It’s 3:00 a.m. and there’s a full moon out. I leave my room dressed in all black and begin my walk to the cemetery less than a hundred yards northeast of my apartment. As I round the corner of Apartment 5, a street begins. It runs east into an ominous darkness. As I walk down the street, the clean limestone of Southwestern University disappears behind me. I am now in a residential neighborhood that seems out of place among the spacious infrastructure of Southwestern. About fifty yards down the street four small houses appear and a dog begins to bark. Within seconds, the barking dog has claimed its territory and is dangerously close to my right leg. I ignore the dog and focus on the darkness ahead of me. I can see two limestone columns and an iron fence at the end of the street. As I approach the columns, the paved street turns into a dirt road that begins at the entrance of the cemetery.

I enter the cemetery and immediately turn on my crookneck flashlight. I don’t usually take excursions to cemeteries at 3:00 a.m., so I’m a little scared. The halogen bulb in my flashlight illuminates the sea of gravestones around me. As soon as I can make out the chain link fence at the end of the road, I can see two figures under a tree about twenty yards northeast of me. As I get closer to the fence, I shine the light on the two figures and can see they are dressed in full camouflage. I quickly move my light away from them hoping I didn’t disturb their activities. They are both guys over six feet tall and both of their faces are painted.

Is this some local militia making plans for a raid on my university? Perhaps they’re two paratroopers that accidentally landed in a cemetery. Maybe they’re a couple of lunatics trying to conjure up some dead soldiers. Or maybe, just maybe, I’m crazy and there are not two guys standing under a tree in a cemetery at three in the morning. To anyone but me, these are all probable explanations for such a bizarre sight, but I know these guys. These two guys are J.T. and Tyson, and on this particular night, they are ghost hunting.

I was reluctant to call J.T. a "ghost hunter." I assumed that the striking unconventionality of such a label might have offended him, but he said the title was fine because that’s what he and Tyson were doing. The ghost hunters asked me to meet them out at the cemetery around 3:00 a.m. and said I should wear dark clothing. J.T. says that within the ghost-hunter community, 3:00 a.m. is the beginning of the "witching hour." It is the time when spirits and ghosts are most likely to be out. At this time of night, most people are entering R.E.M sleep and have begun dreaming. People’s dreams give off a degree of human emotion that ghosts feed on. The energy that people emit brings out the dead and manifests them as spirits or ghosts. These ideas are not solely J.T.’s conjecture, but rather the product of his research on a range of existing theories about ghosts.

Tyson provided his own theory: at 3:00 a.m. civilization slows down. People stop talking, turn off their televisions, and go to bed. At 3:00 a.m., a cemetery is as alive as any household or street.

Other theories on ghosts, established by professors and scientists alike, argue that there is an emotional manifestation in ghosts. At the moment of death, people leave a psychic imprint among the living. These are all theories that cannot be proven true by parapsychology, but by the same token, they cannot be proven false by conventional science. It is because of this conflict, that J.T. and Tyson do their best to combine the realms of the paranormal with conventional science.

J.T. and Tyson have both been schooled heavily in the scientific method, so they incorporate their knowledge of objective science with their search for unexplained phenomena. My interest in their method quickly changed a night of ghost hunting into a lesson in ghost theory. Hours of research and applied scientific method have taught J.T. and Tyson what they would teach me.

Empirical evidence suggests that ghosts are geomagnetic entities, that is, ghosts have a magnetic field that coincides with the geomagnetic grid of the earth. Since this reasoning allows for a legitimate method for detecting ghosts, J.T. and Tyson always take a compass to the cemetery with them. However, a compass is not enough to ensure experimentation. J.T. and Tyson know they cannot conduct tests under the guise of conventional science because their test subjects are not of the natural world. They can’t just show up at the cemetery and expect ghosts to manifest themselves for experimentation. Ghosts are ephemeral entities, so more often than not, J.T. and Tyson walk away from the cemetery with nothing but the thrill of the hunt.

That’s not to say they haven’t experienced anything supernatural. Both of them remember one particular disturbing experience in the cemetery. J.T. and Tyson say they were sitting under the same tree that I found them under, quietly observing the stillness of the cemetery, when Tyson’s sight was suddenly drawn to a distinct movement about ten yards in front of him. Tyson recalls spotting a dark, unidentifiable figure that zipped some fifteen yards along the ground, finally perching atop a gravestone. As Tyson ran toward the movement, J.T. observed a small, black figure perched atop the same grave. Tyson says the dark figure was rapidly bobbing up and down in front of the gravestone. J.T. says the figure had a silhouette of a "little man," standing with his arms outstretched. When they approached the stone, they found the "little man" to be a sculpture of a plant with its leaves outstretched.

