For the Love of Ghosts by Jerry Houston
The article “For the Love of Ghosts” by Jerry Houston details his lifelong fascination with paranormal investigations, capturing experiences from Baltimore’s Westminster Church to Ellicott City’s Patapsco Female Institute. Using camcorders, digital cameras, and NightShot technology, Houston recounts eerie findings like flashes of light, unexplained knocks, and orbs. A notable encounter at the Zodiac Restaurant involved mysterious knocks heard by his group near a haunted restroom. Houston’s enthusiasm for ghost hunting blends personal curiosity with technological exploration, making each investigation a thrilling pursuit of the unknown.
I’ve been interested in ghosts and paranormal activity for as long as I can remember. Maybe it has to do with the fact that my family has always held a love of horror movies. Or, maybe it’s because weird stuff has just always intrigued me. I’ve always had an insatiable curiosity for many things: always wondering how things work or why things happen. I think this is why I feel a need to investigate ghosts; I need to find out why ghosts exist and why they do what they do.
Of course, that answer wouldn’t be clear as day, or there’d be no reason to continue going on ghost hunt after ghost hunt. A haunting is enough to be interesting by itself, but its accompanying story will often make it far more compelling. It wasn’t long ago that I found myself in the bowels of the Westminster Church in downtown Baltimore searching the random tombstones with my handy camcorder for ghostly activity. Many fellow hunters discovered numerous “orbs” on their digital cameras, however, my camcorder showed just a few quick flashes of light. Surely, those could be easily discredited as camera flashes, or could they?
As a matter of fact, a certain “flash” of light while watching my footage caught my attention. It was notable because it was just SO fast it didn’t seem natural. In fact, when I slowed my footage down and scanned frame-by-frame, it turned out that the flash only existed in HALF of the frame. See, broadcast video is shot at 30 frames per second, in an interlaced format, meaning that it takes two passes of “scan lines” to complete one full frame per second. This particular flash of light only occupies the first half of its particular video frame. The flash of light only lasts for, at most, one half-second. No other camera flash that evening goes by THAT fast. In fact, I can’t even stop the frame just on that particular flash of light as I can with the other camera flashes on the tape. Now, maybe I just don’t know that much about cameras and flash speeds –and that’s entirely possible– but I’m fairly certain I know enough to conclude that the occurrence is at least a little weird.
Recently, I was on an investigation with the Maryland Ghost & Spirit Association at the Zodiac Restaurant, also near downtown Baltimore. Again, I was armed with my camcorder and on my way to investigate the women’s restroom. OK, that sounds strange, but trust me, the paintings on the wall in the restroom overshadow ANYTHING you’ve ever thought about a restroom. In fact, you could call these the most unique restrooms of any restaurant in Baltimore, besides the fact that the restroom is haunted by crying female ghost.
Anyway, I was taking video of the “Club Charles” side of the restaurant along with fellow hunters Holly and her mom when we decided to get some shots of the interesting paintings in the women’s room. We were alone in this back-area of the restaurant and walking toward the restroom when I suggested we knock before entering. I certainly didn’t want to barge in on a patron with a video camera and light while they weren’t looking their best! Anyway, I said aloud, “We better knock first and make sure no one’s in there,” when, seemingly from nowhere discernable, we heard three distinct knocks on the door prior to Holly actually knocking herself. Unfortunately, Holly did not hear the knocks as she was preoccupied with preparing to knock herself. However, her mother, myself and the camera all heard the supernatural tappings. They were just as loud as though someone in our group had knocked on the door from the other side of the restroom door. Strange thing is, no one was in the restroom. No one was anywhere around us. There was NO ONE there but us and the camera.
I was excited! It was the first time I had caught some sort of “proof” that something strange was going on. I rolled the tape back immediately for everyone to hear, and sure enough, there were the three distinct rappings just prior to Holly’s knocks on the door. Can we attribute it to the “crying ghost?” I’m not sure, but something definitely hangs around the Zodiac restaurant and isn’t quite ready to go home just yet.
Generally, ghosts will shy away from my video camera, choosing rather to be captured on other hunters’ digital cameras and still cameras. In one case, even appearing on a wireless camera phone. I’m not always that unlucky however, as our visit to the Patapsco Female Institute in Ellicott City proved.
As always, my camera was on and recording throughout the evening, and not really capturing anything odd or mysterious on tape. Several of the more sensitive members of MGSA even reported that it seemed to be a “quiet” evening at the Institute that night, quite different from previous visits.
That evening, my friend Tricia MacKenzie was accompanying me as she often does, with a camcorder featuring NightShot. NightShot gives you the ability to shoot video in near total darkness by relying on infrared light, a light that’s invisible to the human eye. In the “basement” of the Institute is an area used for storage. The area was open to us that night, and we made several trips through with both my standard camcorder and the NightShot camcorder. When reviewing the tapes, the NightShot camera had caught what can only be identified as an orb floating across the doorway to the storage area. It moves by so quick in the corner of the frame that I hadn’t even noticed it at first. Actually, it was pointed out to me by a visitor to 93.1 WPOC’s website, www.wpoc.com, where I had posted the video footage as part of a Halloween web promotion (I’m the radio station’s morning show producer, DJ, and webmaster).
The video is still available on wpoc.com, just visit the site and type in “Haunted Places” in the wpoc.com Search Bar near the top of the screen. Needless to say, I was quite excited by the find. In the process of producing that video for the web, as I said before, I hadn’t noticed the orb in the NightShot footage; instead focusing on some footage I shot using an extremely slow shutter speed from the front of the Institute. In that footage, you can clearly see several quick-moving streaks of orange light across the video. I’m no insect expert, but I’m fairly certain those aren’t bugs flying across the lens. In fact, in my notes that night, I made mention of the fact there was a surprising lack of insects flying about on such a steamy late summer evening. Again, very exciting to see–this is the kind of thing I live for!
SOURCE: v5 MGSA Oct 2005
