SPOOKY the search for our ghostly secrets

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SPOOKY the search for our ghostly secrets
August 18, 2009
TIM MARTAIN
themercury.com.au

An American ghost-hunting team visits Tassie's most haunted place: Port Arthur

PORT Arthur was once a place of sheer misery and punishment but for a team of American ghost hunters this Tasmanian historic site is an utter paradise.

``We come in and they say `welcome to Hell on Earth!','' said ghost hunter Robb Demarest.

``And we're watching all these beautiful birds fly by and we're like, `Hell? It's gorgeous here'.

``But when you hit some of these locations at three or four in the morning and something strange is going on, it takes on a whole different face.''

The team from US TV series Ghost Hunters International has travelled the world, visiting the most haunted locations on the planet.

They have spent nights in a Romanian fortress, an Italian abbey, numerous English castles, all of them with horrifying reputations for ghostly goings on.

But for GHI lead investigator Robb Demarest and co-lead investigator Dustin Pari, there was one location on their international wish list that they were really itching to visit.

``If you go and pick up any book on international haunted locations, Port Arthur will be in there,'' Demarest said.

``Australia is somewhere we always wanted to go, so when we got here we decided we had to go big and there are certain spots that you have to visit if you're going to say you checked out all the best haunted locations, and Port Arthur is definitely one of them.''

The seven paranormal investigators and their TV crew spent a week at Port Arthur filming the site and trying to catch evidence of ghostly activity around the notoriously spooky spot.

Ghost Hunters International (GHI) is a spin-off of the popular US TV series Ghost Hunters, in which members of the Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) investigate the most haunted places in America.

The first season of GHI, which recently started screening on the Sci Fi Channel in Australia, took the investigators to the UK, Germany, Italy, South Africa, Romania, Peru, the Philippines and New Zealand.

And when the team headed Down Under, Port Arthur was an essential stopover.

``It was a huge case for us, Port Arthur is somewhere I've wanted to come for many years,'' Demarest said. ``It's really well known, it's got such an incredible history and not just the history of the location but the paranormal history as well.''

And since they came such a long way for such a highly prized investigation, the team made sure they were as thorough as possible.

``We covered the parsonage, the jail, the old penitentiary, the guard's tower, the guards' quarters, the junior medical officer's cottage, the surgeon's house, the commandant's cottage, seven or eight locations, plus the grounds and the church,'' Pari said.

``They gave us full access to all the areas we needed to get to and we had plenty of time to do a thorough investigation and follow up on everything, and based on what we experienced, we can definitely say we did this place top to bottom.''

The investigators used a wide array of equipment for their investigation in hopes of catching some kind of scientifically verifiable evidence of ghostly activity.

``We use a thermal imaging camera so we can see where draughts are coming in, which is useful where people have reported doors opening and closing on their own or cold spots,'' Demarest said.

``We also have a full-spectrum camera, which sees into the ultraviolet and infrared range, which helps us to see beyond what we normally would in the hopes of catching apparitions.''

The investigators carried handheld video cameras to record their movements and voice recorders to tape any anomalous noises or ghostly voices, known as Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP).

``We set up multiple remote cameras throughout the location and all those cameras feed their signal back to one central unit that tapes everything for the whole night,'' Pari said.

``That way we can lock them off and effectively forget about them for the night and then we have to watch back through all of the footage afterwards.''

The GHI team even connected a vibration sensor to the rocking chair in the commandant's cottage, hoping to record evidence of the chair's infamous reputation for rocking on its own.

With any ghost investigation, the aim is to capture some kind of empirical evidence of paranormal activity, if not a photo or clear voice recording, then at least some other physical evidence that correlates with an investigator's experience.

Demarest said he approached every case with the aim of disproving the ghost stories.


``You go in with the attitude of being sceptical and that there's probably a normal explanation for most of the things that have been reported. And then if you're still left with things that you're struggling to find an explanation for outside of the paranormal, then you might have something interesting.''

``We're always trying out new ideas, new pieces of technology,'' Pari said.

``Not all of them work but that's part of the learning curve. We don't want to keep using the same stale approach, so we keep trying things.''

``A lot of the stuff that we experience is tricky to measure,'' Demarest said.

``You might notice a strange smell like roses but we don't have a smell-o-meter that says `yes, it's roses'.

``So we have to keep pushing to have ion counters, temperature gauges, humidity gauges, hoping that one of those devices will register something.''

Demarest and Pari were careful not to give away any hint of what evidence they captured while at Port Arthur before the episode goes to air, but Demarest cryptically teased that viewers would be impressed.

``I think as a team no-one left here disappointed,'' the notoriously sceptical New York-born paranormalist said with an indulgent grin.

``One of the things that makes it really interesting is that with some of the places we visit, people will tell us stories about strange things that happened 60 years ago and we're like, you want us to investigate something weird that happened 60 years ago and hasn't happened again since and you think it's going to happen again on Tuesday January 2nd? Not likely.

``But when we came here they were saying `last Tuesday' and `yesterday' and `last week' and it's been going on consistently for 100 years, which makes this a very exciting place for us to investigate.''

