Dallas Ft. Worth   -   Washington D.C.   -  Seattle  -   New Orleans

First, a little background information. After I developed the S.P.E.C.T.R.E Project for AGHOST back in 2002, I put details of the sensor array up on the site at this page. I realize many groups prefer to keep this sort of information proprietary, but I believe in the sharing of information a win-win situation for everyone and I am doubly glad to see that it was borne out so plainly this July 4th weekend.

Justin and Andy (of GhostGadgets.Com and Beacon Parastudies respectively) saw SPECTRE and were tempted to buy the same Vernier equipment - but Justin's technical prowess and desire to go one step further won out and so he constructed his own sensor array named A.R.C.A.D.I.A. (Analog Reading Computer Aided Digital Input Analyzer) What is so impressive about ARCADIA is that he hand built the sensors and custom designed the program to read the input and give a graphical output. Such customization promises excellent flexibility for research and design purposes and I look forward to more innovation from Justin.

I initially contacted Justin in November of 2003 as I was so impressed by his Ghost Gadgets site and knowledge of electronics that I felt a need to confer with him on certain technical aspects of ghost hunting. After corresponding with each other in email for several months, we finally arranged to meet at the classified paranormal research site for OKCGC - (a site I refer to as "Hospital X") over July 4th weekend.

And what a superb research opportunity (and ghost hunter holiday) it turned out to be! Justin was kind enough to show me around this very unique facility which is equipped with several webcams and an audio link - all of which is piped 24/7 to the www.researchwebcam.com website. After we talked as guys for awhile and had our own little tech tupperware party, we got down to business. We started by making some preliminary sweeps with the Geiger counter and Air Ion Counter.

These were for baseline readings only, and nothing anomalous was noted. We then selected the former Dining Area as the first place to set up ARCADIA and SPECTRE. Please note, this was not a competition to see which one was better. Each system has it's own strengths and we merely wished to see how consistent they were in detecting unusual phenomena. Speaking of which, Justin has coined a new term for paranormal investigators - he refers to ourselves as "anomaly collectors." At about this time, Becky and Ron Cosgrove  (the Senior Members & Directors of OKCGC) arrived and it was a supreme pleasure to meet these hard working folks at last.

They are very kind, down to earth people, but their well deserved pride in the structure is noticeable. I had always wondered how they had negotiated a deal with the property owner, and they told me that they perform maintenance and monitor security in exchange for being able to use the structure. Now don't let that last sentence just slip past you. This former hospital is fairly large with several levels and has constant issues with rain intrusion and vandals. They have to mow the lawn, repair windows, replace plywood and of course they ran LAN cable for all of the webcams through several levels.

In short, they have invested THOUSANDS of dollars and hours in this project and deserve nothing less than the highest recognition from the ghost investigation community. Furthermore, the webcam project is assisted by dozens of volunteer moderators and "watchers", those that keep checking for anomalous phenomena. Now I can tell you that the life of almost any investigator is easily over glamorized and that much of it consists of a tedious routine that is about as much fun as watching paint dry. As Ron pointed out, most people can investigate, but few have the long term persistence to be a researcher. But he also made another good point - the ghost community needs both investigators and researchers.

What you may not realize is that for many of the webcam watchers, the facility is the closest thing they will come to investigating an actual haunting due to physical or family limitations. Many of those who log onto the webcams are located in far flung places such as the U.K. and Europe, so the impact of this project isn't simply local or restricted to North America.

At one point during the weekend, Ron had me do an actual "interview" with the community through an unorthodox and highly creative channel. I stood in the darkened hallway of the haunted facility while he would read the chat questions off of the board from a PC located in a utility closet. Then I would verbally answer into the live mike and he would read the feedback from the board. I have done many interviews both live and taped, and so far, this was the highlight of my media interaction career. This was such a cool way to interact that I may try doing some live webcasting in the near future. Stay tuned for details on that.

Later that evening I finally got to meet Erik (President of OKCGC) and Laura (Team Leader), two very fine individuals that are as dedicated to ghost research and their organization as any I've met. Erik was very welcoming and I was honored to accompany him, Ron and Andy on one of their routine sweeps of the hospital on Saturday night. Andy is a very enthusiastic individual about equipment and I was very happy to answer his questions and give him a chance to use the Air Ion Counter first hand. In a stroke of brilliance, he tried using it around an old air freshener and the resulting Air Ion Count went through the roof. Could this be used in the future to verify strange smells?

We exchanged gifts and OKCGC was kind enough to present a very limited edition 3rd Anniversary engraved wine glass to SPI; an excellent memento of my visit there. All in all, this was one of the best ghost hunter vacations I have taken and I was awed by the professionalism and hospitality of everyone present. In a field that seems dominated by insecurity, flakiness, egoism and groups that are easily threatened by the accomplishments of others, our coming together was a breath of fresh air. Those who have read my writings know how blunt I can be and I wouldn't be writing this if it were not truly sincere.

I have met other groups and individuals at ghost conferences and to be honest, some of them treated me like a second class citizen or just plain dirt. As for the aforementioned individuals above, I can't find a bad word to say about any of them. May they be blessed in knowledge and happiness in this life and whatever lies beyond.

As for the SPECTRE and ARCADIA logs, SPECTRE pretty much "flatlined" (no anomalies noted) and Justin is on vacation so it will be a while before we get the results back on that. I will post the graphs in the coming weeks, so please be patient until next time!