Paranormal sleuths specialize in a sixth sense BY DANIELLE MEDINA Correspondent Brick Township BRICK - For Brick Township resident Desirae Wojtanowski, the things that go bump in the night are all part of a day's work. As the founder and lead investigator for Paranormal Visions, Wojtanowski and her team travel throughout New Jersey studying paranormal phenomena in private residences, business and cemeteries. "Some people don't know what they're experiencing and they think they're going crazy," Wojtanowski said. "When we're done, many residents feel comfort in knowing that they're not going insane." Wojtanowski said that people report strange occurrences such as unexplained noises or items disappearing or moving in their homes and businesses. Some-times they feel like their house has a bad energy in it. "Some spirits don't leave a house," Wojtanowski said. "They've lived there all their lives and they're very attached to the physical life that they lived. Even after their family has left the house, they'll stay in the house or come and visit on holidays, birthdays and anniversaries." When the Paranormal Visions team members conduct an investigation, they rely on a variety of equipment, along with information from the owners and the intuition of the team members. "We really approach an investigation in a scientific way," Wojtanowski said, "And we use senses to guide us." Camcorders with infrared lighting and digital cameras help to detects orbs and balls of energy that are believed to contain the spirits of the deceased and spirit energy that shows up in the form of a white vapor. The group uses a digital voice recorder and a hand-held tape recorder to pick up electronic voice phenomena (EVP), when a spirit tries to audibly communicate with the living. Electromagnetic field meters measure the magnetic field around it, looking for spikes of spirit energy. Infrared thermometers are used to find cold spots where a spirit is trying to manifest itself, either in the form of an orb or apparition. While the goal for Paranormal Visions is to catch the spirits on tape, sometimes they'll simply go to a house to cleanse it, telling the spirits they're unwanted there and asking them to leave. For Wojtanowski, that sixth sense has been passed down in her family. It manifested itself in her at a very early age. "When I was 18 months old, my mother was in the kitchen washing dishes and I was playing in the living room," she said. "She heard me talking to someone and when she came in, I said, 'Where'd he go?'" Both Wojtanowski and her mother believe it was her grandfather, who died just before she was born. When she was five, Wojtanowski saw apparitions of her grandmother and grandfather standing in the doorway of her bedroom. "As a child I was terrified," she said. "But as I've gotten older, I've come to accept it and enjoy it." Fellow team member Hannah Knueppel said that her visions also began when she was a child and have continued throughout her life. "It seems like every house I go to, there's something there," Knueppel said. Knueppel recalled a time when she was 18 and living in Ocean Gate. She was leaning out of a window smoking a cigarette when she looked down and saw her father, who died earlier that year, walking out of a tavern below her. "When I looked back, he was gone," Knueppel said. Most people will write off what they're seeing as tricks of the mind because they are afraid, Knueppel said. "We are interested in it, so we notice it more," she said. Spirits know which people are more receptive to them, Wojtanowski said. Wojtanowski formed Ocean County New Jersey Paranormal Investigators in October 2005, with a group of close friends and her brother, Don, and began conducting investigations. Earlier this year, Wojtanowski changed the group's name to Paranormal Visions, launched its Internet Web site and expanded its membership. Since then, Paranormal Visions has studied paranormal phenomena at a number of private residences in New Jersey, most recently at Magee's West Side Tavern in Point Pleasant. The 156-year-old tavern is haunted by the ghost of "Captain John," who kept his daughter locked in the attic, according to local legend. "Pots and pans in the kitchen will fall down," Knueppel said. "There are more noises. Glasses get moved." In earlier times, the tavern was a restaurant and a morgue for 39 victims of the John Minturn shipwreck in 1846. When the paranormal investigators descended on the tavern last month, both Desirae and Don Wojtanowski sensed the spirit of a little girl cowering in a corner and tried to coax her out. And Knueppel said she heard something breathing behind her and moving closer to her. "No one else could hear it, but it was there," Knueppel said.