New Jersey's Largest Paranormal Investigating & Training Organization - Founded 1998 http://www.njghs.net/
Ghosthunting New Jersey
(America's Haunted Road Trip)
By L'Aura Hladik
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On this leg of the journey you’ll explore the scariest spots in the Garden State. Author L'Aura Hladik visits 34 legendary haunted places, all of which are open to the public—so you can test your own ghosthunting skills, if you dare.
Join L'Aura as she personally visits each site, snooping around eerie rooms and dark corners, talking to people who swear to their paranormal experiences, and giving you a first-hand account. You’ll go to:
The Spy House—one of the most haunted sites on the Eastern Seaboard, which is home to several ghosts
The Proprietary House—haunted by the ghost of a little boy, a Revolutionary War soldier, and others who occupy the ladies’ room
Centenary College—where a ghost known as Tillie Smith has been seen on the campus grounds and in her old dormitory, as well as Union Cemetery in Hackettstown
Enjoy Ghosthunting New Jersey from the safety of your armchair or hit the road, using the maps, “Haunted Places” travel guide, and “Ghostly Resources.” Buckle up and get ready for the spookiest ride of your life.
L’Aura Hladik, Founder & Director of the New Jersey Ghost Hunters Society and lecturer on the subject of ghosts and haunted places, maintains that ghosts and paranormal study are a year-round activity. And of course as the "First Lady Of New Jersey ghost Hunting" Who better to explaing the world of Paranomal Studies and phenomena to all those who want to learn more.
Typically, The New Jersey ghost hunting team will attempt to collect evidence claimed to be supportive of paranormal activity. Ghost hunters often employ electronic equipment of various types, such as EMF meters, digital thermometers, infrared, thermographic, and night vision cameras, handheld video cameras, digital audio recorders, and computers. Organized teams of ghost hunters are also called paranormal investigation teams.
While many teams purport to utilize scientific methods, there has been no scientifically testable and verifiable evidence supporting the existence of ghosts. The proponents of paranormal investigation claim their methods to be scientific, however many skeptics and ghost hunting opponents claim it is not.
Easy access to information on the world wide web, movies such as Ghostbusters, and TV shows, particularly Ghost Hunters, are thought to be partly responsible for the current boom in ghost hunting. One popular website for ghost hunting enthusiasts lists over 300 of these organizations throughout the United States and the United Kingdom. There are now hundreds of Internet message boards and web sites dedicated to the pursuit. Many of the sites declare themselves free of Ouija boards, which are frowned upon as unscientific among some paranormal enthusiasts. Along with ghost tracking tips, the sites discuss everything from high-tech equipment to analysis of investigations. Many feature ghost photos and videos, often appearing as blurry mist or blobs of light, called orbs by insiders. Similarly, audio recordings are referred to as EVPs, or electronic voice phenomena, sometimes sounding like garbles and warbles amid background noise.
Scores of small businesses selling ghost-hunting equipment, ghost investigation services, and even ghost counseling, are booming outside of their prime season, Halloween. Several companies recently introduced new devices billed as real actual ghost detectors, along with the traditional electromagnetic field detectors, white noise generators, and infrared motion sensors. The paranormal boom is such that some small ghost-hunting related businesses are enjoying increased profits through podcast and web site advertising, books, DVDs, videos, and other commercial enterprises.
In the U.S., the popularity of ghost hunting has led to some property damage and injuries. Unaware that a spooky home in Worthington, Ohio was occupied, a group of teenagers went to check it out. The homeowner fired shots to scare off the trespassers, shooting a girl in the head.[9] Another group of teenagers in Peru, Maine admitted to accidentally starting a fire while hunting for ghosts inside of a former wood mill. Trespassing or vandalizing ghost hunters have also been arrested in cemeteries in Illinois, Connecticut, and other states.
Among ghost hunters, some are also devotees of urban exploration, a growing hobby where enthusiasts venture into abandoned structures such as hospitals, asylums, prisons. plantation houses, cemeteries and sanitoriums.
“Halloween certainly captures the mainstream imagination with spooky ghost stories and horror film releases and rentals of the classics, but for paranormal investigators and researchers, it is a full time avocation,” L’Aura explained in a recent interview.
The New Jersey Ghost Hunters Society was founded by Hladik back in 1998 and today has 600 members both nationally and internationally. In addition to its three divisions’ monthly meetings, the NJGHS reaches the masses with its weekly free downloadable podcast called “The Deadline”.
Paranormal is a general term that describes unusual experiences that supposedly lack a scientific explanation,] or phenomena alleged to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure. Notably, paranormal phenomena also lack scientific evidence, as detectable but not well explained phenomena such as dark matter or dark energy are not commonly called paranormal.
