All Faculty Excerpts

Ghosthunter

Gotham Humor teacher John Kachuba's new book Ghosthunters: On the Trail of Mediums, Dowsers, Spirit Seekers and Other Investigators of America’s Paranormal World, was recently released by Career Press, Inc. Despite the slightly humorous title, it’s not a humor book, but a real investigation into the paranormal scene and why it holds such fascination for so many people. Armed with wit and skepticism, John is the perfect guide into the ghosthunting world.

If you’re up for some Halloween atmosphere, read this passage where John and some paranormal investigators arrive at a supposedly haunted farmhouse in Ohio:


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Friday, May 13, 2005

It was dusk on an unseasonably warm day as Sherri Brake-Recco, her husband Frank Recco, and I bumped up the gravel road in Sherri’s black Toyota 4Runner. I was riding shotgun. Through the windshield I could see the daylight quickly fading behind the old blue farmhouse that squatted on a patch of lawn surrounded by fields left fallow. A handful of shaggy pine trees fringed the house.

“This is it,” Sherri said, as she turned the Toyota onto the lawn. “I wonder if anyone is here yet.”

“The lights are on inside,” Frank said, leaning over the front seat.

We got out of the truck.

There was a pickup truck parked alongside a small outbuilding. Behind it stood a lone rusted silo, the top missing. I noticed dark clouds suddenly descending upon the forested hillsides in the distance and felt a cold breeze spring up. A flash of lightning sliced through the gathering gloom. Thunder grumbled over the fields. A few drops of rain fell. Appropriate for Friday the thirteenth, I thought.

“Let’s see if we can beat the rain,” Sherri said. She opened the back of the truck to retrieve her equipment.

Frank and I didn’t move.

As we stood there watching the storm swarm up over the hills, a towering figure came lumbering from around back of the outbuilding. A bear, I thought, but no, the figure was human. The guy stood six feet tall. He wore muddy work boots, jeans with suspenders, and an electric blue t-shirt that could not prevent his belly from hanging over his belt. He came closer, revealing a gray Willie Nelson beard and blue and white bandana tied around a head of thinning hair.

He carried a rifle.

“We’re dead,” said Frank.

But the man didn’t shoot. Instead, as the car carrying our other team members, Vince and Hannah, pulled in beside Sherri’s truck, he offered to help us bring some of the gear inside the house. His name was Larry and he maintained the abandoned farmhouse for the owner. We quickly dubbed him Big Larry, since the man who had asked Sherri to come out and investigate the farmhouse was also named Larry.

I figured it was a lucky thing he didn’t shoot us in the rapidly gathering dark and attributed our good luck to the bird that had defecated on my shirt only an hour before as we ate our dinner on the deck of a biker bar in town. Italian custom declares such a disgusting occasion—the bird crap, not the biker bar—to be auspicious. The cornfields of Ohio were a far cry from Italy but I’m half-Italian, so I went with it.

The rain was starting to come down harder now as we lugged the rest of our gear inside, piling it up on a table in the little parlor. Tripod, video-cam, digital cameras, tape recorders, EMF (electromagnetic frequency) meters, thermometers, flashlights, dowsing rods, and of course, chocolate chip cookies, coffee, and a cooler of cold drinks. We were prepared.
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To buy Ghosthunters online, visit bn.com.  To learn more about John and his book (and a UNICEF auction for his ghosthuntermobile on ebay), click here: johnkachuba.com