Ghost hunter's work is of a 'sensitive' nature
TV star shares stories of paranormal experiences with college audience
BY JAMIE ROMM Staff Writer

PHOTOS BY ANDREW MILLER staff Chris Fleming, ghost hunter and co-host of the show "Dead Famous," speaks to a room full of students at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft last Thursday.

MIDDLETOWN - Chris Fleming has looked for ghosts in places like Alcatraz and Salem, but he finally met his match - Newark Liberty International Airport.

After being stuck at the airport, Fleming arrived two hours late for his lecture Thursday night at Brookdale Community College, where more than 50 people stayed to hear what the ghost hunter had to say. Fleming is famous for his television show "Dead Famous," which airs on the Biography Channel, and his Unknown Magazine, which investigates the paranormal and the supernatural.

He describes himself as a "sensitive," someone who senses ghosts.

"I don't like to be called a psychic," Fleming said. "I can sense, hear and feel ghosts. I can see in my thoughts in my head their form of communications."

With the lights off during his lecture, Fleming told a story of what happened to him the night before. Staying in a classroom building at Central Methodist University in Fayette, Mo., after a night of ghost hunting, he was awakened at 5:14 a.m. by screaming in a building that he thought he was alone in. He described hearing a man yelling at a cat and footsteps in his own room.

Students watch an excerpt of the show "Dead Famous" featuring a clip of 1950s TV horror hostess Maila Nurmi at Brookdale Community College.

"These things will mess with you. One time I stayed in the Coronado Hotel and got smacked in the head by someone who wasn't there," he said of the historic luxury hotel just outside of San Diego.

He defined ghosts as a spirit that has left its physical body and has not gone on to the other side. They are in between levels of existence.

Most ghosts will just mind their own business and will only be seen or felt by people who are sensitive, like Fleming. Others choose to be seen for separate reasons.

"Some ghosts are just trying to scare the heck out of you because they like having that power," Fleming said. "But most aren't like that."

After asking the audience whether they've seen or know people who have seen a ghost, about three-quarters raised their hands. He says he gets a percentage that high with every audience.

He described a time as a child where he saw a ghost coming out of his closet that he felt was dark and evil. After running to his maid screaming, she came into the room and started praying, and Fleming saw the ghost retreat back into the closet. The maid quit the next day.

Soon after the incident he went to his priest to ask for advice and received a disappointing response.

"He basically told me, don't play with an Ouija board and keep praying," Fleming said. "I told him that doesn't help me at all. They're still there."

He told the audience that there is a reason that we do not see ghosts in everyday life. We only see 10 percent of our physical environment, Fleming said, pointing to a chart of the electromagnetic spectrum.

"That's why we can get them on camera sometimes," Fleming said. "It's a different wavelength."

He showed a photo of a woman in a Halloween costume to the audience, which started to laugh because they knew that she was not a ghost. Fleming then pointed to a face in the background of the image that he knew the crowd could not see at first. He swore that the picture was not altered and that it could in no way be the photographer taking the picture.

"If it was him, then you'd also see the camera lens in the photo," Fleming said. "Plus I know the guy and he looks completely different than the face."

After his lecture he took the remaining people in the audience on a ghost hunt of the campus. He has been touring schools nationwide and taking students on ghost hunts in an effort to get his message across: Ghosts are real.