What is in a name?

There were allot of suggestions on what we should call this newly formed group. We were not interested in researching anything other than "ghosts" so we scratched any name that had paranormal in it off the list. (paranormal can also include UFO's, Bigfoot, etc.) After considering a dozen names, we chose the "Southwest Ghost Hunter's Association" mainly because it's founders called the Southwestern United States home and we wanted to be able to focus on one region that was large enough to provide enough sites for serious research.

There was a time when we told people that we were "Ghost Hunters" they would reply;

"You hunt whaaat? What kind of a gun do you use for that?"

A good question........ in some regards. What are ghosts? Do they exist or is the phenomena related to them explainable in some way? We needed to have some sort of an idea, otherwise how would we look for them? What equipment would we need? How do we use it properly?

Our first two years of existence was dominated by these questions. We looked at medical research, hypotheses of others with similar interests and came up with a few ideas of our own. It is well known that SGHA's founder was a skeptic who had a "experience" of his own. So our idealogy was simple one;

To prove or disprove the existence of the phenomena known as "ghosts".

With the focus of this new group being scientific, we wrote our by-laws with a clause that prohibited working with psychics unless they were brought in by a third party.

We talked to allot of people, visited allot of "haunted" places and observed. Finally, we decided that there must be an answer in electromagnetism. Out of all of the options, it had the most practical explanations. However the equipment of the mid-eighties left allot to be desired.

Our "portable" frequency counter was bench top model that we modified to run off marine batteries. The entire assembly was fitted into a back pack so it could be carried around by one person. The rig, batteries and all, weighted eighty pounds. Yes, it sucked.

Digital cameras had not been invented so we used 35mm. The biggest cost we had was buying and developing film. Towards the end of this "era" we came up with our first hypothesis, the Field Matrix theory.

Within our first year, we received our first request to be on a radio show. After a lengthy discussion we decided that we would not do any media. Why a media blackout? We decided that we would not "do media" until we had some sort of logical idea about what we are looking for and why. Media is a self serving beast. The producers we encounters often cared less about our findings. Their interest is solely on their ratings. Will more people watch if you are on their program.

We learned by watching other groups that they were inclined to exaggerate incidents to make them "scarier" or they would "flip" on you by having "skeptics" debunk their findings after the recording was finished. We wanted to be able to fight back (so to speak) if we were ever put into that kind of situation.

Our "bronze age" started by becoming a part of the BAMF Expedition Team (Team 6). BAMf had great fund raising methods and the financial support benefited allot of our research. Through observations, we determined that the Field Matrix theory just simply couldn't be proven, so that hypothesis was put on the shelf. The next hypothesis generated was one involving subtle energy fields.

By now SGHA was comprised of members of the military, so ghost hunts and investigations had to be coordinated carefully so everyone knew when to take leave. Despite the distance between our members, we were still able to focus our investigations primarily in the American Southwest. The military element also brought knowledge in many areas. Since the majority of us were stationed overseas, we learn about the belief systems of other cultures concerning ghosts and spirits. The varied technical fields that our members were trained in also contributed to the overall base of our knowledge. This was also when we began experimenting with "EVP" recording although we mostly did it out of curiosity.

To us, EVP seemed like a flaw in methodology. After all, to prove that the "voices" on the tape are ghosts, you have to prove that ghosts exist first.

Our membership fluctuated allot during this time. Every two years, on average, we would gain and lose members as they were sent off to other bases. However, during this time we began making acquaintances with people in various scientific fields of study. As a result, we learned more about the Scientific Method and began adapting it to our existing methodology.

Several research projects were started during this time as well. The most interesting evolved around man-made EM fields, primarily in the 60Hz range, to determine if these manmade fields were responsible for the experiences witnesses had observed at haunted locations. The results of our research determined that they were not. A eight year research project was also started in this year, the repeating behavior of paranormal phenomena at haunted locations. The project was concluded in 1998.

We also started noticing strange "balls" of light in some of our 35mm photographs. For the sake of research, we called them "globules". There was surge of excitement about these objects and additional research projects were engaged to discover exactly what these objects were.

(Note: Globules was our term for what ghost hunters would later call "orbs", and yes, we did get them on 35mm film. However the results were very inconsistent. We would do 4 investigations and get nothing and then on the 5th we would get several of them. Many, many, years later, we discovered that certain types of film were more sensitive than others and only when we used that type of film would we occasionally get an "orb". During this time, the film manufacturers were experimenting with various techniques and media to obtain brighter and truer colors)

The next 5 years was a time of introspective. Investigations were few and far between as our focus shifted towards idealogy and trying to tie hypotheses into known medical and scientific ideas. This was the frame work for yet another hypothesis, the superluminal theory. In 1993 we started trying to develop a classification system for various paranormal phenomena based upon previous observations. The end result would be yet another article, "Standards for categorizing spectral phenomena".

A great deal of time was also spent in intellectual studies and "round table" discussions in an attempt to find explanations in existing hypotheses. The topics covered a broad base, from high energy particle physics to quantum theory. The things that we learned during this period would radically affect how we would conduct investigations and the instrumentation we would use. Our days of traveling around the world would finally end and SGHA became based out of New Mexico. Our idealogy became a very skeptical one and for awhile our focus was solely on de-bunking hauntings. Our by-laws were amended to add officers and to create a clause for Charters across the Southwestern United States. Eventually digital photography enters the picture and with it even more "orbs". As a result, a research project began to determine if all orbs are explainable or not.

