The Skeptical Ghosthunter
I live just a couple miles from Colonial Williamsburg, and although I knew its historical significance, neither did I know the depth of it nor did I know just how many of the founding fathers walked these very streets and how involved they were with the state’s government, the church, and the College of Williams and Mary. So I took a part-time job as a tour guide so that I could engage in a comprehensive study of the origins of our country. As part of the position, I was asked to lead a few ghost tours, and although the financial reward wasn’t that great, I thought that perhaps the intrinsic rewards would suffice. I learned the script, and I would dutifully lead each group of about 25 people on a nocturnal journey through the streets of Colonial Williamsburg, and with all the aplomb of an actor auditioning for a coveted role, I would recite each ghost story in front of the building that it took place in—not believing a word I said. Then something began to happen that made me question my own stance on the supernatural:
On these ghost tours that I gave, every once in a while, someone would take a photo with a cellphone camera that captured something that I just could not rationally explain (This was in 2010—2011, and cellphone cameras were not nearly as good as they are now). This began to happen more and more frequently—and it made me think—if they could capture the paranormal on a cellphone, what could I do with my professional equipment? So after the first tourist season ended, I decided to head to Colonial Williamsburg with all of my professional equipment, and I began to experiment. The first night out was a disaster: Not only did capturing anything paranormal completely elude me, but I also had to fight off a bone-chilling wind that put the temperature around or below O degrees (F). After this initial failure, it took me about another six weeks to restore the intrinsic motivation to try again. But my second time out, I captured something at the Bruton Parish Church that would forever change how I felt about the paranormal and would send me on this odyssey to prove with my camera that ghosts are a reality—and of course the implication with that statement is that the soul continues to live after the body dies. What is the soul? Please see my book Haunted Historic Colonial Williamsburg Virginia with Breakthrough Ghost Photography for a very sound scientific hypothesis of what the human soul is. This theory, the brainchild of an Einstein physicist, was able to, along with the visual evidence from my camera, quell the skeptic in me and send me on a quest for more and better evidence. I did search the Internet and paranormal books to see if anyone had achieved the same results as myself; when I found that they had not, with the encouragement of family and friends a new book was born.
My first book took over 2 years and upwards of 10,000 photographs to write, and no I did not use all 10,000 of them, but selectively chose the very best of them to open up a door to the other side for both you and I to peer through in amazement—a dimension we have only whispered about just a few years prior for fear of being labeled irrational, if not crazy. It has been over 4 years and over 17,000 photographs, and I have collected enough evidence to label the existentialists that way. At the top I give you one of my latest captures—I have expanded my hunting grounds to include all of Virginia and even the Outer Banks of North Carolina. On the evening that I took this photo, I was on the top of a sand dune on the Outer Banks hunting for streaking meteors during the annual Perseid Meteor Shower, and these ghosts showed up. Nowadays they seem to show up when I’m not looking for them, even in the daylight. Do they know that I’m a ghosthunter? I can’t say, but from what I have seen and photographed so far, I would say that it’s a distinct possibility . . .
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After 2 years of research, a lot of experimentation, and over 10,000 photographs, check out the world’s first groundbreaking photographic study of ghosts: Haunted, Historic Colonial Williamsburg Virginia with Breakthrough Ghost Photography available at both Schiffer Publishing and at Amazon:
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Amazon: http://amzn.com/0764350609
Tim Scullion is a published author, photographer, and musician. He is a graduate of the College of William and Mary, with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree Cum Laude. In addition to the book mentioned above, Tim has written a novel, a series of instruction books on the guitar, a children’s book (all available on Amazon) and has a photo-essay published by the University of Virginia in the book Troubled Times Companion, Vol. III.
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