<img src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2016/oct/Mukesh-mills.jpg" alt="" />
Post midnight on Halloween Eve (this Sunday), 21-year-old Sarbajeet Mohanty, the world&rsquo;s youngest demonologist certified from New Life Ministry Church School (USA), and 39-year-old Pooja Vijay, a Zumba instructor who moonlights as psychic healer, will visit an abandoned bungalow in Old Panvel to see if it&rsquo;s haunted by a male spirit witnessed by owner Rashida Contractor.
Also read: <a href="http://www.mid-day.com/articles/bombay-haunting/42909" target="_blank">Mumbai haunting: Exploring the unknown, the unexplained in the city's twilight zones</a>
Busting myths &ldquo;She had spotted the spirit near a water body. According to a paranormal theory, water is a good conductor of electricity; the spirit could be using that energy to manifest,&rdquo; guesses Bhubaneswar-based Mohanty.
<img title="Sarbajeet Mohanty investigates a graveyard in Bhubaneswar" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2016/oct/Sarbajeet-Mohanty.jpg" alt="Sarbajeet Mohanty investigates a graveyard in Bhubaneswar" /> Sarbajeet Mohanty investigates a graveyard in Bhubaneswar
The duo are co-founders of the month-old Parapsychology And Investigative Research Society (P.A.I.R.S), an &ldquo;all-in-one solution to all problems paranormal&rdquo; comprising 12 members from across India, Chicago and New York. They had initially conceptualised the visit as the city&rsquo;s first ghost-hunting event, where guests could participate through donations on the crowdfunding portal, Ketto.org. &ldquo;Since we didn&rsquo;t receive donations from Mumbai, we&rsquo;ve turned the event into a private investigation. Mid-December, we plan to conduct workshops on paranormal, metaphysics, quantum mechanics and spirituality. We will also conduct ghost-hunting events at various places in the city,&rdquo; he adds.
<img title="Rahul Kumar at an investigation site" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/2016/oct/Rahul-Kumar.jpg" alt="Rahul Kumar at an investigation site" /> Rahul Kumar at an investigation site
The city-based group is the latest to join a bevy of over a dozen such investigative organisations that have cropped up across India, including the renowned Indian Paranormal Society (IPS) spearheaded by the late Gaurav Tiwari. &ldquo;Inspired by him, many have turned paranormal investigators recently,&rdquo; says Mohanty. They are armed with badges of Certified Paranormal Investigators (CPI) received through courses from Western institutes. They also use high-tech, imported ghost-hunting gadgets. &ldquo;The idea is to bust myths regarding ghosts, remove the fear of the unknown and spread awareness that being a paranormal investigator isn&rsquo;t taboo. Nearly 90 per cent of supposed paranormal activities can be justified scientifically,&rdquo; says Mohanty, who charges for travel and stay when he undertakes cases.
E for energy A ghost or a spirit is nothing but energy, feels Bengaluru-based Dr Rahul Kumar, who is the director of Mumbai-headquartered Team Pentacle. It is a non-profit founded in 2014 by ex-journalist Shishir Kumar to research the world of ghosts, hauntings and UFOs across India. &ldquo;According to the law of conservation, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So, when a physical body dies, the energy is liberated in the lower cosmic strata in the form of electromagnetic waves. An Electromagnetic Force (EMF) metre enables us to get a reading of these waves. If the range is between 50 and 100, we know it&rsquo;s neither from humans nor electric sources like wires. These are called as anomalous energies and once confirmed, we begin research,&rdquo; explains Kumar.
The 29-year-old expert adds, &ldquo;An energy can never harm a human body but it can have direct effect on the hippocampus region of the brain, which causes hallucinations. Through research, I&rsquo;ve realised that these energies also have emotions and memories, something that science has been unable to explain.&rdquo; Team Pentacle receives over 15 spirit-possession cases per month, largely from Mumbai and Rajasthan. &ldquo;If medical reports are normal, our parapsychologists and psychics perform meditation rituals to enhance energy re-flows in homes and counsel an individual to increase their positivity,&rdquo; he says. Vijay adds, &ldquo;Psychics step in to mark hot and cold spots to find the presence of an energy before the investigators take over.&rdquo;
Mohanty, who has investigated places in Alibaug, Manali and Bengaluru, informs, &ldquo;There are two types of communications with energies &mdash; Intelligent Communication, where it manifests and we receive replies. Another is Residual Communication, which does not involve an energy but the emotions of a person at the time of death. These get captured by the electromagnetic spectrum, repeat and fade out with time.&rdquo;
Back in 2008, Kumar couldn&rsquo;t afford the high tuition fees of IPS&rsquo;s course and instead, studied from Ghostbusters of Southern California. Today, Team Pentacle offers three-month and long-term courses in paranormal research, starting from '15,000. &ldquo;Most individuals who approach us are students. You receive a certificate affiliated to ParaNexus Association (USA), which oversees paranormal research in the world,&rdquo; informs Kumar.

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All you need to know about Mumbai's new-age ghost hunters

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