Not the typical night out on the town

Before I tell you my experience, let's get one thing out of the way: no, we were not hanging out with the Ghostbusters in Fitzwilliam, N.H. on Saturday night. The Ghostbusters were Dan Akroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson. So no, Elwood Blues was not in the house.

This was an investigation of a house (now a museum) with paranormal activity. We did not find ectoplasmic goo. We did not shoot Slimer with CGI lasers. If that's what you're looking for, you can stop reading, as I don't want to disappoint you. What we did experience, though, was a lot of fun (although I would take those CGI lasers if they were offered to me).

I went into this experience with an open mind. While I am a believer of "ghosts," if that's the phrase you want to use, I didn't want to go into this house and think that any little noise was supernatural. I wasn't going to let myself be fooled by the smallest creak or voice from another room.

Sidenote: I have never experienced anything supernatural - at least, I think I haven't. There is no definitive moment in my life where I can look back and say, "this is what made me believe." I was 100 percent a newbie heading into this investigation.

My technique going into this house was to get into a room with just one other person, stand still and just be as quiet as possible. One rule was that you shouldn't go alone. There were many reasons, but the most important was for verification purposes. If one person hears something, but there isn't anyone else in the room to hear it, how valid is that claim?

After getting a tour of many of the rooms and after a few sessions with a handful of the group (there was about 11 of us in the house that night), I grabbed my photographer Ryan and aimed to break off and find a quiet room. In one room downstairs was the office Amos Blake used when he was in the house, so we set up shop there. Everyone else was walking away from this area so we weren't going to be hearing voices from anywhere else. I placed my voice recorder down, turned it on and let it record. Ryan and myself just stood in the middle of the pitch-dark room, seeing if we could get anything. We tried talking to whatever may be there. The first question I posed was for "it" to make a noise.

We waited for about three seconds before a dull popping noise came from behind Ryan. My instinct was natural: "Was that you?"

Nope.

You could chalk it up to the old house but it wasn't a noise I was hearing the whole night. There were a lot of creaks and squeaks in this house, but nothing similar to what we heard in that room. Shortly after this though, we experienced something else.

In the same room - and maybe just 30 seconds after the noise - I was standing still with my hands behind my back when I could feel a cold ball of air right on my hands. I moved my hands around the small area and everything else was warm. There was no draft, either - trust me on that.

My favorite part of the night was using the dowsing rods, which, as many will tell you, has no explanation to why they work. You know what I'm talking about: those things that people use to find water? Yeah, bunch of crap, right? Nope. That's what I thought before using them.

Picking those rods up, I had no control over what they were doing. And when asking the rods to command, they would answer. "Point to Lauren." Check. "Point to the bright light." Check. "Point to me." Creepy, but check.

You might say it was the "angle I was holding the rods," but it wasn't. I was making sure the entire time that my hands moved as little as possible. I was conscious of doing that. Sometimes I wasn't even paying attention to where the rods would point, but how steady my hands were. There were times where one or both rods would just continually spin, not stopping until they were forced to stop.

After those experiences, not much happened to me personally. Am I bummed out I didn't see more? Not at all. I met a lot of good people who were passionate and rational about what they love to do. It was a night that I would do again in a heartbeat.

Now I just need to call Akroyd about going ghostbusting with him next week.