In parapsychology, the term has, in the past, been used to describe the supposed phenomena of extra-sensory perception, including telepathy, and psychokinesis, ghosts, and hauntings. It is also applied to UFOs, some creatures that fall under the scope of cryptozoology, purported phenomena surrounding the Bermuda Triangle, and other non-psychic subjects.
Stories relating to paranormal phenomena are found in popular culture and folklore, but the scientific community, as referenced in statements made by organization such as the United States National Science Foundation, contends that scientific evidence does not support paranormal beliefs.
This Halloween season, as in the past, L’Aura will be presenting a PowerPoint show entitled “Paranormal Investigating: Capturing Ghosts’ Pictures and Voices”. This presentation is suitable for any age group and gives clear cut examples of how ghosts appear in picture form and how their voices, called EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) sound. L’Aura says, “Truthfully, Spielberg would never sell a ticket if he depicted the ghost in his movies as the way they typically show up: as an orb.”
The presentations are free and open to the public:
Sept. 30 = Burlington County Library, 5 Pioneer Blvd., Westhampton, NJ – 2:00 p.m.
Oct. 16 = Washington Women’s Club, Church St., Washington, NJ – 7:30 p.m.
Oct. 18 = Sayreville Public Library, 1050 Washington Rd., Parlin, NJ – 7:00 p.m.
Oct. 22 = Matawan Aberdeen Library, 165 Main St., Matawan, NJ – 7:00 p.m.
Oct. 24 = Washington Twp Public Library, 37 E. Springtown Rd, Long Valley, NJ – 7:00 p.m.
Oct. 26 = Cranford Public Library, 224 Walnut Avenue, Cranford, NJ – 8:00 p.m.
If your group or library would like to have this presentation, please contact L’Aura at her Evoice number 908-325-0140 or via email, laurah @ njghs.net
The NJGHS is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping people experiencing paranormal activity with free of charge investigations as well as training its members in the standards and protocols of paranormal investigating. Excerpts from http://www.jacksonnjonline.com/2009/09/17/ghosts-arent-just-for-halloween-anymore/
Approaching the paranormal from a research perspective is often difficult because of the lack of acceptance of the physical reality of most of the purported phenonema. By definition, the paranormal does not conform to conventional expectations of the natural. Despite this challenge, studies on the paranormal are periodically conducted by researchers all from various disciplines. Some researchers study just the beliefs in the paranormal regardless of whether the phenomena are considered to objectively exist. This section deals with various approaches to the paranormal: anecdotal, experimental, and participant-observer approaches, the skeptical investigation approach and the survey approach.
For believers, ghosts are generally seen to be the spirit or soul of a deceased person. Alternative theories expand on that idea and include belief in the ghosts of deceased animals. Sometimes the term "ghost" is used synonymously with any spirit or demon , however in popular usage the term typically refers to a deceased person.
The belief in ghosts as souls of the departed is closely tied to the concept of animism, an ancient belief which attributed souls to everything in nature. As the nineteenth-century anthropologist James Frazer explained in his classic work, The Golden Bough, souls were seen as the creature within that animated the body. Although the human soul was sometimes symbolically or literally depicted in ancient cultures as a bird or other animal, it was widely held that the soul was an exact reproduction of the body in every feature, even down to clothing the person wore. This is depicted in artwork from various ancient cultures, including such works as the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which shows deceased people in the afterlife appearing much as they did before death, including the style of dress.
A widespread belief concerning ghosts is that they are composed of a misty, airy, or subtle material. Anthropologists speculate that this may also stem from early beliefs that ghosts were the person within the person, most noticeable in ancient cultures as a person's breath, which upon exhaling in colder climates appears visibly as a white mist. This belief may have also fostered the metaphorical meaning of "breath" in certain languages, such as the Latin spiritus and the Greek pneuma, which by analogy became extended to mean the soul. In the Bible, God is depicted as animating Adam with a breath.
Numerous theories have been proposed by scientists to provide non-paranormal explanations for ghosts sightings. Although the evidence for ghosts is largely anecdotal, the belief in ghosts throughout history has remained widespread and persistent.
Nnancy Bradley's' New book
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Lean the tricks of the trade from the experts at Gold Rush Ghosts and Investigating the Unknown television show. Author Nancy Bradley and the GRG/ITU crew have included some of thier favorite cases for you to read about.
The Incredible World of Gold Rush Ghosts (The Big Picture): True Stories of Hauntings in the Mother Lode From Celebrity Psychic Nancy Bradley
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Bizarre and Ghostly Tales for the Campfire
By Nancy Bradley
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