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Professional ghost hunter and Santa Clara resident Gloria Young.

Is that a ghostly apparition or a camera flash?

Some of Gloria's ghostbusting equipment.

 

Gloria Young exudes an odd mystique. She is intelligent, funny and fiercely devoted to her work. She is the kind of person who is easy to talk to and easy to respect.

She also hunts ghosts.

For centuries, nay millennium, ghosts have piqued the interest of the masses. The idea of the paranormal has spawned countless Hollywood movies, made million-dollar careers (Haley Joel Osment muttered four words about seeing dead people and, voila, he's a superstar) and has a holiday centered around it.

But the percentage of the general public that truly believes in ghosts is undoubtedly limited. And the scientific community at large might roll a collective eye at the idea, if that.

But putting Hollywood, science and the rest of it aside, even the most skeptical mind has to respect the enthusiasm exhibited by Young - who gave up a successful career in nursing to be a full-time ghost hunter - and her ardent desire to get to the bottom of an age-old question: What happens when we die?

Young's love affaire with the "other side" began when she was a little girl.

"My dad used to tell us stories about the ranch house he grew up in, in the Rio Vista area," she said. "He would come home late at night, get something to eat and hear footsteps. He would call out 'No, it's okay Mom,' but there wouldn't be anyone there."

Stories like that instilled in her what she calls a "gnawing," a burning desire to unravel the mystery behind stories like her father's and seek out paranormal experiences of her own.

"The more time I spent looking for answers, the more questions I got," she said.

Today, Young is a full-time ghost hunter, of sorts, having founded the San Jose-based nonprofit Ghost Trackers 15 years ago. The group's Web site boasts that with roughly 30 members they are the largest and most active community in Northern California.

And while most people spend late October busying themselves with costume shopping and boozing it up at masquerade parties, Halloween is anything but child's play for Young and her contemporaries.
"(It) is definitely a busy time of year for us," she said. "Everybody wants to talk to us and see what we're about."

 

I ain't 'fraid of no ghosts

Gloria and her comrades have evolved from a group of friends breaking into cemeteries in the dead of night to serious professionals who visit alleged haunts about once a month. And rather than employing crystal balls and Ouija boards in their hunt, modern ghost trackers employ an array of high-tech tools including night-vision goggles, electromagnetic field (EMF) readers and the best digital A/V equipment available to record ghostly goings-on even when no one is in the room.
"It helps to understand physics and chemistry and you have to know how all the technology works," Young said. "They don't make it for what we do, so you have to know how to modify it. For example, our EMF readers are modified to detect paranormal activity."

Ghosts can manifest themselves in a variety of different ways, and different gadgets enable ghost hunters to look for as many signs of the paranormal as possible. "Cold spots" in a room are often associated with paranormal activity, so ultra-sensitive thermometers can keep track of unusual changes in temperature. Geiger counters can detect abnormal changes in radiation, and other monitors can determine if the pressure in the room is changing. Often, ghostly images or sounds will appear on footage taken during an investigation that hunters couldn't detect at the time ­ inexplicable orbs of light, for instance, or the sound of talking or footsteps on an audiotape.
This and other equipment, coupled with whatever vibes and impressions Young and her fellow investigators pick up, will help determine whether a place is actually haunted.

But it isn't just spooky feelings investigators are looking for. Some ghosts have signature scents, some will cause windows or doors to open and shut for no reason, and Young herself says she has been pinched, prodded and even had her hair pulled by spirits with a strange sense of humor. Creepy? Maybe for mere mortals, but Young says she is simply not scared of ghosts.

"How can you be afraid of something you can't see?" she said. "I'm more afraid of the dark than I am of ghosts, honestly."
The use of high-tech equipment is helping Young and her ilk gain at least a little recognition from the broader scientific community after years of dismissal, she said.

"Of course, their job is to try and disprove everything we do, but that's OK," she said. "At least they're looking at what we've been working on."

The life of a ghost hunter is not all glamour, however. Young says most of her workdays are filled with paperwork and e- mails, much like anyone else's, on top of mom duties like making sure her kids get to band or football practice. The Ghost Trackers e-mail inbox is constantly full of requests for help from frustrated homeowners, and Young says many of the complaints can be handled with an e-mail or phone call (the group is a 501c3 nonprofit and all of their services are free of charge).

For some cases, however, nothing short of a full-scale investigation will do.

