Bethel Park resident leads ghost-hunting events

Whether it’s “Ghost Hunters,” “Kindred Spirits” or “Destination Fear,” TV shows featuring searches for unusual occurrences typically pack plenty of close-encounter action into tidy hourlong episodes.

Real-life explorations aren’t quite as predictably productive.

“We can’t make activity happen,” Bethel Park resident Patty Henderson said. “That’s what we try to make people understand.”

As owner of Whispering Souls Paranormal Investigations LLC, she organizes events in which participants use a variety of items, from everyday devices to specialized equipment, on missions to make contact with other realms.

Folks on ostensible “reality” shows make the process look easy.

“These people have probably been in this house for four or five hours, and they’re cutting it for TV,” Henderson said. “We’ve been in buildings for two, three hours, and you get nothing.”

But the lack of a guarantee hardly serves as a deterrent. In fact, Henderson met many of her Whispering Souls investigative team members through their regular attendance at searches she organized.

“Believe it or not, in the ghost-hunting field, you have a following. And these would be the people who would come to every single event,” she said. “They get to know you, and you get to know them. And you click.”

The Thomas Jefferson High School graduate has been conducting paranormal investigations for more than 20 years, representing an extension of her early inquisitiveness.

“I’d go and play in the woods, and look for aliens. I swore there were spaceships in there,” Henderson recalled. “Things like that would fascinate me. So I would sneak into places that you weren’t allowed to go into, like the cemetery, and do my own ghost hunting. Then I started looking up groups that were holding events, and from there, my interest grew.”

No imaginary friend

When she was even younger, she often stayed with her grandmother while her grandfather was working late shifts.

“I had to be around 6, 7,” she said. “I used to play with a little girl in her house. Everybody thought she was an imaginary friend.”

But one night, as she was sleeping on a couch, her grandmother apparently learned differently. She caught her own glimpse of the girl and screamed:

“Patty, get up!”Then she acknowledged, “Oh, my God. So that wasn’t an imaginary friend.”

Investigators always are on the lookout for something similarly dramatic, but Henderson concedes that sightings of full-body apparitions are few and far between. A more likely scenario involves signals conveyed from beyond.

For example, something as simple as a flashlight with a loosened battery connection could serve as a conduit.

“You lightly turn it off and you place it somewhere, and we use it as an item for a yes/no type of question,” Henderson said. Resulting flickers just might constitute answers.

Smartphone cameras are recommended accessories — “You always want to take three pictures of the same area, because ghosts don’t stand still and pose” — and plenty of specialized ghost-hunting equipment is on the market. Tools of the trade include:

• K-II Enterprises’ EMF meter, an easy-to-use tool to detect spikes in electromagnetic energy.

• Spirit boxes, which scan radio frequencies to detect utterances known as electronic voice phenomena.

• Laser grids to track motion.

• REM pods to track changes in ambient temperature.

“We tell people, especially with the K-II meter, ‘Your phones can make that go off. Electricity can make that go off.’ So there’s a certain way that you need to use this equipment, too,” Henderson said.

Coming attractions

She and her team members tend to temper expectations:

“We never want to say, ‘Yes, you caught a ghost!’ We want to debunk it.”

Mixing with participants who believe they can connect with spirits are those who don’t.

“We have a lot of skeptics who come in and are like, ‘OK, whatever,’” Henderson said. “I’ll tell them, ‘Let you experience it, and if something happens, then come talk to me afterward. Let’s see if you change your view.’”

She prefers to stage events at sites that are lesser-known among paranormal investigators, and she likes to help the causes of nonprofits.

A favorite local venue is the Schoolhouse Arts and History Center on South Park Road, headquarters of the Bethel Park Historical Society, where an event is scheduled for 7 to 11 p.m. Aug. 26. Plans call for an Afterlife Halloween Bash at the center on Oct. 21.

“It’s great to be able to tell our guests, ‘Your money is going back into this place,’” Henderson said. “That’s a bonus.”

Whispering Souls will conduct free Ghost Hunting 101: Haunted Teachings programs from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Oct. 3 at Jefferson Hills Public Library and from 6:30 to 7:45 p.m. Oct. 5 at Bethel Park Public Library. The lessons may include this piece of advice from Henderson:

“If you don’t have patience, ghost hunting is not for you.”

For more information, visit whisperingsoulsparanormal.com.