Area man tries to pin down proof of the paranormal

In September 2003, Christopher Bohar was in Gettysburg trying to capture a ghost’s voice on a tape recorder.

Bohar, 20, said he was standing alone in a wheat field where between 2,000 and 3,000 soldiers had died in the Civil War.

He asked if any spirit was there.

He got a response, he said.

When Bohar played back the tape, he heard a voice say the name “Grouszki,” which he later learned was the name of a Massachusetts soldier killed in the wheat field during the battle.

The Gettysburg incident was one of several paranormal investigations Bohar has conducted, he said.

Bohar, who lives in Freemansburg, is one of the founding members of the Northampton County Paranormal Research and Investigation Team, a group of amateur paranormal investigators.

He said the group was founded in the late 1990s but didn’t really get up and running until 2001. It now has about 25 members and has conducted investigations at private homes and cemeteries, mostly in Lehigh and Northampton counties, he said.

Bohar estimated that 80 percent of their investigations reveal no paranormal activity.

“The mind plays tricks on people,” he said.

Bohar said he and the fellow members of his team approach each investigation as “Scully-esque” skeptics, a reference to the female FBI agent on the television show “The X-Files.”

The team does not use psychics, he said.

“That’s quackery,” he said.

His group also does not do exorcisms, he said.

Instead, its members try to document spirit activity using photography.

“We basically investigate the paranormal, but we do it from a more scientific point of view,” he said.

Bohar said paranormal investigations are a part-time gig for him.

He said he studied criminal justice at Northampton Community College but did not complete his degree. He recently landed a job at a warehouse, he said.

Bohar said he has always had an interest in the paranormal although he personally has never seen a ghost.

But his mom told him she once saw her deceased grandmother sitting on a bed in his family’s former home in Allentown, he said.

Bohar said he has had some ghostly experiences at cemeteries.

One night, he and his friend thought they saw someone moving in front of a mausoleum at Bethlehem Memorial Park Cemetery, but when he zoomed in on the form with his camcorder, it disappeared, he said.

He also said his group has turned up pictures with so-called orbs of light at cemeteries.

Researches are divided on whether these orbs are ghosts or natural phenomenon, such as rain droplets or dust particles, Bohar said.

But James Randi of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said photographs and audio records are not hard, reliable evidence of the paranormal because they can be faked so easily.

Randi, who investigates paranormal claims, has offered $1 million for proof of the paranormal.

He said documenting the paranormal is just as difficult as proving the existence of Santa Claus. “You can watch the chimney all you want, but the fat guy in the red suit is never going to show up,” he said.

In the case of paranormal activity and Santa Claus, all supporting evidence is bad, he said.

Randi, who spoke recently at Northampton Community College, said people want to believe in the paranormal because they look for magical solutions to life.

Asked what he would like to tell amateur paranormal investigators, Randi said, “I think there’s better ways to spend your time.”

Still, Katherine Ramsland, a forensic psychology professor at DeSales University, wrote in an e-mail that people who dismiss paranormal activity because of bad evidence mistake “no proof yet as no proof ever.”

“That is poor thinking on their part and also poor science. A scientist ought always to be curious and open, even as he or she retains good critical reasoning skills and a skeptical eye,” wrote Ramsland, author of “Ghost: Investigating the Other Side.”

Ramsland wrote that she thinks paranormal activity may exist, but she does not know it for a fact.

She also wrote that she has heard credible stories, but has also seen a lot of “wishful thinking” and “poor technique” passed off as science.

“The ‘evidence’ can usually be interpreted in more than one way, but here and there, a story is told or an experience is heard that isn’t easily explained by natural causes. So that keeps me interested in pursuing the possibility of paranormal activity myself,” Ramsland wrote.

William Cohea Jr. of Upper Mount Bethel Township said he is certain of other energies and spirits among us.

“We make a mistake to think we’re here alone and to think we are the chief actors in the drama,” he said.

Cohea, a former Presbyterian clergyman and founder of Columcille Megalithic Park, said he has encountered these energies but declined to talk about them.

“I don’t care to put that into writing,” he said.

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