Posted on Fri, Oct. 31, 2003

Ghost buster says job not as glamorous as seen on TV

BY DANIELA LAMAS
Knight Ridder Newspapers

 

MIAMI - (KRT) - Steve Vanik is a strong-looking man with a graying ponytail. He's 50, married, a scuba instructor and drummer with three cats, a dog and an iguana.

And he is, well, a ghost buster - a paranormal investigator, technically. He has been for the past three decades, first in Maryland and now in Hollywood (the one in Broward, Fla., not the one that made ghost busters famous).

It's a tedious job, he'll tell you frankly, utterly devoid of the glamour TV shows and movies would have you believe. There are no phantoms spewing green goo, no white suits, no backpacks in which to trap ghosts and other goblins.

Instead, there's a digital camera, two-way radios, a thermometer, an EMF meter to measure change in electrical energy, and a lot of waiting around in the dark.

"Folks expect this sort of thing to be exciting. In fact, it can be really boring," said Vanik, who founded Paranormal Investigations of South Florida in 1976.

He works for free, typically on a couple of new cases a month, with an eight-person staff - currently a few office workers, a graphic artist and a retired nurse.

"We're not a club," said Vanik, who is close-lipped about specific cases. "Some folks believe the spirits of the dead exist to entertain them. Well, you know what? The dead aren't here to amuse us."

A long love of vampire and werewolf movies originally led him to Baltimore's Odyssey Scientific Research in the early 1970s, after reading an item in the local paper. This group focused on unexplained animals. His first case was an ape-like creature, dubbed the Sykesville Monster, which terrorized a small community in the Maryland mountains.

For months Vanik's team interviewed, searched, reported - and then the monster simply disappeared.

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It was a highly publicized case, said Vanik, who saved one June 28, 1973, newspaper article with the headline "Stalking the Sykesville Monster."

"One of the theories was that it came down from the mountains for some reason or another - maybe he was just lost or looking for something - but we never came to any conclusions about that," Vanik said.

In South Florida, it's 98 percent ghosts and hauntings. Requests mostly come over the Internet, 100 e-mail correspondences each year from people who suspect paranormal activity in their houses.

The team launches a full-scale investigation for the estimated two-dozen queries from people who aren't "just lonely or not wrapped real tight," and are within driving distance. They come armed only with the equipment Vanik called "anticlimactic" - the EMF meter, camera, flashlight, and extra batteries.

That's the way the team arrived at Jessie Rodriguez's Miami home two months ago. Rodriguez and family bought the place 2-1/2 years ago, a small 1950s home just down the street from her mother's house.

But there was something wrong - Rodriguez's daughter heard whispering in her room at night, objects disappeared and reappeared in strange places, family members were awakened by what sounded like someone running down the hall in work boots.

"I would feel things touching me, and I'd freak out," Rodriguez said. "It's almost like drowning, like somebody's putting their hand over your mouth and nose and you're struggling to get it off, but you can't move. It's painful, and it's not painful."

She and her husband wanted to move, but it was too expensive. So her husband - who'd initially thought Rodriguez was crazy, she said - started doing Internet research on ghosts and came upon Paranormal Investigations of South Florida.

When Vanik brought his cameras to their home, he confirmed Rodriguez's suspicions, discovering that the yard was "surrounded with orbs" - circles of light that can't be seen by the naked eye, but appear in photos regardless of the camera. Some think they're a trail left behind by ghosts, others think they're the ghosts themselves.

Vanik chooses not to weigh in.

"We're not saying these are ghosts," he said. "Nobody knows for sure."

But Vanik can sometimes sense ghosts even if he can't see them. There's a sudden feeling of coldness, an "unusual" sensation down his spine - a good skill to have in his line of work.

Once Vanik has confirmed the presence of a ghost or spirit, many clients choose to live with it, simply reassured they're not crazy. Vanik has a few ghosts in his home he treats "almost like a guest." In other cases - nine out of 10, some investigators believe - simply acknowledging a spirit's presence and speaking sternly is enough to drive away an unwanted presence.

Some cases call for stronger stuff - spraying a mixture of salt and water, for instance, or burning white sage - but Vanik, who promises confidentiality to all his clients, is deliberately vague.

Rodriguez, for one, has been given a personal regimen that Vanik wouldn't divulge, concerned that readers might mistakenly - and dangerously - apply his advice in the wrong situation. In Rodriguez's case, it included strong discipline that could force the presence to stop its destructive behavior. Sometimes it responds, she said, but the haunting is far from over.

But Vanik is a hesitant ghost buster - he'd rather live with ghosts than destroy them.

