By day Randy Liebeck works in the law enforcement business. It is a career that has developed his skills in electronic surveillance, investigative and interviewing techniques. These skills carry over to Liebeck's other or night job, being a ghost hunter or seeker.
Liebeck's interest in ghosts began when he was about 8 years of age, spurred by reading his grandmothers copies of FATE Magazine. As Liebeck brew older, he continued to read about the paranormal and his boyhood interest grew into an adult past time.
Liebeck hasn't charged a fee for his investigations but occasionally he covers his expenses from writing and lecturing on the subject matter. But as for his investigations, Liebeck doesn't consider what he does as providing a service. Liebeck says "I am not a ghost hunter nor a house cleanser." To Liebeck it's a matter of exploring a mystery that he has a personal interest in. Plus he feels if he can help someone try to understand what might be going on in their home all the better for those concerned. As is the nature of the business, Liebeck finds himself left with more questions than answers most of the time.
Liebeck states that a lot of his time is spent listening to peoples experiences, then tries to explore with them on what might be going on in their situation. This educational process often alleviates the person's fear factor as it gets them to analyze the situation form an objective and investigative viewpoint rather than an emotional one. If the extent and frequency of the reported phenomena is enough to warrant a field investigation, Liebeck starts doing a number of procedures. First is the interviews followed by historical research. Then it's off to the target site with a team of researchers and technicians. Time spent of a case can range from one day up to two years depending on the complexity of the case.
Liebeck and his team use a wide variety of tools into heir investigations. Included are cameras, audio surveillance gear, seismic monitors, infrared detectors, electromagnetic and ion detectors. As well they team up with psychics to further the investigation. Each tool in Liebeck's duffel bag is designed to record events. These events do occur naturally or supernaturally but the motto always remains the same, that being to rule out the normal and get to the paranormal, one needs to move the event from anecdotal to evidential.
What constitutes solid evidence? Liebeck says on the purely subjective side there is an intense feeling of cold in a room where the temperature has not varied. On the objective side, Liebeck reports rapid temperature drops that can be measured on monitoring equipment. In both instances these often precede physical phenomena.
Liebeck's theory on such occurrences is that in order for the ghost to manifest itself or physically manipulate things, it has to expand energy. This energy is drawn from the air molecules in the immediate area. Liebeck says in the case of a person subjectively feeling cold, the ghost may be drawing heat energy directly from the person's body. At other times, Liebeck said ghosts will pull energy from a direct source such as batteries or other power sources in the area.
Liebeck regards himself as an open minded skeptic. He is cautious on just how much of a person's personality and memories survive intact after death is open to speculation. Liebeck says he is open to the possibility of life after death; he is not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt.
This isn't to say that Liebeck hasn't encountered some intense paranormal activity. One case involved a multiple housing haunting in Duchess County, New York. Liebeck heard an unseen entity walk across a gravel basement floor. Plus his team heard distinct sound effects as in creaking stairs when the unseen entity walked up the wooden basement steps, continuing up a second flight of steps before fading away. It had passed within inches of Liebeck, with a cold breeze that set off his magnetic field detector. The entity also passed through the body of one of the team members. The person had turned white as a sheet and had shuddered, describing the incident as a "cold, electrical tingling passing through his body."
Click on the 'NEXT' arrow for page 2 |
 |