LOS ANGELES — It was a dark but not-so stormy night when we set out in search of ghosts at the old zoo in Griffith Park.
"I am their voice. They have a chance to speak and tell their story, so I consider it a gift that I'm able to do this," said Linda Silverstein, better known as Linda, "the Ghost Hunter."
Halloween isn't just her busiest time of the year, "it also happens to be my birthday, so I think I was destined to do this whether I wanted to or not," she said.
Silverstein calls the area around the zoo a portal for ghosts, both good and bad.
"In 1912 when they opened the zoo, they created these cages that were not big enough to hold animals and so many of the animals were dying," she said.
"And it's not just animals that are here, it's very very haunted."
If you've never been on a ghost hunt, there are a ton of gadgets that supposedly help hunters spot the supernatural. Most of them involve electromagnetic fields.
"When there's nothing electrical around and EMF's start to rise, then you know you're on to something," Silverstein said.
Then, there's another device called the Ovilus.
"What it's able to do is take the electromagnetic fields and convert them into words that whatever this entity is that is trying to talk to us," Silverstein said.
But of all the high-tech tools in her bag, the dousing rods are her favorite.
"And when a ghost starts moving them, it's awesome to watch people's faces," she said.
Most of the tour is spent trying to decipher words and phrases from what sounds like gibberish coming from tuning a radio. A lot is open to interpretation. Silverstein and her friend Heather Cunha, a professional psychic who often works with her on these hunts, help put together a plausible narrative to figure out what the ghost may be trying to communicate.
"I guess I've always been a people person, so a dead people person I am too, so I want to know their stories," Cunha said.
As an empathic medium, she connects in a more personal way with the spirit world.
"That's how I know that we're dealing with a car accident, where someone smacked their head because I feel it," Cunha said.
We came across fluctuating temperatures and surges in EMFs, but no floating figures or strange apparitions. Before we left, we gave the ghosts a final chance.
"Do you have anything to tell the Spectrum public tonight?" Silverstein asked the ghosts. .
We didn't get much of a response, although as we packed up, we noticed a cross at her feet, perhaps a final nod from the paranormal world.
"It's very weird isn't it?" Silverstein said.
Safe to say, it was an evening unlike any other. Silverstein said whether people believe or not, that really doesn't matter to her.
"I'm not here to change anybody's minds. I'm just here to show people that there may be something they don't know is here," she said.