27
Feb/2008

by ghost_matt

I've been ghost hunting since the beginning of 2005. I
didn't have experiences prior, I've just always been interested in
things like ghosts, UFOs, Big Foot, etc. For a long time I thought
nobody would take me seriously because I didn't have any experiences,
but I think it actually allowed me to think outside the box better
because I didn't already believe.

After being unable to find a
group to join in my area that I liked, I decided to try to start my own
group. I went on some messageboards and found some people who were
interested. We had our first meeting at my house to meet everyone and
start making plans. Our group was called East Central Wisconsin
Paranormal Investigations (ECWPI), and we had our first investigation
at a metaphysical store in Oshkosh.

My second investigation was
at JFK Prep in St. Nazianz. I wanted to do a good job so I contacted
other paranormal investigators in Wisconsin and asked if they would
help us out, and they did. The investigation was only supposed to be
two nights but it became an ongoing investigation that lasted three
months. Through JFK Prep I got a lot of my training and I also started
to become networked with other groups in Wisconsin and to get invited
on their investigations. I also got interviewed for the show Scariest
Places On Earth, but the show was fake. After telling them a story
about an experience I'd had, my interviewer asked me, "Okay, can you
tell me it again, but can you word it like this?" They also kept trying
to get another investigator from our group to say that the place was
evil and you shouldn't go there. They ended up not using any of our
interviews for the show. You can still read my investigation report
from JFK Prep on ECWPI's old blog at: http://wiscghostnet.blogspot.com.

ECWPI
disbanded after a little more than a year. Getting a group started
isn't as easy as it sounds. Nobody knew each other when we first
started, and over the course of a year we found some people lost
interest or they just didn't stay active, one guy I had to remove, and
some of us just developed different methods. And there were also too
many people in the group and we had to rotate who got to go. So we
split into two separate groups but it was on good terms and everybody
is still friends.

Four of us from ECWPI started Heartland
Paranormal Investigations (HPI) in Manitowoc with one of our
consultants from the old group, and my old co-founder started Fox
Valley Spirit Hunters in Oshkosh. I've since been on nearly 20
investigations as a member of ECWPI and HPI, including occasionally
getting invited along on investigations with other groups. Most
recently I got to spend Halloween investigating the Grand Opera House
in Oshkosh with Fox Valley Spirit Hunters.

Sometime during all
that I started to really get into the science of ghost hunting and went
back to school for Psychology and Parapsychology. I'm working on my
second major in Psychology at UW-Milwaukee right now with plans to go
on to grad school after that to become a therapist or guidance
counselor, and I'm also taking Loyd Auerbach's Parapsychological
Studies program. I'm not impressed by someone who boasts that they have
a certificate in ghost hunting or parapsychology because my feeling is
that ghost hunting isn't a proven science and you can't get certified
in it. There are no experts. So even though I'll be getting a
certificate when I complete this, I'm going to continue taking classes
in Parapsychology where I can find them and just count this as one
credit. Unfortunately no one offers a degree in Parapsychology anymore
so you just have to major in a science and take classes and attend
seminars where you can find them and build your own major.

Recently
my girlfriend Amanda moved up here from Florida, and since we both
ghost hunt we wanted to do it together. The group I was with, HPI,
didn't want to add more members and then have it be like the old group
where we had to rotate who got to go, so that is why we've decided to
be independent together.

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