I Ain’t Afraid of No Ghosts

 IF there’s something wrong in your neighbour hood and it don’t look good, who are you going to call? Well it would seem that when 56 year old Alan Smith is not working as an electrician by day, he is out helping rid people from troublesome spooks.

There are no proton packs, beakers over flowing with sticky ectoplasm or P.K.E – (That’s Psycho-Kinetic Energy metres to the non ghost hunters amongst us) insight.

With his down to earth attitude he seems to suggest that ghost hunting is just like any other hobby such as stamp collecting or building model areoplanes.

“I’ve been ghost hunting for 26 years now. It’s something that I have always been interested in, the element of the unknown is just exciting to me”.

With most hobbies everyone has a rough idea where to begin, for example which club to join, however the question on my lips is – Where does one start when that hobby deals with the undead?

“Well to begin with my team (Ghost Lab) obviously wait to be contacted either by email or phone. If we think there is sufficient grounds for an investigation we usually ask if we can visit them for an interview.

“During the interview we ask what kind of activity has the individual been experiencing. We find out what sort of person the interviewee is like as regards to their general behaviour, do they suffer mental illness or are they on specific medication.

“After the interview we then consider if thee really is any paranormal activity, if so we find it useful if we can perform a vigil. This may last up to 12 hours, during which time we employ video cameras which include night vision, sound recorders, themometers incase there is a sudden drop in room temperature and tape recorders. So we are basically talking about equipment worth the value of £2,500- £4,000.

With the element os suspense and unpredictability in ghosthunting, certain people would not dare attempt to go on a quest searching for evidence of the afterlife. There are also those who believe what Alan and Ghost Lab do is nothing more than a waste of time, but what about the over-enthusastic?, The words enthusiastic and hoax seem to compliment each oher in the world of the paranormal.