TOMBSTONE ? Until Oct. 31, 2002, co-founders of The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) and the stars of a new hit series ?Ghost Hunter? Grant Wilson and Jason Hawes were plumbers in Rhode Island whose hobby was ghost hunting. Over the last three years, however, they?ve had to put the plumbing somewhat on the back burner to concentrate on the Sci-Fi channel weekly series ?Ghost Hunters,? televised locally on Wednesday evenings at 6 p.m. This week they are conducting paranormal research in Tombstone and Bisbee for a show that will air sometime this fall.
How did two plumbers from Warwick, R.I., catch the eye of the Sci-Fi Channel? Jason explains.
?What happened was I had done a lot of other shows, everything from ?MTV?s Fear? down to ?Really Scary Stories? so we were out there.? Having recently debunked a well-known haunting in their area brought them to the attention of author and New York Times reporter John Leland, whose syndicated article, ?Don?t Say Ghostbuster, Say Spirit Plumber? went out to approximately 140 newspapers. What followed was a request for a demo tape that was supposed to be, according to Grant, ?? a drama based on our case history.? ?And we were OK with that,? said Jason. ?We really didn?t want to be on TV.? What resulted from this demo, though, was much different than they had originally thought. One show turned into 10 with an agreement from their employer, Roto-Rooter, that they would work four 10-hour days, spending their weekends filming for the mini-series. When the pace became too great, working a total of about 90 hours a week, their employer permitted them to make adjustments to their work schedule allowing them to work with Roto-Rooter when they were able and on strictly commercial jobs. Being in the limelight as they currently are, were they to work on a residential job, as Grant says, ?A one-hour job suddenly turns into a three- or four-hour job.?
They are swift to acknowledge some big changes in their lives, first and foremost not being home with their families like they were before Ghost Hunters. Grant states that they do try to be home as much as possible and when they are home, they are home, staying close. When on the road, both men use laptops, e-mail and webcams to stay in touch with their families. Jason is proud to tell anyone that whenever he wants to know what?s going on at home, he simply has to turn on his laptop, much to the chagrin of his children he says with a laugh. Both men readily admit that were it not for the support of their families they?d have no show.
?If it wasn?t for my wife and Grant?s wife, we wouldn?t be here today.? says Jason. ?The day my twins were born, I?ve got five kids; I was standing in the hospital when my phone rings to tell me, ?Hey, Sci-Fi bought the show. We?ll see you there in a week.? The first episode you saw, my wife had just gotten home from the hospital three days prior to that.?
Much of the group?s private lives are laid out for the country to watch each week, with an example being during the show?s filming a situation developing where one of the crew, a member who had been with them almost from the beginning, being unable to adequately perform his duties due to interference from his significant other in Rhode Island. Eventually this led to his leaving the show and TAPS, returning only upon extricating himself from the relationship. Like any family when one of their own makes a bad life decision that goes against the good advice of those who love them, there were hurt feelings and the situation was finally resolved, but there was a great deal of discussion amongst the group over the course of several shows.
This weekend and for a few days next week, Jason, Grant and their crew consisting of an additional five members are visiting some of the local buildings in Tombstone and Bisbee in an attempt to prove or disprove the existence of ghosts. Assisting in the paranormal investigation, each of them fulfilling a specific role in the research, are many of the regulars from the show, Donna LaCroix as case manager, Lisa Dowaliby as their director, Brian ?Weezer? Harnois as an investigator/technical support specialist, Steve Gonsalves, technical director, and one of their newest members on the show, Dave Tango as an investigator, joining the group following T.A.P.S lending him support on a haunting his paranormal group was investigating.
Some of the establishments to be visited in Cochise County are the Bird Cage Theatre, the Crystal Palace Saloon and the Copper Queen Hotel, among others in the area that are reputed to be haunted. The Bird Cage, because of its violent history, claims to have more than 125 various ghosts and is of particular interest to TAPS
This past Thursday night, the investigators paid a visit to the Bird Cage with their cameras and recorders in the hopes of finding tangible proof of the existence of ghosts in the form of Electronic Voice Phenomenon, called EVP?s, or with a still photo or film of a figure. In other investigations, this supposedly has happened.
The financial commitment on the part of the founders has been great. There are a number of paranormal investigation groups who will charge for their services, but Grant and Jason refuse to do so, preferring instead to make their services available to all regardless of the monetary situation of the household or business, being willing to investigate the smallest of shacks to the largest of mansions, going where the ghost hunting takes them.
