Paranormal expert scans woman's apartment
BY NICHOLAS SPANGLER
nspangler@MiamiHerald.com

Ed Craft, paranormal investigator, set up his equipment in Fran's living
room. They are neighbors in a possibly haunted apartment building in
Plantation, and he was doing this one for free.

'I've seen shadows since I was 11,' Fran said. One shaped like a man
used to walk through the living room and out onto the deck, where the
orchids are. Voices used to call to her. A woman wept with her one night
as she wept over the dishes, her children asleep and her first husband
out philandering. 'Poor Fran,' said the voice of her dead sister,
Prudi, one night. 'Poor Fran.' That was a long time ago.
'I would feel terrible if nothing happens here today,' Fran said.

'Well, something doesn't always happen,' Ed said, adjusting the
camcorder. He trained it on Fran -- 60s, black hair, red lipstick,
fiddling with her bracelets -- and checked his other machines. These
included various sound recorders, an infrared thermometer and an
electromagnetic field detector, on the theory that field fluctuations
may indicate a spirit presence.

Ed makes his living hosting an Internet radio show, Magick Mind
Paranormal Talk Radio. He is also, according to his website, a public
speaker specializing in demonology, UFOlogy, cryptozoology, alien
abductions, conspiracy theories and government coverups, ancient
civilizations, the prophecies of Nostradamus, secret societies and
ancient mysteries.
He's busy.
Fran retired as a sales manager from a department store last year.
Cancer of the cervix, she said, third time around and now metastasized.
``Six surgeries in 16 months. Now they´re saying it´s back. I gotta
go through chemo again.´´

The problem, Fran explained, was not that she was haunted but that she
was not.
``I don´t feel anything anymore. What I want to know is, why are they
leaving me now, when I´m sick? There´s nobody, nothing, absolutely
nothing that I sense.´´
Ed took this all in equably. Then he photographed all the corners, walls
and reflective surfaces in the apartment, paying particular attention to
a drawing of Prudi that hung on the wall above the couch. Prudi drowned
when she was a girl.
'The upper right top of the head -- there's an anomaly in that
corner,' Ed said. ``A speck of blue.´´

There also was a spike on the EMF meter, a green luminescence in the
bedroom and the image of something on the dresser. Ed's voice grew taut.
'Do you have a doll on your dresser?' he said.
'I'm afraid of dolls and clowns,' Fran said. ``When I was little, I
used to turn all my dolls on their stomachs so I wouldn´t see their
faces at night.´´

Ed made a mental note of this and then addressed the bedroom. 'I'm here
to help,' he said. ``You´ve got a chance to show yourself. Let me
know you´re here! What´s your name? People in this house want to
know who you are!´´
There was no answer. It seemed that Fran was alone, until Ed's
preliminary report came back a few days later:

``The results would seem to indicate a potential entity present in the
home, and a separate, more significant entity involved with and focused
specifically on the owner.´´