Ideas for fund raiser wanted. (Missoula: rental, house, tenants)

[severdsoul]

Hi.
We are a group of paranormal investigators (dont laugh) in missoula and looking for ideas on ways for a fund raiser to get more equipment. I was wondering if anyone has any good ideas, or if anyone has experience in fund raising.
Equipment is not cheap, to set us up like i would like, would run about $5K although to equip the new members that recently joined, will be around $1K for the baisc equipment.
For some this may seem like a dumb idea, but what better way to spend the weekends, out of trouble, and learning. There is so much to learn and look for during a investigation. While it may look like fun on the show "Ghost Hunters" there is a lot of research, planing, history digging, and just flat our boring hours that they dont cover. But it is interesting.. and i'm sure everyone has had some type of experience in their life and wonderd what the heck that just was.. which is why we enjoy what we do, to try to solve the question of 'do ghost exist' and if they do 'what causes it' 99% of the time you end up finding things that are normal occuring, or explainable, but that 1% you cant, its very interesting.
So, if anyone has any good ideas, let us know, we are a small group on a tight budget so some things are out of our reach.
Thanks for reading
Ghost Montana ghostmt.com

[grizzfan]

The day after Halloween Missoula has "The Day of the Dead" parade down Higgins Avenue. You could probably carry a bucket to collect donations. The folks that attend that event are probably weird enough to believe in ghosts!!

[severdsoul]

Great idea, i didnt know they had such a thing. But between work and kids and the group not a lot of time to do much else.
Well, its a draw as to how many belive in 'ghost' and how many dont, we prefer the approach to disprove everything, and if we cant, we end up with some interesting evidence. But its a hit and miss. Sceptics are most of our group. Sure we have seen enough to know that something is not normal, something is happening, but what we can not explain yet. That is our goal to figure out the unexplained. Not the stuff you see on tv where they go nuts over things and then move on.. we want to actualy understand what causes it and why. sure its great when you get a photo, or evp or something, but what is causing it. That is our goal. Be it what ever it turns out to be. Ghost, normal occuring , enviorment.. but to do this it requires a lot of equipment.
Thanks for the reply. I guess this is not a big topic for most, *lol* or they just think we are a bit crazy, or a bunch of kids running around causing trouble. Definatly not the case.

[Reziac]

I never encountered anything like a ghost in MT. Not even in ghost towns.

But there seem to be a lot of 'em in SoCal. And I think once you become aware of them, they're easier to ID -- you start to recognise when that odd feeling is external, not in your own mind. (Also makes it easier to tell when it IS all in your head.)

At my previous place, I had one indoors (tied to the house, I think it was some sort of "wood spirit" that had been accidentally harvested along with the trees the house was built from) and two outside (one was a Nasty that lived in a tree). Visitors would notice them, especially the Nasty, without being told. Two previous tenants had moved out because "the house was haunted", and one had tried to exorcise it by pouring water into the light sockets!!! And once I had someone get out of her car and the first thing she said to me was "Did you know you have a ghost in your house?" (Yeah, old news. It's harmless.) You couldn't see it, but you could tell it was there.

Occasionally the Nasty would come indoors -- a friend who is a practicing witch told me to burn sage to get rid of it. Lo and behold, that works! My biochem background immediately wanted to know what chemical the the Nasty doesn't like that's in sage smoke. Wouldn't that be an interesting exercise -- try each compound alone and in tandem until the right "exorcism" formula is discovered.

There's an "I thought I heard you calling" that comes by my 'new' place once in a while. It had lots of fun with the concrete crew when we were pouring my big slab, to the point that it was entertaining to watch. I finally had to tell them to ignore it, no one is actually yelling for you!! cuz no one was getting any work done. It also pestered the cleaning crew in the rental house, but they knew about it from prior experience, and ignored it. Ignore it long enough, and it gets bored and leaves.

Last month I came home to find some Nasty had been in my house and had knocked over and moved some stuff, and had turned on the heater in the bathroom. (Not something that can happen by accident, the switch is up at eye level and out of the way.)

I tend to be very slow to believe in anything like this, and it takes a lot of convincing to get past my skeptic radar, especially with my atheist bent. But I have come to think there are "things" out there that we don't yet understand, and some manifest as what we call "ghosts" or "spirits" or sometimes even "gods", or maybe just "creepy feelings". They're not supernatural (tho some may be parasites), they're just another sort of critter, living on the fringe of the world we can see. Kindof like the array of weird creatures that live at the bottom of the ocean, out of everyday sight. Without the right equipment to catch and view them, they're just legends.

Tho I'd still say that 99% of what people report is just their imagination, or a misinterpretation of a natural event.

A good read in the SF end of the subject: Nopalgarth (aka The Brains of Earth) by Jack Vance. Sure makes you think twice about exorcising our native "ghosts".

[Jbechtel]

Originally Posted by Reziac

I never encountered anything like a ghost in MT. Not even in ghost towns.

But there seem to be a lot of 'em in SoCal. And I think once you become aware of them, they're easier to ID -- you start to recognise when that odd feeling is external, not in your own mind. (Also makes it easier to tell when it IS all in your head.)

