III. What About Equipment?

Many ghost hunting clubs, groups and organizations stress the importance of quality equipment. We hope that if you decide to do investigations, you will be wary of what some of the organizations say you HAVE to have because it could cost you a lot of money you don’t necessarily need to spend.

The Basics

Camera. This can be a digital camera or a film camera, but you’ll soon find that a film camera will cost you more due to developing cost, the need for a scanner to get your photos into your computer for better viewing and examination, and, of course, waiting time. Once the bug hits you, you’ll be amazed how many photos you have actually taken at one location. Cost and waiting for development can be painful.

We suggest a digital camera with a night portrait setting and, at least, a four mega pixel resolution. The higher the mega pixel number, the better the pictures. Right now, you can get good quality digital cameras from Kodak, Cannon, Sony and a host of other brands for under $200.

The benefit of using a digital camera is that there is no waiting period to determine if your investigation gave you some results because you can upload your photos to your computer immediately upon your return home. If you purchase a camera that has a viewing screen, you can often see anomalies immediately after snapping the picture. It also lets you take multiple images quickly and allows a large number of photos to be stored within or on the memory card without having to change film.

Most digital cameras also come with image processing software so you can manipulate the contrasts of your photos, enlarge, or save your photo to another location in your computer.

Flashlight. You obviously want to know where you are going and investigating at night can be hazardous. It’s a good idea to have a main flashlight, a spare flashlight and extra batteries along, just in case. These words come from experience.

Notebook and Pen. It’s helpful to jot down pertinent information such as your location, date, time, and weather conditions. If you’re going to a cemetery, take notice of certain historical references or grave stones – anything that might lead you to a conclusion of something you may capture on film. Try not to do what we’ve done in the past and later say, “Damn, I wish I had written that down!”

Advanced Investigation Equipment

Let’s begin with recording sound to capture ghostly voices, or in the technical term, Electronic Voice Phenomenon or EVP’s. EVP capturing has really caught on over the past few years with the advent of ever improving sound technology. There are many recording devices out there and computer sound editing equipment that will help you.

RECORDING DEVICES:

The Microcassette Recorder. It depends on how much you want to spend, but there are many adequate micro cassette recorders. Many range in price from $20 and up. The problem with cassette recorders is that the internal motor makes a lot of noise while recording, especially during an investigation when most of the time it is very quiet. The higher quality cassette recorders are much quieter, so budget accordingly. One other setback of cassette recorders is the cost of purchasing micro cassettes. Re-using cassettes is not advised because previous sound can bleed over into a recording.

Digital Recorders. These are another avenue. Like micro cassette recorders, these can run around $20 and up depending on the brand and the sound quality. The cheaper ones have noise problems as well and can distort sound  somewhat. We discovered this the hard way. Chris carried the digital recorder and I carried our mini disc recorder (discussed shortly). We walked side by side at our location. Once home, we listened to the digital recorder first and thought that we had caught some EVP’s. The mini disc recorder dashed our excitement. The digital had warped some of the sounds around us as well as our own voices. The mini disc was clear and we heard what the sounds on the digital recorder “actually” were. They were not EVP’s.

Digital Mini Disc Recorder. This is our personal favorite. We currently use a Sony Mini Disc with a voice activated recording feature. The unit gives us outstanding sound quality with virtually no hum. Each disc can save up to 300 minutes or five hours of sound at a cost of around $2.00 per disc. The main setback is that these units are spendy. Units like ours run around the $300 mark. Keep an eye out for similar ones though because with improving technology, prices tend to fall quickly and there are some mini disc recorders out there without all the bells and whistles that run around $100 which is more than adequate for an investigation.