For Louisiana ghost hunters, every day is Halloween

“There’s a reason why we don’t do things here at night,” says Daniel Wilcox, a tour guide at Oakley Plantation in St. Francisville. “It gets creepy.”

“Good,” replies Sean Tennison, an investigator with LA Spirits.

Thus begins a recent night’s investigation at an historic plantation with a reputation for ghostly activity. LA Spirits is the state’s branch of The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) of Ghost Hunters television fame.

“I knew TAPS used the scientific, skeptical approach, and I wanted a group that employed that method,” Tennison explains. He says he’s been fascinated with ghosts since experiencing the haunting of his aunt’s home as a child. After putting in some teenage time in graveyards and spooky old homes, most people leave their ghost hunting behind, but for Tennison, it’s a pursuit that consumes his weekend nights. “That’s why I wanted to join [LA Spirits].”

LA Spirits is about as scientific as you can be when you’re searching for entities that aren’t exactly endorsed by science. The organization uses equipment such as a thermal camera, infrared cameras, infrared thermometers, electromagnetic field meters, digital voice recorders and digital still cameras to collect evidence of paranormal activity. Despite the high-tech approach—and the expense of the equipment—their service is free. Members purchase their own equipment, and the more than two dozen investigators across the state do it for the thrill of the hunt.

“Like many forms of hunting, ghost hunting is no different,” explains LA Spirits co-founder Brad Duplechien. “It can often get tedious and flat-out boring. You may go on ten investigations and not have anything strange happen. However, all it takes is one strange event to keep you interested and cause you to continue.”

One investigation close to home that did not lack in strange events was Louisiana’s Old State Capitol. Most of the evidence gathered that night came in the form of electronic voice phenomena, or EVPs, which can be heard on the LA Spirits Web site. EVPs are voices and sounds that show up later on the recording although they were not picked up by the human ear.

The most chilling EVP from the Old State Capitol goes a little something like this:

“What year is it?” an investigator asked.

“Die,” came the whispered but clear response.

Whether that was the ghost of Huey Long or a random disgruntled bureaucrat of the past is undetermined.

Care to join in? Amateurs may get their chance. Last February, LA Spirits threw Louisiana’s first paranormal convention, Le Festival d’Esprits, at Shreveport’s municipal auditorium. There, attendees went on a ghost hunt and experienced a lot of activity in the basement, former site of Shreveport’s morgue. The results are reported on their Web site, including a goose bump-inducing EVP of a hushed voice saying “get out of here.” For those who prefer to ghost hunt from the safety of an armchair in a brightly lit room, Duplechien’s 2008 book Paranormal Uncensored: A Raw Look at Louisiana Ghost Hunting details what he describes as “the dark side to ghost hunting, which is filled with quite a bit of drama, dirty tactics and eccentric individuals.” laspirits.com