Neither of them doubted what they witnessed, so they tested the area with the compass. Tyson held the compass up to the grave and observed what ghost hunters call a significant "geomagnetic disturbance." Instead of pointing magnetic north, the needle on the compass pointed fifteen degrees to the west, directly at the gravestone. They both remained skeptical, so they waited a minute and did the test again. The second reading revealed the same, fifteen degrees west of magnetic north. Unshaken by the anomaly, the two were compelled to consider other variables. They thought perhaps there might be some mineral below the soil that could have thrown off the reading, so they stepped back and got readings from several different points. All other points around the vicinity of the grave revealed perfect readings that pointed to magnetic north. About four minutes after the first reading, Tyson took another reading from directly in front of the grave and found that the needle had returned to a perfect reading of magnetic north. Whatever threw off the reading had appeared instantaneously and vanished in about four minutes. J.T. and Tyson don’t claim to know what caused the discrepancy, but the geomagnetic disturbance at that moment could not be denied.

Both J.T. and Tyson agree they are amateurs within the realm of paranormal phenomena, but they both bring a lot of skill, knowledge, and enthusiasm to the field. Last summer, Tyson completed Officer Candidate School for the United States Marine Corps. Among the many skills that must be mastered at O.C.S., using a compass is one of them. He contributes a deep understanding of land navigation and outdoor survival to the search for paranormal phenomena, a search that often looks to the wilderness for investigation. J.T. has a superb knowledge of the myths and theories of nearly every example of paranormal phenomena. His research helped him to create an award winning web page on the paranormal. J.T. was even offered membership into the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, an organization founded by Carl Sagan.

These qualities are not, however, what make them good at what they do. Both J.T. and Tyson attribute their interest in the paranormal to something that all people have, but not all people trust: human experience. Before the Blair Witch Project, before The X-Files, J.T. and Tyson were experiencing unexplainable phenomena and marveling at its weirdness. They neither accepted it nor denied it. Their genuine interest in the paranormal can be seen in their sincere facial expressions when they tell stories. They describe weird events with conviction and yet they remain skeptical. They learn the objective and explore the unexplained. They avoid universal truths and embrace their imaginations.

"You could always blame the millenium. Belief in the paranormal is up and in God is down, according to the latest survey. Almost half of twentysomethings believe that ghosts exist. Yet they are considerably less likely to believe in the Almighty. Although the figures, in an ICM poll of 1,000 people each interviewed for two hours, published in the Daily Mail yesterday, show that the public are more likely to believe in preternatural activities, they also reveal a diminishing basis for such beliefs"(Vallely).

Professor Richard Wiseman, one of the academic world’s leading skeptical experts on the paranormal, explains that fewer people are actually experiencing weird phenomena, despite the rise in belief. So, if people lack a basis for such beliefs, where are they receiving their influence? According to Alan Bash of USA Today, the influence is television.

"Ghosts on Fox, ‘sightings’ in syndication, UFO’s on a Larry King special. Something strange is going on. Skeptics may dismiss this as coincidence. Conspiratorialists may say aliens have taken over our TV sets. But even the rational among us can’t deny that TV is trying to shed more light these days on unexplained phenomena"(Bash).

Television and mass media glamorize the paranormal so much that it permeates the minds of its receivers, polarizing them to extreme ends of a spectrum. It creates an all or nothing mentality in which people either believe in the supernatural and reject science or believe in science and reject the supernatural. We need only look to the Heaven’s Gate adherents for an example of the lunatic fringe. But are the influences on these "lunatic" belief systems any different from our own?

Amy Harmon says that "perhaps more than many would like to admit, they were also part of an increasingly popular culture in which the search for meaning has turned to a fuzzy fusion of science and science fiction"(Harmon). "People end up buying into New Age theories with less care than they take when they’re buying a car. Combined with the rise of moral relativism, which claims that all ideas are equally valid, it has led many people to reject traditional science and its demand that all theories be rigorously tested"(Johnson).

J.T. and Tyson plan on getting a trifield recorder (which picks up geomagnetic fields, radio waves, and static electricity) and a digital camera in order to test their theories about ghosts more rigorously. Ghosts are not their only interest, however. Instead of accepting popular culture as truth, J.T. and Tyson look for phenomena that they can actively pursue. When they saw the Blair Witch Project, they were reminded of their own experiences involving the legend of The Stacker of Bastrop State Park.

One summer when Tyson was working as an assistant to a Park Ranger, he was told about the phenomenon of "The Stacker." While out cleaning campsites one day, the Ranger told Tyson about the uncanny stacks of wood left throughout the forest. The stacks were always identical. They always took the shape of a pyramid and included the same type of wood stacked in the same manner. Pine on the bottom, then yopon, and oak on top. The stacks consisted of large logs and were always placed up high in a tree. The stacks were so weird because they were often found at heights that oak did not grow, ruling out the possibility that the logs fell into stacks. The phenomenon was linked to a man identified in three different sightings, all reported to and documented by Park Rangers.

The first sighting was made by a man driving down Park Road 1A one night. The driver reported seeing a naked man with an overgrown beard crossing the road. A couple hiking down a trail made the second sighting. They reported that an old man jumped out of the darkness and shouted, "Get away from my trees." The last sighting was made by a couple of boys who were hiking at dusk. As in the second account, an old man with the same description jumped out and yelled, "Get away from my trees." According to all three of these accounts, The Stacker was much too terrifying to chat with. The first witness recalls locking his doors and accelerating over the speed limit. The second and third incidents ended the same way for all the witnesses: with a dead sprint to the nearest Ranger station.

