Hi! Lisa again!

So I know I haven't posted here much yet, but we haven't done our first ghost hunt yet, so I don't have any evidence to put out there yet.

BUT, we have made some big strides. Our ghost hunting kit is COMPLETE. My sister bought an 8 channel DVR system with 8 (fairly crappy) cameras with basic night vision. The cameras don't record by themselves, they have to be plugged into the DVR, but the DVR records so we can now set up cameras in a series of rooms or spots and have them all show up on one monitor. We also bought some cheap IR lights that take the cameras' night vision range from 10 feet to 60 feet, so that's a huge improvement!

One of the IR lights we bought to turn our crappy cameras into good cameras! (Picture from Amazon)

We also got a little creative and built spools to wrap all the cables that go with the DVR. We have four 120 foot cables, which can be separated into eight 60 foot cables, and we have four 150 foot cables. It was pretty easy...we just bought some wood rods and a bunch of circular metal pieces from Lowe's that had a pop-out center matching the size of the rods. Then we got some hose clamps, put two metal pieces on each rod about eight inches apart, put a hose clamp on the outside of each metal piece so they couldn't slide off, and then cut some PVC pipe pieces that we can slip on the ends of the rods and hold on to while someone pulls the wire to un-spool it.  Then we had to wrap tape around the edges of the metal pieces so nothing gets cut and around the outside of the pvc pipe pieces for grip.

We also used some L-brackets and other odds and ends from Lowe's to make a steady holder for the grid pen and a mount for the IR light attached to the camcorder.

All in all we have three bags of stuff, but one of them holds just my flat screen computer monitor that we hook up to the DVR. Everything else fits into the other two bags.

Our kit includes:

Full Spectrum IR camcorder and IR light
EVP recorder
DVR system, cameras and cables
EMF Detector
Handheld thermometer
Two digital cameras
Lots of extra batteries and memory disks
The Tarot of the Spirit World
Two head lamps
Two twist flashlights
Notebooks and pencils
Post-it notes and markers (to label any baseline EMF/temp readings around a room)
Grid pen and its holder
...and I THINK that's it. Whew.

We also have reservations at the Bardstown KY Talbott Tavern, one of the most famously haunted locations in the country. This will be our first ghost hunt, on July 7th. My parents are coming too. Who knew in only a couple years I would go from being one of only two people in my family interested in the paranormal, to being part of a family ghost hunt? (My brother can't make it, but he has done lots of ghost hunts on his own).

So anyway, check back after the 7th to see if we picked up any interesting evidence! We reserved the two (supposedly) most haunted rooms in the hotel. At least they have had the most reported activity.

Before we settle in for the night we're also going on a "ghost walk" with Patti Starr through the town where she takes us through the most supposedly haunted areas, gives us some history, etc.

Two nights later we will be investigating an old graveyard right at the edge of a friend's farm. It is way up in the woods, I doubt many people know about it, but the graves date back to the early 1800s.

After these two, it seems it will get harder to find places we can investigate without being certified. Most locations are public places that you could only do at night, or closed so you could only do it with the owner's permission. Both are hard to do if you're not a certified ghost hunting team, so after these two we'll start working on finding a date that we can take the certification course.

HOWEVER, despite our lack of ghost-hunting, the amount of paranormal experiences in this house have been escalating dramatically ever since we went to the psychic fair and my sister began to explore the paranormal. There is a little boy she has seen multiple times, who she claims showed her a picture of him standing on the porch of an old dilapidated house back behind ours with his mother or grandmother. She thinks he lived there at one point.

Last night was even stranger though. My sister's room and mine are directly across the hall from each other, at the end of the hallway. Last night, I thought I heard someone walking out in the house, but then it quit and I knew I had locked the doors, so I assumed it must have been the dogs moving around.

Apparently directly after that, my sister woke up suddenly in bed to find that her bed was shaking! She rolled over and saw a man standing over her, shaking the bed. Up til this point, she has gotten very freaked out when she has seen spirits, and tried to ignore them. This time, she resisted being scared and said out loud, "If you have something to tell me, then say it, but stop shaking the bed!" When she said that, the man immediately disappeared.

These are her dogs, who apparently don't like ghosts

At the exact same time, the dogs out in the hallway started barking, and then crying.

At the exact same time they started crying, I heard very loud stomping out in the hall, and got the impression that something was wrong - like someone was very angry or aggravated about something.

I jumped up and grabbed my pistol, assuming someone was in the house. We both opened our doors to the hallway, and the dogs were backed up into the corner of the wall, both crying. They bolted into my sister's room as soon as she opened the door. Of course, there was no one out there.  We then proceeded to tell each other what we had seen/heard. She hadn't heard the stomping or noises, but I hadn't actually seen the man.

It was WEIRD. We have no idea what he wanted, or if we both just happened to have weird dreams which we woke up from when we heard the dogs crying about something totally unrelated. Who knows. But it was weird.

Anyway, so that's where we are with the ghost hunting adventure! Any other teams out there, how long did it take for you to get started? Did you run into similar problems at first with finding places you were allowed to investigate?

- Lisa