Ghost Hunter's Code of Ethics

G:  is for good impression. We want to make the best first impression possible, on all levels.  People will remember the group name easier if we make a strong first impression, and be more inclined to invite us back, or recommend us to someone else.

H:   is for hospitality.  We will treat all people like we would want to be treated, and all properties will be treated that way we would expect someone else to treat our property, whether it be a home, cemetery or place of business. 

O:  is for open to everything.  Please be understanding and non judgmental towards other’s beliefs and/or feelings.  If you don’t agree with someone else’s opinions or views of things, keep it to yourself. Nothing will ruin an image faster than becoming strongly opinionated about something, and getting into a debate that no one person can win.  Approach everything with an open heart and open mind.

S: is for sincere. Please be sincere at all times. This includes being sincere with the people we are dealing with, the investigation, data collection, everything.  Nothing will ruin our credibility faster than being insincere.  If you are asked a question and you don’t know the answer, please refer it to another person in the group.  Don’t make stuff up; the last thing we want to do is ruin our credibility by answering a question with information that is completely wrong!  This also goes with data; we don’t want to be reporting bogus information in our any of our documentation.  Remember to be sincere is to be truthful.

T:  is for team.  We are a team, and as the old saying goes, there is no “I” in team. Part of being a team is respect towards each other.  There is nothing worse than watching a group have personality conflicts while onsite.  While we try to avoid it, a conflict may arise between members, if it does, please do not let it happen while conducting a walk through or investigation.  There is plenty of time between investigations to settle the conflict. Again, this is a surefire way to have our group image ruined. Remember we are all adults, and at times we must also act like it.

General Ghost Hunting Guidelines

1. Above all, use your common sense.
2. Never go ghost hunting alone. Hunt with at least one companion.
3. Verify location, accessibility, safety, and related issues ahead of time. Check each site during daytime hours to identify parking, paths, and hazards. Carry a working flashlight, even during daytime ghost hunts.
4. Wear suitable clothing, including sturdy footwear. Don't eat a heavy meal immediately before ghost hunting, but don't arrive hungry, either. Do not drink alcohol or use drugs before or during a ghost hunt.
5. Never trespass on private or posted property, without specific permission from the owners or authorities.
6. Leave immediately and cheerfully if the police or owners ask you to, even if the property is not posted. Provide photo ID if the police ask.
7. If you become unreasonably frightened, leave. Always follow your gut instinct if you are prompted to leave.
8. Remember, you have more to fear from the living than from the dead. Haunted sites are often isolated and deserted. That makes these sites attractive to people engaged in illegal activities. Use caution and common sense.
9. As your mother taught you, never speak ill of the dead. Avoid sarcasm and jokes in haunted settings. Sometimes, the spirits "get even."
10. Ghosts do not follow you home. If you are frightened and leave a haunted location, the spirits generally do not go with you and they cannot affect your thoughts.
11. If you are troubled by unwanted thoughts after leaving a haunted location, relax. Eat some comfort food. Watch a happy movie or TV show. Talk it out with a skeptical friend. Spend some time in a church. If the unwanted thoughts persist, see a professional.


12. Never rely upon cellular phones in haunted settings. Often, they won't work. Step across the street and the phone usually resumes power/range.
13. Remember that you are visiting a location that a ghost considers "home." Behave politely as you would in someone else's home.
14. Ghosts do not "possess" people without their consent. If someone or something seems to be taking control, tell it to stop. Think rude thoughts at it, and generally picture yourself as a bigger bully than the spirit is. This does work in most cases. If you--or someone you know--seems "possessed," consult a professional and/or a member of the clergy. It may not be a ghost.
15. Generally, you cannot help a ghost. You can advise them to move on, but don't waste more than about ten minutes discussing this. If you aren't making any progress, it's best to leave that kind of work to a professional. Most ghosts are tied to their earthly locations because they want to change something that happened in the past.
You can't change the past, and most ghosts aren't really interested in anything else.
And frankly, some ghosts just like attention. Don't take their ploys seriously.
16. There are no documented cases of someone being seriously physically harmed by a ghost. If you're worried about this, choose a different hobby. Ghost hunting should be fun.

