Hawes, Jason, Wilson, Grant, and Friedman, Jan. Ghost Hunting: True Stories of Unexplained Phenomena from the Atlantic Paranormal Society. New York: Pocket Books, 2007. Print.



Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson are two plumbers that started the ghost-hunting organization known as The Atlantic Paranormal Society (T.A.P.S.) Jason first started experiencing supernatural activity and apparitions after getting involved with his girlfriend’s idea of life-force energy. Unsure how to deal with such activity, Jason started the Rhode Island Paranormal Society (R.I.P.S.). After Grant offered to redesign R.I.P.S.’s website for free, he began to explain his own ghost encounters with Jason. From there, Jason and Grant’s friendship grew until they began T.A.P.S. They gained a crew of specialists including EVP specialists, a born-again Christian able to perform exorcisms, and an environmental engineer, to name a few. The purpose of T.A.P.S. is to investigate reported hauntings, whether they are simple or complex, and to help the people involved with the hauntings. After receiving a phone call, the T.A.P.S. crew travels to the place reported, and performs tests, recordings, EVP’s, and numerous other techniques and experiments in order to determine whether the haunting is legitimate or not. Jason and Grant make it a point throughout the book that their job is to approach the idea of a haunting as scientifically as possible. They try to find rational explanations for every sound, light, breeze, and any other abnormal activity seen. By doing this, if a rational explanation is not found, they are able to further their investigation and prove that the place is, in fact, haunted. According to Jason Hawes, “In every investigation, we collect a wealth of data through different types of cameras, meters, and voice recorders, and from observations and reports of strange experiences” (Hawes 14). With such strong scientific approaches and involvement, T.A.P.S. is able to provide reliable proof that hauntings and ghosts do exist. Their goal as an organization is to use their scientific observations and accuracy to help enhance the scientific study of the paranormal. Throughout this novel, Jason and Grant tell numerous cases in which they have gone to study reported hauntings including possessions, incubuses, orbs, and spirits both benign and harmful. Many times, the people involved with the place being haunted had an exorcism performed to release the spirits. Sometimes these spirits were even brought upon by the humans themselves because of an involvement with the occult using Ouija boards, black magic, etc. When telling these stories, Jason and Grant explain each of their hypothesizes at the beginning, their scientific approaches and observations, the data they gained, and their conclusions. Today, they continue to plumb along side their ghost hunting that can be seen in television show “Ghost Hunters” on the Sci-Fi channel.
This novel is by far the best piece of research I have used in this project. Jason and Grant start off explaining their ghost-hunting program. While I had seen their TV show before, I have always been a little skeptical about those “ghost-hunting” shows. A lot of times the directors play up the noises and images to entertain an audience more. However, I had no idea that T.A.P.S. was a well respected organization before the show. They have numerous stories throughout the novel that I have never seen on the show that help prove the reality of what is shown on their show. They also provide the actual names of the people involved with each study, along with the location of the haunting. This also helps me to believe that what they are explaining is not made up. They also explained their scientific approach in each case. They went into detail to tell the reader what equipment they used, what they saw, heard, felt, and how they dealt with it. By being so specific and in depth, I found it much easier to believe that they had been dealing with actual supernatural activities and ghosts. Not only did I find myself believing them, I also was learning quite a bit throughout their stories.
While they explained each story, I learned that there was a lot more the ghosts than just seeing an apparition. Ghosts are not just spirits, but supernatural energies. Such things as orbs, which T.A.P.S. does not believe in, are associated with ghosts, but are not often known as the balls of energy that they actually are. While I have always been a little unsure about evil spirits, I found out through a few of their cases, that by experimenting with black magic, Ouija boards, or any other occult related activities, one can unknowingly invite such evil spirits into his or her home. Also, there are such spirits called incubuses. I had only known Incubus to be a band before reading this novel. However, I found out that an incubus is a spirit that lies on a person while he or she is asleep in order to perform sexual activity with them. That definitely freaked me out. I could also relate much of my previous knowledge to some of their other cases. For example, I have read in other books that hauntings are usually tied to a specific place because of the spirit or spirits’ relations with it. Almost every story I read throughout this novel involved spirits that were haunting a place because of a past the spirit had had with it. Jason and Grant presented research they had found when they studied the location’s history to support the conclusion of the tie, as well. Overall, this novel definitely helped in my persuasion to believe in ghosts because of their scientific approach to the study of ghosts and the paranormal alike.