You don't believe in ghosts, right? They're just figments of an overactive imagination, a trick of the light and shadow, seen by people who desperately want to believe.

But have you ever felt someone brush by you when no one was there? Had your hair ruffled by a breeze when there wasn't any breeze? Heard the low mumble of voices, like when you can hear people talking in the next room but can't make out the words, only it's coming from the same room you're in and no one else is there?

Growing up, Jaime Fritze experienced the first two. Which is why she found herself, six years ago, in an abandoned mental institution in Virginia, alone in the dark trying to take an electromagnetic field reading with disembodied voices all around her.

"It took everything I had to not run," the W. Woodwell Road resident said. "I wouldn't go back into that wing again."

Fritze is president of the Greater Dundalk Paranormal Investigators, a group she started in the winter of 1999 to, well, investigate the paranormal.

The GDPI's eight members meet once or twice a month, either at the home of one of the members or a local restaurant - although they will go anywhere for investigations.

The GDPI is a nonprofit organization and does not accept donations. At most, Fritze said, they might request a homeowner help pay for film development.

"I've always been interested in the paranormal," said Fritze, who is also the regional representative for the American Ghost Society. "I know a lot of people who've lived in haunted houses, and I've had a few experiences myself."

She used to belong to another group of paranormal investigators, but left because she didn't think their beliefs were tempered with the proper skepticism.

"They failed to mention that it isn't always unexplainable, that sometimes it is completely explainable," Fritze said. "I always go in with a degree of skepticism, but I always respect what the witnesses believe they've seen."

Fritze's willingness to find natural explanations for alleged paranormal phenomenon give her more credibility when she talks about the experiences she can't explain.

An example of the former is the woman who called from Edgemere with a "Bigfoot" sighting. While the GDPI's main focus is ghosts, the team went to Edgemere to investigate.

"We saw the Bigfoot tracks," Fritze said. "And we could see the heel imprints. A Bigfoot wearing shoes?"

Then there are the monument in Battle Acre Park, which is supposed to glow at night ("It has a reflective surface"), people who hear voices on the wind in the Black Marsh area of North Point State Park ("Voices carry very well in windy, open places") and the witch who legend says lives at the bottom of Stansbury Pond (There's only a rusted car).

During the investigation of the abandoned mental institution, Fritze was the only one willing to go into the dark wing to take a reading (ghosts are believed to cause disturbances in electromagnetic fields).

"I had a feeling of ... a very heavy feeling of loneliness," Fritze said. "It felt like someone who had died there, abandoned by their family."

When Fritze returned to the group, she discovered that others had heard the voices, too. And they were ready to leave without her (which seems like the best reason for Fritze to quit that group and start her own).

The membership of the GDPI has hovered around 10 people. For a while, Fritze was an organization unto herself.

The other members are vice president Dorothy Brigandi of Gray Manor and her daughter, Amanda Randolph, Robert Morris of Dundalk, Vince Reed of West Inverness, Keith Hart of Towson, Liz Staley of Dundalk and Christina Baublitz of Gray Manor.

Brigandi's interest in the paranormal started in 1996 with a visit to relatives in Virginia.

"One of my relatives said, 'Let's go see the vampire house, it's real creepy-looking,'" Brigandi said.

Finding the house open, Brigandi went inside and took a few photos. When the pictures were developed, she found a few surprises.

The most stunning is a photograph of a room that includes a window. In the window, there is a clear spectral image of a young boy.

"I'd always been interested in the paranormal," Brigandi said. "This just heightened it. I wanted to do more, actively."

During investigations, the most high-tech piece of equipment the GDPI use is the EMF detector. They also use tape recorders, video cameras, digital cameras and digital thermometers (the appearances of ghosts are known to cause a sudden drop in temperature).

Much of the work, however, is done before entering the allegedly haunted area.

"Most of the investigation is research," Fritze said. "We research the background of the property, the structure, see if there was anything that happened there. Then we'll interview witnesses and occupants of the home, away from the place that's haunted. And all this is even before I set foot in the location."

The GDPI also make sure they don't break any laws, getting permission from property owners before investigating reports.

Investigations are usually requested by people who contact the GDPI through its Web site (Hometown.aol.com/ldypoet280/GDPI.html). Fritze estimates the group does one investigation every two months.

There are the occasional pranksters, like the man who tried to discreetly knock on the wall and move a blanket and acted like something supernatural was responsible - until Fritze showed him the videotape that had captured him in the act.

Other people expect the GDPI to get rid of whatever is haunting them.

"That's not what we do," Fritze said. If someone really wants something done, Fritze advises them to take whatever action their personal beliefs dictate: exorcisms, blessing the house, sprinkling salt in the house and sweeping it out the door.

As one might expect, billing yourself as a "paranormal investigator" doesn't go over well with everyone you meet.

"There are people who find out what I do, and all of a sudden I'm taboo," said Fritze, who is an administrative assistant at the University of Maryland Medical Center. "We also constantly get criticism from people who think that we're dabbling in the occult."

That doesn't scare Fritze. Her investigations, however, can and have.

Like the time she and some others were doing an investigation at Fort Howard. They were exploring a room when they dropped their flashlight and it went out, plunging them into pitch darkness. They couldn't find the flashlight or the door, and finally just yelled until someone came for them.

"I have been scared, plenty of times," she said. "Most of the time, we'll find nothing. But when we do, it's very unsettling, very frightening."

• Story originally published by:
The Dundalk Eagle, Baltimore / MD - Oct 25.01

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