Name: Tonya K.
Age: 34
Degree/Certification: B.E.S. in Educational and Counseling Psychology from the University of Missouri-Columbia; graduate work in Psychology at Villanova University; M.S. in Education from Drexel University
Occupation: Behavior Specialist Consultant
Marital Status: Married
Date Joined: September 2001
Purpose for Joining: During my lifetime, I have had experiences that I have been unable to explain. My purpose for involvement with the PGHA is to seek explanations for these experiences through serious research. My background in Psychology fuels my interest in studying the paranormal, the people who study the paranormal, and others who claim to have experienced events of a paranormal nature. I am currently conducting a review of research literature in the area of how beliefs influence perception in preparation for possible research of my own.
Experiences Prior to the PGHA: While living in a house in Ardmore, PA, I had several strange events occur. I often heard footsteps when nobody else was present in the house. The smell of strong fresh pipe smoke often greeted me when I came in through the front door (nobody living in the house at the time I lived there smoked). In one of the bedrooms on the second floor, a television came on as I walked by one morning. One Saturday afternoon, as I was home alone, I was on the third floor of the house working on the computer. I suddenly heard very loud music coming from downstairs, and was convinced that someone else had come home. I ran down the stairs, because the music was quite loud, and discovered that I was still home alone.
While living in a house in Philadelphia, I periodically heard footsteps in the hallway outside my bedroom door. One early morning, I heard the footsteps and a loud crash in the kitchen. I went out to investigate, and saw that a picture had fallen from the wall. The nail it had been hanging on was still sticking out of the wall. That picture had apparently been hanging in the same place for over two years. My roommate while I lived there vehemently claims to have seen the apparition of an elderly man wearing a fedora in the room that was my bedroom.
While I feel that I have been lucky to experience these events, my most salient brushes with the paranormal have resulted in the past two years since joining the PGHA!
Seminars / Workshops / Conferences:
2001 IGHS Ghosts of Gettysburg Conference, 2000 (November) PGHA Jim Thorpe Weekend seminar, 2001 PGHA Fort Mifflin Overnight Seminar (April and June)
Equipment Used for Ghost Hunting:
Night Owl Cyclops Compact Night Vision
Canon Elph APS camera
Raynger ST2 Infrared Thermometer
Sony Night Vision Video camera with infrared extender
RCA digital recorder
Panasonic IC Digital Recorder Sony M-527V Microcassette Recorder with external
microphone
Personal Quote:
……We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time……T. S. Eliot, Little
Gidding
"If you are awash in lost continents and channeling and UFO's and all the long litany of claims so well exposed in the Skeptical Inquirer, you may not have the intellectual room for the findings of science. You're sated with wonder"-Carl Sagan
My journey with the PGHA began as a quest for answers to difficult questions. The questions have changed and the answers have not always been what I expected, and the only certainty is that more uncertainty and detours will come along this journey. I will listen closely to the answers and follow the questions, even if they are not what I expect and lead me down a different path. I must continue to trust that my destination, however far away from my starting point, will be the place where I need to arrive. I am willing to shift my view of reality based upon what I discover empirically, even if others refuse to do so. This journey, after all, is for finding answers for myself.