Chasing Spirits: The Building of the Ghost Adventures Crew

by Groff, Nick

  I wear my Phantom Collection clothes on a regular basis. The line launched on Halloween 2011 and has been well received so far. I plan to introduce more designs and clothes as time goes on.

  From attending Ghost Adventures events and meeting fans all over the place, I’m humbled and amazed by how much they want to be a part of what we do. We’re kind of like a subculture—a group of friends out to explore the unexplained, and if people want to join us for the ride, then they’re welcome to.

  I know the clothes, the music, and even this book may look like I’m trying to cash in on something, but the reality is I don’t do something unless my heart is in it 100 percent. When you work in a creative field, you can’t fake it. If you make art that is half-assed, people will see through it. People aren’t stupid. They recognize when something is genuine. Real art is about telling the truth to your audience.

  That honesty is something I try to convey in every episode of Ghost Adventures, and in everything I put out to the public.

  I want to be a positive force for change. I’m in a position where I can do that. And so is everyone else. I truly believe any obstacle can be overcome. I’m just getting started.

  CHAPTER 15

  THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

  It’s taken a long time for my mind and spirit to accept that there’s something else out there after we die. I feel that this is something I’ve always known, but I needed to prove it to myself to be 100 percent certain. Looking for ghosts and, in particular, that experience at Linda Vista Hospital accomplished that.

  I think of my life now as a continual transformation. I’m evolving because of my experiences. Sometimes that evolution takes leaps—like when I locked eyes with a spirit—but most of the time that change occurs in tiny steps that are too small to notice. But over time they add up.

  I’ve learned a lot along the way about the filmmaking craft and about paranormal investigating. But above all, I’ve learned about myself. I know enough to know there’s plenty more to learn—I take a lot of comfort in that.

  I was asked recently by my old UNLV professor Francisco Menendez to come back and speak to the film department. So I started thinking about what I would say to the students. What would I say to a younger version of me if I could?

  I knew I’d ask the students: “How many of you want to be filmmakers?” I imagined I’d see just about every hand in the auditorium go up—that’s how it was when I was in school. My follow-up question would be: “What are you going to do about it?”

  Sure, they’re in school to learn about the process and the business. That’s a good start. And I imagined they would have been attending my lecture to get the answer to my second question. But here’s the thing: I don’t know what they should do about it. I just know what I did about it.

  Going to school doesn’t move you any closer to actually being a filmmaker. A filmmaker captures stories and finds a unique and captivating way to tell them. You can learn about cameras, editing, pitching ideas, and all that other stuff in school. But you must have the heart of a filmmaker. And you must do things for yourself. A filmmaker is a doer, a problem solver. You don’t have the money? Find it. You don’t have the cameras? Borrow one, buy one, or rent one. You don’t have an actor? What about that guy who made your sandwich at the deli yesterday? He was a real character and would be perfect. Ask him! Start filming and start editing. That’s the only way to get better. That’s how I got to where I am today, and that’s how every filmmaker I know got to where he or she is today. If you need your hand held every step of the way, filmmaking isn’t for you.

  QUESTIONS FANS ASK

  Would you ever want to own a haunted building?

  Yes. I would love to own Linda Vista Hospital in Los Angeles. That building still haunts me. If I owned it I could turn it into a kind of paranormal laboratory. The only problem is it would cost millions, and so far my lottery tickets aren’t covering it.

  I also get asked for a lot of advice when it comes to paranormal investigation. People see me do this on television and they want to try it for themselves. I recommend people find a local paranormal investigation group to get started—they’re all over the place. Search online, or attend paranormal events in your region. An established group can show you the ropes, but that alone isn’t enough. Learn all you can on your own. Read books, but not just paranormal books—read what the skeptics have to say, read books on science and energy. Exploring the paranormal is all about testing your own theories. It’s a journey.

  One of the strangest questions I get is from people who think the paranormal is an easy way to get on television. They want to know how their group can get their own show. I try to be helpful, but I question the motive. You should be in the paranormal world because you’re passionate about the work and the study. If you get into it for any other reason, viewers (and television executives long before the viewers) will see right through you.

  Whatever you do in life, follow your passion. If you want to be on TV, be an actor. If you want to pursue the paranormal, do it! If you’re innovative, if your passion for the subject comes through, you may end up on TV—who knows? But the goal should always be to do what you love. When you go looking for ghosts week after week, death becomes your business. What happens after we die becomes an ever present thought. I want to be remembered for who I am and what I did after I’m gone. I want to be someone people could look up to. It’s easy for an asshole to be remembered—those guys stand out. But to be remembered for being someone positive—that takes something more. That’s what I work toward.

  I’ve had the chance to talk with religious people of all persuasions, and one thing I’ve noticed is that no two people will agree on what happens in the afterlife. Even married couples who’ve attended the same church for decades will have different ideas on the afterlife.

  QUESTIONS FANS ASK

  How do you keep your cool during tense moments in an investigation?

