A new bag!

Well one of the guys that is a member of Flying Monkeys Paranormal Group had this pretty cool little camera bag that he takes with him on investigations that I completely fell in love with!

The duffel bag that I'd been using is a NIGHTMARE. It's just one big open bag, and trying to find things in the dark is a complete PITA.

So I'd been scouting around for a new bag for a while - I wanted a lightweight and small bag, one that could be worn with a shoulder strap or just as a bag, that would have enough room for the essentials - digital recorder, emf reader, thermometer, k2, flashlight, extra batteries, pen and paper, some band-aids and my camera and cell phone ... the basics.

This little bag looks IDEAL - and I found one on eBay for under 20 bucks including shipping. I should get it by next week, yippie!

If anyone is curious, it's a LowePro EX120. I found an EX140 in Walmart for about 17 bucks, but it was larger than what I had wanted, so eBay it was.

I found a picture of it on the web ...

Not bad, huh? Looks like ti will be ideal and it is nice to know that another investigator that has been doing this for a while has found that it was suited for that sort of thing, so I expect this to meet my needs for a while.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better than that tired ol' duffel bag did, that's for sure!

Northern Calfornia Paranomal Chat Forum

Soooo I started a little forum that is not associated with any groups, just for folks that might want to hang out and chat and talk ghost stuff in the Northern California area.

Another ghost hunting friend of mine and I thought it might be fun to start one up - just to have some sort of online hangout to blab ghost stories or share and brainstorm about some potential investigation sites.

Right now it's just me as she hasn't joined yet ... but anyone pretty much is welcome.

You can find it here:

http://paranormal.topic-board.com

It's nothing grand or special - just a tiny simple little forum! :)

RIP Katie :(

One of my best friends EVER died very unexpectedly today a year ago.

She was someone that really got me into the paranormal - like a decade ago, long before any of the ghost shows, and she had one of the most active houses I've ever been in.

Over the years, the house quieted down, but our interest never wavered.

She always told me when she died she was going to come back and tell me - and it wouldn't surprise me to find that she's still around.

I love and miss her SO very much. We never got to go camping in BigFoot territory or UFO hot spots, we never got to go ghost hunting together, but we talked about it a lot ... life just got in the way. We had so much fun together ... but life is far far far too short.

Hug those you love TODAY - just because you *can*. Hold them tight and say that you love them and just savor and cherish that moment in time. And then store it deep in your heart.

{{{hugs}}}, Katie. I freaking love you. And I miss you every day so very much.

Underground Tour in Sacramento

So we took the Underground Tour with the Flying Monkeys Paranormal Team - nice folks!

They are the group we checked out, and then went to the Columbia State Park with.

The tour was alright, I really enjoyed the history lesson and the stories ... but the underground bit was a smidge weak. The one "room" we accessed was fairly sterile and well, it was so that they could do tours and not risk hurting anyone.

My cameras both acted odd though. One camera died amazingly quickly. The other shot in a really odd setting. It's taken pictures fine since then though, but most of my images were lost or worthless. My digital recorder also turned itself off repeatedly.

Not saying it's paranormal, just saying it was a little strange. :)

Of interesting note, we found a little juvenile fruit bat on the ground ... having handled bats as a kid (yes I was one of *those* kids lol) I knew enough that when they exhibit behavior like that ... you generally just let them be, as that can be a sign of rabies when they are someplace they shouldn't be and are disoriented, best to not mess with them.

But seeing that it was such a public place, and dogs and kids everywhere, tried to get the nearest business to call Animal Control ... which they had no clue about. So I found an empty cake container in the garbage, washed it out, scooped the bat in it and then found a park ranger who gave me a number of a local bat rescue person.

Bless her heart, she was in the area, and came RIGHT away to check out the little fellow. While we were waiting for her, some guy came up with ANOTHER bat! LOL! so he put his bat into the container with our bat and then we had TWO little fruit bats for her.

Well she came with a suitable container and leather gloves, and scooped them up and checked them out, turns out that they were juveniles that hadn't quite learned how to fly yet, so she just packed them up and took them home with her.

We decided to walk along the river a little bit and took some pictures, and then headed home after grabbing a hotdog. Which we totally walked out without paying for! I didn't even realize that we had basically dined and dashed until we were back in the car in the parking garage, ACK! So I drove right back and paid for them, cuz it's just the right thing to do. Hate to make some poor kid's register short and risk their job for a couple of hotdogs, know what I mean?

Anyways it was a fun day and full of unexpected little surprises and adventures, lol!

Columbia State Park Ghost Tour

We attended the group's monthly meeting today and they seemed like a good bunch of folks. Fairly diverse, everyone was nice, no egos, no aloofness, felt comfortable right away, which is ALWAYS a good sign.

