Sascha Wil­son

If you hap­pen to see a bald-head­ed Cau­casian man walk­ing through a grave­yard at night, armed with strange de­vices, don't be alarmed. He's not crazy, just fas­ci­nat­ed with the world of the spooky and un­ex­plain­able known as para­nor­mal.

Meet friend­ly ghost hunter, Fer­nan­do Ro­das, who bub­bles with ex­cite­ment just hear­ing about strange events that would scare the pants off a "nor­mal" per­son. "It's my pas­sion and my hob­by," chuck­led Ro­das. Call­ing them­selves Para­nor­mal In­ves­ti­ga­tors Team Trinidad (PITT), Amer­i­can-born Ro­das said he and his col­league have been hunt­ing ghosts over a year now. Ro­das who us­es spe­cialised ghost de­tect­ing equip­ment to car­ry out his in­ves­ti­ga­tions, said he has al­ways been in­trigued by the spir­it/ghost world.

In an in­ter­view at his St Joseph Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do home, Ro­das, an op­er­a­tions man­ag­er at an oil com­pa­ny, said his in­ter­est in the su­per­nat­ur­al be­gan when he was about sev­en. "I grew up in a haunt­ed house. There were a lot of a strange nois­es and shad­ows I could not ex­plain," he said. Then ten years ago he mi­grat­ed from New Jer­sey, mar­ried a Trinida­di­an woman, and had two chil­dren. Hear­ing of ghost sto­ries as he trav­elled the coun­try, he said his in­ter­est in spir­its were rekin­dled.

"In the States and oth­er coun­tries peo­ple hunt ghosts, so I said no one does it in T&T so why not give it a shot." Sound­ing like the pop­u­lar Ghost­busters song, he said jok­ing­ly, "If some­thing's strange in your neigh­bour­hood feel free to call me at 785-5433." He said some­times he would walk through ceme­ter­ies try­ing to find en­ti­ties. Laugh­ing­ly, he said, "Peo­ple ask me if I am afraid of ghost, but I am more afraid of liv­ing peo­ple than dead peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly in this coun­try the way crime is go­ing I am def­i­nite­ly afraid of liv­ing peo­ple."

I have found spir­its

Ro­das said his equip­ment has de­tect­ed spir­its or en­ti­ties in var­i­ous places. "I would take a pho­to and in them you would see these orbs. Orbs are balls of light which rep­re­sent spir­its. You could say the light is caused by dust or some­thing, but there are a lot of orbs you see that are un­ex­plain­able," he said.

Re­count­ing some of his ex­pe­ri­ences, he said "I went to Lopinot re­cent­ly and did an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in a room with no dust, or breeze, or noth­ing, and when I took a pic­ture there were three big orbs in the pic­ture, dif­fer­ent sizes and a cer­tain pat­tern." He sent the im­ages to ghost hunters in the US, who con­firmed that the orbs were spir­its try­ing to man­i­fest them­selves. In an old build­ing in Moru­ga, he said, "I took a pho­to­graph and it looked like a child in the porch."

Ro­das said one time dur­ing an Elec­tron­ic Voice Phe­nom­e­non (EVP) ses­sion in an­oth­er place in Moru­ga, where you ask ques­tions, his dig­i­tal recorders picked up a spir­it voice. "We asked the ques­tion 'are you here alone' and faint­ly in the back you hear 'yes.'" He al­so had a scary ex­pe­ri­ence there. He said he felt some­thing brush past the back of his head.

"I looked back but noth­ing was there. I was like there are bugs here. Then I felt some­thing move my shoul­der. You know it move my body and I jumped out of my skin for a sec­ond," he chuck­led. He said nine out of ten times the strange nois­es could be ex­plained by sim­ple things like bats or rats in the at­tic.

No ghosts at Moru­ga Sec­ondary

Ro­das said he al­so car­ried out an in­ves­ti­ga­tion at Moru­ga Sec­ondary

school, where there were re­ports of de­mon pos­ses­sions. "I am not dis­put­ing what the staff and chil­dren said hap­pened, but if some­thing was at the school it wasn't there, or it didn't present it­self when we were there," he said. Ex­plain­ing that when spir­its man­i­fest them­selves they use Elec­tro Mag­net­ic Fields (EMF), he said, "When you feel cold spots in a room they say the spir­its were try­ing to man­i­fest them­selves."

He said sev­er­al peo­ple were sen­si­tive to EMF, which was all around us.

"If ex­posed to too much EMF, some peo­ple get nau­seous, hal­lu­ci­nate, pan­ic and get a feel­ing of dread. When I went to Moru­ga a lot of the class­rooms had break­er box­es which gives off EMFs." He made it clear, though, that his pur­pose was not to get rid of spir­its.