Demarest said that the sprawling size of Port Arthur meant the investigators were spread fairly thin on the ground but also meant their evidence was more reliable.

``If you're investigating a single building, say, and you've got seven people, there's two of us in here trying to be quiet but then there's two in the room next door who are going to hear the two in here and you're going to be on each other's recorders,'' he said.

``But here, with the size of this site, there's no cross-contamination.''

But Pari said they did have the occasional run-in with the local wildlife.

``We were doing a thermal camera sweep and cutting through the old peniteniary and sure enough a wallaby came hopping out so we followed it around for a little bit,'' he laughed.

Pari, who has been interested in the paranormal since he was a child and investigating haunted spots since he was a teenager, said he was living the dream working with GHI.

``It is a lot of fun but you really have to be passionate to be involved in this field for a long period of time,'' he said.

``We've been travelling and filming for three years now, you go to a lot of places, you spend a lot of time watching video and listening to audio recordings where nothing happens.

``But to be elevated to a platform where we travel the world, visit the best hot spots that paranormal teams dream of going to, with regular reports of activity, it really is fantastic.''

And even though most ghost-hunting expeditions are 99 per cent uneventful -- comprising sitting in dark, empty rooms with nothing happening or listening to hours of blank tape hoping to hear a ghostly voice that never comes -- Demarest said Port Arthur was a rewarding investigation.

``I have to be honest, there are some cases where we leave and we think, `hmmm, if only we'd done that a bit differently','' he said.

``But we can leave Port Arthur and confidently stand behind what we found and the conclusions we came to.''

Hobart paranormalist and president of the Society for Anomalous Research Australia Hannah Jenkins has investigated Port Arthur herself and said she was looking forward to seeing GHI's findings.

``I do think they are quite thorough and they try to rule out all the normal explanations for what are referred to as ghostly phenomena and reveal a natural cause where they find one,'' Dr Jenkins said.

``I think people have experienced the phenomena there but I hesitate to use word haunted because I am personally suspicious of the criteria people apply to what they interpret as spirits of dead people.

``But what I find interesting is that different people with no knowledge of Port Arthur and its stories often report similar experiences when visiting the site.''

* The Port Arthur episode of Ghost Hunters International will screen during season two, which will air in the US early next year. Season one is currently showing in Australia on the Sci Fi Channel, Wednesdays at 8.30pm.

GHOSTS OF PORT ARTHUR

PARSONAGE
Regarded as one of the most haunted spots at the site, the Reverend George Eastman died in an upstairs bedroom in the mid-19th century. His coffin was too heavy to be carried out of the house once he was placed inside it, so it was lowered out the window by rope. Legend has it that the rope snapped, spilling Eastman's corpse into the gutter outside.
Ever since, visitors have reported a range of strange phenomena including the smell of rotting flesh, strange lights, moaning noises and ghostly apparitions. In the 1980s a group of tradesmen staying in the parsonage doing renovations were driven from the building after an allegedly noisy haunting that included one of the men experiencing a feeling of being pinned down by an invisible entity.

COMMANDANT'S COTTAGE
The ghost of Commandant Charles O'Hara Booth is said to have been seen in his old residence standing by a window looking out over the settlement. The rocking chair in the top room has been reported to move on its own, even though it is worn flat on the bottom and will not even rock if pushed. Cameras are said to often refuse to work and watches to stop. A variety of apparitions and voices have been reported.

JETTY COTTAGE
The ghost of a young man who drowned off the jetty in the 1840s is said to appear from time to time.

SEPARATE PRISON
A convict named William Carter hanged himself in his cell, using the straps of his hammock. Tourists often feel uncomfortable or depressed when visiting this cell, even when they are unaware of the story. Another mischievous convict has been reported to pull faces at tourists during guided tours, even though no costumed actors are employed at the site.

CHURCH
Was never consecrated due to the multi-denominational nature of the convict population. In 1854 a convict fell from the roof of the nearly-completed building and died. Bright light has been reported from inside the ruin.

GUARD TOWER
The guard tower stands above the old powder magazine and one morning the sound of a bugle playing the Reveille was allegedly heard across the site, coming from the tower. There was nobody there.

ISLE OF THE DEAD
The convict gravedigger Mark Jeffrey, who was stationed on the cemetery island in the mid-1800s, refused to return to the island after he claimed the devil appeared one night.

HIGH-TECH GEAR FOR A HAUNTING
The team's ghost-hunting kit includes
* Thermal camera: to show up cold spots and warm spots and trace the source of draughts.
* Full-spectrum camera: sensitive to ultraviolet and infrared light as well as the visible spectrum, used to try and capture video evidence of an apparition.
* Audio recorders: usually digital, to capture ghostly voices or Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP).
* Ion counters: to measure the presence of electrically charged particles in the air, which may be linked to some ghostly phenomena.
* EMF meter: to measure electromagnetic fluctuations, thought to be caused by some ghostly phenomena.
* Digital thermometers: to measure sudden temperature drops that are said to sometimes occur before a sighting.
* Vibration sensor: to detect if an object is moved by an invisible entity.