Seeking spirits

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Seeking spirits
May 28, 2009
By Stover E Harger III
The Times

She walks through a long, dark corridor at the Oregon Caves Chateau, armed with a tape recorder and infrared thermometer. As a wind blows around her in the rustic lodge, Madonna Merced hears something. A faint scratching and what she thinks is a whisper. She believes she has found what she is looking for. A ghost.

“What is your name?” the Tualatin resident asks.

She gets an answer.

To some it may sound like a mere creak or some other unexplained natural noise, but not for Merced. This self-proclaimed psychic hears the response as clear as day.

“Jeremy…” the voice says to Merced.

Merced is the founder of Believers of Oregon Spirit Society (BoOSS) a paranormal investigation group that has been exploring areas of reported hauntings in Oregon since January. They have completed five trips, including one last weekend to Wolf Creek, Ore.

Her pursuit is one that she believes answers – at least in part – that long-standing question: What happens when we die?

Will we be in the eternal company of a god? Reunited with lost loved ones? Or will we simply decompose like all other natural organisms and enter into nothingness?

Merced is certain – death is not the end. Energy does not cease, so why would we?

Merced’s goal is to find answers for herself and for others. The practicing Catholic finds that with a certain knowledge that there is life after death, she has more of a desire to be good because of the potential repercussions.

“It is good to prepare for the unknown,” she said before pausing and adding. “I mean that literally.”

She says this solemnly and quietly. She feels she has to share her knowledge of spirits with a world that often moves too fast to acknowledge their existence.
Spirits in a material world

Merced’s belief in the supernatural started as early as she can remember when she was growing up in Missouri. Her dad, who died when she was 10, believed in paranormal experiences and would share them with her regularly.

It wasn’t until her teens growing up in Oregon that Merced realized this talk of ghosts was not something the family discussed in public. Starting at an early age she began to feel that she had the ability to communicate with the dead (something she says is possible for everyone) but she didn’t want the stigma that is often attached to psychics.

So she pushed it down.

Then in college she started giving psychic readings to friends. After receiving an MBA from Marylhurst University Merced decided to become a part-time medium in 1998. Along the way she has penned numerous books on paranormal subjects.

Being a psychic was never a full-on career and the money she brought in was minimal, in part because she did not have reoccurring clients. Communicating with the dead can become an addiction for some people and she said she would not play into that. Merced said she would only give information to her clients that she was certain was true, not just tell them what they wanted to hear.

But now she has moved on – replacing that slower-paced paranormal job with the high-energy ghost hunter lifestyle. This is her full-time career now, she said, even if the only pay she receives is her own validation.
Tools of the trade

In Merced’s living room is a table covered with instruments and equipment she and her team of about five use to investigate alleged hauntings.

There’s the infrared thermometer, used to measure spikes in temperature; the electromagnetic field detector; a night vision adaptor for her video camera; a wireless security system and her computer that she uses to edit her footage and share it with the world on YouTube (www.youtube.com/user/boosociety).

Much of the equipment she uses can be purchased on the Internet. The same electromagnetic field detector that Merced uses, “The Ghost Meter,” can be found for $24.99 on www.amazon.com. Some critics point out that most things, including ordinary wires and even the human body, put out electromagnetic fields, rendering such a tool useless. But Merced is adamant that it works.

The tools she uses are common amongst paranormal investigation groups, including The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS), which is featured on the SciFi channel show, “Ghost Hunters.” She even points to Thomas Edison as someone who attempted to create similar devices to detect spirits, although others have disputed that long-held rumor.

Merced’s chief way of proving – in her eyes – the existence of ghosts is Electronic Voice Phenomena, or EVP. These are recordings of voices, like the “Jeremy” tape, that are meant to prove the presence of a ghost.

“This is not a new science by any stretch of the imagination,” she said.
Hope and belief

It’s that same word, science, that draws others away from a belief in spirits and other areas of the paranormal. Skeptics have long addressed EVP’s as fantasy, a way to put simple answers to impossible questions.

Many articles have been written in skeptical magazines showing what the authors call faulty science.

One article entitled “Electronic Voice Phenomena: Voices of the Dead?” published in “Skeptical Inquirer” by James E. Alcock, PhD, proclaims that EVP’s appear to be nothing more than wishful thinking of the listener, and leave too much room for error.

“Electronic Voice Phenomena are the products of hope and expectation; the claims wither away under the light of scientific scrutiny,” wrote the psychology professor for York University in Toronto.

Merced takes skepticism to heart, realizing that everyone has different opinions. But she is still confident in what she believes. Ghosts to her are 100 percent real, just as the sky is blue and the earth is round.

As Merced plays a clip of a reported ghost talking in Portland’s Shanghai Tunnels, it sounds like scratching with a faint whooshing sound. But to Merced it sounds like a voice saying, “Let it go.”

There will be skeptics she said, but it is important for her to pursue what she believes.

“What I am doing is something that I know,” she said.