Of ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night, dear Lord, deliver us.
--An old Scottish prayer
Do you believe in ghosts? What is a ghost? If you have a ghost in your house, what should you do? Christina Watson is the Director of the Ohio Ghost Hunters. The OGH is a group of investigators who travel the buckeye state, and elsewhere, in search of ghosts, spooks and and other paranormal activity.
CASEY REDMOND: So tell me about your group.
CHRISTINA WATSON: The Ohio Ghost Hunters is a group of paranormal investigators ranging from myself, who is a physical medium, to skeptics to scientists, the people who like to use the fancy gadgets, to sensitives and empaths. These are people who feel but don't really see the entities. They feel what the entities are feeling. I think we have, right now, close to twenty on our
team and growing. We go to people's homes and help them with their paranormal issues. They seek us out. We have a website,
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. They fill out a form then I call them. I will interview them and we'll get them on the schedule. We will go to their home and perform an investigation. We specialize in cleansing. We burn sage, we say Catholic prayers and nine times out of ten, it works. For about six weeks, you will have some residual negative energy that will continue to leave the home. They might see anything from balls of light to dark shadows and that stuff is just continuing to leave the home based on the kosher salt, the black salt and the red brick dust that we lay down and based on the anointing oil and holy water we use. So these types of things will get them to continue to leave.
CASEY: You mentioned that you have skeptics in your group. Why?
CHRISTINA: Skeptics are the people who help us vet our evidence. These people are very important to our team because they allow us to question everything. I can tell you that personally, when I first joined the group, I was a full on believer. I have always been a believer. But the skeptics have helped me to truly vet the evidence down to, 'What do we really have here?' Is this really a picture of something or is that the flash bouncing off the window behind that person. The skeptics are truly important to the team because they will question everything, so we are providing our clients with the best possible evidence we can.
CASEY: How long has the group been in existence?
CHRISTINA: We have been around between six and eight years. Our founder, Peggy Lynnae, founded the organization and she recently turned it over to myself and kind of stepped down. She still does some things with us, some investigations or if we do a public ghost hunt. We try and do a couple of those a year. We sell some tickets and try to get our public involved because we do have quite a following.
CASEY: Tell me about yourself. Did you see ghosts when you were a child?
CHRISTINA: I can remember being, maybe, about seven or eight years old and I was in my Grandmother's small apartment and I saw a full body apparition of a tall slender man and I didn't know who the man was. At that time, my Grandfather was alive,
everybody I knew that I could think of at that time was alive, and I didn't put two and two together. I've seen a lot of things in my life, they've never scared me, I've never been afraid of it and I've always sought out the paranormal. It's always been a passion of mine because I've always felt we're not alone, not in the UFO sense, as far as entities and spooks and the ghosts, whatever you want to call them. I always feel like, maybe, some people are stuck in limbo when they pass because they have unfinished
business. I got involved with the team maybe three, three and a half years ago and I learned I'm an empath, a sensitive. I can feel what the entities can feel. I went on my first investigation with the team and it was in Harveysburg, Ohio. It's just a small town outside of Waynesville and this town is super tiny, there might be maybe fifty people there. I went to this investigation and it was kind of scary. The entity was large and reminded me of The Undertaker from WWE wrestling. Very tall like seven, seven and a half foot gentleman, broad shoulders, big tall hat and he had on
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| The Undertaker |
like a long trench coat. He was big and mean and very upset that we were there. At one point, we were all outside and there was beating and banging and there was nobody in the home, no animals, nobody. We have all of this on EVP. This was my first investigation and that was the first entity that I could actually see.
CASEY: Were you scared?
CHRISTINA: It was partially scary but when you have these gifts and abilities, you realize that any entity will feed off of fear because fear is a type of energy. So, you can't allow yourself to be scared. After leaving that evening, I threw myself into meditation because it is a great way to grow your abilities.
CASEY: What do you think ghosts are?
CHRISTINA: I think there is a couple different answers for that. It could be if you have a female in the home and she is going through that female change and is super stressed out, she could create a PK manifestation. Which is basically her creating her own, not entity, but energy. And her making things happen without knowing it.
CASEY: What is the second thing you this a ghost might be?
CHRISTINA: A lot of times when people pass they pass rather quickly and abruptly and they haven't had a chance to get their unfinished business in order. They are kind of stuck in limbo or purgatory and they feel like they have to finish something before they cross over. Sometimes my team will come in and that's what we'll find, they don't realize they are dead.
