Most would think chasing ghosts and other spooks can undoubtedly only lead you down a dead end street. For KAPS, Kentucky Area Paranormal Society, it led to a live weekly radio show on CBS Radio and a dedicated national and international following.
From Georgetown and London, Ky., brothers Tom and Dave Jones, co-founders of KAPS, are broadcast via the Internet and the airwaves all over this world, and maybe others. Part "Car Talk with Click and Clack" and part sÈance, "KAPS Paranormal Radio" entertains such guests as Barry Fitzgerald from the "Ghost Hunters International" television show and Erin Gray (who played Colonel Wilma Deering from "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century") while touching on subjects ranging from apparitions and ectoplasm to spirituality and close encounters of the third kind.
But it wasn't always so glam for the group, which also includes Tom's wife, Bobbie. Incidentally, the society's instigation and Tom and Bobbie's second anniversary in November share the same occasion. A picture taken of Bobbie in front of a portrait during the rehearsal at the Bell House, just outside downtown Lexington, revealed eerie imagery.
"I was blurry, the little boy standing next to me was blurry," she said. "But the picture was nice and clear. In it you can see a face, what looks like a little child's face."
Somebody who was working at the rehearsal stoked their curiosity by telling them about a rumored spirit that jumped down the stairs and into walls. They were rapt.
"We had no paranormal experience, period. We said, 'You know what would be cool? If we took a cooler of beer, sat at the foot of the stairs and wait. But we've never been back," Dave said.
The gang didn't go back to the Bell House, but their interest in things that go bump in the night (or day) was roused. They started researching other paranormal groups online - how they conducted investigations, what sort of equipment they utilized. They also started reading up on notorious local haunts, namely Lexington's Eastern State Hospital, a purported hot bed of supernatural activity. They acquired some basic gear (an audio recording device, a digital camera), got some permission to be on the premises and gave ghost chasing the old college try.
Popular theory in this line of work holds that most specters and anomalies aren't going to be detected by the human eye or ear, at least not all the time. Ghosts no longer have their physical bodies, which means they don't use lungs to push air through vocal folds. Many in the field maintain that otherworldly beings communicate on a frequency we can't detect with our ears, but one that can be picked up with audio recording devices.
After KAPS's visit to Eastern State Hospital, going back through the recordings, they distinctly heard an exhale of breath, and a voice say something along the lines of "Oh, gee."
"We said, 'Man this is cool as hell,'" Dave said. "And from that point on we were hooked. Now we've got enough equipmentÖI've got a pickup truck and the equipment fills up the entire bed."
Their current arsenal includes infrared cameras, EMF (electromagnetic field) meters, thermometers, motion detectors, night vision scopes, cameras and scads of other recording devices. As their interest and inventory grew, so did the scope of their travels. Within less than two years, KAPS has conducted investigations in Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, Michigan, Nevada and all over Kentucky, and hosted national and international paranormal societies in regional investigations.
KAPS also began conducting investigations in private residences, so long as the property owner contacted them first. Sometimes people just want to know why a door will shut of its own accord or why they have the overbearing sensation of another presence in parts of the house. When the investigators show up, they immediately begin to look for natural causes for these scenarios, like the house being built close to a lot of power lines, which has been documented to instill a sense of paranoia. Surprisingly, most residents are thrilled when KAPS reports that unexplainable phenomena are occurring in their house. "It backs them up that they're not mad or something," Tom said.
With any private investigation, permission is always sought before posting evidence online to their Web site, which is now, with forums and chat rooms and other multimedia, an integral part of their investigations and presence in the paranormal world (check out their chat room before a live show).
Evidence obtained from public investigations, like at the Paris Tuberculosis Hospital or the Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, is immediately disseminated throughout the Web to be debunked or deemed unexplainable. And involvement in the paranormal world is a sprawling and hyper-interactive niche on the Web. Each group or individual adds a further layer of scrutiny to submitted evidence, which is not only tolerated, it's welcomed with open arms.
"If there's a rational explanation for something in question, we love that," Tom said. "We love it when people debunk our evidence; we want that, it just makes our other material that much more credible."
To give their evidence and investigations a little more credence, Tom and Dave started a weekly, hour-long podcast, "KAPS Paranormal Radio," early this year where they discussed recent findings and other happenings. Each episode was recorded remotely - Tom lives in Georgetown and Dave in London, Ky. Admittedly, when it came to recording or broadcast experience, the two had a "resounding none." And it was an immediate trial and error experience, as can be witnessed listening to early episodes available in the archives.
But the sound quality improved after some tweaking, and the show moved to a live format via the Para X Network online where people could call in and talk about their own paranormal experiences. "After that, it took off quick," Tom said. "The interaction, that's what people like."
Guests grew in notoriety, which included Barry Fitzgerald from "Ghost Chasers International," whom Tom remembers being very bashful about contacting at first. "I'm thinking, 'This guy isn't going to e-mail me back.' But in about five minutes, bang, he said, 'Yeah, I'll be on there.' I about fell out of my chair when he e-mailed me back. Now we converse two or three times a week."
And KAPS's notoriety grew as the group started making regional and national conference appearances. After one recent appearance at the Michigan Paranormal Conference, after doing a live, 12-hour broadcast, a psychic with a show on CBS Radio gave Tom and Dave a contact at the company and told them they should pitch a show. "I said yeah right," Tom said. "So here I go again, I e-mailed the guy at CBS. They started listening to the show and they loved it. They said, 'Come on guys, we're going to put you on the network."
In mid-September, "KAPS Paranormal Radio" had their first show, which now runs for four hours, on CBS Radio. The group acknowledges that fame and fortune won't come knocking, but as long as they stay true to their impetus, they'll get closer and closer their motivation: the truth.
"You don't get rich in the paranormal, it just doesn't happen," Dave said. "This makes the paranormal more mainstream. Pushing this kind of envelope out there to folk who are more and more receptive to the other side - that's what we're after."
And this radio show isn't the end all for KAPS. Future plans include utilizing a video component in their broadcast and getting some exposure on satellite radio. And maybe, another trip back to the Bell House.
"We need to. Back where it all began," Dave said. "We could broadcast live, and have that cooler of beer there sitting at the bottom of the steps. Just like we planned."
Kentucky Area Paranormal Society Online
See videos, pictures and hear archived podcasts at www.kapsonline.com.
Hear the live "KAPS Paranormal Radio" show at www.psychiconair.com, www.para-x.com from 8 p.m. - Midnight on Sundays.