Michele Phillips holds a glow stick in an attempt to communicate with a spirit. On the ground, various energy readers and motion sensors are deployed to detect the presence of spiritual energy. Sitting, from left to right, are Makaila Bahn, 13, of Orwigsburg, Phillips, of SOS Paranormal, Ryan Steiff, 17, of Ashland, and Giabella Power, 11, of Spring City. PHOTO BY WES CIPOLLA
Originally published in the Pottsville Republican-Herald on June 27, 2022.
DEER LAKE — On June 20, I interviewed a ghost — please let me explain.
I was at Fighter’s Heaven with Jodi Lee Nettles and the young members of the 12th annual SOS Teen Paranormal Camp, who spent the previous week exploring allegedly haunted locations throughout Pennsylvania and learning the finer points of ghost hunting.
“I want to teach the kids how to do things properly so they don’t get hurt,” Nettles said.
“They only do things on TV to get ratings. We have had experiences where your objects move, and your hair gets touched and your hair gets pulled.”
Nettles wants the camp to be fun rather than scary, and activities included decorating the ghost-detecting dowsing rods with colorful beads.
We were gathered in a cabin where Ali’s sparring partners once stayed. While Nettles claims to have once communicated with Ali’s ghost, Sculps Hill, where Fighter’s Heaven is situated, has centuries of history.
“Here, I pick up a lot of Native American energy,” said Kelly Miller, the blond-coiffed, pink sunglass-wearing “Maven Medium” of Selinsgrove. “It’s nice to pick up the energy of the land.”
To Nettles, Miller and the kids, ghosts are simply beings of energy. To detect them is to detect energy.
“You use your own instincts,” Nettles said. “You’re your most important piece of equipment. I’ve had instinct my whole life. It’s not something that was given to me; it’s just there.”
Nettles grew up in a former funeral home.
“They used to hide our things,” she said. “They used to touch us. When I’d lay on my stomach, they used to hold me down.”
“I wanna investigate there!” said Robbie Dickson, 11, of Spring City.
Dickson’s mother tells him he has a spiritual gift, and that at age 3 he remembered details of a past life.
“Is that true?” asked Giabella Power, also 11 and from Spring City.
“My mom says it’s true,” Robbie said.
Giabella thought it would be fun to communicate with ghosts. A previous experience at Fighter’s Heaven, where she heard mysterious knocks on the door and saw a ghostly figure in the window, made her believe.
“I’m being dead serious with you,” she said.
On the floor of the cabin were motion sensors, a REM pod that “detects emotions” and blue and red flashlights to ask the ghost questions — blue meant yes, red meant no. Most importantly, there was a “spirit box,” which rapidly cycles through radio stations.
According to spirit box proponents, ghosts use the frequencies to communicate in short bursts. Nettles and her campers made out words from the garbled sounds of the spirit box.
“How many people are in this room?” Miller asked.
“Alive or dead?” Nettles replied.
“Was this your land?” Miller asked. “It just sounded like someone was whispering.”
“That was not nice,” Nettles said after the ghost apparently swore at her. As she says, “If you were a jerk in life, you’re a jerk in death.”
They asked the spirit to speak my name, and convinced him to appear in the newspaper, but there was no response.
“Show off in front of your spirit friends,” said Deanna Ray, of Deer Lake. “Like, ‘Look at that, I still got it.’ ”
Nettles went live on Facebook.
“Do you have anything to tell all the people that might be watching?” she asked the spirit. “Did it just say ‘Facebook?’ ”
And that is when Nettles let me ask the ghost a question. I was speechless. What do you ask a complete stranger that you cannot see, hear or even know is there?
“When did you die?” I asked.
The red flashlight turned on by itself and the REM meter spiked. This was the biggest response any of the ghost hunters got so far.
“Tell him what your name is, and he can put it in his news report,” Nettles said.
Another muffled sound came from the spirit box, which she heard as “Steven.”
“Do you know where we are?” I asked “Steven.” The blue flashlight turned on. Power’s jaw dropped. 17-year-old Ryan Steiff, of Ashland, wrote feverishly in his notepad. His interest in ghosts came from Pac-Man, “Ghostbusters” and horror movies. He first contacted spirits at a paranormal investigation in Mount Joy with a group called The Boo Crew.
“It was exciting,” he said. “I was like, ‘Yes, they’re real! I knew it!’ ”
There were other ways to get the ghosts to talk. Nettles pulled a series of colored glow sticks from her bag to “play a game” with them.
“These are only a dollar at Walmart,” she said. “Fun way to talk to the spirits.”
“What color am I holding up?” Asked 12-year-old Kate Poncelet, of Orwigsburg.
Apparently, the spirit box said “blue.”
“I heard that! I heard that!” Power said.
Nettles switched from the spirit box to EchoVox, a $20 spirit box phone app. In another sea of random sounds, Nettles picked out the word “help.”
“ ‘Hey Robbie,’ it said,” Miller said. “Did you hear it?”
The REM machine kept screeching. Not only did EchoVox capture sounds, it also transcribed words like “insanity.”
“It says stop!” Dickson said. But that was just the button to stop the recording.
“It said my name, it said my name!” Robbie said, beaming.
“I liked it,” Giabella said at the end of the investigation. “I just wished there was more activity. At the last one, the REM pod and the flashlights were going off. It was crazy. I’d say this was a five out of 10.”
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