CASEY: How do you know?
CHRISTINA: I'll have a conversation with them. Me, being a physical medium, I can see them and talk to them both. Sometimes, I'll just have to come right out and be very blunt and say, 'Do you realize that you are dead?' Sometimes they will say
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| photo from a OGH investigation |
yes but I have this, this and this I need to take care of and I'll have to tell them, no, you don't have to take care of anything. You just need to look for the brightest light and walk right into it and all of the people who have passed before you, all your family, are going to be waiting for you.
CASEY: And that usually will do it.
CHRISTINA: Sometimes. The more negative energies will fight a little bit and that's where the cleansing comes in and we have to force them.
CASEY: Explain what the cleansing is.
CHRISTINA: Our team uses a white candle and the white candle is known to draw out the negative energies in a room. We use sage. Sage is typically used with a lot of different teams. It's used to also push out negative energies from a room or a space. You burn the sage and you walk from room to room and you burn it from corner to corner and you say Catholic prayers. We say the prayer against all evil.
CASEY: It's interesting that there is a Catholic bent to that. So you draw from different things.
CHRISTINA: Absolutely, we do. We have a pagan, a lady who considers herself a witch, we have Catholics, Christians and people who don't have a faith based belief.
CASEY: Let's say, I think I have a ghost in my house. I contact your group and then what happens?
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| Ohio Ghost Hunters |
CHRISTINA: First of all, I would interview you and make sure you're not on any medications that would cause you to hallucinate. I would make sure that you are not on any street drugs. I would ask you how long it's been going on. I would ask you have you used a Ouija board and you would probably ask me, 'Well no. Does it count if I used one when I was fifteen?' Well absolutely it does. Ouija boards are not just a toy and that's a big issue with today's society. Many people are not educated on a Ouija board, it's actually not a toy.
CASEY: It's funny, because when I was a kid we had one because my parents thought it was just a board game and we actually used to play with it when I was, like, six and seven years old. I don't think they had any idea what it was.
CHRISTINA: I think many of us have used one at one point not knowing or realizing what it really was or what it was used for. But if it's used regularly, even one time, you can open a portal and things will continue to come through and they're not nice. In that instance you can actually get an attachment, that's an entity that will attach itself to the human and then we have to do a detachment. It's not an exorcism because we do not do that but it can be pretty intense.
CASEY: So after you vet the people, what is the next step?
CHRISTINA: I would ask them to give me two dates that they would be available on a Saturday evening. We start our investigations, typically, at 7pm and I would let them know that sometimes they run 'til twelve, one, two, three O'Clock in the morning. It just depends on the amount of activity we are getting, how receptive the entities are. Sometimes we get there and the word is mum. Sometimes we get ready to leave and then all the activity starts to happen. We've gotten ready to leave and my whole metal case of equipment has physically picked up off a chair and been thrown. There have been cases where we've arrived and everybody wants to talk.
CASEY: Now do the home owners stay or leave?
CHRISTINA: We leave it up to them. Sometimes it's good to have them as a trigger object so they can stay and ask questions and we can get more out of the entities. Other times, we don't need them to stay.
CASEY: Do you charge a certain amount for the service?
CHRISTINA: No, everything we do is free of charge.
CASEY: Are there areas of Ohio that have more paranormal activity then others?
CHRISTINA: Hamilton is a really haunted place. Cincinnati has an incredible amount of haunted locations. The Cincinnati Music Hall it is incredibly haunted. I think it has been featured on tons
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| Loveland Castle |
of shows but if you ever get to go their it is an incredible place. There is also a particular place in Loveland, the Loveland Castle, it is also haunted. There is also some legends like the legend of Lick Road and that is around Kemper Road in Cincinnati and that is a fabulous place to go and investigate.
CASEY: How would someone go about joining your group?
CHRISTINA: Just reach out. I believe there is a link on our website. A lot of people just go through Facebook and they post something on our Facebook page randomly and I give them our
e-mail. They can e-mail me at
christinawogh@gmail.com and tell me why they want to join, if they have abilities or not or if they're skeptics and we'll interview them and bring them on a trial investigation.
CASEY: Do you have any events coming up?
CHRISTINA: We are working in collaboration with the Boy Scouts of America and the Knights Of Columbus for the Mount Healthy Haunted Hall. We will be doing a meet and greet there on September 28th.
Ohio Ghost Hunters Facebook Page
Casey's Website