  You do get used to being in these frightening locations and situations. Once you’ve faced the paranormal down a few times, you know what to expect—not that I still don’t get surprised on occasion. It’s similar to people who hunt dangerous animals. It’s good to have a healthy amount of fear to keep you sharp, but if you’re not ready to face that fear, then paranormal investigation is not for you.

  From childhood I’ve been thinking deep thoughts about all aspects of the unknown. Even in the Bible there’s a description of a spaceship. In the book of Ezekiel, chapter one describes in great detail the technology of a wheel-within-a-wheel craft that comes down from the heavens with multiple humanoid entities on board. The description isn’t spiritual, it’s technical.

  What if some of these UFOs we’re seeing are ourselves time traveling from the future? What if some of these ghosts are us catching a glimpse of the past? There’s so much that isn’t known out there. That’s what draws me in. I want to know. I have big questions, and I’m inviting everyone along for the ride as I search for answers.

  Nothing is impossible. Not so long ago, people thought it was impossible to fly to the moon. But we did that in 1969. So many “impossibilities” have become commonplace that it almost seems ridiculous to call anything impossible anymore. Yet some still do. It’s not true. We’re limited only by our imaginations. The paranormal will be proven, even if it’s to one person at a time.

  Through my ghost investigations, I’ve become more spiritual and less religious. That might sound like a cop-out, but it’s not. I still pray, I reach out to my grandmothers almost daily for help and guidance, and I constantly think about what positive change I can make on my life and the people around me. There are still bad days, of course. Some days I have lawyers calling, projects stalling, or issues with people I work with, but still I push through. I try to stay more positive than negative because in the end I know I’m winning more than I’m losing.

  Life is short. Working in television, and especially my return to music, has helped me realize I’m here for a reason. I�
�ve been through the highs and the lows. I get it.

  I turned my passion into my career. I keep my love for doing this because I’m still an adrenaline junkie. I still find it thrilling to explore haunted locations and see what we turn up. I want to have more experiences like I did at Linda Vista. I’ll be ready for it next time. If the entity reaches out to me, I’ll want to reach back. I’ll ask: “What is it like where you are?”

  In many respects, I feel like spirits are calling out to me to keep doing this. That’s fine—I have no plans to stop. Through doing this I can be an example to others.

  Working on Ghost Adventures and living in the public eye have made me more confident in who I am. I recently did a live interview on a morning show in Las Vegas. I sat down in their studio and talked about the show and my experiences with ghosts. When it was over, I walked out of the studio thinking, How cool is that? First, that someone would find me newsworthy, and second, that I wasn’t nervous at all. Live TV—who knows how many people are watching at home?—and I’m completely comfortable in my own skin. I know who I am, I know what I have experienced, and I’m happy to tell others about it—whether it’s to someone standing next to me or in front of a television audience.

  I realize I’m blessed. Some people live their entire lives without ever getting comfortable or even knowing who they are. I still have more to learn—I know this. But I know who I am right now. I know the journey I’m on is spiritual, and it always has been.

  I’m Nick Groff. I’m a filmmaker. I’m a paranormal investigator. I’m a musician. I’m an author. I’m a dad. I’m a husband. I’m a son and a brother. And I believe in ghosts!

  PARANORMAL INVESTIGATION EQUIPMENT

  THERMAL IMAGING CAMERA: If you’ve seen the Predator movie series starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, then you have a sense of what a thermal imaging camera sees: heat, or more specifically, infrared radiation. By looking for infrared energy, the camera can create a video picture in which warmer temperatures show up as light colors or white and cooler temperatures show up as dark blues and purples. The FLIR camera I use can give you a scale of temperature ranges in its field of vision accurate up to one hundredth of a degree. It can detect temperatures between -4°F and 482°F and then create a rainbow-colored video image. It looks amazing—and it had better, considering how much these things cost! They can range from a few thousand to over fifteen thousand bucks.

  This piece of equipment was designed for military, law enforcement, and emergency workers and later adapted by electricians and contractors to look for heat signatures inside of buildings. Emergency workers can use them to look through walls for warm bodies who may be unconscious; contractors can look through walls to wires and pipes that might be glowing hot and in need of fixing.

  As with a lot of equipment paranormal investigators use, we have taken this tool and adapted it for what we do. I use a thermal camera to look for spirit energy. If there are cold spots or hot spots in a room, this camera finds them. Sometimes I may see a warm, misty figure floating in the room through the camera and then quickly learn that its source is a heat vent right below—no ghost, but at least I know. Then there are times when I see something on the camera that looks exactly like a human figure. When I see the bright colors of a human body, my first thought is that there’s a person nearby—maybe someone I’m investigating with, or someone who maybe shouldn’t be where I am right now. Usually there’s a normal explanation for what this camera picks up, but once in a while there isn’t.

