February 28, 2008

     After many weeks of planning and gathering our equipment, the time had come.  Our first case as Hawaiian Island Ghost Hunters.  This case was mainly a dry run to see how we would set up and use or equipment, and carry out an actual investigation.  Here's how it went.

     We decided to investigate a house where my partner Blaise had lived in when he was younger.  He recalls hearing footsteps in the house as though someone had been walking through the living room and also creeks halfway up the steps leading to his bedroom.  The thing was, no one was home but him.  The house is elevated about two feet off of the ground and the floor is made of wood so the sound of footsteps is very distinguishable.  He told me that the footsteps would occur both day and night.  He also mentioned several occasions where he would be up in his bedroom watching T.V. or working on his computer and he would see someone walk past his door through the reflection on the screens.  Again, this would happen when no one else was home with him.  In both instances, he would get up to see if someone had either come home or was trespassing in his house.  No one was there.  Lastly, he mentioned that his dog would stare at a bedroom that was on the bottom floor and growl as if someone were there

     So, with this information in mind, when set out to do our investigation.  The equipment we had were two night vision cameras connected to a CPU that we used as a DVR, one Sony camcorder with Nightshot, two digital audio recorders, two digital still cameras, and two IR non-contact thermometers.  Set up was fairly quick, only taking us about a half an hour.  Our base station was set up in the garage of the home.  We had one night vision camera located on the first floor capturing the whole living room and the downstairs bedroom and the other camera was set up on the second floor shooting down a hallway so we could observe the doorway leading to Blaise's former room.  We also left one of the voice recorders at the halfway point of the steps hoping to catch the footsteps and creeks Blaise mentioned.  No one was home at the time so we had the house all to ourselves.

     We started off in Blaise's former room with the voice recorders.  We asked questions hoping to catch some EVPs.  At the same time, we were shooting random pictures with our still cameras and taking readings with the IR thermometers.  WIth the instant view feature of the digital still cameras, we were able to see if we had caught any anomalies.  We didn't notice anything abnormal at this time.  Also, we noticed no fluctuation in temperature with the IR thermometer.

     After about a half an hour, we proceeded to the living room to continue or EVP session there.  Again, there were no temperature fluctuations and no photographic anomalies.  We both mentioned that we had no eerie feelings or strange sensations.  After about another half an hour, we decided to go and monitor the cameras at the screen set up at the base. 

     I decided that I wanted to go inside the house alone and see if I could catch any activity.  Besides the heart pounding sensation of being in complete darkness alone, I felt nothing and caught nothing on the equipment.  At this point, we decided to call it a night.

     We were both a bit disappointed that we didn't experience anything personally, but we accomplished what we set out to do; run our equipment and perform and investigation.  So we gathered up our equipment and headed home for a good nights rest.

   Over the next couple of days, we reviewed every bit of footage we had on the DVR and listened to every bit of audio.  It's tedious work but at the same time it's very exciting.  Below is a listing of our findings.  We're now ready for our next case.