Local ghost hunters seek adventure

On a warm October night, the trio peeled off Clovis' Seventh Street into a cemetery. After entering, their sedan wobbled over uneven gravel until parking at a beige mausoleum.

It's difficult to tell what's scarier: How quiet it was or how dark it was. Unpredictability and tombstones don't mix well. For most people, their fight or flight instincts are screaming "Flee! Flee! Flee!" But this trio – Jeff Conner, Jason Kapera and Renaee Latham – aren't most people.

They're ghost hunters.

As Halloween rapidly approaches, that age-old question – "Do ghosts exist?" – is being discussed now more than ever. Here in eastern New Mexico, however, the crew is doing more than debating – they're doing full-fledged investigations. Inside a stuffy, coffin-filled mausoleum, they're strapped with ghost-hunting equipment -- REM-Pods, portal phone apps, an Ovilus and dowsing rods.

Despite research showing ghost hunting and belief in spirits is ascending, their group – Ghostly Concerns Paranormal Investigation (and) Research – has dwindled; from about 15 members to five over the past decade. In sharing their experience, they hope more sleuths can join the adventure.

"We know there's a child in here somewhere," Conner said, eyes-widening behind his round, wire frames, as they crept through the mausoleum.

But if anyone wants to join, they have to be committed to the craft. Kapera and Conner said the drop-off mainly stems from financial difficulties and people not wanting to do the legwork required to be a true ghost hunter.

"A lot of people like the fun of doing investigations and everything," Conner said. "But to give you an idea, like we record EVPs (electronic voice phenomenon), Jason and I would spend hours and hours, because if you hear something goes click, you have to go back and slow that click down, see what it's saying, reverse it some time to do different things to it. So one little click can take you over an hour just listening to it to figure out what it says."

The plunge is a disappointment because they see how much fun it is. The fright of being in eerie places, while on the verge of discovery provides exhilaration.

"That just went off," a wide-eyed Kapera said. He was referring to a golf ball-like gizmo bursting with blue and red lights down the hall. It can pick up when there's electricity nearby, meaning a ghost is in their presence, he said.

"She's playing with it again," Latham said.

At one point, Conner pulled out two dowsing rods and held them at his sternum. If he asks a question about a ghost and they move, it indicates that one is there, he said.

"Is there a little girl here?" he called out. The rods swayed.

"And we're not moving," he said convincingly.

A self-proclaimed "hillbilly" from West Virginia, Conner grew up thinking paranormal activity was all hullabaloo.

But there he was, 24 years old, when a blanket covering him levitated, and he saw a woman in a "white gown" with "fire eyes" staring back at him.

Since then, he's known that paranormal activity is real. Just keep your eyes open and you'll notice it everywhere, he said.

For the last 30-plus years, when he's not working as a nurse, he's tried to find paranormal activity. He was a member of groups when he lived in the South and Midwest. Then he started his own group when he moved to Clovis roughly a decade ago to seek new adventures and reunite with family members.

In Clovis, alongside Kapera, the pair have done investigations all throughout the Southwest. While recounting them, they sound like 40-somethings recalling high school shenanigans.

Point is, if you want to join the crew, just be ready for something – anything – to happen.

"We've been to Buddy Holly's Grave," Conner said. "We heard guitar music coming through, right? And said, 'Can you tell us the name of the girl you sang to?' Swear to God, it said 'Peggy Sue.'"

But it takes guts, too. Just take their Floydada, Texas, Hospital investigation where members developed all sorts of health problems.

"I developed afib," Conner began. "Melanie (a member) developed afib. Her daughter, Maddie, who, when she was 10, started developing SVT, Supraventricular Tachycardia, had to be treated. One of the other girls had to have bowel surgery. One had her hip go out.

"Everybody who went to the hospital had a medical condition because of it."

Through it all – even the time he said he became possessed by Satan himself – Conner, 61, kept at it.

Following the death of his wife, Crystal, in 2022, ghost hunting has provided a community and a passion to cope with unresolved grief.

"I cry about Crystal twice a week," Conner said.

According to Conner, what keeps him from having a "nervous breakdown" is his friendship with Kapera. The pair frequent Amarillo, watch paranormal shows together, hang out at the movies, grab meals and, of course, travel hundreds of miles for investigations.

The joy of finding that next inkling of paranormal activity is what motivated him to start. But the people – the fleshy, alive ones – is what's kept him coming back.

Now, he's just hoping other people can join him. In the pursuit of spirits, they may be astonished at what they'll find. Maybe it's Peggy Sue. Or someone they can call a friend when life gets scarier than any ghost, ghoul or goblin.

"He's like my brother that I've never had," Conner said of Kapera. "I depend on him more than he'll know."