Investigating the Unknown

ORLEANS COUNTY: Investigating the unknown

By Miranda Vagg
vaggm@gnnewspaper.com




Most people naturally get scared, maybe a little spooked, when things go bump in the night.

There’s one group of local residents who run in the direction of the unknown in search of the source of mysterious sounds. They’re eager to see if there’s an apparition waiting around the corner of any dark hallway.

The members of the Center for Paranormal Investigation Association have had different experiences with the paranormal and have individual reasons for joining the group, said lead investigator David Condoluci of Albion. The member list is made up of spiritualists, scientists, skeptics, psychics and those who are open-minded and curious.

“You’ll find out each of the members are amazing in their own way,” David said.

In 2001, his friend, Tim Davis, CPIA director, established the association, and David joined soon after.

“We have a huge mix of people, which, in my estimation is the best group to have,” Davis said, a self-proclaimed skeptic of the unknown.

Today, the group has about 25 members, including Davis’ brother, Steve, and David Condoluci’s mother, local psychic Donna Condoluci. They have been called to investigate activities throughout Western New York and several other states. Investigations take anywhere from four to eight hours for one location, with CPIA members using high-tech gadgets to catch a glimpse of the other side.

According to Condoluci , the group uses handheld video cameras with night shot, infrared camera, parabolic microphones and digital voice recorders that have caught the ghostly whispers of those from beyond.

In his mid-20s now, Condoluci became interested in the paranormal when he was 15 years old. Growing up in a haunted house, he began seeing a person’s shadow in his bedroom, which drove the family pet, a Jack Russell Terrier, crazy, he said.

“I used to see a gentleman in the middle of the night,” Condoluci said. “It wasn’t until I was going through a photo album (much later) that, come to find out, it was my grandfather.”

With growing interest, Condoluci began studying texts about the paranormal and eventually began performing investigations on his own.

Davis’ first experience with the paranormal happened on a back road somewhere between Shelby and Albion that was rumored to be haunted. That night, he and his friends drove out to the secluded spot, parked and got out of the vehicle. It was shortly after that that Davis witnessed a glass bottle fly through the air in front of him and shatter on the ground.

Without any feasible reason for it to happen, Davis said he went in search of who threw it, but found nothing in the dark, besides himself and those he went with.

“I got really interested in it after (that),” he said.

Now before each investigation, the group researches where they are going, so they understand the history of the building. That information is privileged, to a point. Donna Condoluci and fellow psychic, Debbie Pritt, are not given the information before going into an investigation — what they call “going in cold.”

“They try not to tell us about it,” she said.

Both psychics were born with the gift, they said, and have paid attention to their natural abilities. While Pritt can see spirits, Condoluci cannot, because her specialties lie in another area.

“She sees them. I feel them and hear them,” said Condoluci, relating a story about the spirit of a child who followed her around an investigation one night, clinging to her jacket. Though she could not see the child’s ghost, Condoluci could feel the tugging and Pritt was able to give a full description of the little spirit.

“My grandmother was psychic, and so was my father, though he wouldn’t admit it,” Pritt said. “(Donna and I) feed off each other.”

Contact reporter Miranda Vagg at 798-1400, ext. 2225.

View the PDF version of the Journal-Register Front Page Here.

EMF Electromagnetic Fields

Methods for investigating using EMF meters.


Everyone has heard about EMF from Ghost hunting shows, etc. But not too many people understand what EMF really is.

EMF Defined:
The electromagnetic field is a physical field produced by electrically charged objects. It affects the behaviour of charged objects in the vicinity of the field.

Everything gives off a EM field. You emit and manipulate the EM field of your couch when you sit on it, the Doritos that you are eating have a measurable amount of EM radiation, everything that you see has some form of Electromagnetism that is detectable in one form or another. There are a few ways paranormal researchers use EMF meters to detect supernatural forces. How do you do it?

First, you get a baseline reading of your surroundings. Start by walking around the room and writing down and mapping the room. TV's Speakers, Microwaves, Clocks, Computers, Nuclear reactors, and anything electronic that can be plugged into the wall will give a noticeable reading,Then document the reading for each and plot it on your diagram of the room. Then walk to spots where the EM contamination from those electronic devices do not interfere with your readings. Document your highest and lowest readings for the room and choose a spot, free of interference to measure later.

Then when you return for your investigation, you should know what readings you should have for each spot.

Lets say you choose a spot in the center of the room as your reading spot. The baseline reading for your spot is .03 Milligauss. Sit in this spot and place the meter where you can read it clearly. If there is an entity in the vicinity, the belief is that the meter will register a fluctuation in the constant of the EM field.

So lets say that you have finished that bag of Doritos, and all of the sudden your meter spikes from .03 to 4.9 and jumps around from there for about 30 seconds, then stops.....What now?

Well, think to yourself what could have caused the meter to go crazy when I am just sitting here? Go back to basics.... Check the room again, are all of the readings on electronic devices the same as before? Document the time and check with your colleagues later. It's possible that someone started up the microwave, turned on the tv in the next room, or something else which caused the meter to move. If all of your groupies are accounted for, and nobody was at fault, what could you have done to make the meter move yourself? Did your cell phone go off at that time? Did you place a 2 way radio near the meter? If not, then it seems more likely that it was an anomaly than interference from a near by source.

Now when checking your evidence, such as EVP recordings, Video, and Photos taken at that time, (and you should have been recording these at the same time) compare with the time of the EMF spike. If you pick up something to go along with the meter spike, such as a floating librarian standing next to you on the video..... then that goes a long way to help prove that it wasn't just a fluke.

To make a long story short.......
"everything gives of EMF, find out the normal level so you can find out what isn't so normal."

I hope this was semi-informative.

-Tim Davis
CPIA Director

The Science Behind "The Creeps"

Infrasound Experiments
Patricia Reaney
Reuters

Monday, 8 September 2003

Scientists produced soundless music using a large pipe to test their theory (Laura Davis)

Shivers down the spine and other weird feelings may not be due to the presence of ghosts in haunted houses but to very low frequency sound that is inaudible to humans, according to a controlled experiment by British scientists.

Research, presented at this week's British Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Manchester, has shown that the extreme bass sound known as 'infrasound' produces a range of bizarre effects in people including anxiety, extreme sorrow and chills - supporting popular suggestions of a link between infrasound and strange sensations.

"Normally you can't hear it," said acoustic scientist, Dr Richard Lord at the National Physical Laboratory in England, who was involved in the project. Lord and colleages, who produced infrasound with a seven metre pipe and tested its impact on 750 people at a concert, said infrasound is also generated by natural phenomena.

"Some scientists have suggested that this level of sound may be present at some allegedly haunted sites and so cause people to have odd sensations that they attribute to a ghost - our findings support these ideas," said Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire in southern England.

In the first controlled experiment of infrasound, Lord and Wiseman played four contemporary pieces of live music, including some laced with infrasound, at a London concert hall and asked the audience to describe their reactions to the music. The audience did not know which pieces included infrasound but 22 % reported more unusual experiences when it was present in the music.

Their unusual experiences included feeling uneasy or sorrowful, getting chills down the spine or nervous feelings of revulsion or fear: "These results suggest that low frequency sound can cause people to have unusual experiences even though they cannot consciously detect infrasound," said Wiseman.

Infrasound is also produced by storms, seasonal winds and weather patterns and some types of earthquakes. Animals such as elephants also use infrasound to communicate over long distances or as weapons to repel foes.

"So much has been said about infrasound - it's been associated with just about everything from beam weapons to bad driving. It's wonderful to be able to examine the evidence," said Sarah Angliss, a composer and engineer who also worked on the project.