Requesting an Investigation
MaineGhostHunters
January 24, 2024
The Maine Ghost Hunters organization is fully equipped to investigate spiritually active historic public access locations in Maine, and in some cases, the greater New England region.
Among our primary team goals is to share our passion for local history with MGH followers, supporters, and viewers. If we’re hyper-focused on anything it’s our desire to excite the masses to take a look at the history that sits locally ‘in their own backyard’. We strive to be a force of encouragement, sparking ‘the curious’ to visit the places we showcase.
Maine Ghost Hunters leads with the allure of the paranormal, and curious visitors leave your spiritually active historic location with a deeper appreciation for local history. It really is a win-win scenario.
Making the contents of our investigations public is the best way to meet that team goal, and this is why focusing on historic public access locations for our investigations resonates with us as strongly as it does.
Maine Ghost Hunters has a fairly large following and we’d love the opportunity to advertise your business on your behalf. If you’re the owner or legal steward of an historically significant location with paranormal activity and you’d like to get the word out to attract more patrons, visitors, customers, and the like, we’d enjoy the opportunity to team up with you to help spread the news.
Maine Ghost Hunters does not charge for investigations nor the videos we produce on behalf of the locations we investigate. We invite you to visit the Maine Ghost Hunters YouTube channel as well as our ZeroLux Paranormal YouTube channel which hosts our online ‘paranormal reality’ series.
Locations MGH typically investigates
- Historically relevant public access locations in Maine and New England
- Businesses in historic buildings such as, but not limited to;
- Inns, Bed and Breakfasts, Hotels
- Restaurants, Dining Facilities, Taverns, Bars, etc..
- Closed healthcare facilities, schools
- Museums, Historical Societies
- Jails, Prisons, Asylums, Sanitariums
- Abandoned locations
- Historic Mills, Industrial Complexes
- Old Churches, convents, rectories
- Ex-funeral homes, morgues, body storage sites
- Forts, Lighthouse keeper quarters, lighthouses
Location types we do not typically investigate
- hazardous locations
- locations we don’t have permission to investigate
- Apartments
- Apartments are not usually owned by the requesting client. And since all private/non-public-access investigation requests must come from the owner of the location we’re being requested to investigate, this would preclude an apartment renter from asking us to get involved with their case.
- Another reason, and probably the most significant in terms of data collection, is because apartments are almost always in immediate proximity to other dwellings. A major part of our investigations involve sensitive sound recording equipment, and a lot of video recording. Being aware of the limitations investigation environments can afford us in terms of controlling sound, motion, and outside stimuli is how we’re able to provide as successful a data collection experience as we possibly can. Having no control over nearby environments, nor any certain awareness of what’s going on in other dwellings close enough to us to contaminate our evidence, is likely to result in evidentiary uncertainties. If we can’t stand by the evidence we collect in any certain environment, then why would we waste our time, or our client’s time, obtaining it? What would be the point?
- Locations that are; loud; close to neighboring buildings; a forum for transient populations; and unpredictable in terms of environmental stimuli.
- Locations that have been the site of ‘recent history’. Legends and lore aside, deaths and murders, or crimes of these types that happened recently enough in the past that the event is still fresh in our state’s local collective consciousness is a moral issue we struggle to challenge.
What to do if you think you have a haunting
- Communicate with the spirit presence vocally, out loud, in the place you think you’re noticing paranormal activity.
- Be friendly. Treat the spirit like you would a new friend. Be kind and accommodating.
- Tell the spirit what you’re uncomfortable with, and lay out clear boundaries of when and where he/she/it can make its presence known. There is no need to be rough with your approach. Speak casually and in a friendly tone. This environment is yours but you’re allowing the spirit presence to know you’re aware he/she/it is among you so long as he/she/it stays within whatever boundaries you lay out. Use this approach repeatedly over the course of time. Communication is a big player in a lot of spiritually active cases.
- When describing your boundaries be specific. Ex: “I don’t mind you being here. I actually enjoy knowing you love this place as much as I do so I’d like to make my boundaries known to you, directly. You can express yourself in the communal areas when I’m away from the building. You’re never allowed in the bathroom when anyone is in there, ever. To be clear, the bathroom is completely off limits. If a door is closed to living people it’s also closed to spirits, such as yourself. Sometimes, we all need privacy. When I communicate with you I will be nice and use proper manners and I would ask you do the same for me. And please, don’t scare me on purpose. I promise I’ll do my best to respect your need to feel acknowledged and validated so long as you do your best to respect these boundaries that help me feel safe while we share this space together.”
- If negatively disruptive behaviors continue try designating an area, preferably in the vicinity the paranormal activity is taking place, to leave gifts, toys, trinkets, etc… for the spirit(s).
- Suggestions we’ve made in the past: cigars, tobacco, coins, paper dollar bills – for men; flowers, perfume, thimbles, jewelry – for women; marbles, farm animal figurines, toy cars, balls, stuffed animals – for kids. Be sure to communicate, aloud, these items are gifts for the spirits you think are making their presence known in your environment.
