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Former Texas A&M student Casey Unger, Class of 1992, along with Angel Crawford and Kedron Reed Sitton are apart of a ghost hunting group known as The Final Crossing.

The Final Crossing uses motion detectors and video cameras to help detect paranormal activities.

Ghost hunters

Bryan-College Station group travels

By: Clair Lavender

Posted: 10/31/08

We can thank Hollywood for the picturesque image of ghosts popping up with bloody faces and the sole intent to take revenge. However, with television shows like Sci-Fi channel's "Ghosthunters" or Discovery Channel's "The Haunting," it is clear that paranormal investigation has become an increasingly popular and supernatural hobby that doesn't include what is seen in the movies.

For ghost hunter group The Final Crossing, the investigations are a complex search for truth.

Growing up in an old Victorian mortuary in Calvert, Texas, 30 miles from Bryan, Casey Unger, the group's founder, was introduced to paranormal activity as a child.

"I used to bring my friends in high school out to scare them," Unger said.

Unger, Class of 1992, received a degree in psychology and business management. She is now a counselor and consultant in Bryan.

Growing up surrounded by an unsolved mystery, Unger was looking for a way to get some answers. After watching "Ghosthunters" on TV for the first time in 2004, it became clear what she was meant to do.

On Oct. 17, 2004, Unger bid on a suitcase of paranormal investigation equipment on eBay. Shortly after, she began the group now known as The Final Crossing, or TFC. Unger began inviting others with similar interests to join her as she traveled to nearby towns.

With six dedicated members and four part-timers, the group now travels on average twice a month to conduct paranormal investigations. Mostly making research trips, TFC is open to house calls but has not received many in the past.

Team member Angel Crawford is a bill collector by day and a lead investigator by night. After being invited on an investigation in 2006, she was hooked and has traveled as far as Cash, Oklahoma, with the group.

"I believe, at times, there are spirits that come back to guide and watch over you," Crawford said. "I guess that's why I do what I do. I'm trying to find those answers."

Crawford said she has experienced plenty of paranormal activity since joining the group including electronic voice phenomenon, an encounter with a shadow person and many undeniable cold spots.

While on an investigation, Crawford recalled that as she was carrying equipment, she felt a hand on her shoulder. The team found three wet fingerprints still fresh on her shirt.

Crawford said two types of paranormal activity can be detected.

"Intelligent activity is when a spirit responds to us in any form and residual activity is repetition sounding like a recording played over and over again without change," she said.

While the majority of the time they do not find anything, TFC has come in contact with paranormal activity. Such an occasion will be featured in the upcoming Volume 2 of Golden West Publishers' "Ghosts from Coast to Coast," by Kalyomi. The book, released last October, retells TFC's most powerful evidence of paranormal activity to date.

The investigation took place in Unger's hometown of Calvert in 2004 at a place known as the "Orvuss Vault," an 1880s burial vault that has been vandalized several times.

Carrying a night vision camcorder, an electromagnetic field meter which measures electromagnetic activity, an audio recorder and a temperature gun to record any changes in temperature such as cold spots, the group began walking around the site.

Unger, remembering a child's burial plot, called out saying, "I'm speaking to the spirits of the children who are here. I'm speaking to the spirits of the children whose graves were desecrated here."

At the time, nothing was heard or seen, but after returning home to review the camcorder and sound device, the group was astonished at what they found.

Caught only on the camcorder, the bone-chilling voice of a small child is heard saying, "The children left."

This recording, along with a more detailed description of the story, can be found on the group's website (www.freakuency.org) or purchased with the book and DVD featuring photos, video and interviews from the investigation.

Unger's husband and TFC technical manager Kedron Read Sitton said while TFC may encounter activity during an investigation, it is not always easy to get the approval of others.

"If the audio or video can't speak for itself, it won't make it on the website," he said.

Sitton, who has been working for Texas A&M as a public policy researcher since 1997, acts as the group's webmaster and helps digitize and enhance data after an investigation.

Sitton was not always involved in the paranormal. He used to be a skeptic.

"Humans can't see the dead," he said. "It's not that they can't, it's that they won't."

Even Unger admits it is too easy to believe everything.

"I'll experience something and I'll try to talk myself out of it," Unger said. "I overanalyze everything."