Think you have paranormal activity? Call Georgia Paranormal Investigations
Philip Wyatt, a Buckhead hairdresser by trade, also has a side interest that is more unusual than, say, knitting or pickleball: He seeks spirit activity as the head of Georgia Paranormal Investigations.
The volunteer group solicits clients via social media and website georgiaparanormalinvestigations.net, though Wyatt isn’t even sure calling them “clients” is proper since the group doesn’t charge anything for its services.
“It’s more like a passion or a calling,” said Wyatt. “This is not a profession.”
While he said he’s a medium who can talk to spirits, that isn’t a requirement for the other eight team members who help him with investigations.
“Everyone on our team really, at some point in their lives, had paranormal experience that was a catalyst to getting into the paranormal investigation world,” he said.
Tiffany Frazier, an Atlanta author of paranormal romances who once saw an unexplained shadowy figure as a child, said she sought out local groups online to help make her books more accurate. “I needed to understand how the equipment worked and do the field justice,” she said.
One ghost hunting group she hung out with at a cemetery was “super rude” and seemed to be trying to “provoke” the spirits, she said. But when she observed a GPI investigation, she was impressed. “They were respectful” to the ghosts, she said.
Wyatt sensed her interest and asked her to join the team in 2023.
“Philip has a knack for remaining grounded, and that’s critical when investigating,” Frazier said. “Philip’s goal is to make sure every explainable explanation is looked at first. Then and only then does he allow for paranormal explanations.”
Wyatt is well aware of skeptics. In a recent Gallup poll, only 39% of respondents said they believe in ghosts. But that is up from 32% in 2005. He thinks the growth in ghost hunting shows on networks like the Travel Channel over the past two decades may have had an impact.
“People are more open-minded now than older generations,” Wyatt said.
Still, the stigma lingers. Sometimes people don’t want their neighbors to know what’s happening, so they request GPI arrive without identifying T-shirts. “We’ll pull into their garages and shut the door before unloading equipment,” he said.
And he doesn’t love the way many shows portray ghosts as evil. To him, that isn’t the case. Most ghosts, he said, are benign.
“Our No. 1 goal is to educate the public,” Frazier said. “Not everything is evil or demonic. TV shows tend to embellish. Most of our investigations are boring. We’re often bored. We’re there to gather data. We’re not there to make a scene.”
Wyatt said the “scientific community does not consider paranormal investigation a science. Scientifically, you can’t prove the human consciousness exists after bodily death. So what we’re doing is based on hypotheses and theories.”
He himself saw his first ghost as a 9-year-old growing up in the mid-1970s in a religious household in tiny Statesville, North Carolina.
“I saw this figure of a woman standing next to my bed,” he said. “I started screaming bloody murder. My mom came in and got frustrated. ‘Stop making things up!’” he recalled her saying.
After that, whenever he saw a figure who wasn’t supposed to be there, “I kind of ignored it. I didn’t talk about it. I pushed it aside until I got older. And we didn’t have the internet back then. Our tiny library didn’t have books on the subject.”
He grew up, moved to Atlanta and opened The Philip Wyatt Salon in Buckhead about a quarter century ago.
Wyatt eventually began reading about paranormal activity. “I used to go on ghost tours and ghost hunts for fun,” he said. “That is different than paranormal investigating. Ghost hunting is thrill seeking. You don’t do any kind of research. I’m interested in the science aspect of it.”
His group, which he began four years ago, doesn’t just take any client. They hold Zoom calls and seek more details. They glean motivations. They have them fill out a questionnaire.
People who seek GPI out often “just want to know that whatever is going on in their house, they’re not imagining it,” Wyatt said. “We do not guarantee anything. We’re not exterminators. We’re evidence gatherers.”
The investigation usually takes several hours. Wyatt uses different equipment to pick up abnormalities that may indicate paranormal activity. He measures unusual shifts in radiation, temperature and sound.
They also set up cameras and record sound in hopes of catching video and, more commonly, voices. “We try to pick up a sound we can’t hear with our own ears below human hearing range,” Wyatt said.
When they arrive on a site, they tell suspected ghosts specifically that “we are here to communicate with them, not to harm them.” Their goal is to ensure the ghosts and the homeowners have an understanding and don’t bother each other.
Patricia Hill, who owns Kennesaw salon Patricia Hill Color Studio in a 137-year-old home, said for years, she would pick up overnight loud, unexplained bangs on security cameras. In 2018, a piece of paper inexplicably flew off a shelf that was caught on video. Hill’s research uncovered that the building was built in the 188os by a family who owned indentured servants.
She found GPI on Facebook, and Wyatt checked her salon out in 2023. Wyatt’s team found so many voices the first time, they came back again for more information.
Based on Wyatt’s findings, Hill thought one of the servants may have been hanged on an old tree that still exists on the property. She put a cross there to honor the person who may have died.
“I kid you not, it’s like a weight lifted,” Hill said after GPI came to her salon. “The space feels so much better. It doesn’t have any mean energy. It feels light. I want the spirits to be free. I want them to be happy.”
GPI only gets a couple of queries a month and will do a handful of investigations a year. Sometimes they’ll visit an existing public site known for ghosts and investigate for fun. They hold occasional library lectures.
Wyatt said he has been touched by and has held conversations with ghosts. “I’ve been freaked out a few times,” he said. “It’s more exhilarating after you come off the initial shock. This isn’t for the faint of heart. You have to have confidence and a passion for learning.”
About the Author
Rodney Ho writes about entertainment for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution including TV, radio, film, comedy and all things in between. A native New Yorker, he has covered education at The Virginian-Pilot, small business for The Wall Street Journal and a host of beats at the AJC over 20-plus years. He loves tennis, pop culture & seeing live events.
