Maine Paranormal Investigators Look into Old Town Haunt
Harold Murray is the skeptical ghost hunter By John Schoen 

It's pitch-black in the Jackson Cemetery, a family plot located off to the side of poorly maintained dirt road in the backwoods of Hancock County, just east of Old Town, and Harold Murray's Trifield, or natural electromagnetic meter, is making a hissing noise. This may be an eerie indication of a phenomenal disturbance. Or not,

Mr. Murray is Director of the Bangor's Ghost Hunters Association and he and his crew investigates hauntings. Mr. Murray quickly realizes that the disturbance is coming from a digital recorder and microphone which the overly-sensitive device is picking up. Mr. Murray asks in his somber baritone: "Is there anyone here that would like to make contact with us? Are you a man or a woman? Adult or child?" The meter hisses again. Either it's the great beyond, or maybe he's just picking up the effects of an atmospheric anomaly, easily explainable.

Mr. Murray says he's looking for any evidence of an ethereal presence, especially that of ectoplasm, a glutinous discharge from the undead in the form of vapor, brittle cloth or bright, milk-white orbs that hover midair like fiesta lights kicked up in a wind. The term itself, ectoplasm, or "exteriorized plasma," was made famous in the early twentieth century by the medium Mrs. Helen Duncan.

Mrs. Duncan was known to have exuded the cheesecloth-like substance from various orifices while in the thralls of a violent trance. It is believed that the substance is the product of psychokinesis, or telekinesis-the materialization of thought. And if you look long enough at photographs which may have captured such a phenomenon, there appear ghostly visages, full body shapes, and the wraith like outlines of wandering children beholden to no direction or purpose.

The problem derives from the fact that just as someone can stare long enough at fluffy nimbus clouds lumbering over the earth and make out the shapes of any number of objects, one can begin to see the phantasmal apparitions of the deceased in a thick mist or a glowing orb captured on film. Any number of factors must be taken into account and used to screen out the possibility that what has just been captured on film may have been a ghost.

Photographic ghostly phenomenon could simply be moisture, or insects caught in the blaring flash of a digital camera. Mr. Murray acknowledges this issue. As he pores over hundreds of photographs in his home, he uses a software program that cleans up and isolates electronic voice phenomenon (EVP), better known as "white noise.

He then labels each aberration by the phrase "to be further investigated," jotting down either the photograph's number or isolating a voice to be carefully scrutinized at another time. Never once does he say the word "ghost," a fact in which Murray takes great pride. "I don't like to jump on it right away and say that it's anything in particular," he says. "It could be any number of things."

An ordained minister and a retired magician, Murray looks more like a Hell's Angel with his long gray hair pulled back and a thick beard. The tattoos on his arms are testaments of a less reverent past. In actuality, he is a bike enthusiast, often servicing the United Bikers of Maine by blessing their bikes before a ride.

When asked if his profession as a magician, and even that of a minister, arouses suspicion to those who are more skeptically inclined, he responded that "what they are most shocked about is that a retired magician has just debunked a case." His argument is that with his experience with visual trickery, "smoke and mirrors," as he calls it, he knows a fraud when he sees one. He has been a field investigator since 2000, and has over 75 cases in three states under his belt. In only one instance he feels safe enough to say that there was a haunting.

He says that through investigation after investigation, one begins to know the differences between moisture drops and ectoplasm, fact from fraud. One example, he said, involved a woman in Lewiston who claimed to be possessed. With her eyes rolling in the back of her head and claiming to be a vessel for a hell-bound spirit, the woman put on an act that to Murray was less than award-winning. Producing a bottle filled with virgin olive oil secured from a local Seven Eleven, Murray tells the woman it is blessed holy water. He splatters the woman and watches as she lashes around like a palsied crack-addict screaming in Germanic tongues. "Something was definitely wrong there," he laughs.

Murray's crew is an offshoot of Maine Paranormal in Lewiston, and includes his two sons, James and John, who recently became co-director of the organization. Also on the crew are Mr. Murray's daughter-in-law Mary, video technician Tyler Costigan, Mike Marino, a fire-investigator who employs a laser-guided thermometer that would ordinarily be used to find smoldering fires inside walls but is instead used to detect sudden changes in temperature inside the cemetery, and an eccentric gentleman with a prolific knowledge of gold-mining, metaphysics and Gnosticism named Spike.

Spike uses copper divining rods, antiquated, hand-held devices that detect vortexes of electromagnetic fields. And then there's Night Ranger, a remote-controlled 4x4 equipped with a night-vision camera which can be used as an "observer" without the hindrance of a human presence.

Jackson Cemetery curator Rachael Garceau is another BGHA member. She has decedents buried in Jackson Cemetery, and has frequented the family plot since she was child, replacing flowers and clearing debris. "I've always felt something here, a presence," she says. Mrs. Garceau does not visit the graves alone at night.

Although Murray and his crew never claimed to have seen an actual ghost-and this admitted uncertainty may be what attracts his clients-his incentive for investigating is clear. "Maybe someday I'll find the proof of the existence of God," he says. "I'm looking for the existence of another life after death… there's got to be something after this."

And perhaps the BGHA did find some proof in the Jackson cemetery. An isolated EVP recorded that night reveals a voice-a barely audible whisper-which appears to be that of a human and four-syllables in length. There is also a photograph taken in another cemetery in Greenbush which reveals two illuminated orbs, one of which is in motion. A phantom voice or someone blabbing on a walkie-talkie? Ectoplasm or a moth caught in a flash?

What does Murray say to those cynics, those dubious naysayers of the unknown? "Come on an investigation with us. Tell us what you experience… I would invite anyone, let you be the judge. Let the evidence speak for itself."

If anyone is interested in either having a case investigated or participating in one, contact Harold Murray at mainewizard@aol.com. He investigates at no charge, and asks that he only be compensated for mileage, given that current gas prices would make anyone turn in their grave.

Misty Doyon Contributed to this article