Friends Lisa and Tina crouched in the darkness over the grave of Daniel B. McDuffie, 1948-1950, holding an audio recorder.
"I’m talking to you to see if you can tell me anything," Lisa says, loudly and clearly.
The silent crowd standing around them begins snapping digital pictures of the women and the surrounding cemetery.
Flash.
The women’s faces light up. The crowd reviews their pictures but is not satisfied.
"Are you here with us tonight? Would you like to try to communicate with us?" Richard says, lowering his camera to swat a mosquito.
Flash.
"I got something!" he says. He points to a saucer-size orange blob hovering over the gravesite, visible in his viewfinder. They continue to take pictures, hoping for more images of these elusive glowing spheres, because as they believe, these are the figures of Alabama ghosts trying to talk to them.
Flash.
The 12 men, women and children walking through Swift Cemetery in Foley are members of the growing Bon Secour Paranormal Investigations (B.S.P.I.) team, and for the past seven months, they have spent their Saturday nights hunting spirits in Baldwin County and Mobile.
"We’re trying to prove that there’s something in between heaven and hell," Richard Johnson, who formed the group with his wife Evelyn, said. "Whether you want to call it energies or spirits, there’s something out there."
Once a month, members meet at a previously determined location and spread out to investigate. They usually choose a place rumored to have paranormal activity, like Fort Morgan or the Oakleigh Mansion, and always ask permission from the owners. Armed with digital cameras, audio recorders, video cameras, walkie talkies, portable weather stations, electromagnetic meters, batteries and packs of cigarettes, they take hours of footage, directed at nothing in particular.
Occasionally, they will catch these spherical, colorful images, known as "orbs," on film. They have also reported hearing voices speak to them, and seeing "apparitions" or spirits in human form through the lens. However, none of these are visible to the naked eye. Richard believes they find spirits 99 percent of the time.
In addition to seeing or hearing the spirits, Evelyn Johnson, the assistant director for B.S.P.I., believes they have also felt them. During encounters, people have had hot or cold flashes, and sensed they are being watched or touched. She says their group encounters a lot of unexplainable events and participants are often overcome with intense feelings. Three members have already quit because they were too overwhelmed.
Evelyn said she has always grown up around ghosts, and has always been interested in the spirit world. Her husband became interested after watching ghost hunting shows on television, so they decided to do some research online. They found a paranormal group in northern Alabama, and joined for just under a year, before deciding to start their own group in Baldwin County. She now regularly attends paranormal conferences in the area and is in close contact with their Mobile sister group, The Mobile Order of Paranormal Investigators.
"We’ve learned a lot, but we’re still learning," Evelyn said. "We’re not experts by any means."
Evelyn says she thought her family and friends would laugh at her for the work she does, but was surprised to discover that they are actually really interested in it. Two of her and Richard’s children, 17-year-old Erika and 15-year-old Holly, ghost hunt as well. Erika says her friends at school think that it’s really cool, but she believes that her Baptist Sunday school teacher thinks her family members are "devil worshippers."
"I think a lot of them are just scared to admit that we’re actually finding things and there’s something really to it," Richard said.
This is the second time the group has visited Swift Cemetery. The gravesite they are at belongs to Daniel McDuffie, who died at the age of 2 from an allergic reaction to medication. He was the uncle of B.S.P.I. member Mike. The first time the group came to his gravesite, they recorded Daniel supposedly speaking to Tina, Mike’s wife, asking her why they were taking photos. They also took a photo of a headless apparition by the church.
Tina, a teacher in Foley, says that she always lived in houses with ghosts, including the one she is in now, and that objects have mysteriously moved whenever she has been upset. She has also heard them many times, and is now used to them being around.
"I don’t have very good social skills with normal people," Tina said, laughing. "That’s why I like to talk to ghosts."
She learned about B.S.P.I. from student Erika, and then encouraged her husband, Mike, and her friends, including Lisa, to become members. Evelyn said everyone is welcome to join, as long as they don’t believe their group is a joke. Membership dues are $5 a month, which Richard says is just enough to cover batteries, equipment and the maintenance of the group Web site.
"We’re not out to get rich. We’re not out to get famous. It’s just a hobby for us," he said.
When hunting, members wear their membership badges, dark t-shirts and tennis shoes, in case they need to run from bad spirits, often times appearing as red orbs. Tina said she isn’t concerned about that though.
"I ain’t scared of ghosts," she said. "But if a real person comes out of those woods, I’m hauling ass."
The other half of the group in Swift Cemetery, who had been sitting on the church stairs, came running back to the gravesite.
"We heard someone talking!" Holly says, handing the recording over for playback. Everyone huddles together, ears alert as they rewind and replay the digital sound byte over and over again.
"There’s a little girl’s voice at the beginning, and then a man’s voice in the middle."
"I don’t know what the girl’s saying, but to me, it sounds like he’s saying, ‘Please don’t step on the wood.’"
"Oh yeah, that was definitely it."
They hurry back to the parking lot to hand it over to Mike, the electronics expert. He plays it for the excited group of listeners.
"Oh no," one man says. "That was me. I said I was fixing to step on the wood."
"That didn’t sound like you."
"Well it was."
"Well, the little girl definitely wasn’t you."
Disappointed for now, the group headed back into the cemetery to record more.
"See, we don’t just accept everything as a ghost," Tina said. "We try to think of all the reasons why we are seeing things or our meters are going off. We aren’t totally crazy."
The group also does not smoke while taking pictures, whisper while they are recording voice or wear bright clothing because these all affect the outcome of the recordings. And on a night like tonight, after a big thunderstorm, the group is careful to not confuse moisture in the air with orbs.
The group never knows what they have until they review all of the pictures, audio and videotapes. Knowledgeable about computers, Mike is trying to make the time-consuming process more efficient. He wants to begin a live feed from the field straight to the laptop on the hood of his pickup truck, so footage can be analyzed on-site instead of hours later at home. He would also like to one day create a feed directly to the Internet so others could watch.
"A lot of times, it’s hard to tell what’s on the picture until you put it on the computer," Tina said. "So it’s not all that fun when you’re out here. Mike loves to hide and scare everybody."
"I get bored easily!" Mike said, grinning.
"But it’s fun when you go back through it and find stuff," Tina said.
Three hours later, the group packed up and drove 10 miles to Swift Elementary School in Bon Secour. Numerous people have reported to B.S.P.I. sightings of apparitions around the school, supposedly haunted by the school’s founder, his family and his slaves. But after an hour at the school and only a few photos of orbs, the group was ready for bed.
"That’s the way it goes," Richard said. "Sometimes you see things, sometimes you don’t. Maybe tonight just isn’t the night."
"There’s no telling," Evelyn said. "The night is young yet."
Window air conditioners and cicadas humming around her, Evelyn took her barometric pressure gauge and Kodak camera and walked back into the vacant playground.
(Original headline: ‘Ghost’ keeps people guessing )
