On Wednesday night, Grant Wilson returned to St. Augustine Lighthouse with his Ghost Hunters team to investigate heightened claims of paranormal activity occurring in and around the grounds of the Florida landmark, including frequent occurrences of the shadowy figure Wilson once experienced in 2006.
Ahead of the new investigation, Wilson tells his co-lead investigators, Kristen Luman and Daryl Marston that he experienced “something coming off the landing” and “swoop off the staircase” when he first investigated almost 13 years ago. Once he ran to the top, he and his previous partner discovered nothing present.
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Fast forward to tonight’s episode titled, “Return to St. Augustine,” and Wilson and his team are now armed with a large range of modern devices aimed to help capture evidence of the latest claims. During the investigation, Luman is joined by paranormal investigator and historian, Mustafa Gatollari, who placed three REM pods — also known a radiating device that detects any kind of motion by generating its own 360-degree electromagnetism field — on each level of the lighthouse. The state-of-the-art tech is an aspect of ghost hunting Gatollari shared exclusively with PopCulture.com he is always excited about working with.
“[We] implemented some really cool tech in [St. Augustine],” Gatollari told PopCulture.com. “And I will say just generally, we’re very, very, very distrustful of any type of garage tech, and I think Brandon [Alvis] can speak to that even better than I can — but I’ve been working with it for a while myself, and what’s really cool is that we’re super selective with the tech that we use, so then when we do get some type of activity on that tech, it’s like, ‘Oh yeah!’”
Gatollari explains that it’s all “basically going through a vetting process.”
“I kind of make it like you’re at the gym and then Arnold Schwarzenegger raises his eyebrows and nods his head in approval, whether you get certain amount of weight up,” he laughed. “It’s like, ‘Okay cool.’ Because I’m actually going through the paces of doing things in a very stringent way. So, when we do that with the tech that we use, it’s awesome!”
As Luman and Gatollari explore the lighthouse in the episode, the two discover that the REM pods are beginning to go off on two separate levels at the same time. Going up the stairs, the REM pod on the higher level starts to flash with Luman and Gatollari asking questions, which causes the device to flash on response. It’s then that they discover whatever is in the lighthouse is “playing” or “toying” with them as they make their way back and forth on the staircase between the REM pods going off.
One of the things fans might ponder is how sensitive the REM pod really is, since it detects any kind of movement. Gatollari explains to PopCulture.com that it all depends on the “different types of activity.”
“What we want to do is to test the sensitivity. We want to wave our hand around it,” Gatollari said. “We want to get different types of items, and see what that sensitivity level is, and then we can adjust the sensitivity accordingly.”
Gatollari goes on to share that the REM pods used during the St. Augustine Lighthouse investigation were “good” and “served their purpose,” admitting that they “weren’t overly sensitive.”
“That’s why we have team members ’cause we always have somebody else to just double-check. ‘Oh, what was that? What was there?’ And we have cameras on them, and we review the footage on them,” he added.
The New Jersey native admits that they also always check for false positives.
“I know in that particular case, I had dragged some cloth over them,” he disclosed. “I had a little piece of thread, so I put it around there. ‘Okay, that didn’t really do anything.’ I blew on it. ‘That didn’t really do anything.’ So, it’s like, if something’s walking past it, I wanted to check and see what’s the lightest level of sensitivity that’ll set the REM pod off.”
Sadly, fans of the REM pod might be surprised to learn that the team will no longer be using the specific device in future investigations after the St. Augustine investigation.
“They’re kind of big, and we have the items that do the same exact thing on a smaller package,” Gatollari said. “But they generally serve the same purpose.”
Ghost Hunters fans can tune in every week to catch all the latest and greatest tech the team uses, Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on A&E.
Photo credit: A&E Networks
