Ghost Hunters
Even though advancements in science and technology continue to flourish exponentially, the inexplicable never quite seems to disappear. With every door of discovery opened, we inevitably find ourselves perplexed by another more complex one right behind it. For Dakota Paranormal Investigators, the thrill of the unknown is what keeps them moving forward.
DPI is a group (like the name implies) of paranormal investigators based in Fargo. They offer their services throughout North Dakota, and they do so free of charge. Utilizing a full arsenal of ghost hunting gadgets from electro-magnetic field detectors to infrared cameras, DPI is more than well equipped to handle your paranormal investigation needs.
Founder and team leader Nik Guse explained, “I originally got into the paranormal because I had a bunch of stuff happen to me when I was younger, and in 2004 I broke my leg and saw the show Ghost Hunters and thought, ‘Wow, how cool is this…?’”
The events to which Guse refers from his younger days are shocking, to say the least. His initial interaction with the inexplicable happened via a Ouija board.
“I was 19. My girlfriend’s aunt was a witch, and she called her and got some prayer we were supposed to say before we got into the Ouija board,” Guse said. “I had the Ouija board on my knees, and I kicked it off because I thought it was just a bunch of B.S… and as soon as I did that, everything hit the fan.
“There was a wheel well above my head that just started shaking. Something was pounding hard on the door, we heard voices, lights started turning on and off, water was turning on and off in the bathroom. The biggest thing was, in the end, my nose started bleeding… fast. My friend had a handkerchief and I put it up to my nose…. After it stopped bleeding I threw the handkerchief at my friend just trying to be funny. It went into the air and it actually was in slow-motion.
“The handkerchief went in the air, opened up and started slowly floating back and forth and landed right at my feet, and it was a picture of the Devil. It had the horns, it had the eyes, it had the mouth and blood coming out of the mouth, and then we heard this big BAM! and we bolted out of the house. We slept in the car that night.”
After that night, Guse said that he was followed by a paranormal entity for four years. Everywhere he went, he heard footsteps, and according to Guse, his friends and acquaintances heard them too. His specter stalker vanished, however, after reading a few Bible passages suggested to him by a group of Evangelicals.
Years after his stint watching Ghost Hunters in the hospital, Guse created a Myspace page to try and find ghost hunters in the area and found Red River Investigators of the Parnomal. His interaction with RRIP was, however, short-lived.
“I decided to go off on my own, because I didn’t really like the direction the other group was going,” he said.
Thus, Dakota Paranormal Investigators was born in March of 2008, and their numbers quickly grew thereafter. They’ve done countless investigations and seen a lot of strange things. Spotting the supernatural is not the only thrill their line of work provides, however. For Guse, debunking the supernatural can be equally rewarding.
“Our main vision, our main goal is to help people,” Guse said. “All of us that got into this got into it for different reasons. My main goal when I first started this was to help people that needed help. I was actually one of those people that needed help when I was younger…. Everything we go into we try to debunk… we try to prove that it’s not paranormal. “
There are a number of reasonable explanations for what can seem to be a supernatural encounter. On one investigation, a client was experiencing a falling sensation when going down the stairs. All it took was a carpenter’s level to realize that this client’s stairs were actually slanted forward, thereby explaining the falling sensation.
Electromagnetic fields are a common culprit as well. When exposed to intense amounts of electromagnetism, human beings can experience feelings of terror, paranoia, nausea, headaches and even hallucinations. “That’s the easiest to debunk,” Guse said.
DPI uses K II EMF detectors and other gadgets to locate electromagnetic fields. At the beginning of an investigation, one of the first things they do is identify all of the pre-existing electromagnetic fields to differentiate between those caused by household appliances and those caused by the supernatural.
They also use ambient temperature meters along with EMF detectors to locate what they call “cold spots”—isolated areas of low temperature and high electromagnetism. When a cold spot is found, they often use tasers in order to give apparitions an extra boost of electromagnetism to help them manifest visually.
They also look for “electronic voice phenomena” using voice recorders. An EVP is when a voice shows up on a recording that was not audible at the time of the actual investigation. Some EVPs DPI have found include phrases like “get her” and “help,” along with things like sinister-sounding laughs and cannon fire.
HPR got to tag along on one of DPI’s investigations in a South Fargo home—the home of one of DPI’s own investigators. The supernatural activity that warranted the investigation consisted of phantom footsteps, flickering lights and children’s toys that inexplicably moved on their own.
After identifying all of the pre-existing electromagnetic fields, we set out to arouse some electromagnetic interaction from whatever was inhabiting the home. Four of us sat in the corners of a dark bedroom with an EMF detector in the center. We asked a wide array of questions in an attempt to trigger a response, but it wasn’t until we jokingly played the Bloody Mary mirror game in the bathroom that we got one. It seems that ghosts don’t care too much for mockery, as Guse’s aforementioned personal story can corroborate.
After that, we asked the presence to respond to our questions by creating spikes in the EMF detector. Sure enough, when we asked it to bring the meter in the red, the meter spiked into the red. Three questions in a row we achieved what seemed to be a genuine interaction.
But not all interactions are genuine, nor are the investigation requests put forth by some. That’s where DPI Case Manager Jennifer Schatzke comes into play. You can probably imagine that when you offer a free service like DPI does, plenty of jokesters and pranksters come out of the woodwork looking for an investigation. It’s Jen’s job to sort through investigation requests and pick out the ones that seem worthwhile, in addition to being the team coordinator.
“I’m pretty much the one who sets up the investigations,” Schatzke said. “If we get any emails or calls, I’m the one that does the follow-up emails and calls, see what’s going on, answer questions….”
For more information on Dakota Paranormal Investigators, you can visit http://www.dakotaparanormal.com, http://www.myspace.com/dakotaparanormal or you can find them on Facebook. To hear a live radio interview with DPI, tune in to 1100 AM The Flag this Friday at 8 p.m.
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