There is a common belief that 12 midnight is the bewitching hour when ghosts, spirits, poltergeists, what have you will appear.
For ghost hunters, many have day jobs and night is the best time for them. I believe it is spookier at night and having some nice scary pictures to go along with your explorations doesn’t hurt. I believe it adds atmosphere and gets you in the mood. It is also a reminder to be alert.
Remember when you were a kid and how the creepy old house down the street was creepier at night? It may also have something to do with Halloween when we dressed up in costumes and went trick-or-treating in the dark. Maybe at that time in our lives we were only interested in the candy and seeing our friends, but if you remember back it was so very quiet. You could hear your footsteps echoing behind you. The silence was only broken by the occasional chorus of voices calling out, “Trick or Treat!”
There were the creepy lit jack-o-lanterns that adorned porches and fence posts casting an eerie glow to the yard. Some played scary organ music with occasional screams, rattling chains and moaning wind. Things may have changed over the years, but the basic atmosphere and our enthusiasm hasn’t.
In the “still of the night” has been an ideal time to hunt for ghosts.
It is obviously quiet and you have a better chance of picking up something on your recording devices. It appears ghosts don’t like being in crowded places, if they are at all aware of their surroundings. There are haunted houses, hospitals, restaurants, libraries, and open spaces.
There was a mall in a neighboring town that lost its anchor stores and soon became a “ghost town” of sorts. I’m not saying it was “haunted”, but I did feel uncomfortable walking around in there during the day. Others had remarked that they got spooked walking through the empty mall one night after a meeting. So I suppose ghosts prefer to be where we don’t like being.
One personal experience I had recently was at a well known slaughter house in town.
Just the idea of a slaughter house would instantly make one think it would be haunted. The thing about this place is that there have been stories, many have been proven to be hoaxes perpetrated by local teens having fun and perhaps wanting to create an urban legend of sorts.
Well, it wasn’t my intention to go to the slaughter house, but I was out with friends and we saw something that came whoosing out of the sky at us. We followed it to the old slaughter house.
I tried to convince everyone it was an owl, but they gave me reasons why it couldn’t possibly be. So there I was walking along this empty field late at night to this building that had a questionable reputation. The old brick building had been broken into numerous times over the years and visitors would take a brick as a souvenir.
Hoax or not, this was a creepy place. There was this unsettling scent in the air — like death, but the slaughter house hadn’t been used for decades.
The air had a chill in it I didn’t notice until I got closer. I wasn’t thinking of anything in particular, just placing one foot in front of the other, not wanting to fall into a gopher hole and twist my ankle.
All of a sudden there was an ungodly screech and this black mass with a white skull face came swooping down upon us! I took off running! The others followed.
Pity no one had the peace of mind to take a picture, but we’re not the bravest souls who go off exploring in the dead of night.
