When there's something strange in our neighbourhood… guelphghost.org members delve into the paranormal Bronwyn Roe
Trevor Bishop and Wanda Hewer. Photo by Bronwyn Roe.
For many, Halloween marks a time of renewed interest in ghosts and other paranormal activities. But for Trevor Bishop and Wanda Hewer, an interest in the paranormal lasts the whole year through. The duo are part of a team that aims to provide information about, and assistance with, paranormal activities in Guelph and the surrounding region through their website guelphghost.org.
Bishop, a Paranormal Investigator/Researcher, founded guelphghost.org last December as a source for information on paranormal activities in the Guelph area. Bishop calls it a community site where we have helpful information for people to look up on the paranormal.
"It's not really a ghost tour or ghost walk site," he said, "It's more for information so people can do research, as well as post their own paranormal photos. They can upload that to our site directly and we'll analyze it for them. If they think they have a haunting they can come to us and we'll help them understand why they might have a ghost in their house and how they can deal with it."
The site features informative tools like a "Paranormal Dictionary" with definitions of various terms used in the paranormal community. Users can post their own experiences in the "Reports" section or browse through reports of the investigation team in "Investigations."
The site now has a team of four investigators: Bishop, psychic Craig O'Brien, affiliate psychic Wanda Hewer of Guelph Ghost Hunters, and Gerald Pyra. The team has investigated various locations that interest them and are arranging investigations in private homes as well, which they conduct free of charge in the Guelph area.
Bishop and Hewer told me about some of their recent investigations, including a roadside cross near the town of Breslau. Bishop had seen the cross while driving to work and decided it would be an interesting place to investigate.
"We picked up two spirits," Bishop said, "One that had passed and one that was still there. Gerald was picking up a girl that was still there, and she liked being at that spot – she was comfortable there.
"We get those kind of weird impressions like they just want to stay there because they're comfortable," he continued. "The cross was actually for another spirit that had passed over okay to the other side, but there was another spirit still there. It's interesting to find out that the reason we went there was for the cross but we found out there was another spirit as well."
Tools of the Trade
Hewer explained that assessing paranormal activities involves a "blend of science and sensitivities."
For any investigation, either Craig or Wanda will attempt to provide their intuitive feelings about the investigation. Hewer explained that she frequently meditates before or after an inspection.
"A lot of the times before an investigation if I'm in a meditation I'll have a vision and I won't even know if it's to do with the place I'm going to or not until afterwards," she said. "Having a meditation afterwards as well has given me visions, and at that time I know if it's to do with what I'm doing."
Hewer, the affiliate psychic with guelphghost.org, explained that being psychic is a natural ability, but "people can take it further if they like and get more training" to improve their psychic skills.
However, confirming the presence of paranormal activity like spirits and communicating with them is not simply a matter of psychic abilities. It also involves the use of equipment to attempt to document paranormal phenomena. Guelphghost.org members use cameras, video cameras, audio recorders, and electromagnetic field (EMF) metres.
Digital cameras are used to photograph the site with the goal of catching orbs (circular anomalies) or other details not noticed by the naked eye.
Audio recordings sometimes reveal sounds that were not noticed or properly heard by investigators at the time of the investigation. In the paranormal community, these audio recordings are referred to as Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP). Guelphghost.org has a section devoted to EVP recordings and encourages users to upload their EVP recordings to the website for other users to listen to and evaluate.
Bishop noted that it is best to use a digital recorder as opposed to a tape recorder. "If you use one with a tape in it [the tape] can pick up the actual tape noises and interfere, so if you use a digital…it makes it a lot clearer and there's less chance of people getting the wrong idea of if it's a spirit or not."
Hewer explained that the purpose of EMF metres is to indicate if there's a spirit present. "The idea is that a spirit is made up of electromagnetic fields," he said.
According to Bishop and Hewer, there is an importance of the relationship between intuitive or psychic sensing and more scientific resources.
"I like to start sensing right away and follow my senses with the cameras and the video," Hewer said. "A lot of times I'll feel a spirit's presence by a touch, they seem to touch me. And a lot of times if there's a person with a camera right there we'll be able to get an orb floating by at the time of that experience, and the EMF metre helps to tell if an orb is paranormal or not, because if an EMF metre goes off at a time you have a picture of an orb, it sort of solidifies that something's going on."
