Stuart's Interviews
Emily
Things going bump in the night, windows opening on their own, granite coffee tables splitting in half, and large wall mirrors flying clear across the room and shattering on the opposite wall. For some this is the stuff of superstition, ghost stories and movies, but for others they are mysteries to be investigated, to be proved or disproved using all the rigor of the scientific method. But, I am getting ahead of myself; let me get to the real story.
Let me introduce you to Emily Taylor: pre-school teacher, AGLP driver, Marshall High School Alumni, and paranormal investigator. Emily, inspired by her Grandmother, received a degree in education from Western Michigan University. Looking for a change from small town Marshall, she moved to Tennessee to room with a friend before moving to Oregon, where she now teaches pre-school.
Now to the good stuff: in addition to her day job as a teacher, Emily is also on a paranormal research team. I should clarify one thing: this is not something that Emily does every day or even every week, most often she goes on one investigation every other month. Emily is a member of a team called VAPR (Vancouver Area Paranormal Research). Emily first got involved in VAPR when she was exchanging ghost stories with a 70-year-old Native American woman named Donna, who created the team with her son. "I was talking with her one day, at the store I worked at at the time, and we were talking, telling ghost stories, and I told her that I had grown up in a haunted house I believed," said Emily, "and she invited me onto her team."
To test if there are presences in a building, there are two kinds of instruments used. The first is an EMF (Electro Magnetic Field) sensor. These sensors detect electrical signals given of by electronics, "like computers, microwaves, sometimes even alarm clocks, but you test it on those things to see how far up the needle will go and then when your not around those things, if your just standing in the center of a room and it goes off, that’Äôs usually an indicator that there’Äôs a presence or some other kind of energy there with you."
The second way of seeing if there are presences in an area is EVP (electronic voice phenomena), which is used to pick up sounds that cannot be heard with the human ear. Many precautions are taken when recoding these EVP’Äôs. Donna makes notes in the tape of outside noises so that they do not get confused as something from the beyond. "[Donna] has played those [tapes] back and heard voices [’Ķ] sometimes she’Äôll just get noises like screams or furniture moving around."
So far Emily has only been on three investigations. The first of which was a family that strongly believed there was a presence in their house. "They would see a little girl in the hallway, and they could hear footsteps on the roof". The investigation yielded no results.
Emily, as case manager for VAPR, has the job of finding palaces to research and do investigations on. Cases are usually found just by talking to people. She discovered one of these cases when she was at a dessert house. "I had just heard that the place was haunted so I just asked the waiter." Emily gave the waiter her business card and explained what she did; this opened a floodgate of stories from the waiter. For instance a woman (who bought the house to open the dessert shop) came to look at the house and claimed to have a strange feeling come over her. She then recalled the exact date of the previous owners death. Another was one of the workers doing paperwork up stairs who smelt women’Äôs perfume accompanied with objects swinging.
Emily has had an interest in paranormal studies ever since she was young. Emily’Äôs family had just moved into their new home on W. Prospect between Mulberry and Sycamore. The house, they latter discovered was part of the Underground Railroad, and had several slaves buried on the property. The house had also been a hotel, and it was because of this that it had kitchens on both levels of the house one of which was converted into a living room. This has a point, just bear with me.
It was a cold winter day and Emily, who was in fourth grade at the time, was just getting home from school. When she and her family entered the house they found all the cupboards in the kitchen-turned-living room wide open, the stack of magazines fanned out across the floor, and all the windows wide open. "We’Äôve also had ironing boards that were clipped on to the backs of the basement door just randomly fall down the stairs in the middle of the night." Said Emily.
"One more is that I was taking pictures at Christmas time in the living room and there was a cloud of smoke that keep changing forms in my pictures. In three of my pictures it was like a tube of smoke weaving in and out of my family members, and it was there in three photos and not in the rest." Emily found this experience extremely interesting, since no one in the house smoked and there was no fireplace.
"A lot of this can be really far fetched for some and even for me you know and that’Äôs why I’Äôm doing it to see if I can prove to myself that other things exist," said Emily. For some the idea of spirits is nothing but a myth or folklore, for others it is very real and concrete, and there is a third group who have not decided what they believe, who approach the topic with an objective and open mind. "I know a lot of people don’Äôt believe in spirits and that’Äôs totally fine, I mean part of it is that I’Äôm not even sure I do." In the end, most of what we know of spirits is hearsay, and it ultimately comes down to what you personally believe.
Jacob
Neighbors Helping Heighbors by
If you were to ask the average person off the street and asked them what they did for a living they would most likely give you one answer. Jacob Washburn is not the average person; he would give you three, Funeral Director, Emergency Medical Technician, and Fire Fighter. Now because I have a limited amount of time to write this, and the fact that if it were to be too long I would loose the interest of my readers, I will only talk about one of these carriers, the fireman.
Now we all have a perception of what a fireman looks like. The talkative, happy, joking man sitting in front of me fit this image in only one way, he had the build for it. He was strong, the kind of strong that comes from growing up on a farm in the Midwest.
Now the one thing that has always interested me is what makes someone want to run into a burning building? Well the answer is simpler than it seems. "I became a fire fighter because it’Äôs a family thing. My dad was fire chief retired in Fredonia Township, and my grand dad was one of the first members of the department." Said Jacob.
For Jacob a benefit of being a fireman is that it keeps him involved in the community. Jacob believes that "community is really, really, really important," he said. Jacob also said "It’Äôs just nice to give back to the people who have helped me over the years.
During to course of my interview I heard Jacob mention the importance of family and community. "When you get on a fire department, the guys that you’Äôre on department with they become your family." The other men who are a part of the department are "just another part of your family. [’Ķ] One of your guys needs help out side of the fire service you go help them."
As I sat talking with Jacob I could not help but to notice his Fredonia Township fire department shirt with the phrase "neighbors helping neighbors" and it struck me that that was what Jacob had been talking about the whole time. That was what it was all about, community and family. That’Äôs it. That’Äôs what makes people risk life and limb running into a burning building to save others. Nothing glorious nothing ostentatious, just the desire to help family.