Spectrum Tattoo, Part 2
November 22, 2025 | 7pm — 10:30pm
The Claims | Equipment and Setup | The Investigation | Our Results
Back in January when we investigated Spectrum Tattoo for the first time, they gave us an open invitation to return, so we've been keeping that invitation in our back pocket since then. When we made the plans to come back, we thought we ought to come back with some kind of game plan, as a standard investigation approach would feel a bit redundant.
We were already familiar with the location, its staff, its history, and it's reported claims of paranormal activity. Certainly, to get similar results again would be interesting, but a return trip is an opportunity to evolve and grow. So, reminding ourselves of the spirit of Frank and his effect on the staff, we thought we might attempt to do something about him. The staff seems to enjoy (or otherwise not mind) that the place is haunted, but being brought to tears with feelings of dread aren't aspects of that anyone should be dealing with. So our game plan was to try to negotiate with Frank.
The Claims
The claims at Spectrum have been basically the same since our previous investigation, but we had the unique experience of having claims develop while we were on site and in the middle of investigating. Not to get too far ahead here, but during our first Estes Method session, our host Chris received a text message from one of the tattoo artists who had just left. The message explained how one of the lights upstairs started flickering when we got started, and she started feeling very overwhelmed and distraught out of nowhere. She would later send a voice message in which she was crying, marking the second time this artist has been brought to tears during our investigations there.
Equipment and Setup
We brought our usual kit — REM Pods, flashlights, EMF meters, voice recorders, catballs, and our XLS camera — but with a new addition to the kit... our Dead Bell. A dead bell is a relatively new piece of equipment to the world of ghost hunting. It's basically just an EMF detector, but instead of flashing a series of LEDs or showing a numeric readout on a screen, it triggers a small piston that rings a desk bell. The desk bell can function normally as well (by ringing it manually), making it pull double duty as a potential trigger object in certain scenarios.
Note: For the sake of transparency, "Dead Bell" is the name of one specific version of this item. However, as it is quickly being adopted as a common term for similar bells, I'm using the term generically here. Officially speaking, ours is the Brickhouse Inn Call Bell.
Additionally, it had been some time since we last played with any of the ghost hunting phone apps. Since this one was going
to be heavily communication-based, we figured it wouldn't hurt to try them out again just to see what turned up. Just like the
last time we used any of the apps, we are still solidly on the fence about them.
The skeptic in me believes they are likely all just some kind of random word generator. But the believer side of me sees
how frequently the responses they give can be relevant. Sometimes too frequently to be coincedental. For this
investigation, we used GhostTube and Spirit Talker.
This next one is more of a methodology, but I figured I'd lump it in here. This time around, since we were familiar with the spirits, the claims, and their effects on the staff, we had a game plan for this second investigation that would heavily lean on provocation. Provoking is a common methodology used by investigators to stir up activity or otherwise attempt to get the attention of the spirits. Some people think it means being overly aggressive and mean-spirited, but that doesn't necessarily have to be the case. It can be as simple as withdrawing a fun trigger object if activity doesn't meet a certain expectation. In our case, we tuned our provocation to be mildly agitating since our targeted spirit had a history of being a bit of a bully to the staff.
Lastly, for the purposes of negotiating with Frank, we did some research on offerings for angry spirits and found that whiskey and tobacco are common spirit offerings. We didn't want to jump into the deep end by trying to find any kind of spiritual rituals that we certainly weren't qualified to perform, and it seemed like going beyond the whiskey and tobacco was going to start to lean too far toward this or that aspect of spirituality. So we figured, keep it simple and just bring some little single shot bottles of whiskey and some bagged, loose tobacco. These would be used as bargaining chips / trigger objects, or otherwise left as an offering for Frank.
With regard to the above statement about rituals, we didn't exactly go without. I did prepare some words to read at the end of the night as we presented the offering. I figured the offering ought to be given with good intentions, and if we were going to be negotiating with a negative entity, I thought it best to have our intentions written out so our message was crystal clear. Like the provocation itself, this falls more under methodology, but I wanted to include it here to show all the "tools" we prepared for the encounter. Was it overkill? Perhaps. But with the posibility of spirit attachments being rather high here, better safe than sorry.
