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    An alternative way to explore and explain the mysteries of our world. "Published since 1985, online since 2001."

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Reality Checking


A New Ghost Picture, More EVPs, and More Profound Questions



By Brent Raynes




EVP 10-02-11, Brent, say I love you
EVP 10-02-11, Honey sleep
EVP Collinwood, 08-28-11, I can feel it too
EVP Lynchburg, Brent, 05-21-11
SB 06-17-11, Max here

For nearly two years now, we’ve had the pleasure and honor of being involved in quite a number of paranormal field investigations with Bret and Gina Oldham of Halo Paranormal (www.facebook/halo paranormal.com) up in Lebanon, Tennessee. We’ve gained a great deal of insight and firsthand experience in our work with these two serious and dedicated investigators. They always conduct themselves in an ethical and professional manner and I have consistently found their honesty and integrity to be of the highest caliber. Going all the way back to around 1976, I periodically attempted to record EVP (electronic voice phenomena) during investigations at sites with reported paranormal activity. Every once and awhile I would get something a little odd sounding that I would think might have been a bona fide EVP, but it wasn’t until I had the good fortune of meeting up with Bret and Gina (when they were demonstrating the “spirit box” at the home of Sandy Nichols in Thompson Station, TN) that I gradually began to turn the tide on my previous run of limited firsthand EVP experiences, while today I switch on my digital handheld recorder, and as happened just a couple of hours ago, and when I play it back I have several unexplained “voices” that neither I nor anyone else present can account for (tonight it was just my wife and I), after just a few minutes of recording time. In addition, these “voices” are very interactive to questions that we ask.

So what is the secret? Hmmm. Intention is obviously very high on my list. The chemistry works very well between us and Bret and Gina as we share the same basic ethical values and believe that you have got to put forth good intentions in order to achieve productive and constructive results in paranormal fieldwork. I have a great deal of respect for both them and the quality of their work.

While I was pretty well read and familiar with paranormal case histories and literature, and had interviewed my fair share of experiencers across the country, thanks to working with Bret and Gina I have been gifted with another dimension of understanding about what we’re dealing with here that had not previously even seemed possible in anyone’s experience with the paranormal, much less my own!

The fact is, the impression I had garnered from years of studying the paranormal (going all the way back to 1967) was that even with gifted psychics and “mediums” these paranormal abilities and phenomena were all too often hit and miss, and that the parapsychologist trying to study a psychic in a laboratory setting all too often was disappointed by the psychic’s inability to perform on demand the feats he/she had earned a reputation for producing.

I’ll admit I was initially skeptical, but as I continued to observe session after session, in different locations and getting information in ways and in contents that I couldn’t logically explain, and then when I realized that I could do it myself in my own home, I truly realized something very anomalous and significant was going on. I had always understood psychic phenomena to be this frustrating hit and miss will-o-the wisp phenomenon and, quite honestly, for several sessions initially I thought, “Well this time nothing is going to happen. This just can’t keep happening.”

But it did, it still does, and I truly can’t explain it!

We were doing a “ghost box” session recently (09-14-11) and I noticed that we were getting a number of interesting interactive responses, so I held up a quartz crystal I had laying on the coffee table near the “box” and asked, “What am I holding up in my left hand?” Immediately we heard a very audible “quartz,” followed a second later with what sounded like “crystal” (male voice). “Very clear! Impressive!” Bret remarked when I played this for him. Even when we’re not together with Bret, Gina or Sandy, the “voices” on the “box” or our recorder may ask for them or mention them, as happened recently on another “ghost box” session (09-18-11) when we got “Get Bret” and the first and last name of a brother of Sandy’s, followed by “bullshit.” (Some of these “voices” can cuss like sailors!) “The ‘get Bret’ was very clear,” Bret noted. “Wow! That one really has me puzzled. It’s truly amazing how they know that we know each other. I’m also wondering, are they asking you to get me because maybe they want to speak to me or are they saying it in a threatening way as in they are going to get me?”

To further illustrate the propensity of some of these “voices” to use bad language, on an earlier “ghost box” session (09-08-11) a male voice loudly and clearly stated (as Bret said after giving it a listen, “No doubt on this one“), “Schwarz said f--k you.” A spirit “voice” often comes through claiming to be my late friend Dr. Berthold Schwarz, an imminent psychiatrist and fellow student of ufology and the paranormal. Bret felt that it could have been “someone screwing with you guys,” and that was my impression as this was totally uncharacteristic of the Dr. Schwarz I and many others had known. Though the full moon was still four days away, the “voices” that night seemed, at times, caught up in some sort of weird mood that might best be described as lunacy. When I asked if there was any message for me, a male voice said “Go with Satan.” Then another said “Chill,” and then another stated “F--k Satan.” Obviously the language is quite uncharacteristic of normal AM radio traffic.

