Ghost World Selects Gettysburg for Conference
By Meg Bernhardt , The Evening Sun
Gettysburg will be the site of the nation’s largest ghost conference next year, the event’s organizers announced this week.
“It’s a dream destination for a lot of ghost hunters,” said Jeff Belanger, a partner of Ghost World LLC.
The newly formed company is organizing the Ghost World 2007 conference at the Wyndham Hotel and Conference Center at Gateway Gettysburg from July 20 to 22. A paranormal radio show based in Toronto – ‘X’ Zone Radio – will also be broadcasting live from the conference.
There are many more reported sightings of ghosts in Gettysburg than in other cities that have only one or two reported paranormal hot spots, Belanger said.
He expects between 300 and 500 people will come to the event, which is intended to bring together people interested in the paranormal and standardize the procedures they use to document and research ghost sightings.
Previously, Belanger said, there were two different ghost conferences held by the Maryland Paranormal Society and the New Jersey Ghost Hunters Society. Those two groups and www.ghostvillage.com have joined to create the Ghost World Conference.
“It’s a growing field,” Belanger said. “It’s similar to amateur astronomy where people have normal 9 to 5 jobs and then at night they go out and make observations with their telescopes. We want to be like that so we have people documenting these phenomena in a certain way.”
Some of the leading names in the field of supernatural research, including Charles J. Adams III, Rosemary Ellen Guiley, L’Aura Hladik, Mark Nesbitt, Troy Taylor, Kelly Weaver, Vince Wilson and John Zaffic, will be on hand.
Belanger said the conference will attract ghost hunters, psychics, people who’ve witnessed ghosts and people who are trying to apply science to the paranormal.
They’ll host workshops and lectures, but there will also be excursions into town for ghost hunters to test out their techniques. They’ll likely come armed with cameras, recorders, thermometers, infrared equipment and devices that measure electromagnetic fields.
Ghost World hopes to unite theology and science, two fields that are often opposing.
“The idea is, if this phenomena is real, it must effect the environment in some way,” Belanger said.
There have been millions of ghost sightings around the world, Belanger said, which has caused many ghost-researching groups to pop up around the nation. He also said supernatural tourism is starting to take off everywhere.
He believes the story of ghosts is very important, especially to those who’ve seen a ghost.
“When someone has this experience, it’s life-changing,” Belanger said. “Because for that person, that big question of ‘Is there life after death?’ is answered.”