They were headed for Columbia State Park after their meeting, to take the Ghost Tour, and invited us to go along, so we did.

So we did and I have to say, that it was pretty cool! GREAT settings, cool stories, interesting possibilities.

The whole area is quaint, and very charming.

It's certainly a drive though - I don't think that my car would make it LOL.

The group is hoping to do an investigation there - I was way into that, if we can afford it anyway! So hopefully they will have some more information on that location soon! :)

It was an AWESOME Saturday though, to be sure! Very fun!

Checking out a new group!

Well, one of the great things about the group we are with now is that they are SO open for the team to be able to work with other teams if they want more of a variety of events or experiences - so we are going to attend a meeting by another local group tomorrow.

I think it will be a nice group - the founder of the group we've been doing things with has gone on a number of investigations with this team and spent some time getting to know the group's founder and says he is very nice but has said that they have a different flavor, in that they tend to prefer private residences and that they incorporate a more religion/spiritual cast on things, which is cool as though I do enjoy a strict clinical scientific slant on things, I am also interested and intrigued by the spiritual side of things.

Moreso likely because I have been doing my first steps into shamanistic journeying this past couple of years, and well, that will obviously come into play at some point I am sure. After all, we are supposedly trying to contact spirits, so it makes sense to have that spiritual slant included to some degree.

It will be interesting to do LoneWalk again this year to be sure!

So since the primary group doesn't look like it's ever going to be busy in a regular sense, it will be nice to have another group to work with as well I think. I really like that they have a different cast on things, because variety is ALWAYS a good thing, and it brings different things to different tables.

they will be doing a Ghost Tour at Columbia State Park after the meeting, we've RSVP'ed for it, but not sure we will actually go or not - I guess it will depend on the vibe we get and if they are nice or not. I dislike that my car has been acting up, and it's a looong drive to take especially when the engine check light has been popping on for the last two days .... so not sure it's wise to take it on a road trip far from home LOL. but we will see!

Haunted Houses of California

This was a pretty cool post, sounds like it might be fun to try to check some of these out hehe!

http://www.ghost2ghost.org/?p=297

Sure would be nice to dig up some more local "hot spots" to go check out to be sure ...

Rockville Cemetery in Fairfield

Did another test run today at another local cemetery - it was cool and all, as cemeteries go.

I just really don't often get any sense of paranormal activity in graveyards. Not saying some don't have activity and that some might not have hauntings, but just overall doesn't seem like the one's I've visited had anything stirring that wasn't actually alive, lol.

But it sure was pretty, and again, not a bad way at all to spend a summer afternoon! :)

Mountain Cemetery in Sonoma

So yesterday we went bouncing around this grand old cemetery with your group and, WOW - it's a great place just to go walking for an afternoon!

Definitely would be mucho spooky at night - would LOVE to find a way to get permission to stay there overnight, to be sure.

Mostly it was just a testing ground for us to practice surveying a location, so wasn't really about gathering any credible evidence.

However, one thing of note was that a few folks had found the Lise gravesite and we had some interesting thing s happen - just a few EMF spikes, but then there was an audible interaction via the Ovibus that one of our members had brought that was recorded. Basically they asked if someone was there and received "Yes" as the answer. They then asked if they were responding to their question and received another "Yes".

So that was rather cool, although sparse - but then what can one really expect in the daylight while a baseball game is in progress nearby? LOL.

Possible EVP?

So this was the first potential EVP I got from the Mar. 20th investigation.

Check it out - I put my digital recorder into another room where no one else was. Me and my "investigating buddy" (we employed the buddy system, so I had someone volunteer to be my buddy hehe) that went into the room to put it there were the only ones who knew where in the room I put it and she never left my vicinity, nor did any of the others in our group after we came back. The other group was downstairs, and had no clue we were doing that at all.

I left the recorder there until the session ended and the group downstairs was starting to trickle up. 

Click the play button below to listen to the EVP.

In any case, it was sort of cool to find this in the lower frequencies. Is it paranormal? No clue. But it's sort of cool I think either way, lol!

So what do YOU hear?

Investigation Day!

OMG.

First Ray gets called into work at the last minute. But we think, no big deal ... he's off by 5pm, and that gives us a 2 hour period to get to Stockton, which is only an hour away.

The trouble happened because I gloated at being sooo ahead of schedule. I know this. And I know better than to gloat. But I did it anyway and the universe, as usual, smacked the hell out of me for doing it. *sigh*

So let's see. We took off on time. We hit UGLY UGLY UGLY traffic. Nasty bad evil traffic.

So it looked like we might be you know, 1o-20 minutes late. So I call before we are late, you know because that is the polite and courteous thing to do.

Turns out I'd have been pretty accurate ... had I been on the right freeway.

Oh yes. Seems I somehow ended up on the WRONG flipping freeway. Stockton is interesting - I-5 and 99 run parallel to each other and Stockton sort of sits in the middle of both of them.

