Ghostbusting in Houston
Oct. 31, 2005 — -- Halloween tends to inspire active imaginations. Suddenly, the creeks of an old house are really the footsteps of a restless spirit unable to find relief in the afterlife.
Harry and Lesli Zamora argue these spirits really exist and maintain that their Houston home is haunted.
"As soon as we moved in, strange things started happening," said Harry Zamora, who has lived in the house since 2003. "You hear footsteps on the stairway. You can be walking around pretty much any time of the day and you'll notice a shadow figure or something -- looks like there's a person and there's nobody there."
The Zamoras' belief in the paranormal is not that unusual. According to a Gallup Poll, 32 percent of people believe in ghosts and 37 percent believe in haunted houses.
The Zamoras say that the proof is in the pictures. They have taken numerous photos they claim show mysterious orbs of lights, which must be, they say, ghosts.
One time, Lesli Zamora said she saw a man behind her husband after he got out of the shower. She was so frightened that she fainted. The Zamoras say they see shadows on the floor and that doors mysteriously lock and unlock.
"We don't know what to think," Harry Zamora said. "It was scary at first."
They sought second opinions from a ghost hunter and a feng shui specialist. A spiritualist told the couple that the house was teeming with spiritual activity. Harry Zamora, a Houston police officer, decided to take things into his own hands.
To combat these alleged visiting apparitions, he joined forces with some of his fellow cops and formed the "Phenomena Police." They brought in special ghost-finding equipment in hopes of proving that the Zamora house is being invaded by the netherworld.
"People ask 'Is this house haunted?,' and I have to tell them I don't know if it's haunted, but there are definitely things going on here that I can't explain," Sgt. Rob Jackson said.
Joe Nickell, a senior research fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, says the Phenomena Police should stick to tracking down live suspects.
"Science has never found a ghost, never authenticated a single ghost photograph or any other alleged evidence," he said.
Despite the dismay of their neighbors, the Zamoras and their ghost-hunting friends keep searching, and now they will be cashing in out their hunt by starring in a new reality television show.
"We all agree, we think there's something around," said Officer Mike Bender. It's a "fact of life, we're all going to die. What happens after that point? And we're trying to find out what that is."
