Who You Gonna Call?
 

Photo by Barry Langer / VOX Staff

By Barry Langer / VOX Staff

Most of us cower under the covers when we hear things that go bump in the night. But not Patrick Burns — he actually seeks out proof that ghoulies and ghosties haunt more than just our imaginations. As founder of Ghost Hounds, a paranormal investigation agency, Burns has dealt with everything from poltergeist pranksters to full-body apparitions staring him full-on in the face. In the seven years he’s been searching for spirits from his home base in Lawrenceville, he’s managed to skyrocket to national fame with his Court TV show “Haunting Evidence.” Yet unlike many of his counterparts who try to scare up some substantiation that ghosts exists, Burns remains somewhat skeptical and uses a variety of sophisticated gear to hunt as scientifically as possible for otherworldly beings that may — or may not — be right behind you as you read this. VOX mustered up the courage to track Burns down and ask him what he’s uncovered during his paranormal investigations:
 
VOX: Let’s start it off with that one burning question: Are ghosts real?

Patrick Burns: (Laughing) That’s the question. Everyone wants to know if ghosts are real, and we won’t know until we become ghosts ourselves. It’s a mystery, and as an investigator you have to approach it with skeptical perception and not let personal belief cloud what really is. Am I myself convinced? Not completely; but based on my own investigations I’m 95 percent sure that ghosts are real. It still remains the big mystery, the big enigma for everyone else, and I’m OK with that. However, some of my colleagues want definitive proof.

As an investigator, once upon a time, I wanted to find this Holy Grail. I wanted definitive proof, and as I got older and wiser I realized it probably won’t happen in my lifetime. Paranormal investigation takes on a spiritual meaning that you have to experience yourself. I could see a ghost walk in front of me right now and the world would think I’m crazy. So how can I prove it? You need to look for the evidence, draw your own conclusions, and figure it out for yourself if you think it’s real. Nobody really knows what we’re dealing with. I’m fairly convinced that something survives the death of the human body. It’s a mystery, and it’s likely to remain one for the foreseeable future.
 
VOX: What would you say has been your most otherworldly experience?

PB: The ultimate experience in haunting is a Full-Body Apparition. It’s very real, and it’s only happened to me a few times. The first time was when I was sleeping in my parents’ basement in Wisconsin in 1993, and at about three in the morning I was awoken from a very deep sleep …  As I started to come to, I noticed there were two figures standing next to me, but I wasn’t totally coherent yet. The first one was a woman who had long black hair, who looked like she was wearing a nightgown. She looked at me and started to walk to the furnace room and, very soon after, the second figure started walking. It was a small boy, between 8 and 12 years old, and he had a half-smile fixed on his face. He looked right at me, and as they walked away to the furnace room, they disappeared. They faded away. I didn’t really have a chance to be scared about it. Afterward, I sat up — without blinking — for a couple of minutes, trying to figure out what had just happened.
 
VOX: That’s a little scary. Are ghosts out to get us?

PB: I really don’t think so. Some in my field believe there are so-called “malevolent entities,” that for whatever reason are out to get us. I believe there are entities that, for whatever reasons, don’t want us around [but do not want to hurt us]. Maybe they didn’t want to cross over to the other side. If somebody is malevolent in life, he or she may very possibly carry it beyond the grave. Those cases of malevolent activity are very, very rare. Sometimes I think they really like to toy with us, and even have a sense of humor; but you’ve also got the ones that want to be left alone.
 
VOX: Why would a ghost want to remain to haunt a house? Why stay in one place?

PB: One of my colleagues in the field named Tom Holser believes that it is not a natural thing for someone to become a ghost. He believes they’re stuck here. If people die very suddenly, maybe they don’t realize that they’re dead, so they’re going about their daily things, thinking it’s normal, even though they’ve died. Maybe these spirits weren’t the nicest people in life, and did a lot of things that were of a questionable nature, and think that if they cross they’ll have to face up to whatever god they believe in. Maybe they feel they have unfinished business to attend to — which is one of the more plausible definitions I believe in. Maybe you just want to watch your children grow up even if they can’t see you.

VOX: Where are ghosts supposed to be going?

PB: Nobody knows for sure, and we won’t until it’s our turn. I believe it’s more than likely that it’s a different plane of existence. The Law of Conservation of Energy says that energy has to change from one form to another, and I believe that death is just another plane of existence for us, and that the only thing that dies is the physical body. The emotions, the knowledge we’ve acquired, probably goes with us.
 
VOX: What do you use to track ghosts?

PB: Paranormal investigators work with digital thermometers to find the proverbial “cold spot,” electromagnetic field detectors to find changes in the earth’s magnetic field, and we also work with a thermal imaging camera. It’s a camera that sees temperatures. We’ve adopted them for paranormal
research because you should see the outline of a ghost if you’ve found one; you should be able to see the warm or cold spot in that location.

