Jefferson Davis
Born in Vancouver, Washington in 1962, Jeff is in fact related to his namesake, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy. Jeff is an Army brat who grew up playing in and around the Vancouver Barracks. This led to an interest in the military and history. Late night horror movies led to an interest in ghosts, mythology, and archaeology. After a three year enlistment in the U.S. Army, Jeff returned to college where he earned a Bachelor's degree in Anthropology. For several years Jeff worked for the U.S. Forest Service as an archaeologist in the Gifford Pinchot, the Boise, the Umatilla, and Mt. Hood National Forests. In 1995 Jeff and his wife moved to England for a year where he earned his MA in Archaeology at the University of Sheffield. His thesis topic was the lifestyle of the Viking settler in Greenland. That is where he received the inspiration for his publishing company name, Norsemen Ventures. In addition to his work as a freelance archaeologist and researching books on the paranormal, Jeff is planning on traveling to Greenland and producing a multimedia CD on the Vikings who settled there.









There has been an increase in the medias interest in the Paranormal, what effect to you think that it is having?
With the rise of “Edutainment” and commercial Ghost Hunters, it is a real detriment, because there is now an expectation on the part of the general public that they are trying to do their own paranormal investigating or go talk to another paranormal group. Then they are not impressed because the scientific evidence is not what they see on television. They have had the same problem with juries, they see something on CSI and want to know why that it is something that cannot be done. In a way we have to re-educate the public in what we do what we get and how we get it. I have an E.M.F. meter that I take with me to investigations and one of the first things that I have to tell the people is that this is not a “Ghost detector” or I will look at a digital camera and see if it is designed poorly and will take orb photos. That is the instantaneous positive feedbacks of the wrong kind. I did a talk to a local community and some people were very hostile when I showed diagrams and explanations of orbs.
When I give talks I have to explain that if it were that easy to communicate with the dead, there would be want ads and you could read messages from beyond the grave.

What would you recommend to someone that wants to get into the field?
I would recommend reading, first and foremost. The gadgets are something that you financially graduate into. Learn the basics like interviewing skills, questioning people, developing forms you start that way and then after a while you will decide if you want to spend $100.00 on a tri-field meter or even more expensive equipment. I also explain to people that just because you have a tri-field meter that does not automatically make it a ghost detector. You did an analysis on the digital laser thermometers, and the experiment was a great example of a misapplication that some people make, because you are just measuring the temperature of the wall. That is why I suggest going back to the basics. Learn your interviewing skills, learn techniques, and then you can use the equipment. But it is human nature to go with what seems to give you the most positive results. An old example that Peter Underwood gives about ghost photos is that he was interviewing a lady and she had been using an old “brownie” camera. He discovered that the leather bellows had cracks in it, so light was leaking in and exposing the film. He taped over the crack and she was upset because she could no longer talk with her “friends”. I feel bad about it because you don’t want to kill the spirit of wonder.

A lot of groups are offering “certifications” in ghost hunting, what do you think of that?
I think that it can be a good thing as long as the group has good standards. If a group can eliminate people who just want to go hang out and don’t care about the science. That way they can go through training programs, which can be intimidating. If you evaluate the training standard of individual groups, outsiders can look at their reports and gauge the science from the pseudo-science. But the bad thing is that anyone else comes in and makes an evaluation and makes suggestions, they can upset people if they are not tactful.

We have talked to other people about using an on-line shared database to help with investigations, what do you think of the theory?
One example is that if someone sets up a website and their standards are atrociously low, or they don’t manage it well and the site becomes popular, it is no longer a clearinghouse you just have a disaster on your hands. There is actually an example of that; it’s the International Ghost Hunters Society. It is an international clearinghouse of affiliated groups, showing what they have. 

I like to have extremely high scientific standards for everything, but then you run the risk of over time becoming tied down without innovation. I think in a way that having it like the “wild west” where people come up with ideas and theories and then are tried out and gradually the process comes about. It’s just like Orb photos. It’s taken a couple of years but people are catching on that it’s not that easy. I like to see high standards and some standardization in training, yet we can’t be overly educated or close-minded about innovation.

