As a child I grew up hearing tales of ghostly encounters that my mother and grandmother had while living in an old home in Conway, Arkansas.  Although the house was divided into a duplex, my grandparents occupied both sides and my mother grew up there. One half of the house always felt warm and inviting, while the other side was majorly creepy.  I couldn't stand to go into the back section at all.  I can remember entering the kitchen on the creepy side at a very young age and feeling terrified, like something was about to reach out and grab me.  I avoided that side as much as possible.  It is in one of these creepy rooms where my mother woke up to something holding her hand, griping it tightly, causing her to literally squeeze her hand out of the icy grip.  She has never forgotten it nor the singing that she heard numerous times coming out of the corner of the room.  They were convinced that the house was actively haunted, but I was too young to understand such things or really care.

There was one interesting thing that happened to me personally at my grandmother's house while playing in the backyard one day about the age of 4.  My mother and grandmother saw me playing at the fence and talking.  At first they thought I was just playing, but upon further viewing, they decided that it looked as if I was having a conversation with someone.  When I came inside, they asked who I had been talking to.  I answered that a very sweet old lady had been there and yes, we had been talking for quite awhile.  This disturbed my family since they never observed anyone else around the fence, but wrote it off as a playful imagination.  A few days later I was looking through our family Bible and from out of the pages dropped a photo of an elderly woman.  I got excited and told them that this was definitely the woman who had been speaking with me in the backyard that day.  My mother and grandmother were shocked, especially since the photo was one of my great-grandmother, someone I had never met or seen a picture of. She had been dead for over 10 years. Although I can't remember the encounter, I believe that it is possible that she was visiting me.  I think that children are allowed much more contact with the spirit world than adults.  Perhaps it's because we aren't easily frightened at that age, or that we will eventually forget the encounter ever took place.  Who knows, but it is comforting to know that our loved ones on the other side can visit and sometimes communicate.

Why did I start ghost hunting?  Like I said, I grew up with stories, but until our family lived in a very actively haunted house, I didn't really believe it, they were just stories.  Living there and experiencing ghostly activity on a daily basis changed my life forever.  I was fascinated by the occurrences and decided to do some research on ghosts on the Internet.  I found a few sites back then that posted photos and evp's as evidence, but I was never thoroughly convinced that anything that I saw or heard was actually real.  I wanted to believe, but the sleuth detective in me just had to know for sure....is it real?  After months of frustrating searches for credible evidence, I decided that the only way that I would ever know the truth was to go out and do it myself.  Starting the first paranormal research group in Arkansas has proven to be one of the best decisions I've ever made.

One of the most perplexing things about this research is the unpredictability of paranormal phenomenon.  One time a location will be extremely active and then the next time we go there, it is absolutely devoid of anything even slightly supernatural.  It is one of the greatest mysteries to me and hopefully someday we will figure out what exactly happens to make the veil thinner between the dimensions.

Over the years I have seen the interest in the paranormal explode.  We are thrilled that this field of study is becoming widely accepted and even respected.  My quest for irrefutable evidence of an afterlife is an ongoing commitment and something that I look forward to sharing with many others in the years to come. 

I'm a single mother of two precious little girls, and I conduct Ghost Tours in downtown Hot Springs, Arkansas.  Click on the link below if you would like learn more about what I do.  Being a paranormal researcher and tour guide has given me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis.  It's not only the research that I find rewarding, but also enlightening people about the spirit world around us gives me great satisfaction.

For those of you experiencing unexplained activity in your homes, I suggest keeping an Encounters journal, which you will write in every time something significant happens.  It's so easy to forget all the things that happen, also writing it down while it's fresh helps to keep the details from becoming fuzzy. 

Please contact me anytime if I can be of any assistance with a haunting or if you would like to apply for membership.  Meeting new people with a similar passion for the paranormal is what keeps me going.  Your enthusiasm helps to renew mine!

www.hotspringsghosttour.com