I've been ghost hunting since March of 2005. I didn't have experiences prior, I've just always been interested in things like ghosts, UFOs, Big Foot, etc. For a long time I thought nobody would take me seriously because I didn't have any experiences, but I think it actually allowed me to think outside the box better because I didn't already believe.

After being unable to find a group to join in my area that I liked, I decided to try to start my own group. I went on some messageboards and found some people who were interested. We had our first meeting at my house to meet everyone and start making plans. Our group was called East Central Wisconsin Paranormal Investigations (ECWPI), and we had our first investigation at a metaphysical store in Oshkosh.

My second investigation was at JFK Prep in St. Nazianz. I wanted to do a good job so I contacted other paranormal investigators in Wisconsin and asked if they would help us out, and they did. The investigation was only supposed to be two nights but it became an ongoing investigation that lasted three months. Through JFK Prep I got a lot of my training and I also started to become networked with other groups in Wisconsin and to get invited on their investigations. I also got interviewed for the show Scariest Places On Earth, but the show was fake. After telling them a story about an experience I'd had, my interviewer asked me, "Okay, can you tell me it again, but can you word it like this?" They also kept trying to get another investigator from our group to say that the place was evil and you shouldn't go there. They ended up not using any of our interviews for the show.

ECWPI disbanded after a little more than a year. Getting a group started isn't as easy as it sounds. Nobody knew each other when we first started, and over the course of a year we found some people lost interest or they just didn't stay active, one guy I had to remove, and some of us just developed different methods. And there were also too many people in the group and we had to rotate who got to go. So we split into two separate groups but it was on good terms and everybody is still friends.

Four of us from ECWPI started Heartland Paranormal Investigations (HPI) in Manitowoc with one of our consultants from the old group, and my old co-founder started Fox Valley Spirit Hunters in Oshkosh. I was on nearly 20 investigations as a member of ECWPI and HPI, including occasionally getting invited along on investigations with other groups. You can read about all my previous investigations here.

Sometime during all that I started to really get into the science of ghost hunting and went back to school for Psychology and Parapsychology. I'm working on my second major in Psychology at UW-Milwaukee right now with plans to go on to grad school after that to become a therapist or guidance counselor, and I'm also taking Loyd Auerbach's Parapsychological Studies program. I'm not impressed by someone who boasts that they have a certificate in ghost hunting or parapsychology because my feeling is that ghost hunting isn't a proven science and you can't get certified in it. There are no experts. So even though I'll be getting a certificate when I complete this, I'm going to continue taking classes in Parapsychology where I can find them and just count this as one credit. Unfortunately no one offers a degree in Parapsychology anymore so you just have to major in a science and take classes and attend seminars where you can find them and build your own major.

Recently my girlfriend (now fiance) Amanda moved up here from Florida, and since we both ghost hunt we wanted to do it together. The group I was with, HPI, didn't want to add more members and then have it be like the old group where we had to rotate who got to go, so that is why we've decided to be independent together.