Terry Hinkle, ex-radio host, TV show host and ghost expert, has had more encounters with ghosts than he can count on his fingers.
Starting in 2000, Hinkle was the host of a radio show called “Shadow World” every Saturday night for three hours. They listened and told ghost stories, talked to other ghost experts and eventually conducted live ghost hunts. Before his first live ghost hunt, Hinkle was unsure whether or not he believed in ghosts.
“I was kind of in a grey zone,” Hinkle said. “I didn’t believe, but wasn’t closed off to the idea of ghosts and spirits.”
The event that changed his mind was a film him and his team did for his television show. His team was made up of a psychic, a cameraman and a group of Washington University students that studied the paranormal and made cameras that were made to catch everything on tape, especially ghosts or entities.
The first ghost hunt took place at a Hinkle’s friend’s new cabin they built. Inside, their daughter had supposedly been talking to ghosts. The team brought their EMF (electromagnetic field) detectors and cameras and the psychic worked to attract the ghost into the room. One of the college students stood in the room with the psychic and watched the numbers on the detector as a spirit came closer to the room. Within seconds, the student claimed the detector became too hot to hold and it shot out of her hands into the air at a perfect 90 degree angle. Later, the footage caught on a camera showed an orb move quickly into the room directly at the the student and rise into the air with the detector.
“It was so crazy to see something happen right in front of my eyes that we could not explain, then look on the BHS monitor (the screen the showed the camera footage) and see the cause of it all,” Hinkle said. “It’s nothing like you could’ve imagined.”
Because of this event, Hinkle immediately started believing in ghosts. In one of his many interviews he did on his radio show, a man explained to him why he believed ghosts and spirits still roam the earth. He said it has been proven that energy is not created nor destroyed; therefore when people die, their energies do not die with them. This concept has been tested many times by experiments that took people on their deathbeds, put them on a scale, and measured them before they died and right after they died. Every person lost between 6-8 ounces. It is believed this is because the energy escapes the dead bodies because the energy cannot die.
In another one of Hinkle’s ghosts hunts he went to the museum of the Titanic which has been notorious for being haunted. The BHS monitor showed around six orbs against the wall and a very tall orb in the back of the room, almost hiding behind the other orbs. After seconds of watching the orbs on the monitor, the tall orb quickly traveled straight to the camera and looked as if it passed through the camera. Although they had seen the live footage, when the team tried to replay the video later that night, it had all been erased. The team believes the orb, or ghost, erased it.
According to Hinkle, losing footage and battery life is not uncommon when working around ghosts because they are infamous for sucking the energy out of batteries. The team uses strong batteries that have hours of life, and bring many backups. They have to park their radio van far away from any place they are doing a ghost hunt because the van and equipment in the van could lose battery power after minutes.
Hinkle does not believe ghosts can hurt you, and he believes they are only here because they have nowhere else to go.
“When I witness these spirits I can’t help but ask myself if they are ghosts or guardian angels,” Hinkle said.
Looking for advice, Hinkle’s neighbor, an older woman who lost her husband 30 years ago, told him she had been feeling his presence in her house. He advised her to tell the spirit she is open to seeing him.
“I told her she needed to tell him every night she loved him and truly missed him,” Hinkle said. “And it had to come from the heart.”
After a week of not seeing the woman, she showed up at Hinkle’s front door with tears streaming down her face. She told Hinkle she talked to her husband the night before for three hours, and she finally felt closure with his death.
Hinkle continued to study ghosts for a couple years and became interested in quantum physics. He believes it helps him understand the concept of spirits a little better.
For many non-believers, quantum physics has answered a lot of questions, Hinkle said.
“Quantum physics is the theory that nothing is proven until it is seen. Everything else is only a theory,” Hinkle said. “And I think that explains a lot about spirits and entities.”
