Ghost Hunters of the South

North Carolina

North Carolina This page intentionally left blank East Coast Hauntings Organization BATH, NORTH CAROLINA Christine Rodriguez, Founder and Director Christine Rodriguez is, first and foremost, a writer. She started out by writing a book on the effects of feral dogs on wildlife. It was picked up by Tufts University Veterinarian School as a textbook. It took her five years to sell the book because it was so bizarre, but after it finally sold, she went on to other things: “I have written fiction and nonfiction. I wrote a fiction horror book in the same vein as Stephen King. Then I wrote collectible guides for a number of years. I coauthored with my twin sister. I did some collectible Sci-Fi stuff, motorcycle toy collectibles. We took all the photos for that. So we had to do studio photography for the models.” Christine stopped writing for nine years. Then in 2003, she revamped some old manuscripts and sold one of them right away. Christine’s second novel—a mystery —was published in April 2005. Someday, she would like to write a nonfiction book on the paranormal. Before coming to North Carolina, Christine was founder and director of a group in Florida called P.O.R.T.A.L. The story of the evolution of P.O.R.T.A.L. reflects the instability of many paranormal groups. After leaving a subgroup of North Florida Paranormal Research, Inc., Christine started P.O.R.T.A.L. in 2002. The group 217 consisted of four members, one of whom was an empath. The group experienced a high turnover in its membership during its two-and-a-half-year existence: “People on teams rotate quite a bit,” Christine said. “They leave. One of the original members of P.O.R.T.A.L. had an impacted colon and had to go to the hospital fighting for her life. Different things happen. People get divorced. It’s hard for people to continue doing this straight through on a volunteer basis, and I know all groups suffer from this problem.” In January 2005, she founded a new group in Bath, North Carolina. By February, she had only two members, both of whom are still undergoing training. Actually, though, Christine is not looking to recruit very many more members: “I don’t like a large group. Four or five are enough. If you can sustain four or five members for more than six months, you’re lucky.” Since moving from Florida to North Carolina, Christine has had to change her group’s name because another group in Tennessee was already using the name: “I contacted them and told them this had been my name in Florida for two and a half years, and it might be confusing for browsers to pull up the same name. They might think we’re related, which we aren’t. They agreed to take the dots out of P.O.R.T.A.L. but leave everything [else] the same. A browser doesn’t know the difference. I wrote them and thanked them for considering the change. Then I went about changing the name.” Changing the name of her group turned out to be a very expensive decision because she had already made a large number of T-shirts with the P.O.R.T.A.L. logo. The group’s new name is E.C.H.O.—East Coast Hauntings Organization. The members of E.C.H.O. buy only the equipment that fits into their budgets, such as infrared cameras, thermometers, EMF meters, video cameras, analog tape recorders, digital tape recorders, North Carolina 218 and 35mm cameras. Of course, there are some very expensive pieces of equipment that Christine would love to be able to afford: “Some people use Geiger counters, but they’re quite expensive. The average groups can’t afford them. A thousand-dollar thermal imagery camera is really costly. Nobody’s going to be able to buy that. There’s a lot of equipment I wish I had.” Even more important than the type of equipment the group brings along on an investigation, Christine believes, is timing: “If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. I don’t care what kind of equipment you’re carrying. If you’re in the right place at the right time, you’ll get something.” Christine prefers that all her members have their...