  I used this camera while investigating outside the Gettysburg Engine House in Pennsylvania. This was the exact spot where the Battle of Gettysburg began back on July 1, 1863. We aimed the camera down the railroad tracks and captured a human shape walking. The shape was dark blue, meaning the camera detected this figure as colder than the environment. When I looked ahead, I saw nothing with my naked eye. That’s when my heart started racing. This piece of equipment doesn’t know how to fake evidence. It just looks for temperatures and displays what it sees. Could it be that this camera saw a Civil War spirit that was pulling energy out of the environment and creating an area colder than everything else around it? Let me put it this way: if that isn’t what happened, then I can’t explain what I saw on the thermal camera any other way.

  EM PUMP: One theory about ghosts and spirits is that either they are made up of electromagnetic energy or they use electromagnetic energy to make things happen in our world. So creating a cold spot may draw a small amount of energy from the room, while pushing a living person into a wall most likely takes a lot of energy. This may explain why the batteries we use sometimes suddenly drain for no apparent reason. The EM pump was invented by Bill Chappell, an engineer, inventor, and ghost investigator who builds this stuff to test paranormal theories. The EM pump was designed to give spirits a beacon to follow.

  According to Bill, the device creates a small electromagnetic field around it that changes in frequency from .2 to 256 Hz. It makes a kind of electromagnetic white noise, similar to when you hear a police siren behind you on the highway. That sound goes low to high, back and forth—it’s designed to get your attention. Same with the EM pump. “If I put something in the room that makes this obnoxious noise,” Bill explained, “sooner or later you’re going to go look for it.”

  When I place one of these devices in paranormal hot spots, more activity seems to happen. I get more electronic voice phenomena and I hear more unexplained noises. So this beacon is definitely doing something to attract spirit activity.

  EMF METER: An EMF meter or detector measures electromagnetic fields. The theory is that spirits are either made up of electromagnetic energy, or manipulate those fields in order to do something like make a sound, materialize, or move objects. If that’s true, then an EMF meter should measure some kind of fluctuation. There are many different brands and types of meters. I’ll go through some of those below.

  TRIFIELD METER: This device is also known as a natural electromagnetic meter because it’s designed to detect only DC, or direct current, that mostly comes from natural electric and magnetic sources like the earth’s magnetic field, high solar activity, static electricity, and nearby thunderstorms. The electricity in your house runs on AC, or alternating current, but the Trifield meter isn’t looking for those frequencies. It’s called “Trifield” because it measures in three directions: the X, Y, and Z axes. The device can even detect electromagnetic activity in living people—some people carry an electronic charge, though others do not.

  If spirits are moving the natural electromagnetic fields of a room, the needle on this device will move to show how strong the force is. It also has a buzzer alarm on it so you can set it down and leave it alone like an electromagnetic motion detector. If you hear the buzzer, that means some electromagnetic field has just come into contact with the device. It doesn’t necessarily mean a ghost, but it does mean some force has moved through the room.

  I know that’s getting technical, so here’s what the Trifield meter basically means to me: if I’m sensing something weird in a haunted location, like a tingling sensation or a cold spot, or if I’m hearing strange sounds in the room, I pull out this meter. If it picks something up, that’s just one more piece of evidence of a paranormal event.

  DIGITAL AUDIO RECORDER: An EVP, or electronic voice phenomenon, is one of the most compelling pieces of paranormal evidence out there. When I’m holding my recorder and asking questions, then play it back and hear a response to my question that I didn’t hear before—whoa, that’s big. There are tons of audio recorders out there that people use for EVP. Some people like to buy analog recorders with microcassettes; others, like myself, use a digital recorder—it’s easier to work with the sound files later and analyze them by computer.

  Making contact through EVP is a simple process, but it still takes practice and some work. When I’m getting ready, I try to clear my head and think about the location I’m in. I try to ask questions that make sense to the spirits believed to be there. If I’m in
a former Civil War field hospital, I won’t be asking about aircraft fire or machine guns. I want to get my mind into the right time period. I know these ghosts are around me somewhere, and I try to talk to them the same way I’d talk to a living person I haven’t met yet.

  You have to think about how weird you might look to a spirit on the other side. There you are in strange clothes, holding some little device with a red light on it—you look completely out of place. When I do an EVP session, I start my recorder, introduce myself, and tell the surrounding spirits that this little machine won’t hurt them, but it may be able to record their voice so we can talk to each other. Then I ask a few questions that relate to the time period or location. I’ll ask their name, how old they are. I may turn it up a bit and ask who attacked them, for instance, if I know a murder took place where I’m standing. You need to leave a few seconds between questions for the answers to come through.

  Something else you need to do is “tag” normal sounds. So if I’ve just asked a question and a loud truck rolls by outside a second later, I’ll announce in a normal voice, “A truck just drove by.” If you’re not reviewing the audio evidence until days or weeks later, you might forget that a truck drove by at that moment and think you’ve picked up a demonic growl instead.

  I try to keep my EVP sessions short—maybe two or three minutes at most, so I can play them back right away while I’m standing there. If I get a voice, I can try to keep the conversation going, or break out more gear, like an EMF meter, an electronic device we use to measure the amount of electromagnetic energy in the area.