Photos courtesy of Michael Richard
One of the few hostile spirits the Richards met was this man who appears above his gravestone. The authors only identify the cemetery as in Northern California. The spirit was said to be still chasing his wife who he?d murdered in the 19th century. Some thought he was angry because he had a heart attack soon after the murder.
Durango's ghost guy says he now makes a living from spooks. He sells his paranormal pictures to collectors and, with his wife, Susan, has self-published a short memoir They Call Me "The Ghost Guy."
As for the division of labor, Mr. Richards is the paranormal photographer. Mrs. Richards takes backup rolls of photos to check results and has written most of the book.
The book contains 71 black-and-white photographs, most of which have white blurs in them. The Richards' claim is that the blurs are pictures of spirits. Should we pay attention to their claim?
Who knows? One thing the Richards could have done to help their claim would have been to print the pictures on glossy paper so they would show up better. But this still begs the question of what the blurs are in the first place.
A whole posse of 958-pound gorillas lumbers around the book. First there are the basic questions of whether spirits exist and, if so, what they look like. Then there's the question of Photoshop. Mr. Richard said by phone on Sunday that Mrs. Richard had colorized one photo so it would show up better, but no other picture had been altered.
As for technique "only two types of film, high speed and infrared, will give me the detail and dependability I demand," they write. "You can, however, get interesting results with regular film. I have also found that manual cameras are best." After a shoot, Mr. and Mrs. Richards send their film to separate labs.
"Spirits do have the ability to choose whether they want to show up on film," the Richards write, adding that spirits are generally shy and averse to crowds. And they're scary, though the Richards say that since they treat the spirits with respect, they've rarely been attacked.
Mr. Richards was introduced to the paranormal as a child in 1966 when he fell off a land shelf into the ocean and nearly drowned. While he was sinking "a huge white light engulfed me. The light felt alive and female. It gave me a feeling of comfort and pushed me toward the surface." He emerged able to see auras. Soon he started seeing spirits. "Sometimes I can even hear or feel the other side," he says in the book.
Hauntings are of three types, the Richards contend: spirits, ghosts and imprints.
"Spirits are beings that have come over for a particular reason. Either they want to get a message to this side or they are here to give comfort to someone specific. These beings include spirits who lived in this world before and beings who never lived here `85 gnomes, fairies, the wee people, etc."
Ghosts are lost souls who haven't found their path to move on to the next world and imprints in time are when events happen at the same time, place and way - again and again - as they did originally.
The book includes pictures of a gnome and UFOs. Mr. Richards is sure fairies exist, but so far they've been too shy to be photographed. It's full of entertaining stories, though they're irritatingly vague. A ghostly encounter may feature "a woman in California." How are we supposed to evaluate that?
The Richards have been to Mesa Verde, Sedona and the Aztec Ruins and include photographs of the spirits they found there.
One practical benefit of the paranormal photos has been to help a New Hampshire man who was stuck with a haunted house. When he discovered the pesky ghost, the previous owner and real-estate agent didn't want to take the house back. But Mr. Richard's photos helped the new owner win his case.
Prospective readers shouldn't go seeking high literature here or even experienced writers who can make the most of the peculiar stories, but the Richards' spook-hunting venture is a highly creative take on the perennial problem of how to survive in Durango. Good for them.
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