Throughout human history men and women have believed in an afterlife. Ghosts were often thought of as departed relatives, deceased peoples looking for vengeance or trapped souls paying for bad deeds committed in life. Most of the earliest reports of hauntings were limited to eye witness accounts but as science and technology grew, so did the quest to find proof of life after death. Most of the time, supernatural happenings were found to have natural explanations, sometimes they didn't. Skeptics wanted to disprove ghosts and believers wanted to prove they did exist.

 

Everyone loves a mystery and ghosts present one of the biggest mysteries to humankind since the beginning of time. One of the very first ghost hunting investigations may be traced back to the 1st century A. D.  A man named Athenodoros rented a house in Athens, Greece to explore rumors of a haunting within the house. The fist night he stayed at the house, he reported seeing an old man with bound feet and hands. The old man rattled chains and coaxed Athenodoros to follow him. Athenodoros  complied and followed the old man until he vanished. Athenodoros marked the spot where the vision disappeared and had officials dig there. Eventually, shackled bones were found, buried and the old man never appeared again. The tales of ghosts and hauntings continue throughout history and amid the myriad of  cultures. In the 1600s the chaplain of Charles II, Joseph Glanvill investigated ghostly activity in the British Isles. His most famous case was  the Phantom Drummer of Tedworth. The drummer haunted an English family. making drumming sounds, beating night after night. It would also violently hit furniture and smashed a bedstead to pieces. Only when a clergyman came to visit did it stop.

 

In the 1800s the Chase family tomb of Barbados caught the attention of the press. Coffins seemed to be moved, rearranged and even thrown against walls. The entrance to the tomb was sealed with mortar and the governor's mark until the next death in the Chase family. Before the tomb was opened for the burial, a thorough inspection of the Vault from the outside was made. It was found to be as strong as ever. The mortar seal was examined and was intact and the marks in the mortar were untouched. As the door of the tomb was being pulled away, a strange sound came from within the crypt. To everyone's amazement, the coffin containing the body of Dorcas Chase, dead for eight years, was leaning against the marble door. Another coffin of Mary Anna Maria Chase, inside the tomb for 12 years, had been flung so violently against the left side wall that it had chipped away a piece of it. The rest of the coffins had  also been disturbed and the sand covering the floor showed no trace of... anything. The Chase family then emptied the Vault and today it remains empty and as far as we know, quiet.

 

Perhaps the biggest phase in paranormal investigation came onto the scene in the mid 1800s. It began with the Fox sisters of New York State.  The Fox sisters started the trend of mediumship, or the communication with the dead. They would ask questions to departed souls and answers came in the form of knocks and table taps. Many people believed the sisters were authentic, many didn't.  Some believed that the Fox sisters were  taking advantage of the bereaved. To investigate the claims of alleged paranormal phenomena, originally called the "Ghost Society", the Society of Psychical Research was started in 1882 by a group of scholars and continues to investigate the unexplained to this very day. Another forefather to modern ghost hunters was Harry Price. Price was one of the best known researchers in the 1930s and 40s. His first major success in psychical research was in 1922 when he exposed the 'spirit' photographer William Hope as being a fraud. With the advent of technology such as film and digital cameras, audio and video recorders, electromagnetic field detectors and thermal imaging cameras being affordable to the general public as well as researchers and scholars, ghost hunting groups continue the quest for evidence of life after death.

 

On a side note, the media has also played a huge role in the popularity of paranormal investigations. After the successful release of the movie "Ghostbusters" in 1984 and the TV series, "Ghost Hunters" in 2004 paranormal research groups have reached a fevered pitch. In 1922,  Scientific American offered$2500 for the first authentic spirit photograph made under test conditions, and/ or  the first psychic to produce a "visible psychic manifestation." Harry Houdini was a member of the investigating committee. The first medium to be tested was George Valiantine, who claimed that in his presence spirits would speak through a trumpet that floated around a darkened room. For the test, Valiantine was placed in a room, the lights were extinguished, but unbeknownst to him his chair had been rigged to light a signal in an adjoining room if he ever left his seat. Because the light signals were tripped during his performance, Valiantine did not collect the award. Since then, many individuals and groups have offered similar monetary awards for proof of the paranormal in an observed setting. These prizes have a combined value of over $2.4 million dollars...still uncollected.