"We do our best to be discreet," Young said. "People worry that they're going to have us showing up at their house in a hearse with ghosts painted on the side in front of all the neighbors. We're still following in Ghostbusters' footsteps, in some ways."

And while the group is not for profit, happy homeowners do often donate after a successful investigation is complete.

 

Eminent Domain

While most of the time the Ghost Trackers respond to claims of haunted houses, her chosen profession has lead Young to some unexpected haunts. For example, she says the Grant House located in San Jose's Joseph D. Grant's County Park is "deliciously" haunted, and the location received the Ghost Tracker Web site's "Most Haunted" award. The Ghost Trackers determined the house was indeed haunted while helping journalists work on a Halloween story, and reported that the ghost caused equipment to malfunction and actually pushed a young girl videotaping the exploration.

Another decidedly haunted site is Dinosaur Point, near the Pacheco Pass visitor's center on Hwy. 156. Young says visitors have a chance of experiencing the paranormal within the comfort of their own car if they park late at night and turn off the lights, provided the conditions are right.

"You can hear the covered wagons, the horses and the Indians all around you, very clearly," she said. "Again, the conditions have to be just right, and we're not sure exactly what they are, but it does happen."

But what happens when the Ghost Trackers are able to confirm that a location is in fact haunted? What if that location happens to be somebody's house ­ how do you get rid of a ghost?

"We never get rid of ghosts ­ after all, they were there first," Young said. "We try to teach people how they can live with their ghost, so that they both will be better off."

The key to a successful relationship between the living and the dead, like any relationship, is respect, Young says.

"Ghosts want to be acknowledged," she said. "They were people, whoever they were, and they died with their own personalities and emotions ­ happy, peppy people will be happy, peppy ghosts, for example."

For people who are living with a ghost, Young suggests letting it know when you leave the house and when you plan on coming back, setting a place for it at the table when your family eats or talking or singing to it while you do your chores.

"After all, most people talk to themselves in an empty house, so you might as well talk to the ghost," she said.

People who create "negative energy" in a house, such as families in the midst of a divorce or dealing with domestic abuse, might cause a ghost that is usually passive and harmless to start acting out, Young warns.

And, just like the living, the dead love presents.

"A nice thing to do is buy a cheap candle and light it in an empty room, and let them know, 'This is just for you,'" Young said.
Once you establish contact with the ghost residing in your home, it helps to set some ground rules. Young, who says she has an "indoor" and an "outdoor" ghost at her home, asks that they keep a friendly distance.

"All I ask is that they stay out of my bathroom and my bedroom, for obvious reasons," she said.

 

In the Biblical Sense

Since time immemorial, people have told stories of life after death and the trials and tribulations of souls that have left their mortal bodies. Whether it includes traversing the river Styx en route to Hades, weighing one's own heart against a feather or wandering through purgatory, many cultures have agreed that the afterlife is anything but a picnic ­ initially, at least
.
"God instilled in every man, woman and child a desire to look for Him, but some people get lost along the way ­ they can get lost in their hobbies, their jobs or families," said Dan Reggins, a deacon at Alum Rock Southern Baptist Church in San Jose. "So things like poltergeists are interesting, but it's just one more thing to take your eyes off where they should be going."

Reggins added that if a member of his church was delving into the paranormal he would advise them to steer clear of it. His view seems to be something that many spiritual leaders agree on. Young herself said that she found little help from the mainstream religious community when her investigations started.

"I went to a Catholic priest, a Jewish (cantor) and the ward leader of a Mormon church," she said. "I had a lot of questions for them, but for the most part they said, 'We don't really talk about that, have a nice day.'"

The disapproval, or at least apathy, of the religious community did little to thwart Young's curiosity, though.

"Ghosts have nothing to do with religion, they're separate from that," Young said. "They've been around longer and they're a part of just about every culture."

Ghost hunting is now becoming more popular with each passing year. The growing popularity is thanks in large part to the Internet facilitating easier communication among ghost hunters all over the world, and a number of popular shows on niche television networks that conduct paranormal investigations.

While ghost hunting's popularity could be temporary or a fad, Young says that the discipline, science and sport of paranormal investigations will be around for a long, long time.
"As long as people have experiences that they can't explain, people will want to look for answers," she said. "And right now that's the best we can do."

 

For more information about the Ghost Trackers visit www.ghost-trackers.org.

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Danielle Smith Danielle Smith writes about the surreal for Alternate 101. Send comments to letters@alternate101.com.