The Investigation
Since this investigation was going to focus on communication with the spirit of Frank, we started off with a pair of Estes Method sessions in the basement. Like the previous investigation here, we also set out other equipment during these sessions, in the event that the spirits had other ideas of how they wanted to communicate. Our questioning focused primarily on Frank, though we were of course open to anyone else who may have come through.
Almost right off the bat, GhostTube started spitting out words like possessed, demonic, and the like, and
while I acknowledge the "random word generator" aspect of these apps, they were a little too closely related to simply write
off, so I suspected this was Frank trying to scare us in some manner. I won't suggest GhostTube only gave us these "scary"
types of words, though, it certainly gave us a fair share of random words (the screenshot above shows the last 10-15 entries
from our investigation). Interestingly, almost the exact moment I started up the Spirit Talker app, the second
entry I got was "don't provoke us" — interesting only because that's exactly what we were there to do. Either it was
random, or something there knew what we were up to.
As for our Estes Method sessions, Jecca and I were both having some issues hearing words come through clearly over the radio, and it was likely because it's difficult to get radio signal down in the basement. This is especially interesting, however, because what words we did hear were suspiciously loud and clear by comparison. The bulk of the responses we would get were investigative themselves — questions like "Who are you?" "Why are you here?" And so on. Then there was the profanity. If you watch the video below, you might get a picture of a particularly grumpy fellow who had no interest in humoring us and otherwise wanted us to leave him alone. This was Frank. Frank's activity seems to fall in-line with a common type of intelligent paranormal activity, which is being active with the residents but stand-offish with investigators.
In fact, the activity was so stand-offish that we didn't get a single EVP the whole evening. This is surprising considering we got a handful the last time. We performed a dedicated voice recorder session in the basement at one point, but we also run voice recorders during our Estes Method sessions as well. We did a total of four Estes Method sessions, so that was five sessions covering the sweeping majority of our time on investigation, and still no EVPs. That being said, the Ghost Hunting Mindset section on the front page clearly states that "no result IS a result," and that was going to be a theme for our evening. Since we know Spectrum is haunted, and we know Frank's personality (at least as he presents it to us), the fact that we have HOURS of empty voice recorder audio speaks volumes. He just wasn't having any of it that night. Gotta respect him for it, I guess!
The video below shows the bulk of our investigation. Just about the only part it doesn't show is most of Dan's Estes Method session, which was mostly silent outside of the dead bell activity. I'm wanting to produce videos that are shorter than an hour going forward (when possible!), and this one clocks in at around the 50-minute mark. We hope you enjoy, and we'd be most appreciative if you like the video on YouTube and subscribe to our channel. The more interaction our videos and channel get, the more viewers that pesky algorithm puts our video in front of.
Our Results
Our night was rather quiet, but knowing about Frank, it doesn't surprise us. And to be clear, while we love getting EVPs and would have loved to experience X Y Z, it wasn't disappointing. It's all part of the experience of ghost hunting. We knew Frank was up and about that evening, he just didn't want to bother with us too much more than the little bit of interaction we managed to wrangle out of him. That being said, if you're going in specifically to provoke a spirit to the point you feel you need to bring an offering to make up for it, it's a good feeling when you're writing a blog entry about it a week later without anything happening at your home. Here are our results for the night:
- Semi-interactive Estes Method sessions
- Flashlight activity in the basement
- Catball activity in the basement
- Dead bell rang numerous times upstairs
We'd like to thank Chris, Dawn, LaCinda, and the rest of the artists at Spectrum Tattoo for facilitating our second investigation there. It's really awesome knowing we're building a relationship based on trust in a field that could easily go sideways for us at any time. We look forward to our next visit and our next tattoos! (Jecca got some ink this time around, I didn't have anything prepared.)
by David Reimer, posted November 29, 2025
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