Paranormal Project was contacted by Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Surfers Paradise regarding some strange occurrences that were happening within the museum. After sitting down with management and hearing the stories of staff seeing apparitions and one staff member saying her hair was moving when there was no breeze (like someone had walked past her really close, but no one was there). We toured the museum on a preliminary investigation to see where we would set up our equipment.
We went into this investigation with the usual rational thinking and due to the recent construction there, we really wanted to see if these strange occurrences were due to a more natural explanation but on the other hand all the artifacts in the Ripley’s museum are genuine and because it has been said that spirits can attach themselves to certain objects, we were very curious to see what the night would bring.
After planning out the placement of our equipment, we waited until Ripley’s had closed for the night to start our investigation. Due to the museum being somewhat underground this provided the best environment for our investigation as when the lights went out the museum was a very different place. It was a very quiet almost too quiet feeling at times, after an initial walkthrough of the museum, we paired up and explored the area, each pair conducting scientific and spiritual experiments in the different parts of the museum. Throughout the night we documented several strange occurrences, our EMF meter spiked a few times through the hallways however a more natural explanation was put forward as it may have been due to some wiring in the walls. Our walkie talkies also acted somewhat erratically, and while it could have been due to interference there seemed to be a few times when this “conveniently” happened.
After reviewing the evidence, we cannot come to a solid conclusion as to whether Ripley’s is in fact haunted. Our physic on hand had experiences, one was with a little boy who was reported to be the spirit of one of the shrunken heads on display near the main entrance to the museum and another was a captain of a ship yet without solid proof to back this up we cannot make any conclusions with the evidence we gathered on the night. The evidence obtained on this investigation has been deemed inconclusive with the scientific evidence pointing more towards a natural cause for the phenomenon occurring however due to the authenticity and bloody history of some of the artifacts on display at Ripley’s, there is always a chance that we may need to revisit this location in the future.
