Investigators Wary Of All Paranormal Phenomena

Brad Smith entered a Stockton home recently when, all of a sudden, he felt an ice-cold grip on his left wrist.

There was nobody there to grab it.

Smith, who investigates whether ghosts exist at certain locations, said he doesn't know what it was, but it could have been a deceased relative.

Smith, a member of a Sacramento-based organization called American Paranormal Investigations, spoke to about 40 people attending Wednesday night's meeting of the newly formed Lodi Paranormal and Historic Anomaly Society.

Smith is what is his group calls a "debunker," someone who searches buildings attempting to prove that they aren't haunted. He looks for logical reasons for funny noises, like a running air conditioner, a breeze from the window or a creaky wooden floor.

In Stockton, Smith checked for a significant amount of electric and magnetic fields in the neighborhood, which could cause something that appears to be ghostly.

"It could be anything," Smith said.

It could be a ghost of someone who once lived in the house, it could be someone who once lived in the neighborhood.

"It may be passing through," he said. "They may be curious just like us."

Smith, who was a reporter for two years for the Siskiyou Daily News in Yreka beginning in 2006, said his group will return to the Stockton house for a more thorough investigation. He now writes for what he described as an "area newspaper" and does crime reporting online.

Dave Bender, who founded American Paranormal Investigations in 2001, told interested Lodians that he doesn't use the term "ghost" when discussing possible paranormal activity. Instead, he likes to use the word "apparition," an unusual or unexpected sight.

Bender said American Paranormal Investigations won't come to someone's residence strictly to look for ghosts.

"Twenty percent of the things we encounter are paranormal," Smith said. "The other 80 percent can be easily explained."

It's more important to listen to people's stories about what they think is abnormal in their house, Bender said.

"They don't want people to think they're crazy," he said. "What's important to them is to be willing to listen to their story.

"I can teach you how to investigate," Bender said. "I can't teach you how to care about people. We're here to make the family feel better."

Describing his most unusual experience searching for ghosts, Bender recalls visiting a house in a nice Sacramento neighborhood. He didn't notice anything unusual, but several women, including his wife, felt like they were choking.

One woman was walking in a bedroom at that home when something unexplainable bumped into her. She fell down and hurt her elbow.

"It was nasty, that's what it was," Bender said.

Smith said he was blown away one night in Auburn, where several people told him they saw creatures resembling "gray humanoids."

"So we scouted the area. At the driveway, I saw this blurred humanoid shape in the air, turn and go away," Smith said. "We tried to debunk it, but we couldn't explain it another way."

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