My Real Life Ghost Hunt

my photo from the Charleston Dungeon tour
This week I was fortunate enough to be on vacation with my dear friends Dawn and her husband Bill (I changed their names to keep their privacy).

 Dawn is a psychic and has been on about every ghost tour around. She and Bill invited us to go on vacation with them this year and we chose Charleston, SC. Besides the normal shopping and dining out we took a few ghost tours and paid to be part of a ghost hunt.

Before the ghost hunt (which was from midnight to 2AM) we took the regular tour to get an idea of the history of the place. Google Old Charleston Jail for more information, but suffice to say this is a very bad place, whether you believe in ghosts or not. To begin with, the entire city of Charleston is built over dead people. They just dumped bodies for hundreds of years into the water and then eventually dredged up the dirt from the river and built on it. Occasionally they even find bones during construction. But as far as the jail goes, in a nut shell, it was used to house local criminals, civil war prisoners and runaway slaves (to be punished severely for their "crime"). This was not a place of rehabilitation, this was a place of torture and death. If you went to this jail you went there to die.

If you are ever in Charleston I highly recommend you go to Bulldog Tours and ask for Braxton to be your guild. He is a writer and actor so he tells a fabulous story and is very knowledgeable about the area. Smart and nerdy, I of course panted at his heels the whole time.

The tour was interesting. It was dark and flashlights were needed as the steps were not even and the place is metal on the inside with many odd corners and ironwork. Not your typical jail, most of it is made up of rooms instead of small cells. You may have seen it since every ghost show on TV has investigated it and deemed it haunted. Use of ghost hunting equipment and cameras were encouraged and Braxton brought and EMF detector.

After the tour, the 11 of us who had paid extra for the hunt stayed behind. Braxton took us to one room and pulled out his EMF detector. For those that do not know, this stands for Electromagnetic Field. All electric wires give off this field, at least the older ones, and the device is used to find major leaks in homes which can have physical effects on people. For ghost hunting purposes, after determining there are no EMF sources in the vicinity, they are used to communicate with spirits. No one knows exactly how, but the spirits can make the lights blink on these detectors, so you can have a real time yes and no question and answer session with them. If you have ever watched a ghost hunting show you know what they are but to see one in real life and watch it answer your questions, well that is a completely different thing. The only other equipment there was a tape recorder our friends had brought. I await their full results, though I did hear a response on playback right there on the spot (it was very short but clear and I cannot recall what it said but nothing nefarious). I had a camera and got a lot of "orbs" but since I do not believe orbs are anything but dust or bugs then I have to report I got nothing on film.

Back to real-time hunting. After the initial talk, Braxton told us we could split up into groups. Anyone who knows me knows this was my queue to boogie out and away from everyone else as fast as I could. I went up and down halls and through doors, around corners and into dead ends. Mark was with me most of the time and though I "felt" nothing, he felt quite uneasy and queasy, something we would find out later 3 others felt as well.

At one point another "hunter' popped out of nowhere (and scared the bejeebers out of me). He was lost and looked scared so I invited him to join me and Mark, where shortly after we found the best room in the place...the one with the air conditioning! I live in Florida and I will tell you my time in Charleston was miserable as far as the weather goes, even for a Floridian. Hot, sticky, not a breeze to be found, how anyone in colonial times wore layers and layers of clothing is beyond me. No wonder they all fainted!

