Searching for Spirits

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John Rinehart, founder and lead investigator for Joliet Paranormal Society, talk to team members via walkie talkie during Wednesday night’s investigation of the Abyss Haunted House in Minooka. Guest Tracy Wills is shown monitoring the feeds from the various video cameras the group set up around the building in an effort to capture any unusual activity. (Herald Photo by Heidi Terry-Litchfield)

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MINOOKA – Calls to the Joliet Paranormal Society rise at this time of year as interest in – and the desire for insight into – the paranormal increases.

John Rinehart, founder and lead investigator for JPS, said calls increase because of Halloween, but also because windows are being shut and furnaces are kicking on and bumps in the night are more prevalent now.

On Wednesday night, members of the paranormal investigation group set out to the Minooka farmstead that hosts the Abyss Haunted House to see if, beyond the tricks and attractions, it really is haunted.

“Emotions, especially fear, tend to draw energy,” said John Rinehart, founder and lead investigator for JPS. “A haunted house has a lot of fear.”

Rinehart said there are a lot of misconceptions about what his group and other paranormal groups do.

“We are science meets supernatural,” he said. “We don’t exorcise houses or profit from our investigations.”

JPS takes a very scientific approach to research and is not quick to call a place haunted.

“We do about 35 to 40 investigations a year,” Rinehart said. “Of the investigations we’ve done the past two years, only three have things that can’t be explained with science or logic.”

There are currently nine members of JPS, whose real jobs range from police officer to PC tech, and from insurance agent to pharmacy tech.

The one thing they all have in common is the desire to investigate and learn about things they don’t always understand.

Rinehart started the group in 1998 as Haunted Chicagoland, but decided the name sounded like an amusement park, so he changed it to Joliet Paranormal Society.

As the group entered the Abyss Haunted House they carried cases filled with infrared cameras, electromagnetic field detectors, digital cameras and recorders, mel meters and special devices designed by the group to bring sonar to human level hearing.

They quickly walked through the building, choosing where the best locations would be to set up cameras and start running wires from the camera to the makeshift headquarters from where they record all the cameras see.

“The cameras make vision up to 300 feet in complete darkness available,” Rinehart said.

Once the cameras are recording, the group splits up into sets of two and the teams head out in different directions, looking for any energy or activity that may be present.

“I’m the hardest skeptic in the group,” Rinehart said. “It’s not uncommon for part of the group to feel the place is haunted and part of it to believe it isn’t.”

He said they go in with an open mind and the realization that it probably is not haunted.

In a five-hour investigation, the group collects about 35 hours of video, as well as numerous hours of audio.

They go home and look through their video and listen to their audio and only if they feel they have captured something abnormal do they bring it to the entire group, where everyone collectively watches and listens to make a determination.

“It’s only haunted if you can’t explain it away,” Rinehart said.

Rinehart prefers to use the word energy instead of ghost, and said there are two types of energy –  what the group calls spirits, which is that of a person who is deceased and had a soul, and residual energy – which people refer to as a ghost.

Rinehart believes the residual energy is like a recording of something that happened in history.

“The atmosphere is correct to record that moment,” he said. “A report of this has been at University of Illinois, where people claim to hear a basketball game over and over again, only to enter the gym and find no one there.”

“The atmosphere was correct at the moment that game was being played to record it,” he added.

While he’s heard of poltergeists, Rinehart said he’s never seen one. He doesn’t like the word demon.

In the end, following their personal experiences and a review of the audio and video captured, the group determined the only haunting happening at the Abyss Haunted House is by the actors who roam the maze when the seasonal attraction is open to the public.

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