[We] also use a digital voice recorder. EVP [Electronic Voice Phenomena, the electronic recording of voices of spirits] is the most compelling evidence that we have at this time of the existence of ghosts. I’ve tried to debunk it, to explain it away as crosstalk on the radio waves, and I cannot come up with a satisfactory explanation of what is really happening. As I got older and wiser, I realized that these voices are answering specific questions, or commenting on what was happening in real life, putting in their two cents, or calling us out by name. What we’re recording on these devices isn’t what you’d think is on the airwaves — not like what happens when you turn the radio on and off — and we’ve validated it by asking the spirit questions and it responds very specifically, which is strong evidence.
 
VOX: You’ve said that you’re interested not only in ghosts, but also in other paranormal activity as well. Have you personally witnessed any instances of psychic abilities such as ESP?

PB: I have experienced it myself, actually. One day I had a very vivid dream. In the dream, I was in my car, and I saw that there was a blood drive happening at a hospital. I pulled up to the hospital, and people weren’t even getting out of their cars, they were just lowering their windows, and they were giving blood right from their cars. It seemed like there was a very sudden need for blood, and since I’ve never given a drop of blood in my life it seemed very odd that I was there. Then I got out of bed and went to work, and the planes hit the Twin Towers. I still hadn’t yet made the connection, and in the next few days, as people were giving blood in droves, I found the common thread between my dream and real life.

VOX:  How do you sleep at night, dealing with all this unsettling, scary stuff?

PB: (Laughing) A lot of people in the field say, “I’m not scared, I don’t run.” A Full-Body Apparition is a very rare occurrence, but when something like that happens, it can be very unnerving. We fear the unknown. I do get creeped out sometimes. How is it that curiosity overrides fight or flight?

Fortunately, my own home does not appear to be haunted in the classic sense of the word. [My wife and I] do get activity that makes itself known in our home from time to time, usually a few days after an investigation. For lack of a better term, [ghosts] follow me home! I believe the activity that manifests itself in my home is transient activity. It’s prevalent for a few days and it invariably goes away. Usually the stuff we experience is very subtle.

I think you almost become jaded over the years, in some way. I used to get an adrenaline rush when going into a cemetery. You realize over time that Hollywood is really what’s scaring us. It’s not really a thing that scares me as much anymore. It also helps to have other people with you as a reality check. Your subconscious is going to help you see what you want to see — if you feed the subconscious with the right stimuli, your brain will run away with itself, and if you have the equipment or another person there, you can double-check it.

VOX: So ghosts aren’t scary, but Hollywood is.

PB: A lot of paranormal investigation is boring. You set up your gear, and it’s hurry up and wait. The amount of activity you get on an investigation is usually very small; we don’t get any spiritual beings trying to tear us down into the depths of hell, and lots of people get out of it because it’s so tedious.
 
VOX: You mentioned earlier that ghosts like to toy with us, play tricks on us. Have any ever been played on you?

PB: I was poked once, above my lower back. I was sitting in the family room of my home, editing some video footage on my computer, when I felt a sharp poke in my back. When I turned around, nothing was there. I felt a cold spot go past, figured the window was opened — complete ghost hunter in denial — and [went] back to work, felt the cold spot again, and the next thing I know, I hear this loud thump, like someone took their fist and pounded it on the wall. It originated about 10 feet away from me, and I figured that one of the cats had jumped off the printer stand and slammed it against the wall. So I went back to work. Within five minutes, it happened again, except that this time, it was so hard the house shook, and at this time I got up, took my headphones off, and said, “You have my undivided attention now!” Then it went away. That was a very eventful, interesting night.

I did an investigation with 11 Alive News, and during this investigation, the poor cameraman’s batteries just kept draining one after another; after five minutes of use, it would say “Battery Low” on batteries that are supposed to last at least a couple of hours. On the recording, you hear me go “Oooh,” like something spooky was going on, and then you hear a woman’s voice mocking me, going “Ooooh!”
 
VOX: What did your wife think when you first started hunting down ghosts?

PB: She initially wasn’t crazy about it at first. She thought I’d bring something back with me. As time went on, she realized that Hollywood wasn’t real, and now she actually works with me in the group.

Back in 1999, when I joined the Georgia Haunt Hunt Team, I got to go to their Christmas party. On the way home from the party, I had a really wigged-out feeling. I had this wrenching feeling that something was riding with me, and I even turned the rearview mirror down so I wouldn’t see anyone who shouldn’t be in the car.

My wife said she heard me open the door and come up the stairs, and figured I went to the computer. Then she saw a dark silhouette on her side of the bed, and she thought, “Oh, how sweet, Patrick brought me a glass of water.” Then she looked at my side of the bed, and I was there. When she looked back, it was gone.
 
VOX: Do you think you will become a ghost?

PB: I’ve already promised that I’ll haunt the hell out of people I know! (Laughs) I’d like to set up a series of experiments, like Harry Houdini did in the 1920’s. He created a secret code that he shared with his wife and no one else. He was afraid that when he died, people would approach his wife, saying, “I have a message from your dead husband,” just trying to get to her. So he set up a series of controls, and supposedly the code was never cracked before his wife died. I’d love to do a similar experiment, to relay a code from beyond the grave.

If I have a choice to stick around, I’m not sticking around. There’s very little I like about the world we live in right now, and, presented with the choice, I’m taking a one-way ticket to the other side.

Barry is a senior at The Weber School.