As we sat there cooling off the door creaked open and it was Braxton, requesting we rejoin the group. I recall him taking us to a room where people were severely tortured. Ropes hung from the ceiling and you were tied to them and whipped mercilessly, each slap of the whip slicing through your skin to the flesh. Whipping is not like you see on TV, where a bit of blood oozes out, it is a brutal practice and most who are doomed to "40 lashes" do not survive it. While in this room I felt a profound sadness so I left the room but that did not help, it got worse and I felt the entire weight of the place emotionally on me, like I was drowning in the sorrow. I did not get a sense of hate or evil or anger there (though there are known psychopaths who died there) I only felt the sadness and desperation of the people who were once there. I actually began to cry a bit. Being alone was not helping so I made my way back to the group who were still in this room. They were doing an EVP "session" and each time the lights on the device went on I felt a mild breeze pass by me where I had found a comfy spot in the doorway. Not your typical cold spot, but like someone passing by me very closely, yet no one was there. It was then that I noticed an open window so I had to dismiss the breeze. My personal rule for ghost hunting states that if there is any possible natural explanation, no matter how remote, that is the one you must go with. Yet it till kept happening...the lights went on on the EMF and I felt this breeze at the same time. I followed it out the door. I followed it a few feet down the hall. It was very dark but I did not want to scare it away with my flashlight. Farther and farther down the empty dark hall I meandered, following this fleeting breeze and hearing the voices of the group grow fainter as I made my way to the belly of the building. I have never been afraid of ghosts (I have encountered spirits before) but I have never felt compelled like I did here. The next thing I know Braxton is hollering down the hall at me, "Where are you going?" Guiltily, I told him I was following this breeze and he replied," Please come back. It has been known to do this. It is luring you away from the group. It is trying to isolate you. Come back in here with us". This started me out of a mild trance I did not realize I was in and I scooted back to the group, cursing the crafty spirit, and myself, under my breath. I know better than this! When I got back to the room Mark was leaning over, ashen, and said he felt the nausea again.

Later in  the tour, Dawn was sitting on the steps (she was having back pains the whole week so she had to sit once in a while) and as we were doing more EVPs she cried out "stop touching me!" and told our shocked faces that something was tugging on her shirt.

After some very interesting (but horrifying and sad) history,  many cool spots (we would enter a room and there would be a cold spot that immediately left as soon as we got there) the tour was over. I asked Bill if he felt anything but he refused to talk about it. I did not push him but the next day he offered his experience...at one point he felt like someone had punched him in the stomach, enough to double him over. Bill is a brave man in my book. If that would have happened to me I would have been out of there! After the tour, while comparing notes, there were several people who, during the hunt, were fine but then would suddenly get a chill accompanied by a creepy feeling, like they were being watched or followed, and at least 3 others besides Mark were ill, a common occurrence when there is a nasty spirit present.

A real ghost hunt is a bit different than I had expected. For one, I thought we would have frightened people, or even hyper vigilant ones, but everyone was calm and tried to be as cooperative as they could. At the end while in the courtyard a cute couple came up, the girl had to be under 20, and she got all wide eyed and amazed when she realized we had done the ghost hunt, saying she would never be able to do that. I think she could. When you are with a group and you have a guide you can have faith in, even the biggest chicken would feel safe I believe. It is also different from the "professionals" in other ways. Professionals are part of a team, a group who is used to working together, whereas we were just a rag tag group who all happened to pay for the same hunt. Therefore, people whispered during the EVP sessions (Electronic Voice Phenomena) so the recordings are practically useless, and everyone who took a photo of an "orb" did not realize it was dust (orbs are actually very rare and look nothing like what most of us know as orbs, which are really just close ups of dust particles lit up by the flash). In a real hunt you also cannot have others just meandering around the place because they will contaminate your evidence. At the least, if you do have wanderers you should have some means of communication with each other.

This ghost hunt was five days ago and I spoke to Dawn yesterday. She asked me why I left my body wash in the bathroom...which I did NOT do. I specifically recall emptying out that entire closet and this was a big bottle, I could not have over looked it. Yet there it was, in her cabinet, in a position I never would have left it in, and anyway I am sure I packed it . She said that things have been disappearing and reappearing in odd places since all these tours we took. Usually that can be chalked up to forgetfulness but when you find your keys in the oven and you don't have Alzheimer's it does make one wonder....

If you find yourself in the Charleston area do yourself a favor and book a Bulldog tour and ask that Braxton Williams be your guide. You will have a wonderful time and see Old Charleston in a new light. I went on The Haunted Jail Tour and the Jail Ghost Hunt and the Ghost and Dungeon Walking Tour but I have heard all but the Dark Side of Charleston are good (and the Cemetery tour only shows one cemetery). Please check out their website, if nothing else the writing is a hoot. http://bulldogtours.com/. Oh and please tip your guide.