still scratching my head...

the first 3 investigations i attended, nothing happened. well, at least i didn't experience anything that seemed unexplainable. i will admit that there were a few times where i felt a little creeped out, or maybe had some strange feelings, as if something were behind me etc. but nothing that i could write home about.  and i have to tell you dear readers, i was beginning to become even more of a skeptic than i was when i started this quest.  here i was, entering allegedly haunted homes and not having a single experience!

i remember coming home from a particularly uneventful investigation one evening and telling my husband that i wasn't sure i really believed anymore. NOTHING WAS HAPPENING!! i think at this point, all those years of watching reality ghost shows had tainted my view of what paranormal investigating really was. on tv, something happens every episode! footsteps...what was that!?! they whisper to each other.... yeah, none of that. granted i had only been in the group for 3 months. but i was starting to get antsy. when will i see something?! it weighed on my mind nightly.

when july rolled around, i was invited to tag along on a preliminary investigation. a "prelim" is our first meeting with clients. when someone sends a request for an investigation, they are contacted and after speaking to them on the phone, usually a prelim will be scheduled. typically a smaller group will go out and interview the clients and gather information on the home/business, map out the place, take photos etc. the team can then recommend a full investigation be done, based on info gathered during the interview/prelim process.

needless to say, i was excited to learn more of the process and jumped at the chance to join the team and help with a prelim. this particular investigation was in a teeny tiny little mining town deep in the forest of the sierra nevada's. (please note: real names of places and people will be omitted, for obvious reasons!! ) so 3 of my fellow investigators and i loaded up in my car and off we went.

upon arriving at the client's home, for some unknown reason, i began to feel sort of strange. my stomach began to hurt and when entering the home, a headache soon followed. at the time, i simply chalked it up to a disagreeable lunch.

we decided to split into groups with two of us doing interviews and two mapping the house/taking photos. I was assigned to the latter and my colleague, brad and i began inside the house snapping photos, taking some initial readings of EMF. This was a VERY small home. 2 bedrooms with a fairly good sized basement. an old mining "shack" if you will, that was converted into a nice cozy home for two.

not even 10 minutes after being inside the home, "something" told me to go down to the basement (that "something" is an entirely different post, coming soon!) what i will say about it now, is that it wasn't an audible voice, but a feeling. a very distinct and somewhat out of the blue urge to go down to the basement.

so staying together, i grabbed brad and we headed downstairs. the basement was unfinished. dirt floors, washing machine and a old refrigerator. there were 2 office type florescent light fixtures downstairs that we turned on and i just started snapping photos. with the dirt floor, i was confident that most of my photos would have false "dust" orbs and not much else. after being down there for a few minutes, i began looking around through the screen on my digital camera.

it was then that i saw something.  it looked like a mist. a swirly white colored mist. i looked up from my camera and yes, i could also see it without the camera. it was right there not event 2 feet away from me!!! so, i did the only thing i knew to do. i started snapping photos. when i looked down at my camara's preview screen and saw what i had captured. my eyes grew wider and my heart started racing. the mist began to move and i followed with my camera, snapping pic after pic. i called for brad to come look when he got to my side, the mist had moved just over the fridge and it was there that we both saw what looked like a swirly white mist starting to take the shape of a face. my body went completely cold. chills went right through me and it was almost as if you could feel the electric charge in the air.  as mesmerized and strange as it felt, the only thing i could think of was, "just keep taking photos, jeannie...don't stop".  we followed the mist all the way around the room, until it finally just disappeared just behind the staircase. i stood there in complete shock and IMMEDIATELY told brad... "we have to debunk this. right away".  debunking, for those of you that don't know, is trying to find a non-paranormal reason for a paranormal experience. sometimes it can be as simple as a loose floor board, or a leaky pipe. sometimes, you have to dive a bit deeper for an explanation, such as weather, or high amounts of electro-magnetic energy.

So, my first thought was.. it was a combination of lights and dust. so we went about testing our theories, stirring up dust, taking photos with and without the lights on. trying anything and everything to recreate what we both had seen with our eyes and had captured on my digital camera.  we couldn't do it. NOTHING came close to it.  i still didn't believe it.  i couldn't have been. could it? Here are a few of the photos i caught. you be the judge. { Due to the confidential nature of the work we do at API, I am not able to post evidence until it has been posted on our website. Soooo.. as soon as the photos are released on the site, I will post a link. Sorry readers!}

Now, there are a few things i want to point out about this experience. #1 - i have to take into account, how the mist moved. dust does not move like that. nor does it photograph with its own light source. #2 the way my body reacted when that thing started to take shape is something i had never felt before. it was like someone dipped me in ice water. then i tingled everywhere, like when your foot falls asleep and it starts to come back and it tingles. i felt like that all over my body.  i wanted to scream with excitement!!! i wanted to jump up and down like a kid on christmas morning. I SAW A GHOST!  well, i really don't know what it was that i saw and experience, but it wasn't anything i could explain. and everything that i thought i knew or had known up to this point in my life, felt changed.

what am i supposed to do now? come on, jeannie! you got into this field because you wanted some answers, now all you have are more questions!!! it's funny. i thought i would be scared, frightened and want to run away if i saw or experienced anything. but it wasn't scary. it was almost eerily peaceful in a way.  i knew i wasn't going to find an explanation for this, and the implications of that thought is what really scared me. what does this mean? do i really believe that what i saw was something not of this earth? a spirit? a ghost? what was it!!!! what i did know, was that my life was about to change, big time.

readers, i understand skepticism. i relish in the fact that i take everything that happens to me on investigations with a grain of salt. that caught up in a moment, your brain can allow you to have any number of experiences. that if you let yourself, you can turn every sound you hear into footsteps. you HAVE to remain objective at every moment, or fall victim to circumstance. did i see what i saw in that basement, yes i did. whether it was paranormal or not, something happened that i couldn't explain and it was the most fantastic experience of my budding paranormal career :)

My next entry, i will dive a bit deeper into exactly what that "something" was that told me to go down into that basement. stay tuned my lovelies!!!!

xoxojeannielee