But I’ve been finding that by just turning on my digital recorder I can get an amazing variety of interactive “voices”. One that blew me away recently (if you’ll excuse the pun) happened as we were visiting my wife Joan’s mom’s graveside one beautiful and sunny noon day (08-28-11) and I commented “Breeze feels good.” Joan agreed, saying “Ah, it’s wonderful.” Then a third voice (female) added, “I can feel it too.” The thing is, there was no one else there (that we could see)! As I stated earlier in this article, my wife and I had just done a brief EVP session here at our home and simply with my digital recorder in hand we asked questions about a personal matter that was very much troubling my wife. In fact, she hadn’t slept well the night before, which made this comment (just a minute and 14 seconds into the recording) very meaningful. “Honey, sleep.” It was very clear. Joan was trying to talk to her mother who had passed on a couple years earlier about what was bothering her. During the end of our nine minute recording, Joan was getting quite emotional and a female voice said, “Brent, say I love you.” Listening to that I felt the message was simply from someone observing us who felt that Joan needed to hear those comforting words from me.

I’ve told Bret in the past that I felt when we did EVP and “ghost box” related sessions together that he brought to the table some sort of psychic energy that seemed to intensify whatever results were achieved. I have speculated that working with him might have played a role in how I can now do sessions solo and acquire similar results. I have been told by people who worked with psychics how they temporarily got powered up, so to speak, with similar telepathic abilities as the psychics themselves demonstrated, but that by the next day the ability had worn off and they were back to being their “normal” non-psychic selves. However, with this EVP work the ability, if it is indeed passed along, has not worn off, but instead seems to becoming gradually stronger as we continue to experiment. “You’ve opened up your psychic awareness to the spirits and they now know that and your intent,” Bret shared with me. “The more you do it the stronger it gets. That’s why you are getting more and more communication over the past two years which I’m sure will continue to grow.”

Recently Bret emailed me, “We recently got invited by a friend of mine from the UFO community, who now has a paranormal group, to go on an investigation with them in Kentucky. …They had some awesome video equipment which was cool to watch. I got 24 EVPs on my recorder alone and threw out another 20 some due to contamination. I also had about 15 straight minutes of K2 interaction in which the spirits were answering my questions. There was no power in this house so it was definite spirit causing it. The cool thing is they caught it all with two different cameras. Their group was very impressed with all the activity Gina and I attracted.”

Of course, none of this really surprised me, as you could have guessed from what I just wrote in the paragraph just before this one. Then another rather startling discovery soon emerged from this investigation. Bret had photographed a full body apparition!

“I was taking photos of the house when we first got there to use as reference points for other shots later when it was dark so we don’t confuse something in the house as paranormal,” Bret emailed me around mid-September. “It was still daylight out. Maybe about 6:30 or 7:00 p.m. The main room we set up in was a large room that was used as a dining hall at one time. I took a shot out across that room. It opened up to the main foyer and a large staircase. There was one of the group members in the shot. He was to my left side and was rolling out cable. No one else was anywhere in the house. They were either outside or behind where I was standing. In the shot, there is a second person. A boy about 10 to 12 years old. Blond hair, wearing jeans and looks to have on high top tennis shoes and possibly holding a jacket over his shoulder. He is standing right in the middle of my shot and about two feet inside the doorway to the foyer, looking at me. I didn’t see him when I took the shot nor did anyone else. He is much smaller than anyone that was there that night. When you take the photo and reverse the negative the man from the group shows up as he should but not the boy. It’s one of the best ghost shots we’ve ever gotten!”

In a follow-up email (09-15-11) Bret added, “Yes, everyone was blown away from the image. They have all analyzed it. The ghost figure does not show up as a solid object when you reverse negative the photo but of course the man rolling cable does. Not to mention that no one saw anyone like that there. It was one of those split second things. Perhaps he wanted me to take his picture but I sure didn’t see him when I was doing it. I only enhanced the colors that were already there. It’s not much different on the original. Just a bit more deeper in color.

“The funny thing is, I kept saying that I felt a child in there or maybe more but I was definitely picking up on children. The place has a very long history going all the way back to a stagecoach stop, a large home for several families, a military school, a nursing home at one time and a hotel, so there was a number of people it could be. I caught several young sounding EVPs among the EVPs I caught there also.”

Readers may email Bret and Gina Oldham at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..


Thursday, March 28, 2024