All Over Albany

The Albany Ghost Investigators

If there's something strange in your neighborhood, who you gonna call? Well, you could call the Albany Ghost Investigators.

No, really. We're not making this up.

The Albany Ghost Investigators were founded in 2004 by a man by the name of Dr. D. K. Moore.

Moore says he's been interested in haunts and reports of ghosts for over 50 years and has visited supposedly haunted places all over the country. In the past 10 years, he's begun conducting field observations and interviews. He has a PhD (in education) from Lehigh University and makes his career in educational testing, but ghosts and hauntings have remained a major hobby. In fact of the seven people on Moore's ghost investigation team, all are gainfully employed in fields unrelated to the paranormal.

He also says people from all walks of life have had experiences with "haunting phenomena.

"We've conducted investigations for nurses, accountants, engineers, business people, social workers, teachers, mechanics, medical technologists and even a trooper!" explains Moore. He says they mainly investigate private residences, among them an old mansion in Menands. But sometimes they look into unusual locations. Moore says they once investigated an accident site off Rte. 9 in Rensselaer County and turned up an "electronic voice phenomena" (an unexplained, robotic sounding voice that registers on the investigators' electronic field meter).

Moore says his team doesn't traipse around in cemeteries or trespass, and they only investigate a case after they've interviewed witnesses and determined them to be credible. (We can't tell you exactly how that's determined.)

Actually, despite dozens of investigations at reportedly haunted places, "real" haunting
situations are rare, according to Moore. Apparently these things are pretty unpredictable. Still, Moore says his team has collected some video of inexplicable human-like shadows that appear to get up and leave a group of seated people. He says they also sometimes obtain strange audio including a voice or utterance from someone who's not there.

It turns out that even ghost investigators have their doubts. Moore says there's always the possible that some haunting experiences are just "psi phenomena," unconsciously caused by someone present.

If you're interested in becoming a ghost investigator, Moore says prospective candidates must complete a special questionnaire and be interviewed by the team to determine if they're a good fit. Then they'll get to be "tried out" for a few investigations before a final decision is made.