Note: The "Orb Project" started in 1995 and ran for nine years. We tried every possible test to determine if orbs have any chance of being paranormal. The tests included, but were not limited to, "cross capture techniques" and stereo photography. Cross capture photography is where two photographers would move across from each other and take photos at the same section of space. The idea was to capture and orb in both photos and then use triangulation to prove that they are an object in 3-D space and not a particle in front of the lens. Stereo photography involved the same concept but the cameras were mounted on a rod 20" apart from each other.

We also went deep into the scientific aspects with Fresnel's law, the circle of confusion and Huygen's Principle. We could practically determine what a particle was composed of based solely on it's diffraction rings. The project was conducted at over 50 different sites, spanning three different states.

After all possible tests were exhausted, the project was closed in 2004 with the conclusion that ALL "orbs" are not paranormal and are completely explainable.

Was it a waste of time? No, because we found something else even more interesting along the way that would drive future hypotheses, an interferogram.

After settling down in New Mexico, we began forming a team that was not comprised solely of active duty military. As a result our investigations and research increased dramatically. One interesting hypothesis involved electrical sensitivity. Although it started out as a skeptical hypothesis, we found that it could have implications in paranormal experiences.

We "left" the BAMF Expedition Team and became a sole entity. The association with them began to give us more problems than what it was worth.

Our first website, hosted by Geocities (before the Yahoo takeover) came on-line. It's intent was to share the data and information that we have learned and to satisfy the requirement of the scientific method of reporting your findings.

By now, the data that we had collected and trended started to show a link between paranormal experiences and low frequency EM signals. As a result, a research project was launched to determine if these emissions were related to Ultrasound and exactly what the effects of ultrasound could create. While we were able to link ultrasound to some paranormal experiences, a great deal of the data suggested that these low frequency EM emissions were pulsed and did not have the characteristics of Infrasonic waves. The results from the Infrasound experiments generated new ideas and hypotheses, ranging from biological radiation to the energy fields connected to life itself. Eventually, the conscious electromagnetic field theory became a more likely hypothesis, but it was lacking important information to tie it in with the collected data.

It quickly became apparent that an emphasis on specific instrumentation was needed. However SGHA was financially impaired to acquire the monetary requirements.

We eventually found an answer by starting a ghost tour. Utilizing the stories and information that we had gathered during investigations in Old Town Albuquerque, we put together a two hour tour that incorporated Old Town's unique history and legends. The hope was that this would provide a financial base to fund our research and in the beginning, it was strictly a volunteer based fund raising endeavor. However, the realities of operating a tour full time quickly became apparent.

As a result, the tour became a business partnership called New Mexico Ghost Tours. SGHA continued to be involved by providing additional knowledge on the locations through continued investigations and promoted the tours in Old Town. In exchange, New Mexico Ghost Tours agreed to set aside times in October for the tour to be strictly utilized as a fund raising endeavor for SGHA.

While this seemed to be a step in the right direction, the operation of the business would eventually have an adverse affect on SGHA. While the major players of the group focused on the business, the people left to run SGHA became more relaxed in their data collection and analysis. The criteria for new members became substandard and the nature of SGHA itself started to change. The leadership's response was to create a sub-group of SGHA that was composed on skeptics. This sub-group was named SHIELD. Its purpose was to skeptically evaluate the data that was collected by the ghost hunters and to ensure that protocols were followed during investigations and research projects.

Finding members for SHIELD was actually quite easy due to contacts that we had made during lectures for skeptical societies around Albuquerque. However, as SHIELD's membership grew, SGHA's membership suffered a large loss due to the "new" skeptical approach of evaluating data.

In the end, the creation of SHIELD was invaluable as it forced SGHA to become more scientific and to address the skeptical arguments concerning paranormal activity.

This era was also the time that the media blackout finally ended. It starts with appearances on local radio and television stations.

For two short years we had a Charter in California. The Charter was disbanded after the death of it's State Coordinator.

SGHA incorporated in 2006. We focused our fundraising endeavors towards haunted entertainment (Halloween haunted houses), something that we started doing in 2002 and have gotten better at with each passing year. We also continued the tradition of partnering up with a local charities for these halloween events. "NightFall" was the name chosen for our haunt. It has a continuing story line that continues to evolve, providing a thrilling experience for the locals of Albuquerque. Our involvement with charities extends beyond the halloween season as the SGHA leadership often offers lectures and presentations for free. The charity charges a fee at the door, all of which goes to their cause.

The focus on charity work and public relations was deemed to be valuable due to the negative press that "ghost hunters" were receiving locally and abroad. Like many other groups, we had our share of t.v. pilots and film projects. The first was "Lost Souls". We were paired up with Chris Fleming and the pilot focused on the "experiences" that people were having at haunted locations in the Old West. “During the filming of Dead Famous, I have had the opportunity to work with several groups across the country, including TAPS. But in my travels, I have never met a group that knew what it was doing any better than the Southwest Ghost Hunters Association. They are one of the best (groups) out there and for the Lost Souls project, I want only the best.” Chris Fleming, 2006 The second was called "Dead Reckoning". This focused solely on SGHA and it's scientific approach to investigating paranormal claims.

Will anything become of the television pilots? No one knows yet as of this writing. On the research front, several new projects are currently being executed. For the first time we are seriously looking at the validity of electronic voice phenomena (EVP). Although we have considered it a curiosity, our fundamental hypothesis suggests that it shouldn't be possible. The project is in its' second year with baseline data being collected. Additional research is also being done in extended spectrum photography with experiments on lighting sources and optical adjustments.   The journey continues.....