Welcome to Diana's Halloween Countdown. In honor of this most glorious and ghoulish holiday, I'm devoting my next three columns to Web sites supernatural, scary or just plain silly. Considering the current state of paranormal research, I think most "information" to be found in cyberspace fulfills all three criteria rather nicely.
Which naturally brings us around to IGHS — the International Ghost Hunting Society. Yes, there really is one, and like any self-respecting organization in the 21st century, these guys have a Web site. Browse through their catalogues of haunted places, ghostly photographs, and "scientific" articles about life after death, demonic exorcism and the danger of Ouija (I'm dead serious). This site has plenty to see and learn about — just don't do it alone in a dimly lit room in the middle of the night. As soon as I stopped laughing out loud, I began to get the heebie-jeebies. The ghostly sounds (EVP, or "Electronic Voice Phenomena": http://photos2ghostweb.com/ evp.html) are especially spine tingling. Then again, I'm basically a fraidy cat. There are some episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that gave me nightmares.
But for those of you that never yelled at the screen when slasher-flick cheerleaders sashayed down basement stairs, Ghostweb has everything you need to know for a successful hunt — from what stage of the lunar cycle ghosts like best to the range of your basic camera flash. In fact, the IGHS article on "Standards and Protocol for Field Investigations" is my favorite on the site. Instructions such as, "Keep fingers, hair and camera straps away from camera lens," are juxtaposed with gems like, "Ask spirits for permission to take their photograph." See? They even make it easy for beginners.
What they don't do, however, is make ghost-hunting look particularly exciting. You can't even see these babies while traipsing around the creepy cemetery, since the "orbs" and "vortexes" are only visible on film. And while we're on the subject: "orbs?" If my ass is out in a damp graveyard in the middle of the night, I expect something more exciting than a wisp of light on film courtesy of Eckerd's one-hour. Transparent people, or at least beings floating around in sheets. After all, it's pretty tough to go Trick-or-Treating as a vortex.
—Diana Peterfreund
This article appears in Oct 16-22, 2002.