Devil in the Delta by Rich Newman Page B

materialization was caught on video. It would be a great piece of evidence if the act had been recorded. Again, I noted the event and the time in my pocket notebook.
    Both of these events had happened early in the investigation, so all of us were now quite excited. What was next? The answer: not much. As is true with most paranormal cases, when you want something to happen, it usually doesn’t. We would go on and spend hours doing EVP work, roaming room to room with cameras and camcorders, coaxing spirits to do anything to let us know we weren’t alone. Unfortunately, only one other unexplainable thing would happen during this trip to the trailer.
    I was making my way down the hallway that runs past the children’s bedrooms when I thought I saw a black shape shift ahead in the darkness. It appeared to move quickly from the hallway into a side room.
    I know from past experiences that these events usually pan out to just be a trick of the light and/or my eyes attempting to adjust to a different level of darkness. On the chance that this was neither of these things, I moved quickly into the area where I saw the shadow go. This was the youngest daughter’s (Katie) bedroom.
    Moving into this room, I again saw the strange black mass shift—this time toward a closet. I was now sure this was no natural shadow. Whipping out a K2-style EMF detector, I walked toward the closet door. EMF stands for “electromagnetic field” and most paranormal researchers believe that spirits, in order to exist, must give off this type of energy. As a result, carrying a plethora of assorted EMF detectors during an investigation is a ghost hunting standard.
    As I slowly crept toward the closet door, I stared at the device in my hand. It was when I reached the outside of the door that the K2 lit up like the Fourth of July. It had picked up an unusually strong reading—but only for a moment. Then it died completely. During our walkthrough of the trailer, we had found no EMF levels above 1.0 milligauss (and this is natural since even well-insulated wiring can give off a low EMF reading), but here there had been a short, sustained spike that literally maxed out the detector.
    Though I would spend the next fifteen minutes trying to figure out what caused the spike—or where the possible entity may have gone—the single occurrence was all that happened. The EMF detector would pick up nothing else out of the ordinary and I would see no more strange shadows.
    After hours of nothing else of paranormal significance happening, the night began to wear on me and the other investigators. At one point, I took a lap throughout the trailer to check in on the Mississippi team and was greeted by sets of bleary eyes and yawns. Blake was actually asleep on the living room couch, still clutching an audio recorder. It seemed that nothing more of note was going to happen this evening.
    In the living room, Joanne wrung her hands with worry. She couldn’t understand why “nothing was happening.” I explained to her that this sometimes happened when new people came into a place and that it’s common to think nothing is happening during an investigation, but then discover later during a review of our audio and video surveillance that we did, indeed, have something paranormal going on. This was when Joanne said something that completely took me by surprise.
    A Demonic Moth and a Practical Joke
    I had just taken a seat on the couch when Joanne stated that she did not understand why nothing was happening in the trailer since a “demon” was watching us “right now.” This was the first mention of anything to do with a demon or anything religious, so it immediately struck me as an odd thing for her to say. Cautiously, I took a look around the trailer. Nothing seemed amiss.
    When I asked her where this demon was, she pointed at the wall directly over my head. Cautiously, I peeked in that direction. There was a moth