“I am Amy” — a voice comes through one of the many electronic ‘ghost-hunting’ devices placed around the cold, dark room at the back of a history museum before the lights on several magnetic metering machines go wild.
It sends shivers down my spine. I think this is what I came here for, but this sudden discomfort makes me question my motivation and sparks a fleeting desire to take flight, rather than ‘fight’.
But I stay seated in the room — which was once a ward in a nursing home — because satisfying my curiosity is a stronger urge.
A friend and I have joined Clive ‘CJ’ Woolley of Shepparton’s Caspa Paranormal Investigations and his colleague Shane Reynolds of Southern Paranormal Adventures at an investigation at the Mooroopna Museum and Gallery on one of the coldest nights of the year so far.
It is the first time I’ve turned up to a job wearing my Ugg boots, and quite possibly the last.
We arrive late, after the group of about six seasoned investigators and six first-timers has already settled into its communications with beings from the afterlife.
They report they’ve had contact in the old hospital with a doctor and an abused eight-year-old child (Freddie), whom he’d cared for, and had invited them over into the museum for the next stage of their investigation.
This was where we joined the ‘party’.
Mr Reynolds sits in the dimly lit room, firmly gripping a pair of homemade dowsing rods — divining rods made of copper and wooden beads — in his hands.
He asks questions of the spirits he believes to be in the room — David Madill, Mary Ellen Madill, the doctor and Freddie — asking that they cross his rods for yes and open them for no.
Before we entered, the investigators had charged the room with energy through machines but had to turn them off so they didn’t play havoc with Mr Woolley’s pacemaker. He says spirits find communicating easier if there’s readily available energy in the atmosphere.
An investigation is a slow process, given only yes-no answers can be asked of entities who exist in the afterlife, and it takes them substantial energy stores to break through, which I guess is why this investigation is a 12-hour affair.
After plenty of response to Mr Reynolds’ dowsing rods and various lights and sounds activating on K2 electro-magnetic-field-reading meters, SB7 radio-scanning spirit boxes, and Rem-Pods, which are said to pick up radiated electromagnetic field disturbances and manipulations around it, activity slows a little.
This is when Amy ‘shows up’.
Despite having carried out investigations at the venue previously, none of the investigators had ‘met’ Amy before.
They are excited and relaxed by her presence.
I share the former sentiment, although it is a nervous brand of excitement, but not the latter.
To me, Amy — if she is really here — seems angry.
Maybe it is that the next sentence communicated through the voice translator is a simple yet unmistakable instruction to “go away”.
Or maybe it is because the next sequence of events conveys even more strongly to me than those two words that someone — or something — isn’t happy with our presence.
Almost every device in the room illuminates and squeals at once in a chorus that signals a grand finale to this part of the investigation.
After it, all ghosts appear to go AWOL.
There is silence, and Mr Reynolds, who had earlier said he had a sixth sense where he could feel spirits around him, with male spirits heavier than female spirits and three spirits living with him at his Werribee home, says he can no longer feel paranormal presence in the room.
It is was though she was the boss; like a mother ghost telling all her child ghosts not to talk to earthly ‘strangers’.
She came, demanded we leave, made a ruckus and silenced every other spirit’s ‘voice’.
This was enough for me to witness on my first foray into the world of paranormal investigation.
After holding the dowsing rods (which don’t move a millimetre in my ‘ungifted’ grasp) and chatting with facilitators about a few of their other spooky experiences, I excuse myself at midnight, leaving the group to its final six hours of the investigation.
I’m still undecided about what parts I do and don’t believe in matters of the afterlife. There are too many instances of unexplainable occurrences to not believe there’s something to it, but do ghosts really perform on demand for humans?
I feel like the reason they’re hovering in the in-between is because they’re ticked off about something from their mortal life, so why would they dance like a monkey for a mere mortal?
But then, on the other hand, if they had some unfinished business only a mortal could help them with, that might be the exact reason, right?
Either way, before I step into my car, I speak to the ‘empty’ air around me asking that no spirits follow me home anyway.
Mr Woolley and his team are looking to host investigations every couple of months. Follow Caspa Paranormal Investigations on Facebook or phone Mr Woolley on 0419 612 920 to express your interest in joining in.