Ghost Hunting Equipment Check List

• Digital video recorder: DVRs have gotten fabulous in the last few years and there are dozens out there to choose from. Buy quality, because your digital video recorder is one of your primary tools. Be sure and get a DVR with excellent sound quality and buy a good static free external shotgun microphone to go along with the camera. This allows a good DVR to function as a digital audio recorder too.
  
• Digital Still Camera: It’s all about the Megapixles! – The higher the resolution the more you will be able to zoom in later on when you are analyzing your photos in Photoshop.
• Digital Image Editing Program: Sometimes by adjusting contrast, shadows and highlights or colors, you can find things in a photo you didn’t know were there.  Photoshop is my favorite.  And remember you can give your video the same treatment with the color correction tools in a Video Editing Program like Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere.
• 35mm FILM Camera: Yes, I’m talking actual film – there are tons of great digital still cameras and they are much easier to use, but, remember, a film camera processes the images through a chemical process, not through an electronic sensor array. Experienced ghost hunters will tell you that a traditional 35mm camera, especially with black and white film often catches images that do not show up on even the best digital cameras.  So, make sure someone on your team is rolling old school.
  Today Ebay is far and away the best place to buy 35 mm cameras. My all time favorite is the Nikon F3.  It has simple, dependable controls and is built like a tank.
  
• Misc. Camera Gear: You’re going to want a decent camera bag and tripod, extra film for the 35mm, plenty of memory cards for the still camera  and extra tapes for the DVR.
• Night Vision Equipment: Night vision scopes have gotten a lot cheaper in the last few years and there are adapters that you can use to attach them to video recorder and cameras so you can shoot in near total darkness.
• Analog Tape Recorder: Like the 35mm camera magnetic tape recorders are also quickly headed for obsolescence, but they also record sound differently than modern digital audio recorders. Also, you should be getting digital audio through your DVR, so this gives you a valuable double check for any anomalies you encounter. Remember to rewind the tape and listen to it at the end of the expedition even if you didn’t hear anything unusual while you were there. Spirit voices sometimes are recorded on magnetic audio tapes even when humans hear no sounds. This phenomena is known as EVP, Electronic Voice Phenomena.
  Be sure and use new tapes, because the tiny scratches from rewinding and playing tapes make it much more difficult to pick out very faint noises.  Like 35mm cameras, Ebay is also the best place to shop for Analog Tape Recorders.
  
• Flash Lights: Obviously, this is a no brainer. If you haven’t already moved up to a modern LED flashlight now is a good time. Battery life is much longer, the LED bulbs are almost unbreakable, and they often allow for different colors of light and intensity. However, no matter how good your primary flashlight is every other team member should carry a back up light.
• EMF Detector: EMF Detectors pick up electronic fields at a variety of frequencies. Usually, where there are ghosts there are disruptions in the electronic magnetic field. This is one piece of equipment that every ghost hunting expedition should have and they are fairly cheap.
• Compass: Obviously, you can use them for navigation, but on a ghost hunting expedition the primary role is as the low tech back up for your EMF gear. A compass reacts to changes in the Earth’s magnetic field and since it is your backup do not buy an electronic compass. A glow in the dark needle is nice.
• GPS: You can use GPS to record the exact time and location of each paranormal incident as a way point, also some outdoor GPS’s are loaded with extra features like altimeters and thermometers.
• Thermometers: Obviously, a good thermometer can detect changes in the air temperature, but your ghost hunting team should carry both a traditional mercury thermometer and a digital thermometer to ensure good backup. Also, today both types are very cheap.
• Barometers: Follow the same logic as with thermometers and have both a traditional and electronic.
• Wind chimes: Buy the lightest wind chimes you can, preferably ones that are easy to move, and as you move from room to room you reposition the chimes. Windchimes are cheap, but sometimes they are the first piece of equipment to record an unusual phenomena. The team should have several windchimes on the expedition. Many people like to paint them with glow in the dark paint.
  
