As midnight approached, a grassy field where the old train depot once stood pulsed with activity.
About 90 people tiptoed around night-vision cameras atop tiny silver tripods and dodged remote sensors connected to a computerized surveillance system. They waited for the Lincoln Ghost Train, which some believe passes through Urbana, Ohio, on the anniversary of the 1865 trip that carried the president’s body to Springfield, Illinois, for burial.
Ghost-hunting groups around the country are swelling with members — their popularity fueled by television shows, the Internet and the increasing availability of high-tech equipment.
“Academics pooh-pooh all of this usually,” said Julieanne Phillips, an assistant professor at Urbana University who invited the ghost hunters and organized the vigil that also included about 80 students and residents. “I’m hoping for some vindication that there might be some type of paranormal activity surrounding this.”
On this April night, there wasn’t.
“Ghost reality shows have really opened the door for people to get involved themselves,” said James Willis, founder of The Ghosts of Ohio, the group watching the tracks for the paranormal train.
The airwaves are populated with shows such as Ghost Hunters, Ghost Whisperer and Paranormal State.
Ghost Hunters chronicles investigations by The Atlantic Paranormal Society. The Rhode Island-based group now has about 80 affiliates in 44 states, double what it had two years ago.
A Midwest Haunting, based in MaComb, Illinois, offers October tours of buildings, cemeteries and other sites it believes to be haunted. The number of people taking the tours has tripled, jumping from about 600 in 2006 to 1,800 last year.
Forty of the 60 people who attended a recent dinner in Erie, Pennsylvania, that featured the Paranormal Study and Research Group asked if they could join the group or tag along on ghost hunts. A year earlier, only two or three asked to be involved after a similar event.
“We’re actually grateful for [Ghost Hunters] because instead of being a bunch of freaks, we’re like the cool people on TV,” founder Pat Jones said. “People used to look at us like we were absolutely insane, and now they want to come along with us. It’s almost like every day is Halloween.”
Thirty-four percent of Americans say they believe in ghosts, according to a survey conducted in October by The Associated Press and Ipsos.
Joe Nickell, senior research fellow with the Amherst, New York-based Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, said he has investigated dozens of reported hauntings since 1969 and has turned up no evidence of ghosts.
Equipment being used to try to detect ghosts is not designed for that, Nickell said. Ghost hunters often arm themselves with electromagnetic detectors, thermometers that can identify cold spots and wireless microphones that eliminate background noise.
Orbs of light that show up on photos, he said, are often tiny particles of dust or moisture close to the lens of the camera, “voices” picked up by tape recorders can be radio signals or noise from the recorder, and electromagnetic detectors can be set off by faulty wiring or microwave towers.
“The least likely explanation for any given reading is it is a ghost,” Nickell said.
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