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“My daughter is seeing strange things and having weird dreams. Can you help?” asked the voice on the other end of the phone.
An unidentified Maricopa woman made this plea to Pinal County paranormal investigators David Chavez and Michael Pool. Chavez, who holds a bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering, is a resident of Maricopa; Pool, who holds a bachelor’s degree in geology, resides in Casa Grande.
Chavez and Pool formed Southern Arizona Scientific Paranormal Investigators in August 2007 as a way for the two friends to explore their interests in the field. “We like to watch the sci-fi show “Ghost Hunters,” and it gave us the idea to form the group,” Chavez said.
Since then the two have traveled around the state, exploring old motels, homes, graveyards and even abandoned barns. “We have been lucky. Every investigation we have gone out on, we have found some form of paranormal activity,” Pool said.
Each of the two has a personal experience that stands out from the rest. Chavez’s eerie tale comes from when the two investigators were exploring a hotel in Bisbee, Ariz. Chavez was in the motel trying to pick up some EVPs (electronic voice phenomena) when he felt a tingling in his back. “I felt a spirit enter me,” he said.
Once the spirit entered, Chavez said he suddenly became emotional and felt like crying out for help. Although it was the first time a spirit would enter Chavez, he said it wouldn’t be the last. “For some reason they choose to enter me,” he said. “I catch their emotions.”
While Chavez’s most memorable experience involved a spirit sharing its feelings with him, Pool’s experience was more verbal.
The Casa Grande investigator was at his home, listening to some EVPs the two had gathered, when a voice came across the tape so loud, clear and recognizable that it shocked the investigator. “I don’t want to say what the voice said, but it belonged to one of my relatives who had recently died,” Pool said.
While these experiences stand out, the two are not doing these investigations just for themselves. “We like to go out, gather the data and present it to the people we are doing the investigation for,” Chavez said.
To gather this data the two use video cameras, still cameras, digital voice recorders, dowsing rods and an electronic magnetic field detector (EMF). Each of these tools serves a different purpose.
“One of the first signs of paranormal activity is a spike in the electromagnetic field, so, if we go out and see this spike, we know there may be something going on,” Pool said. After determining if there is a high level of magnetism in the air, the two will set up their cameras and start their voice recorders, hoping to capture some action.
“We will typically gather information for a minimum of three hours. We will then analyze everything we find and present it to the person we are doing the inspection for,” Chavez said.
While the two present this information, they do not offer their opinion on what may be causing the activity unless asked. “We try to just show people what we have found and let them draw their own conclusions,” Pool said.
Although their findings have often been quite revealing, both Chavez and Pool said that they haven’t had anyone freak out on them yet. “We get a lot of wide eyes,” Pool said.
In the case of the woman whose daughter was having bad dreams and seeing things, the investigators were able to determine that the family was having a paranormal experience. “They were being visited by a spirit of a recently deceased family member,” Chavez said.
He added that often people think spirits are confined to a home, but that is not the case. Spirits can lock onto an article, land or even a person. “It is all about what makes them comfortable,” Chavez said.
“These investigations help us gather information and help the person with the experience out,” Chavez said. “It is a win-win.”
The two investigators will take their investigative skills on the road this Sept. 25-27 when they go to the paranormal investigators’ conference, Haunted Con, in Prescott, Ariz.
Chavez and Pool do their paranormal investigations free of charge. If you would like to contact them, they can be reached by e-mail at SASPI.David@yahoo.com or Mike@SASPI.org. Want to listen to some of their EVPs? Go to http://saspi.org/EVPs.html.
Photos courtesy of SASPI
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