Secret Life of a Ghost Hunter

Secret Life of a Ghost Hunter

"Far from the staged spookiness of cable TV, part-time paranormal investigator Dan Sturges pulls back the curtain on a decade spent searching for spirits."

Leonora Desar

After the TV series Ghost Hunters debuted in 2004, wannabe ghost busters were all the rage. But real-life investigations are often a snoozefest compared to what you see on television, and many of the teams soon tired of waiting around for spirits that never showed. Sturges didn’t. For him it wasn’t just about the thrill of the ghost hunt—it was about discovering when and why supernatural phenomena occur. This earned him street cred with research and science-based organizations like the Parapsychology Foundation in Manhattan, which has supported the study of dream telepathy, poltergeists, the effects of hallucinogenic drugs on psychic ability, out-of-body experiences and other psychic phenomena.

Sturges speaks about what he does as if it were an ordinary blue-collar job, like plumbing or carpentry. When asked if he can pick up on psychic phenomena, he shrugs and answers: “I think that everybody does on some level. When you walk into a room where there was a big giant fight and the tension’s so thick you can cut it with a knife—that’s picking up energy. When you watch two people meet for the first time and you’re like—they’re totally going to hook up. Or when you know you’re going to hook up with somebody—that’s energy. You just know.”

“We all have a little bit of an ability,” he continues. “Some people just have it more. It’s like cable TV and basic service versus premium service. Everybody’s got basic—you need basic. But some people have HBO. Some people have Showtime. Some people have all of it plus Internet and On Demand.”

Sturges is quick to note that he himself does not posses extraordinary powers. “I have basic. I’ve been in a room where people have been watching a ghost and having a conversation with a spirit, and they go, ‘Don’t you see that Dan?’ And I go, ‘No I don’t.’ I wish…But I’ve had experiences. And every couple of months, HBO has a free weekend, right?”