For the last four years, I’ve followed ECPS around, pointing my camera in team members’ faces every chance I get: at Dunkin’, in frigid cemeteries, at historical sites, during community presentations, and in the countless private residences we’re called upon to investigate. Sadly, I’ll soon be moving many states away, and my time with ECPS will end.
Although I don’t think I’ve ever captured a spirit on film, I like to think that I have sometimes managed to convey the spirit of ECPS. These people have become beloved friends, and I’m grateful that I have so many photos to remind me of my time with them.
Let’s look at a few of my favorite photos from the last four years:
I love how Chris looks like the leader of a very cool, and maybe slightly illegal, secret organization in this photo. In reality, he’s showing David and DJ some of his automatic writing and drawing.
The lighting gives this photo a Renaissance feel that is further amplified by Sara’s gesture. I like the relationship between the menacing spotlit tree and the Dunkin’ items, which seem lit from within, and I like how the color of Sara’s glasses echoes the color of the door. There’s just a lot happening here!
I’ve taken MANY cat pictures on investigations, and while this blurry image is not the best of them from a technical perspective, I think it might still be my favorite. It’s just such an accurate depiction of what it feels like to have too much caffeine and then hear a scary noise (something that happens every investigation).
This house was HUGE – if you stood on one end and screamed, someone at the other end of the house could not hear you at all. We genuinely lost track of each other while exploring these halls. Adding to the inherent eeriness of the large space was the fact that this house was being renovated and was totally empty save for construction equipment and these spectral plastic doorways. Drafts blew through the empty halls and rustled the plastic; out of the corner of your eye the movement looked like a ghost every time.
This is one of the first pictures I took of David, during a client debrief in 2018. I soon noticed that he wasn’t camera-shy and was willing to cooperate with me to get great shots, and thus began a long collaborative effort to capture his “good side” (we think it’s his left – see next picture).
I like how this looks like it’s from a news article about some grave social issue affecting residents of a small town in Wyoming, but it’s actually just a picture of David deciding whether to have another donut during a break in the investigation.
Ghostbusters just happened to be on TV during this investigation! I couldn’t help snapping a pic. During my time with ECPS I have—partly out of necessity—developed a great enthusiasm for taking pictures in dark spaces with just one or two concentrated light sources (e.g., flashlights, device signal lights, TVs, and streetlights).
I took this photo during one of my very first investigations. This beautiful old house included some modern renovated portions, and on an upper floor the new and old sections were connected by a jagged hole in the wall that one could climb through; the whole situation was very much like something out of a great YA novel. This was also the night that an Amazon Alexa (of whose existence we were unaware) loudly interrupted a tense moment of spiritual divination to ask us whether it should play some songs by the band Queen. Read the room, Alexa!
In the service of our clients, we are sometimes called to visit places that look like horror movie sets. This was one of those times.
I just think this picture of Eli is cool. I like the unusual color and quality of the light that the window cast on the wall, and I like that Eli’s glasses act as in intermediary between the two “windows.” Finally, I like his pose, which inhabits a space somewhere between “pensive” and “gunslinger.”
Uh oh. This one is horrifying. Straight out of a Paranormal Activity movie. That’s my cue to end the blog before things get any weirder—may the record show that, in my infinite kindness, I did not share any of the hilarious blooper pics I have of each and every team member. That’s friendship for you! See you around.
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