Ghost stories recounted

From News-Press.com: Ghost stories recounted
Honey Archer has seen and heard some spooky things in her 12 years of ghost hunting.

Strange voices. Flickering lights. An unexpected touch in an empty room.

"I had a spirit walk past me, and I could hear his pant legs rubbing together," Archer says. "Then it proceeded to the door and opened it. I didn't see him, but I could hear him.

"That kind of thing only happens rarely in investigations. But when it does happen, it blows your mind."

Archer will tell more ghost stories Friday, Aug. 26, when her occasional "Ghost Hunting 101" class returns to Cape Coral's Rotary Park.

By day, Archer works as an environmental recreation specialist for the City of Cape Coral. But by night, she visits haunted houses with other members of Southwest Florida Paranormal Investigators, the ghost-hunting group she helped found in 1999.

Archer's two-hour class introduces people to the basics of ghost hunting, including the various tools of the trade: video recorders, sound recorders, EMF (electromagnetic field) detectors), temperature sensors (handy for finding telltale "cold spots) and more.

Not everything is a ghost, though, Archer says. Sometimes that flickering light is just some faulty wiring. So Archer and her group spend a lot of time debunking supposed hauntings.

Other class topics include how to conduct a ghost investigation, recognizing false evidence, and the science behind the techniques.

Archer also spends a lot of time answering questions from the class.

One biggie: What happens to us when we die?

After countless ghost investigations, Archer still doesn't know for sure.

"I get a lot of life-after-death questions," she says. "But all I can do is give them my best guess."