I just came back from a trip to St. Augustine, FL lighthouse and went on the Dark of the Moon ghost tour with a friend this past weekend. I must say, I didn't know what I was expecting, but I am not sure what to make of what happened during the visit.

For those not familiar with the Dark of the Moon tour, it is a short (2 hr) tour given at night (ours began at 8:30) where 1 hour is devoted to a tour and the next is devoted to free roaming of the grounds. You can choose to rent an EMF detector (which we did) and bring whatever equipment you like. Like I said earlier, I came a skeptic and I left one. Read on for my experiences. These are ones I personally encountered. I came there with an open mind.

First Part: The Guided Tour
-- When we were in the keeper's quarters (upstairs where bedrooms would have been) my EMF reader spiked to the second green dot (ie: not very high, but there was movement) intermittently while the guide was talking about the 3 girls that died on the grounds way back when. We were sitting in the middle of the floor and had no electronic devices on our person. No one was around us. It did not move during any other portion of his speech before or after. Only during that small period of time. It was sitting on the ground in front of me, I was not holding it. At one point he took a tangent and talked about something other than the girls and it stopped. When he returned to their story, it started again. Coincidence?
-- When we went into the lighthouse on the way up there was no movement on the EMF detector, but back down it was spiked to orange/red for about half the way down. My guess is there was some sort of live wire running on the inside railing of the lighthouse. I asked the guides, but they said there is no such wire. I think they may be wrong. I am left handed, so I held it in that hand and it was on the outside railing on the way up (no activity) and on the inside railing on the way down (movement between orange and red until about half way down).

Second Part: Free Time
-- Due to the EMF experience in the keeper's quarters we went back there after walking around for a bit. It was noticeably cold on a balmy Florida evening, more so than it had been before even though we had also been the first ones inside the room earlier. We sat in the exact same place and talked to the room asking if the little girls were there and if they could make some noise for us (which made us feel incredibly silly). There was a lot of commotion outside because our group seemed especially big and rowdy, but we were being pretty quiet. After about 10 minutes of relative silence, there was shuffling in the back right hand corner of the room. It was very faint, but definitely there. No one seemed to be on the outside balcony, we were on the second floor. Suddenly, one of the tour guides walked in (exclaiming: Geeze! It's cold in here!) and instantly the "feel" of the room changed (yeah, I know kind of a vague thing, but whatever). After that we moved to the back of the room, but it was just different and we left.
-- There were stories about a room in the basement (Pete's Room) where women feel they are being perved on and men feel threatened, so we went down there. Again, we were alone. We sat in the chair where the activity supposedly was and talked to the room again. I let my hair down (physically...) and tried to "entice" the so-called spirit. My friend (a male) began insulting it's masculinity. Our EMF stayed constant throughout our time there and we didn't feel anything (except for some warmth on my shoulder blades, but I can't say what that was from, could be a weird body thing). I can't remember the exact sequence of events for this next part, but here it goes...
---->As my friend was insulting the room telling whomever was there to show himself and asking if he was too scared, the lights in the room turned on and off. We shrugged it off as someone playing with the power, but asked later on and they said that no one was messing with it.
---->Also, again when my friend was antagonizing the room, we started hearing footsteps upstairs (which at the time we attributed to other tour members and didn't even give a second thought to) and then a chair dragged pretty violently across the floor. At that exact moment my EMF detector (which I was holding in my hand and had been consistently on green the entire time) spiked all the way to red and staggered between the two most extreme points for 2-3 seconds at least. We also shrugged this off as maybe some sort of static electricity (idk why, it was just odd...) and continued with our thing until some people came down (they had been outside, not upstairs) and we left because they were being loud.
-- We went upstairs to investigate the room above where we just were and saw there was a chair midway out from a table, but not far enough to sit on. We thought maybe someone bumped up against it to get by (idk why since there was so much room between it and the wall) and shrugged it off again. We dragged the chair to simulate what had happened an put the EMF detector right next to it and nothing. We began talking to the room again asking for a sign of something's presence, to make a sound, to spike the EMF reader, anything. Nothing happened. We told it we were leaving and I took one step towards the door and it lit up to red, just for a split second. I retraced that step many times to see if I had spit an electrical sweet spot (I was in the middle of a room) and nothing happened. We started to talk to the room again and it lit up a couple times to yellow, but I can't remember in what context. It was either when we were talking about leaving again or when we asked it to make a sign.

Thoughts
The only thoughts I really have to expand upon what is said above has to do with the chair moved while we were in Pete's room. When I was telling the story to a friend of ours, I realized that the footsteps and chair dragging was not accompanied by any voices. We noticed when we were upstairs that the voices were carried very well up the floor but I am not sure if the opposite is true. When we were upstairs, we could hear the exact conversations of the people downstairs. That would be cool to play with if we ever go again.

tl;dr
I post this to (1) tell someone! I don't really have anyone to tell and it seemed like too good a story to keep to myself (2) see if anyone has experience with EMF detectors and can help explain some of what happened (3) see if anyone has thought in general about anything I said.

So please, rip my story apart and help me out! (And sorry for the book!)

Totally sounds like ghosts, there can be no other explanation.

Or Fairies, maybe. Just those two possibilities.

Or demons, it could be demons too.

Also magic, let's not forget magic.

I suppose if you like long shots, we could add fraud or make-believe to the list.

Explain what happened? Well, you went on a ghost walk and experienced some stuff. The problem is that people were freely wandering around, the guides are presumably paid so it's not in their best interests to tell you the truth about wires (presuming they know it) and EMF detectors detect electromagnetic fields, not ghosts.

Is there a proven correlation between EMF readings and presence of ghosts?

Arjan Dirkse wrote:Is there a proven correlation between EMF readings and presence of ghosts?

If so, I think that means ghosts can be attracted by electromagnets like iron filings.

Spikes of EM are easy, it's a sideshow trick like banging pipes and floating tables.

Yep, it's the 21st century equivalent.

Oh, don't I love to read about ghostie hunters, scurrying about with test equipment they cannot interpret and do not understand.

"Ooooh! The needle jumped!"

Jesus H. Christ on a goddamned stick.

Answer a few simple questions, almost_there. Why do you imagine that a device that responds to electromagnetic fields is detecting ghosts?

With what standard ghost did you calibrate this "detector"?

What sorts of phantasms will this detector detect?

Orbs are the other thing. Look, an orb! In the exact same lighthouse!

If you can get me a model number and frequency range off of the EMF detector you had that'd be pretty great. That way I can look into the users' manual to see what sort of ghosts normally show up in that range, ie Angry, jealous, envious etc.

Then we can work on finding out which of these ghosts are the coldest. Once we've got that figured out, we capture them and sell them to CERN so they can keep their superconductors cold for free. Clearly we'll sell them for a pretty penny, and no returns. I don't need no disembodied moaning going on about how life is unfair from a dead person.