her home was haunted, and she wouldn’t hear anything to the contrary. It wasn’t our job to convince her one way or the other. All we could do was tell her what we had seen and wish her good luck.
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    GRANT’S TAKE
    W e’re not mean people. We would rather have a happy client than an unhappy one. However, we’ve got to call ’em the way we see ’em, and the way we saw Deena Jackson’s house was “not haunted.
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THE HAUNTED WAREHOUSE FEBRUARY 2001
    W e’ve all heard of haunted houses, but how many of us have heard of a haunted warehouse? We at T.A.P.S. have not only heard of such a thing but we once had the opportunity