For almost eight years, I rented an old, run–down house (built in 1912) near downtown Eugene, Oregon. The house had been divided into a duplex in the 1940s. I experienced all kinds of strange, unexplained events in the house—such as a treadmill starting up by itself, a lamp moving from side to side, and my dog barking (frequently) at something, or someone, I couldn’t see! My duplex neighbor, a woman in her early 40s, had experienced strange phenomenon in the house, too. On several occasions, she heard a woman’s voice calling her name. Her cats often stared—and looked spooked by—something she herself could not see.

One Saturday in 2004, a team of paranormal investigators, Martina and Todd Baker, drove down from Portland to investigate my house. Martina, a psychic, immediately detected the spirit of a woman roaming the house. The ghost soon made her presence clear to us in my kitchen when Todd’s EMF meter (a device often used by ghost hunters that measures electrical activity) spiked from zero to 100!

The ghost investigators recorded several ghost voices, or EVP’s (Electronic Voice Phenomenon), during their visit, too. The voices said things like: “Will they speak to me?”, “Check out the wiring” and “Lights are so flammable.” I took the messages seriously. (By the way, I should mention that literally 10 minutes before the ghost hunters showed up at my house, a light in the bathroom totally blew out—and wouldn’t work even when I installed a new light bulb.) I called an electrician the following Monday. Besides replacing the broken bathroom fixture, the electrician found three more light fixtures that needed to be replaced. He showed me a ancient, brittle wire in the kitchen socket. I asked if the wire was a fire hazard. He said that old wires like that one were the leading cause of house fires. Had “the spirits” of the house been trying to warn us about the old wires and prevent a house fire?

The following week, I did a little research at the local library. I found out that a woman named Daisy and her husband had moved into the house in the early 1920s. They lived there for almost thirty years, and they both died in the house.

People have asked me for more information about the people who investigated my haunted house. Martina and Todd Baker of the Pacific Paranormal Research Society in Portland, Oregon, did the investigation. You can read about the Bakers’ super–spooky investigation of another haunted place, an old apartment building in Portland, in my book, Haunted Houses. Check it out! The Bakers are cool!!