• Infrared Thermal Scanner: These are a great pieces of gear, because they essentially allow you to see changes in temperature across a room or field. When you see the anomaly move towards your team and trigger the wind chimes and the thermometers it is an incredible moment.
• Air Ion Counter: These are expensive, but useful. They measure positive and negative ions in the air and often provide additional evidence to support thermometers, barometers, and wind chimes.
• Walkie-Talkie: Always useful, but try to get one that is hands free, preferably with headsets. Today, you can actually link a team together through conference call on cell phone if everyone has the minutes.
• Spot Light: You can get a 200,000 candle power light for about $30.00, but they do tend to eat batteries.
• Motion Detectors: These can really give you a heads up and they are not expensive.
• Extra Batteries: Try to have extra batteries for everything.
• Matches and Candle: Just for back up.
• Watches: Each team member should have a watch and they should all be synchronized with the other members watches and time codes on the camera equipment. Sometimes this is the most challenging part of a hunt.
• Paper and Pen: They don’t run out of batteries and they are cheap, and you can record a written log. It’s a good idea to have a secretary recording the time and description of events as you go, because this represents the closest you can get to human memories, without the filter of technology.
• First Aid Kit: Ya never know!

Prospect Place In Trinway , Ohio

Slavery was an issue long before the Civil War made the dividing lines of the United States more prominent. Ohio was a free state, but there were still plenty of battles fought in the state's small towns. Prospect Place Mansion was many times the battleground for good versus evil in the war's constant struggles for freedom.

Family History
George W. Adams was born in Virginia in 1799 on a large plantation. When his grandfather died, George's father freed the family's slaves and sold the plantation. In 1808, he moved his family to Ohio, a free state where slavery was illegal. Twenty years later, George and his brother Edward built a large flouring mill. They met great success in this industry and soon had 2 prospering flour mills. George used his wealth to help develop the town of Dresden. He financed many infrastructure projects, including bridges and a canal that connected Dresden with the Ohio-Erie Canal. Soon, he was the largest employer in the region.

But it wasn't all about wealth for George, who was a renegade for social justice. The mills provided grain to the local residents, but they also served as safe houses for runaway slaves on their journey to freedom. George didn't just allow slaves to rest in his mills during their escape from the South. This staunch abolitionist also smuggled slaves out of the South on flatboats during business trips to New Orleans.

George W. Adams had his Greek revival mansion built at Prospect Place in 1856. This stately home had 29 rooms in 9,500 square feet. However, before the family could even move in, an arsonist torched the house. The family constructed a barn on the remains of the first mansion that could be used as a living quarters for the ranch hands as well as stables for horses and carriages.

Then they set to work building a new mansion that would be the first in the state to have an indoor well and plumbing. It also had a cupola on top of the house where a light shone brightly as a sign to traveling slaves that this was a safe house. The house became a spot where slaves could rest and eat before continuing on their journey north. It was a key location on the Underground Railroad.

Bounty Hunters
Although Ohio was a free state, this didn't mean the slaves were safe here as they passed through. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made it legal for bounty hunters to capture runaway slaves here and return them to the South. It was also illegal to harbor slaves, a risk that George Adams was willing to take every time he opened his home to fleeing slaves.

In the late 1850s, an angry bounty hunter came to the house and demanded that George release the slaves he harbored on his land. George's ranch hands came to protect their boss and the bounty hunter skulked away. According to family legend, these same loyal ranch hands followed the bounty hunter to his camp and abducted him. They brought him back to the barn and hung him there for his crimes against freedom and humanity. Today his angry spirit lurks in the barn, occasionally lashing out at visitors when provoked.

The slaves who came to Prospect Place were dodging dangerous bounty hunters and many were injured when they arrived. Some of these slaves died from shotgun blasts or wounds from animal attacks. Their journey to freedom was cut short in the safe haven of George's basement, and their spirits still haunt the place today.

A Squandered Estate
George W. Adams lived to see success in his true life's work -- he saw slavery abolished before he passed away in 1879. He left his vast estate to his children. Sadly, the family squandered their inheritance and by the mid-1950s, this once stately home was abandoned. Recently the great-great grandson of George W. Adams purchased the property and is working to restore the mansion to its former glory. However, his efforts are sometimes thwarted by the ghosts that remain at Prospect Place. The phantom footsteps, whispering voices and dark shadows show that the battle of good and evil will never be over for the sad and angry spirits that remain.