- If you’d appreciate a more spiritual approach to the paranormal activity there is always the ‘sage’ route. You can perform a spiritual cleansing inside your home by lighting the tip of a hand-held sage bundle on fire, blowing it out, and releasing the smoke into all corners of every room in your house. It’s believed that leaving windows, and even doors (if weather permits), open while doing this will help the spirits understand, further, that it’s time for them to move on, and away from the location being saged. Be sure to make your intentions known while performing this ritual, by stating aloud your expectations that the spirit move on to another location outside of your house and away from your property, and that they aren’t allowed back unless specifically invited by you, personally. Set the smoking sage bundle in a safe place where it can extinguish itself naturally. This could take some time so take this into consideration when allowing the sage to burn out on its own. If you still notice disruptive occurrences at your historic public-access location which you think may be from a paranormal source, you might want to drop us an investigation request.
When should you request an investigation?
- If you’re wondering ‘at what point’ you should request an investigation we suggest a few considerations;
- whether or not there is physical contact taking place
- are people being physically hurt by an unseen entity?
- Is the activity disrupting daily life in ways you consider negative?
- If the answer to these questions is ‘yes’ then this may be a good time to reach out to us to request an investigation. If you’ve tried communicating directly with the paranormal presence as explained in the above section and you’re still having negatively disruptive issues, this might also be a good time to drop us a line.
- Maine Ghost Hunters rarely investigates locations with negative or dangerous spirit presences, so if you’re just curious about the paranormal activity you’ve been experiencing at the historic public access location you represent, drop us a line.
- The overwhelming majority of spiritually active locations Maine Ghost Hunters has investigated have been benign presences meaning no harm to those they share their day-to-day.
- If you run a business in an building steeped in history which you think may benefit from having Maine Ghost Hunters investigate and possibly advertise via our online streaming media programming, we’d enjoy speaking with you.
Some of what you should expect from an MGH investigation
- Before we start our investigation we have our clients sign legal liability forms and media release waivers so we may share our findings in video form.
- The investigation environment will need to be cleared of all people and animals for a period of time that spans as little as 6 hours and as long as 14 hours
- Oftentimes, we request a single supervisor/docent of the location to be present while we’re investigating
- In certain situations, due to the late hours we conduct our business, we are often left with the responsibility of being in charge of the investigation environment, without a supervisor/docent overseeing our investigation.
- Heavy camera presence, both still-photo and video.
- That Maine Ghost Hunters will respect the investigation environment to the best of our collective ability. We strive to conduct ourselves in a “no trace left behind” manner. We’re acutely aware we’re in historically important locations during some of our investigations and we never take this for granted. We treat every invitation to investigate as the gift that it is. And we appreciate it, equally as much. We realize your residence/work environment is as sacred to you as ours is to us and we treat it that way. Should we be invited to investigate your place of business you can be ‘rest assured’ we understand what a privilege this is.
- Multiple Investigation Dates
- One of the stronger aspects of our organization’s evidence review protocol exists as a means to ensure we’ve done our due diligence in terms of ‘debunking’ potential investigation contaminants. Often times (not every time) this requires our investigators to revisit the location to collect evidence in some of the same general places as the previous visit; places that are thought to have previously yielded evidence and/or curious data patterns.
Why night time investigation hours?
- Investigating at night allows MGH to be more aware of the contaminants in our investigation environment. There are less sights and sounds to contend with at night than there are in the day time.
- Investigator availability due to work schedules generally relegate our investigations to night time weekend dates.
- Night time investigations also allow us to utilize video equipment that can see different ranges within the light spectrum. Ranges we can’t easily access in bright daylight.
Some of what Maine Ghost Hunters expects from our clients
- We’re a 100% volunteer organization with each member not only providing this investigation service for our clients ‘for free’, but also paying money out of our own pockets to do so. We just ask that you keep this in mind when communicating with us, or about us. When we dedicate ourselves to a case we give it every bit of attention we can afford. This is our commitment, not only to you, but to the legacy of our organization. We put much of our own time, effort, and money into providing this service because we believe in what we do.
- We expect our investigation locations to be clean and non-toxic. We’ve heard countless stories from some of our peer investigation teams who drove hours to arrive at client locations that had piles of putrid odor filled garbage stored in open rooms within the residence, feces filled diapers they had to dodge in their direct investigation path, hoarding scenes that were clearly unsafe and which made investigators sick from unidentified toxins hidden within heaps of unknowns, and highly toxic black mold infestations.
- Please take the time to clean the investigation environments you would like us to spend time in.
What should I expect after the investigation has been completed?
- We ask that clients give our team 6+/- weeks from the last investigation we did for you, to complete our evidence review of your location.
- You can expect to receive digital communication regarding your case and/or downloadable documented evidence provided by MGH within 8 weeks post ‘final investigation’ date.
- There may be exceptions to this timeline, particularly if our case load is stressed, and also – if we attempted to coordinate a follow-up investigation with you and it didn’t quite work out. In the latter case, our initial evidence review may be put on hold at a certain point while we await the go-ahead to compare environmental factors during a return investigation visit.