What would you suggest for people that are looking for someone to help with a paranormal event that is impacting their lives?
One of the things that I do is try tell them to look on the website and see if they can find someone in their area. If they find someone I suggest that they examine the site and see if they feel comfortable with the group. There are some groups that have no psychics and they are all gizmos, and then there are groups that are the resident psychics and they have to be comfortable with their consultant. I believe that most hauntings start basically innocuous and the homeowner doesn’t even notice it, then something actually skews their observation, like the usual mass panic when they release a movie like the Omen. It’s a question of does their awareness makes it larger or just makes them paranoid. I tell people who don’t even want a consultant that for control they can keep a diary, figure out a pattern. The control of trying to figure out what is happening is something that seems to help them deal with it and sometimes it fades away.

We have seen different groups visit the same location and find very different results. One will find Demons infesting the location and others will find bad wiring. What is your take on that?
You and I have firmly grounded careers in other things, and I am absolutely not embarrassed by my interest in the paranormal but at the same time I have to be able to back up what I say, and not be over the top. I have already written a book on World War II and people don’t want to read a book from “paranormal strange guy Jeff” they want to read a book by Jeff the historian.

What do you think of the new trend of everyone getting into writing paranormal books?
Putting books is a difficult process; it takes over a year to write one of these. The thing that I have noticed is that people who write a lot of books on the subject tend to duplicate stories from their previous books. It’s almost like “Didn’t I read this in book 60 and this is book 65?”

With the rise in paranormal tourism, we have just added a new section to the page on Ghost Walks. I don’t work for tourist agencies and so I as a tourist like to take Ghost Walks and I don’t like paying $20.00 for a bad Ghost Walk. We list the walks and are not afraid to say what the tour was like, because the people that I work for is the people that buy my books and visit my website. And that is something symptomatic of where ghost hunting is going, we have got to be really careful, we cannot pass these off as good scientific investigation when in reality we are taking money from a group of tourists and putting on something for their thrills. Running a Ghost Walk around a haunted place is not quite the same as going there alone and sitting quietly for a few hours with your gear and just observing as opposed to taking a group of 40 people to a street corner for 5 minutes.

A lot of groups seem to think that they need to turn out all of the lights and use niteshot during an investigation, what do you think of that theory?
I am against it. It is counter to what we are doing. The whole daytime nighttime thing, I believe that the activity does not happen because the ghosts are more active it is because we ourselves are less distracted. If you are wandering around a haunted locale in the middle of the day, business is going on people are talking on the phone and if something small does happen you probably wont notice it, and yet if you are there at night working alone with less distractions, you will perceive these things. Its like in Beetle Juice, remember the Manual for the dead? It says that the living will not notice the dead. Will not or cannot? At night you have the advantage of less distractions. If the business is closed on a Sunday afternoon I would prefer to go then. Those people are not walking around using night vision in a dimly lit room. If you follow the theory that ghosts are what is left of a human, when are people most active?

What do you tell people that are having paranormal activity in their lives?
The number of credible people that tell me that “the ghost pushed me down the stairs” to the people that say, “I got scared and fell down the stairs” is really very small. I think that people that live in haunted house and are well adjusted to it outnumber the panic stricken by 9-10. Usually when people contact us they usually say “there is nothing that I can do about it and that is what scares me” its not my house is haunted oh my god I’m scared, its “I cant get rid of the ghost”. I try to bring them back to reality and tell them that its not the Exorcist or Poltergeist, its not going to kill you in your sleep, its just there. When you give them some control over it, the phenomenon seems to just fade. I always tell them to keep a diary, and that alone is an element of control. If they get to see a trend or go to their library or historical society and do some research on the history of their home, they tend to get an affinity to the ghost.

What do you think about people that claim that something attaches or follows them home from an investigation?
I guess that I have been lucky that has not happened to me. We did have a case that was in an old Catholic Orphanage that is now a school for trouble youth that we did a walkthrough with a local reporter for Halloween. The reporter was standing with us and a psychic that we use told him don’t move, something has attached to you. He was a non-believer, but when he got home, he said that he heard something following him in his gravel driveway that was not there and he was waken up in the middle of the night by a little boy peering at him from the foot of the bed. If it was the power of suggestion I’m not sure but it is interesting.

Are you working on any new books?
I have written 2 science fiction books that have gone nowhere, they were never even published.
I currently signed a contract to write Weird Washington, and the great thing about that is its not all ghost stories.

A Haunted Tour Guide to the Pacific Northwest
Ghosts and Strange Critters of Washington and Oregon
Ghosts, Critters & Sacred Places of Washington and Oregon II
Ghosts, Critters & Sacred Places of Washington and Oregon III
Haunted Astoria, The Tour Guide