Who you gonna call ...? | Wairarapa News | Local News in Wairarapa

THE hunt is on for the haunts of restless Wairarapa spirits and the Times-Age building could be the next stop on the safari trail.

Andrew Morahan, co-owner with wife Kathy McBride of The Crystal Shed in Masterton, said the couple joined forces this year with veteran psychic investigator Kelvin Miller to source and search older buildings and homes in the region for spectres, ghouls and ghosts.

The team has been in contact with the 20/20 television news crew, Mr Morahan said, who "are very keen to tag along" on upcoming hunts.

Mr Morahan, who has a BA in religious studies and psychology from Victoria University, said several overnight ghost hunts have already taken place in Wairarapa, including investigations at private homes in Carterton and Eketahuna, a pub in Pahiatua and a commercial site in Masterton.

Photographs taken at some of the sites have been scattered with light flares that could be either dust or "energy orbs" associated with supernatural activity or unexplained reflections and images caught on camera.

Mr Morahan said he and his wife, a clairvoyant, have in the past few years performed many lay exorcisms of homes that are "more ghost busting than ghost hunting".

"Ghost hunting is a search for verifiable evidence of the supernatural. That's why we're looking for homes and older buildings that people may have already witnessed this sort of activity.

"Places like the Times-Age building (built in 1938), where a lot of people have worked over a long time.

"Most people working there today wouldn't even notice ? I'm not particularly sensitive myself ? but that doesn't mean there's nothing there," he said.

"I have been sceptical in the past and I was an atheist for three months ? but that was all the faith I could manage. I've heard footsteps and whispers in a house when there was nobody there, so my attitudes have changed. Personal experience makes a huge difference.

"It can be quite difficult for people to believe unless they've lived in a haunted house or been through the experience themselves," Mr Morahan said.

Mr Miller earlier told the Times-Age that a typical hunt includes Darkness Sessions, where team members sit in complete darkness within a suspected haunted house or building and use a Tri-Field Meter surveillance system of motion sensors and audio and video units to record encounters; Channelling, which is where a team member "takes up the spirit of the dead" and conversations with manifested entities are conducted and recorded; or a Passing Over Ceremony, which dismisses an entity back to its source.

Mr Miller has earlier travelled to England for three months to take up a vacant seat with the Ghost Club Society based in London.

The society was formed in 1851 and past members, he said, include notable authors Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Dennis Wheatley, and American entertainer and escape artist Harry Houdini.

Mr Miller has "the absolutely rare privilege" of being the first and only New Zealand member of the society, he said, which has a network of only 150 members worldwide.

Membership is gained by nomination from standing members only, as other members resign their seats or die.