First Nations paranormal hunters scour Six Nations for spirits

Todd Thomas can't see anything, but he senses there's a big tall shadow named Richard O'Malley hovering over him. Thomas thought he heard that name over his spirit box, a modified transistor radio he uses to try and talk to spirits. So now he's telling it to throw something at him.

The rest of Thomas' paranormal team is documenting the moment meticulously — on night vision cameras, thermal cameras, recorders — hoping to capture something, anything, that's "unexplainable." 

"If you experience something, it's better than any rush in the world," Thomas said. "I actually get thrilled out of mind when it happens."

Thomas started S.N.I.P.E. eight years ago acting on his lifelong fascination with ghost hunting. The name stands for Six Nations Investigating Paranormal Encounters but is also the name of a clan.

The group has hunted all over Ontario and even in the U.S., but Indigenous investigations are particularly important to them. They've gone inside old residential schools and abandoned buildings on reserves.

On this particular night, it's a very run down, dilapidated house on the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve, southwest of Hamilton, Ont.

Paint peels from the ceiling, part of which has collapsed into the living room. The family who lived there seemingly fled hastily. The house is still strewn with clothing, DVDs, colouring pages, cigarette butts — there's even an expired jar of peanut butter in the pantry.

"All I can say is that I have seen things in here," Thomas said. "Felt things. Heard things. Captured things. So it's active."

Father-daughter ghost hunting duo

To maximize their chance of seeing or hearing something, the S.N.I.P.E. hunters follow some unwritten rules.

• Try not to whisper.
• If you make a unexpected noise, or if your stomach gurgles, call it out.
• Be careful not to stir up dust as it could confuse the cameras.

The team sometimes hunts for six hours or more, then sifts through hours and hours of recordings afterwards. Nerves are a necessity.

Tom Hill got involved with S.N.I.P.E. after he starting hearing knocks and whistles in his own house. The team conducted their first investigation there. They sensed a presence they nicknamed Darryl and Hill has been hooked ever since.

Now, his daughter, Ryan, has started coming to investigations as well. "It's something that we can enjoy together," he said.

"She'd rather be sitting with us in a haunted house or looking for ghosts on a Friday night rather than hitting the parties."

She achieved a big hunting accomplishment on this particular hunt by asking questions to the spirit box for the first time.

"It was a little scary," she admits. "[I was] just waiting for something to say something ... I didn't know what it was going to say but it was pretty cool."

S.N.I.P.E. welcomes skepticism

Though the hunters claim to have had paranormal encounters, others who have gone out with them haven't. And the S.N.I.P.E. team is OK with that. 

They welcome skepticism — and say they never come to any conclusions of their own. They simply want to go out and find things they can't explain.

"I am very skeptical. I do not immediately know an event is a ghost," Thomas said. "Anything I show you I don't claim it to be a ghost. I just say, 'I don't know what this is. You tell me what this is.'"

The hunts have turned into a "glorified hobby" for the team.

The hunters have other jobs but spend a lot of their money and time on investigation tools. They have opened their services to the public, but don't charge any money for them.

"I don't feel this should be something you should charge for especially if a person comes to you for help," said Thomas, a journeyman millwright by day. "We do it for the evidence, we do it for the love of getting out and investigating."

For hunter Jay Smith, it helps get him out of the house.

"Some people shoot pool to have fun. I help hunt ghosts."