Prior to the involvement of Sci-Fi, Grant and Jason and others spent thousands of their own dollars each year to keep the group going, working out of a small trailer in Jason?s yard, only renting office space in the last year.
All travel expenses were absorbed by the group, with no income other than their own with perhaps a donation here and there, but nothing solid to count on from one month to the next. Some of the equipment they use can also be quite expensive. For each investigation, the group uses digital voice recorders, still cameras, video cameras both mounted and hand-held as well as night vision equipment.
One of the most expensive pieces of equipment they use is their infrared/thermal imaging camera, which detects changes in the environment from hot to cold or vice versa, helping them locate ?cold spots? or ?hot spots,? which would indicate the presence of a spirit or perhaps something else.
The camera proved its worth during an investigation in Eureka Springs, Ark., last year. The site was the Crescent Hotel, once used as a morgue in the 1800s when the building was a fake cancer treatment center. Jason and Grant saw an image of a figure against a storage locker. On the camera, the figure was blue, or cold, but the number on the locker in the center of the image of the figure, a ?2?, glows bright red, signifying a hot spot. At another location in Eureka Springs, at the home of a Dr. Ellis who practiced medicine at the center during the 1880s, Jason speaks to a person claiming to be a medium while Grant films with the infrared camera. During the conversation, a psychedelic light show unfolds on the camera screen. Grant and Jason say they have never seen anything like it in their roughly 15 years of investigation.
T.A.P.S, under the direct guidance of Grant and Jason, take a different approach to ?ghost hunting? than other investigative groups might. Both men, having a mutual interest in the paranormal as a result of separate but similar encounters with spirits, approach each case perhaps with a bit of skepticism. While they both very much believe in the presence of spirits in the world, they also find that most times there is a logical explanation for most happenings that are reported to them. This doesn?t stop them from hoping, before each investigation, that this is the one to give them solid proof of the existence of spirits, or as Grant often calls irrefutable evidence, ?The Holy Grail.?
In visiting their Web site, www.the-atlantic-paranormal-society.com, they share stories of some of their past investigations and the results. On one particular case, the homeowner was asking for assistance with ?walls that bleed.? In looking further into the matter Grant and Jason discover the pipes behind the walls were old and rusty and leaking rusty water through the drywall. In another instance, they are asked to investigate ?sounds in a wall? only to discover the owner installed speakers in an attempt to fool them.
Also on the Web site, T.A.P.S shares with its visitors some of the evidence collected over the years, not in an attempt to convince anyone of the existence of spirits, but to allow others to view what they?ve discovered and to reach their own conclusions.
Neither Jason nor Grant will easily admit any place they investigate is actually haunted. On the show there is plenty of good-natured ribbing directed toward Jason and his dislike of the ?H? word. However, there has been occasion where Jason has been forced to admit that a place might actually be, well, haunted.
Recently, the group visited the abandoned Mansfield Reformatory in Ohio, which was used in some of the filming of ?The Shawshank Redemption.?
During this investigation, they caught on tape a dark, scampering shadow that ran toward the camera and then back again. In another show, when visiting Myrtle?s Plantation in Louisiana, unbeknownst to Grant and Jason who were sitting in a darkened room with a side table between them, a lamp on a table had moved with no one touching it. This piece of evidence was only discovered later upon viewing the footage from the night vision camera in the room with them.
While these are the exception rather than the rule, T.A.P.S continues to go whereever requests to investigate takes them, with a priority being given to haunts that involve possible danger to children.
In spending time with Grant, Jason and the rest of the group, it is evident they can?t figure out why they are considered ?famous? when the fact of the matter is, they are simply a bunch of people from Rhode Island who happen to investigate the paranormal in their spare time. What is also evident is that this group of young people, most of them in their 20?s and 30?s, seem to have figured out is that Ghost Hunters, in the grand scheme of things, is but a small segment of their lives.
Once it?s gone, their lives will return to normal after a fashion enabling them to sit down to a meal at a restaurant with their families with no one interrupting them asking for an autograph or a handshake. In the mean time, though, for so long as they are in the midst of their fifteen minutes of fame, they?ve decided to grab hold as best as they can and enjoy the ride for as long as it lasts.
But until the ride ends, neither Jason nor Grant has any plans to leave the plumbing business. Folding his arms across his chest, Jason states, ?Plumbing is recession free. I?m sticking with that.?
Grant readily agrees, ?No one?s going back to outhouses.?
Source: http://www.svherald.com/articles/2006/0 ... /news1.txt
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