Woman has spirited flair for investigating the paranormal
By Correne Martin
On Halloween, Heather White will probably be watching some paranormal show on television. But she’ll be wishing she were out actually investigating and interacting with spirits herself.
Originally from Arkansas and now living in Prairie du Chien, Heather began ghost hunting after watching them on TV. She and her ex-husband, who is from this area, thought the mysterious phenomenon was so intriguing that they “bought a digital voice recorder and headed to some cemeteries.”
Heather said her biggest motivation for getting into paranormal investigations was to satisfy her curious mind
“We all have energy. My scientific mind knows that energy doesn’t dissipate. So where does it go?” she wondered.
“Back when we first started this, it was mainly by word of mouth because a lot of people had never heard of paranormal investigations. It was still relatively new,” she said, noting that they made social media posts about their new obsession, hung posters and asked friends to share. “We normally did any houses that the homeowners were having issues with. Any homes with kids would take priority.”
Heather said they would do an initial contact by phone, then head to the county offices to look over property, talk to the local libraries about any deaths, etc.
The process of an investigation, she explained, can take from a couple of days up to a week or even longer. This depends on the activity and access to the home.
“The longest process is going over the evidence, listening to the recordings, watching the videos and looking through pictures,” Heather described. She said she and her extrasensory team documented everything.
She formed a team of mostly fellow investigators who had dabbled in it before. Interestingly, some of the members were even skeptics, including one engineer. But most were there for the knowledge, the investigations and what could be learned from them. She said a good investigator is someone who is not a thrill seeker, but a person who wants to debunk a presumed “haunting.”
“Normally, we took any new people either to somewhere we knew we’d get action or to the cemetery, Heather added. “Somewhere, where if the new person would freak out, it wouldn’t freak out the homeowner too.”
The team traveled as far as Galena. There, they investigated a private residence and experienced a lot of interaction with the spirit there using our electromagnetic field radiation (EMF) detectors.
“We would ask a question and ask them to light it up, which they did. It was a pretty cold response,” she remembered. “At that same house, we witnessed a partial apparition form, from the feet up to about mid thigh.”
Another time, which happens to be her first and favorite investigation, was at a place that has since been torn down where the first Crawford County jail was housed.
“Some of us were touched,” Heather recalled. “We got an electronic voice talking to us, a direct response to a question.”
Those kinds of contacts were events, she said, that could not necessarily be recreated.
“If you can recreate it, it’s not paranormal,” she insisted.
Certain spaces or situations that are supposedly haunted are easily debunked, in fact. Heather said old houses and old pipes can most often be identified and explained.
She and her fellow investigators are aware that there are plenty of doubters who say there’s no such thing as true paranormal activity.
“To the nonbelievers, I say this: Prove to me they don’t exist,” she stated. “There’s been hundreds of years of tales of ghosts and hauntings. Lately, there seems to be more proof that they actually do exist. And to the scientific minds, I ask the energy question. Energy just doesn’t go away.”
Heather and her team stand by their scientific equipment and the results.
“Science has come a very long way within the last five years alone, and there are many investigators who are hungry and working with some intelligent minds to help prove the afterlife is real,” she maintained.
Heather said she would love to get another team together and begin seeking more proof of spirits.
“The truth is out there,” she said. “Honestly, anywhere in Prairie would be awesome to hunt at. The history here alone is awesome.”
Ghost hunting is so invigorating, to her.
“I’ve been whispered to. And if you do this long enough, your senses heighten and you can ‘feel’ spirits around you,” she quipped.
Until she gets back in the field, Heather will continue watching TV shows where other enthusiasts discover and unearth the unknown.
Whether it’s “Ghost Hunters,” “Ghost Adventures,” or “Dead Files,” this superfan recommends people check them out, before the spirits come check out you.