So if you get on the *wrong* freeway - as I did - you might find exits named the same, but when you get onto them the directions "no longer workie". Of course you never realize it at first. Oh no, because that would be easy.

So we drove alll the way down Wilson Way (which I hope I never see again in this lifetime) to Dr. martin Luther King Blvd.

On the way we almost ran over some guy in the middle of the street clutching his chest and having the most painful expression on his face in the intersection of Bradford and Wilson Way. Scared the shit out of me! Hope he was okay, the ambulance came and scraped him off the road maybe 2 minutes later.

We saw hookers, drug deals, gun deals, people partaking of a variety of drugs, and man, I could not get out of there fast enough. Anyways after 2 hours of being lost in a really ugly part of Stockton, I somehow figured my way out and where I needed to be (I seriously have NO clue how that happened, it was practically magical!)

Anyway we finally got to where we were supposed to be, and they were nice enough to let us jump on the end of the investigation.

I didn't feel like there was anything there, but that's cool. More like a dry run was the way I viewed it, lol.

Nothing of note happened that I was aware of really, but should be interesting to see what was recorded during the evidence review meeting!

The way home was uneventful and disgustingly easy and quick. LOL!

In any case, it was an adventure and I am glad that we finally got one under our proverbial belts!! :)

Tonight is the night!

Well tonight is the first real investigation I think that we will have gone on. The one we did  with another group before this one was just strange and it kind of sucked. Imagine like 7-8 investigators and 3-4 residents all jammed into a double-wide trailer filled with large furniture.

So I am looking forward to this one quite a bit, got a bunch of stuff packed already lol, and everything is charging, so yay!

Even if we get absolutely nothing, it will be fun! :)

February Social

Well had another social get-together with SGHG.

Have to say Irene picked a GREAT little café for getting together, love that place!

Was good to see more people come by too, and hey even Dan showed up this time, which was cool too, just nice to get to know everyone a bit better and see how the chemistry was and it was *really* good!

And hey if you ever stop by Steady Eddy's in Winters, their sandwiches are yummmmmmy and their mochas are delish!

Tech Meeting

Was a lot of fun, I really like this group ... good people, and funny too!

Lots of gadgets and just was a very pleasant meeting. I am looking forward to getting to know everyone better and can't wait to start sitting around quietly in the dark LOL.

It's here! It's here!

I got home from work and my brand new shiny digital recorder gadget was hereeeeee!!!

Yippie skippy! :::does the happy happy dance:::

And it is sooo SMALL! OMG! LOL!

Definitely need to get an external microphone for it but it's still cool!

I got the Olympus WS-311M digital recorder to start with, and then I think we will get an analog and the H2 next. It looks like it will be ideal for investigations.

The manual is freaking HUGE though - wow. Now I get to read and absorb it all hehe!

Fun fun!!!!

This will be awesome for me to record the meditations I'm doing as well - having to pull myself out enough to read the next step just throws me off, and I really want to be doing better when we journey to find our power animal!

Exploring Shamanism

Well I've been taking this Shamanism course to sort of help me get a little better  in touch with my grandmother's side of things, and really I think it's something that is way more in line with who I am overall anyway.

I suck at meditation in general and since you need to be good at it to journey, it seemed like a nice challenge and I felt drawn to learn more about it. Hopefully it is something that I will get better at with practice, lol!

So today was the day for us to go meet the new group!

And we really enjoyed it! :)

We were SO happy to discover a group of very nice, down to earth people, with good energy.

This was not our first time meeting a paranormal group - but I will not speak about those here, suffice it to say that we just did not see eye to eye on the kinds of things that matter.

Anyway - this by far was the most enjoyable meeting we've attended out of them all.

Folks were nice, FRIENDLY (huge plus), warm, grounded, no egos, no dramatics, just good folks with a common interest.

I think the meeting lasted 2 and a half hours (seemed like it flew by to me lol) and I only have positive things to say about it at all, which is always nice to be able to say about any group of people!

We can't wait for the next meeting, so yay - seems like a wonderful first start at any rate!

Blog Launches!

So I thought that I'd start a specific blog for my "hunting diaries" I know I have a MySpace account for the same thing, lol, but it's just not as customizable as blogspot is, so here  am.

Why "Spirit Stalker" for the blog name you ask?

Well cuz the names I wanted were already taken (Curses! Foiled again! :::shakes fist in air:::), and Ray mentioned this one and it sounded cool and it rolled off the tongue and was available, and it's sort of what we are doing ... stalking around spooky areas to see if we can capture evidence of spooky things or debunk claims by figuring out what caused the things that people reported happening, if at all possible.

So anyway, just working on getting it up and running and then I'll post the first "real" post I guess LOL. ;)