The lure of the mystery surrounding The Stacker excited Tyson and J.T., so they gathered their group of friends together, loaded up a .30/.30 rifle, a .38 recessed hammer, three machetes, and went looking for The Stacker. They never found him, but they had fun looking. J.T. and Tyson don’t pretend to know what The Stacker was, but they have theories. He could have been some nature buff living off the land or just some crazy naked guy that enjoyed creating natural art. Perhaps the stacks were trail markers left by a skilled tree-climber. Whatever he was, he was more real to them than The Blair Witch will ever be to millions of viewers.

To J.T. and Tyson, seeing is believing. J.T. says he searches for the paranormal because it’s fun. It provides an adrenaline rush that cannot be understood or explained. He also feels that science doesn’t fully encompass everything in this world and that there haven’t been any major breakthroughs in science since quantum physics. Tyson describes his motivation as "the nerve." There is an inherent fear and mystery in that which cannot be explained. For Tyson, wandering through the realm of the unknown is a unique test of courage. J.T. and Tyson have "the nerve" right now and are planning new excursions. In the future, whether they are ghost hunting in a cemetery, searching for a ghost town called Phalen, or investigating cult activities in the forests of Bastrop, J.T. and Tyson will continue wandering down their own road, always rejecting rides from the bandwagon headed for Hale Bop.

J.T. says their next excursion will be to a bridge in Hutto that is supposed to be haunted by three young girls who died there. Tyson received an email from a fellow paranormal enthusiast from the northern United States who made the trip (some one thousand miles) to Hutto just to experience the phenomenon. The email said that if you park on the bridge and put the car in neutral, unknown forces would push the car. I know what you are thinking: won’t all cars roll on a bridge? Well, he had an answer for that. He wrote that he put baby powder on the hood and handprints appeared. He’s not the only believer. J.T. has heard from several of his coworkers that this is a legitimate phenomenon. I’m going with them on Halloween night. When J.T. invited me along, he asked me if I believed the myth. I told him I would believe it if I saw it.

At first, I was reluctant to right about Tyson because I live with him. I thought that I was too attached to Tyson to describe and evoke how he lives and what he values. I was afraid that our friendship would make it impossible for me to evaluate Tyson independent of me. However, if the idea of intimate journalism is to investigate the ordinary and uncover the extraordinary, then this story is perfect. For the three years that I have known Tyson, he and J.T. have always had the nerve to experience the paranormal and they have always asked me to go along. But I never did, not even once.

I realized that I had a chance to uncover something extraordinary. All those times that I stayed home while J.T. and Tyson were ghost hunting would pay off. I always thought their after-hour antics were a little kooky. I always pretended to be busy when they got dressed in full camouflage and painted their faces. I thought the same thing anybody would have thought: that these guys were weird.

My very own preconceived notions would end up being the premise of my paper. By investigating the hidden lifestyle of J.T. and Tyson I wanted to uncover something extraordinary. At the same time, I also wanted to do the opposite. I wanted to show that the extraordinary and "kooky" lifestyle of the paranormal involves ordinary people. People will say that all paranormal enthusiasts are "crazy" and "out there," but some of them are just like you and I. They are our friends, our neighbors, and our roommates.

This was not the only meaning I tried to express in the article. J.T. and Tyson don’t believe anything until they experience it. They try to go places where they can find things out for themselves. They both enjoyed The Blair Witch Project and are big fans of The X-Files, but they never let popular culture dictate their beliefs. I wanted to show that even though television and books on the paranormal drive their interests, they never buy into the theories glamorized by the media. Instead, they maintain an open mind by using science to seperate truth from fiction.

To a large extent, popular culture is transmitting the supernatural into the minds of its viewers. As a result, viewers blindly formulate new belief stystems without even knowing it. I tried to depict J.T. and Tyson as exceptions to this phenomenon, so I contrasted them with "lunatics" like the Heaven’s Gate adherents. The last thing I wanted this article to do was depict J.T. and Tyson as lunatics, so I tried to explain the dynamic of their interests.

I ended the article with their current interest in ghosts by describing J.T.’s plans to investigate a bridge in Hutto. It’s true, J.T. and Tyson did invite me along and I gladly accepted the offer. We ended up going to the bridge twice but experienced no paranormal activity. It was not a complete loss though. I finally experienced "the nerve" that Tyson was talking about. I found myself obsessing over the bridge. I wanted to stay on the bridge until I saw something. I wanted to go back a third time just because there was this chance, this possibility, within the vast world of possibilities, that I would experience something that could not be explained.

My investigation of J.T. and Tyson transformed me. No longer did I dismiss paranormal enthusiasts as lunatics. J.T. and Tyson taught me that beneath the façade of popular culture, there are people that follow their own path.-A.J.D.