The investigators also use less scientific tools like dowsing rods and pendulums. Team member Gerald Pyra uses dowsing rods, similar to those used by some to find underground water sources, to locate spirits. Bishop, meanwhile, has a pendulum that he uses to communicate with spirits. He believes its movements indicate whether a spirit is present or not, and can also serve as a line of communication between spirits and humans, as spirits can manipulate the pendulum's motion to reply to questions.
Spirits: Naughty or Nice?
What would make a spirit remain in the human world?
"Since everybody's different, everybody would have different agendas, different anchors," Hewerexplained. "They might need some closure whereas another spirit might not have that…Maybe how we live our life is maybe how we die, so some of us might have trouble moving on."
Hewer also suggested that "some people may not know they're dead" if they died in a sudden or traumatic way.
Bishop and Hewer agreed that most people tend to think of spirits as negative, often frightening, presences. However, Bishop noted that his personal experience with spirits has been predominantly positive, and Hewer stressed a need for attempting to understand spirits rather than being afraid of them.
Hewer said her goal is to promote co-existence with spirits rather than attempting to clear them from the place they are haunting, which is a last resort. If for some reason a spirit does need to be cleared, Hewer recommends burning white sage and sprinkling kosher rock salt around the building.
Paranormal, or just normal?
Bishop and Brewer acknowledge that many things they take as proof of the existence of spirits or other paranormal activity can be explained in different ways. For example, the definition of "orb" in the site's Paranormal Dictionary includes a description of two opinions regarding the appearance of orbs in photographs: "There are two main trains of thought regarding the cause of orbs in photographs. The first school sees it as a fairly clear-cut case of flash reflection off of dust, particles, insects, or moisture droplets in the air in front of the camera, i.e. they are naturalistic. The opposing school maintains that orbs are paranormal in nature, i.e. non-naturalistic and ghost-like. Guelphghost uses the latter rule when it comes to orbs."
Guelph Ghost Stories
Wanda Hewer provided The Ontarion with some information about ghost sightings and investigations in Guelph. University of Guelph students might be interested to know about rumoured hauntings of student hotspots McLaughlin Library and the Albion Hotel.
The University of Guelph Library
According to Hewer, the spirit of a woman hanging in a noose was seen by a student employee in the basement level women's washroom in McLaughlin Library. At around 8:15 in the morning, the employee, who was picking up books near the washroom, opened the door to the women's washroom and saw an apparition of a woman in a noose. According to Hewer's documentation, the spirit "looked grey and bluish and her mouth was opening and closing, like she was gasping for breath and looked straight at her. [The employee] went up and told her supervisor and her supervisor went down at another time and cleared the spirit."
I went with Hewer and Bishop to do an impromptu investigation of the site. We went to the basement level's women's washroom and (after making sure no one was in the washroom) began documenting the site, both in the washroom and in the hallway immediately outside. Bishop and Hewer took several photos of the area, and Hewer made a video recording as well, speaking to the spirit and leaving it time to respond.
Hewer's EMF metre squealed in the hallway, indicating high levels of electromagnetic fields, but when she set it down in the washroom it was silent.
Bishop held his pendulum, which began swinging in a circular motion, which he believes indicates a presence of a spirit.
Bishop emailed me a photo later that day that showed an orb in one of the photographs he had taken. However, he stressed that a more in-depth investigation would have to be conducted at the site before forming any definitive conclusions.
The Albion Hotel
A favourite haunt of U of G students, the Albion Hotel is also rumoured to be haunted by a female spirit. An employee reported that they and two other people heard a door slam in the woman's washroom on the second floor when there was no one else in the building. They then "heard footsteps that came right out into the main body of the bar room and came right next to where they were sitting. It was like footsteps of someone wearing high heels shuffling around in a circle and then they walked back to the bathroom and the footsteps disappeared with the sound of the slamming door again."
Popular legend says that Al Capone stayed at the Albion frequently during his whiskey runs to Ottawa during the prohibition. Hewer's documentation of the legend states, "he kept a mistress that was the hotel owner's daughter back then and she supposedly committed suicide when her love affair with the mafia man fell to ruin."
Hewer says that fellow guelphghost.org member Gerald Pyra had an apparition at the hotel.
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