At my previous place, I had one indoors (tied to the house, I think it was some sort of "wood spirit" that had been accidentally harvested along with the trees the house was built from) and two outside (one was a Nasty that lived in a tree). Visitors would notice them, especially the Nasty, without being told. Two previous tenants had moved out because "the house was haunted", and one had tried to exorcise it by pouring water into the light sockets!!! And once I had someone get out of her car and the first thing she said to me was "Did you know you have a ghost in your house?" (Yeah, old news. It's harmless.) You couldn't see it, but you could tell it was there.

Occasionally the Nasty would come indoors -- a friend who is a practicing witch told me to burn sage to get rid of it. Lo and behold, that works! My biochem background immediately wanted to know what chemical the the Nasty doesn't like that's in sage smoke. Wouldn't that be an interesting exercise -- try each compound alone and in tandem until the right "exorcism" formula is discovered.

There's an "I thought I heard you calling" that comes by my 'new' place once in a while. It had lots of fun with the concrete crew when we were pouring my big slab, to the point that it was entertaining to watch. I finally had to tell them to ignore it, no one is actually yelling for you!! cuz no one was getting any work done. It also pestered the cleaning crew in the rental house, but they knew about it from prior experience, and ignored it. Ignore it long enough, and it gets bored and leaves.

Last month I came home to find some Nasty had been in my house and had knocked over and moved some stuff, and had turned on the heater in the bathroom. (Not something that can happen by accident, the switch is up at eye level and out of the way.)

I tend to be very slow to believe in anything like this, and it takes a lot of convincing to get past my skeptic radar, especially with my atheist bent. But I have come to think there are "things" out there that we don't yet understand, and some manifest as what we call "ghosts" or "spirits" or sometimes even "gods", or maybe just "creepy feelings". They're not supernatural (tho some may be parasites), they're just another sort of critter, living on the fringe of the world we can see. Kindof like the array of weird creatures that live at the bottom of the ocean, out of everyday sight. Without the right equipment to catch and view them, they're just legends.

Tho I'd still say that 99% of what people report is just their imagination, or a misinterpretation of a natural event.

A good read in the SF end of the subject: Nopalgarth (aka The Brains of Earth) by Jack Vance. Sure makes you think twice about exorcising our native "ghosts".

Reziac, you told that story so well, when I heard the thunder, I almost got scared. What reality. Tell us more.

[Walter Greenspan]

.
.
Have a Mystery Bus Trip to an unspecified ghost town or otherwise scary area.
.
.

[Reziac]

Originally Posted by Walter Greenspan

.
.
Have a Mystery Bus Trip to an unspecified ghost town or otherwise scary area.
.
.

That's actually a very good idea. Maybe run it like a Murder Mystery dinner, except as a field trip -- have some folks act out the events, then everyone gets to try to figure out what the ghost-of-the-day's real story is, either individually or as teams. Whodunit? Why is the ghost still haunting the place? Use your imagination here, there's no end of ways something like this could be handled.

Locally, these Murder Mystery Dinners are always packed even at $75/seat. And the food ain't nothin' special. And personally I think the concept of a "Ghost town field trip" is a lot more interesting!

[severdsoul]

That is a great idea... lots of old ghost towns around here... hmm very interesting.
I am going to have to do some thinking and planing on this one..
and email a few officals to see what the rules are on group trips to ghost towns..

[severdsoul]

I agree Reziac a lot of what is reported is nothing more than every day stuff that can be explained, although i have to admit, i have seen some things and have a few recordings that just blow the mind.
On instance i was helping a mother and son , they reported their house was haunted, with a man, no guy lived in the house, so after a while of going through the obvious i had her do EVP's, fist one got a male voice.. which was interesting.. then i suggested white noise, radio off station kind of quiet in the back ground.. some times this helps.. what i got back blew my mind... the next day she sent the recording and i was going through it and you hear the male voice say "how dose this dang thing work" It knew the radio was in the room and on and was trying to figure out how to change the station, or turn it off or something.. just amazing.. but most as you say are nothing more than standard sounds and occurances.

[Reziac]

That's pretty funny! Musta been visiting from a previous century.

That reminds me of when my house ghost did not like my choice of TV... I was channel-surfing with nothing much to watch, and finally settled on an old horror film where at the end, the house burns down. After a while I became aware that the house ghost had shuffled out of the middle bedroom (it lived in the closet there, and it moved in slow motion at best) and was quite upset, doing its ghostly equivalent of hopping from one foot to the other. Apparently it knew this movie and did not approve of the ending! Okay, fine, I don't need to watch it... I changed the channel, and the ghost shuffled back into its room, all happy again.

That's when I began to think it was some sort of wood spirit (literally). This house was all solid wood interior, quite unusual.

This house ghost could not go thru walls or closed-and-latched doors, tho I'm not sure if that was inherent or because it tried, in its poor way, to imitate people. If I shut its bedroom door so it couldn't get out, it would become unhappy (tho never angry). It could push the closet door open but that was the limit of its "powers". It liked company and was not happy when I moved (tried to shut the door in my face once, when I was carting my stuff out), probably because I was the first resident in years that wasn't hostile to it. I invited it to move with me but apparently it couldn't leave the house.

The Nasty in the tree was something else entirely. Normally you could walk under the tree, it was trimmed up high enough. But you didn't dare do so at night, you'd get a stick in the eye. Visitors who didn't know about it but happened to walk under that particular tree (an otherwise unremarkable elm) would mutter and look behind themselves, as if they expected to be attacked.