"I caution people about that," Vanik said. "To automatically treat a ghost as something that's evil, nasty, dirty … well, it could be a relative. You could be disrespecting your own relative."

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© 2003, The Miami Herald.

The Shadowlands: Ghosts and Hauntings February 2003 Newsletter

:::Beyond the Pale: Ghosthunters at work::: by Stacey Graham (WyntersMoon@theshadowlands.net)

With nearly 30 years of supernatural exploration behind him, Steve Vanik, of Paranormal Investigations of South Florida, has a wealth of experience surrounding what goes bump in the night.

Shadowlands: Steve, how long have you been researching the paranormal?
Steve: I began in the 1970s with a group in my home town of Baltimore called Odyssey Scientific Research. The term "paranormal" hadn't come into use yet. Much of our work revolved around investigating the Sasquatch phenomenon that was prevalent in some of the forests and rural areas there and in the surrounding states at the time. We also worked a lot of UFO cases. When I relocated to Florida, I missed the group and decided to form my own.

Shadowlands: How many members are in your group?
Steve: Just a few core members although we work with outside investigators from time to time. Sometimes it's just me. We don't actively seek new members. Our purpose is not to document the existence of paranormal phenomenon for the world. Our focus has always been helping people who are experiencing paranormal activity in their homes or on their property and have no resources to deal with it. Sometimes, they just need someone to show them that they're not going nuts. We don't just investigate ghosts and related activity. We respond to any reasonable request from someone genuinely needing help regarding any paranormal, occult or otherwise unexplainable phenomenon. <Grins> Except UFO's.I get a lot of e-mails from people outside of our area seeking advice and do my best to help them if they can't find someone local. I also get letters from time to time from people in various areas the U.S. asking me to travel to their location to help them. Unfortunately, it's just not within our means.

Shadowlands: What equipment do you find most helpful?
Steve: Although it isn't a piece of equipment, the most useful tool for me has always been my intuition.EMF meters and digital thermometers often come in handy. Sometimes not. Digital cameras are great. We've gotten some very interesting stuff on surveillance videos, but it required months of constant monitoring to get it. That's not always practical. We often found that something would turn the video cameras off before they were able to film anything. Once in a while that "something" either forgot, or perhaps was having a bad day and couldn't turn the cameras off.

Shadowlands: Do you use tape recorders hoping to find Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP)?
Steve: Rarely. Haven't had any real success with it.

Shadowlands: What are your feelings on ghost photography?
Steve: It can be valuable in some instances. A photo or video can show someone what is running around their house or property. That can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how they take it.Other times it would seem people are grasping at straws to get their "five minutes of fame." Dust, pollen and moisture droplets being touted as orbs are a common example. The problem with ghost photography is (as it's always been) that it's easy to fake or doctor such photos, especially with the technology available nowadays. The only person who knows for sure that a photo is real is the actual photographer. You should see some of the photos people send us. They must think we're pretty gullible!

Shadowlands: We're all dedicated to finding out more about ghosts, how do you want to accomplish that?
Steve: Investigating and documenting as much as possible in a truly impartial manner.

Shadowlands: Can you recommend any books or sites for more information?
Steve: I usually refer people to the Shadowlands. It's a great site.

Shadowlands: Do you have a favorite case?
Steve: Favorite? I don't know if that would be the right word to describe any of the cases people have contacted us about. Most interesting, perhaps.We've been working a case for over a year now involving what we first thought was a classic poltergeist, because of the nature of the destruction that was going on in the house. Then things started getting really weird, even for a poltergeist. What's interesting is that the old house was already haunted for a long time by a non-aggressive ghost that the owner knew about and whose presence we could sense when the unrelated poltergeist activity started. We could sense that she (the ghost) was not pleased with what was going on in her home. We managed some orb videos of her which were eventually displaced by some rather sinister looking videos of a "shadow," much like the shadow of a little troll-like thing. She disappeared, the cause of the new destructive activity apparently chasing her away. At least, I hope that's all that happened to her. She was a gentle soul.

Shadowlands: How would you suggest someone get started in this field?
Steve: Read all you can and then seek out a suitable group or mentor. Buy some basic equipment and go out and learn how to use it effectively on your own. I say suitable group or mentor, as there are too many ghost clubs and organizations around that think ghosts exist primarily to entertain them. They should get a life. Then there are those who believe all ghosts are bad or evil and should be exorcised. My advice is to stay away from people who don't show proper respect for those who have passed over, whether they are "ghosthunters" or not.

To contact Steve and the Paranormal Investigations of South Florida, please visit the website at: http://www.floridaparanormal.org.