Ghost Hunting Characters: Searching for my tribe

I’ve looked my entire life for “my people.” They are extremely hard to find. I had to turn to the blog world where I've pleasantly found (through my followers) that I have a tribe!

Like a single seeking out a mate, I went in search of my people by taking weird classes like palm reading and Reiki or going to events at local metaphysical shops and more. When I realized I wanted to hunt ghosts in a very conservative southwestern state, I had to seek out “my kind.” What I found was a mixed bag of nuts. You know how someone can like SciFi and go to a convention and get excited to hear about upcoming movies and talk about Star Trek and others have to go in costume and speak Klingon the entire time? Well, the ghost hunting world is the same with great differences in the tiers.

Here’s some of the types and grades of ghost hunters I’ve discovered in my search for my “tribe,” but none of these ones were a fit for me:

“Big Bad Benny” This guy is likely to be a robust man (that’s being polite), with a shaved head, goatee, a slow drawl to his voice, a bossy attitude, and a T-shirt with his team’s name on it. Sounds familiar, huh? “Ghost Lab,” right? When a team shows up with matching T-shirts I want to cringe. It’s actually very unprofessional and anyone calling in a ghost hunter does not want him to arrive at the door wearing shirts announcing to the neighborhood their intent. He doesn’t take much to women telling him their opinion on matters, but he doesn’t mind having a token one on the team as “bait.”

“Psychic Susie” She’ll arrive in dramatics, with overdone nails and red lips and hair teased up looking like a beauty queen past her prime. She probably has an entourage of hangers on that follow her. She doesn’t speak at first, just cues you to shut up and let her move around and “feel” the place. She builds up to her dramatics cautiously. She begins with the walk through, stopping and closing her eyes, feeling the area, thinking a moment, moving on. Stopping, turning, squinting, holding her head. Eventually, she’s ready to tell her story. She walks the group through the place, at times trembling, quivering, sobbing, putting her hand to her chest and throat often, and eventually leaving because she “can’t take it anymore.”

“Danny Dark-O” These ones usually arrive in a pack of goth glum with black hair, lined eyes, piercings and tattoos. They want to outdo each other with scariness and don’t show a real regard to history or setting as they shove at each other and dare them to do things alone. They’re preoccupied with death and with wanting to bring on dark elements. It’s a form of mental S&M for this group.

“Dowdy Duo” These ones are hilarious cute. A couple of plump middle-aged women wearing t-shirts that are four times too big for them, looking tired and worn and dowdy as all hell, but they’re in giggling fits over doing something “crazy” like a ghost hunt. They constantly squeal like schoolgirls and dash around trembling in fear and pushing at each other to go into a room alone. They don’t leave each other’s sides and they mostly just want one ghostly experience on their “to-do” list, but they also fear it at the same time.

“Religious Rehab” He starts out as a perfectly normal person with a clear attitude about ghost hunting. Then, somewhere into the experience, he expresses a concern about possession and bringing home bad mojo and so wants to do a cleansing prayer. He mentions he’s moved away from religion (almost every time it’s an ex-Catholic) and considers himself spiritual. Yet, no matter what he does, the residual of magical thinking and rituals has not been shaken from this religious rehab. He still believes in concepts like evil and demons, prayer and cleansing tools.

Have I found any of my people on ghost hunts? Yeah, but it’s actually pretty rare. My people are creative and artistic, intelligent and have a wicked bawdy sense of humor, are skeptical and yet open-minded, have a high threshold for horror and dark places and would rather spend a day rooting around abandoned buildings than going to a concert. In other words, should Dane Cook decide to take up ghost hunting, I’d be first to sign up to ride shotgun.

Oh, and thank ya’all for being my tribe. You meet all my requirements and exceed them in many ways.