Interview with Ghost Hunters International Barry Fitzgerald and Dustin Pari.

GHI’s Barry Fitgerald and Dustin Pari

THE DEADBOLT: Barry, how hard or easy is it to spook you?

BARRY FITZGERALD: [laughs] My biggest nemesis has to be mannequins. I have to say that those truly frighten the living hell out of me, because I have my mind set on I’m there to do a job, I’m there to look for ghosts, and all of a sudden this dummy will be leaning against somewhere, maybe where it shouldn’t have been before, and it truly frightens the hell out of me.

In Argentina, in the case that’s coming up, that they had the death images that were taken back in Victorian times, where people would be propped up with different things around them and a photograph was taken. So I was in a dark room with my own camera taking photographs of these photographs, because I’ve never actually seen them before, and the only thing light-wise I had was the auto focus on the camera. So, as you can imagine, as I turned around there was a small dummy of a child leaning against the wall and I screamed louder than Brandy Green ever could and all of them grabbed their stomachs laughing at me. I get spooked by those things, I really do.

THE DEADBOLT: When you guys visit a location that is known to have hosted famous people, do you try to contact that person, or does that even factor into the investigation?

DUSTIN PARI: It doesn’t factor in as far as “do we do anything different?”, as far as putting all of our effort in. But anytime a location has a somewhat specific [person], especially somebody of notoriety, we are going to make that effort to contact them. The benefit of course, being someone of notoriety, is that we can try to use names that they may be familiar with. We can try to look up some history of that person and we can try to get into their mindset a little bit.

I think it’s a shared viewpoint that it’s very important to try to use, to the best of your ability, questions that are more likely to elicit a response rather than just throwing out there the stock questions like, “What is your name? How long have you been here?” We want to try to make an emotional connection that may make them come forward with a response.

THE DEADBOLT: Barry, since you’re the technical manager, is there any new equipment out there that you guys haven’t employed yet that you want to use?

FITZGERALD: We are going to be bringing new equipment along and it’s going to be some revolutionary and new video equipment. We start filming later this year and that new technology is going to come along, because it takes the perspective much further.

THE DEADBOLT: What does it actually do?

FITZGERALD: Am I allowed to say too much about it now, or do I wait until those shows air? I would assume I’ll wait until those shows air, but it’s a fantastic new camera system that truly brings us ten years ahead of current technology.

THE DEADBOLT: Dustin, what’s scarier, castles or prisons?

PARI: I’d have to say prisons. I get a little on edge when I have to walk down those long hallways with all of the open, darkened cells. My wife likes to bust my chops because I can’t watch horror movies. I don’t like when things pop out. I know it seems really silly because of what I do out there in the field, but I’m okay with spirits and such, I just don’t like when things pop out in dark quarters. So prisons definitely rank up there with some of the spookier places.

THE DEADBOLT: I was looking through all of the places you guys have hit. Is there any talk of going to Russia?

FITZGERALD: I would love to go to Russia …

PARI: Because you already have the hats. [laughs] He wears these big, furry cosmonaut hats all of the time.

FITZGERALD: [laughs] Never listen to Dustin. But yeah, I would love to go to Russia and I’ve made a few inquiries into a couple of locations there in Russia. However, I’m not so sure that the Russian authorities might let us go in there, such as the old KGB. The old KGB stations underground that you can only access wearing total body chemical suits and places like that intrigue me to wonder what type of history went on inside. Of course we need to get permits and permits in Russia can be extremely expensive. And even after you get the permits, you still have to bribe people in the street. So that could become hugely expensive and then there’s the threat of the equipment being stolen as well. I would love to see it. Will it happen? I don’t know, but only time will tell.

Troy Rogers

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