Responding to reports of deer being illegally hunted in a Minnesota cemetery at night, game wardens staking out the site found that the problem may have been 'paranormal' in nature.
The two officers from the city of Duluth were watching the graveyard after nearby residents reported people were there using flashlights to possibly spot, stun, and subsequently shoot deer, which is against the law.
And so, hoping to put a stop to this practice known as 'shining,' the game wardens paid a visit to the cemetery and had a rather spooky encounter when a car entered the graveyard around midnight.
"We could see they were using some sort of light. But it wasn't really a beam of light. ... It was flashing on and off like a strobe," recalled one officer to the Duluth News Tribune.
Bewildered by what they were seeing, the two men decided that they should investigate the situation, but the car sped off from the scene when the game wardens approached it in their truck.
Incredibly, a short chase then ensued, but the mystery vehicle eventually pulled over to the side of a road and the officers learned that hey had busted some hunters of a different variety than they had hoped.
The two women in the car were at first reticent to tell the officers what they were doing because "they said we'd make fun of them."
Eventually they relented and revealed that the game wardens had caught them in the midst of ghost hunting and that they were using the flashes on their cameras to look for spirits.
"They said that you can't see ghosts with a normal light, that you have to use a flash," one of the newly-enlightened game wardens explained, musing that "I didn't realize ghosts only show up with flash."
The inquisitive officers were then apparently given an impromptu lesson in ghost hunting as the pair of paranormal enthusiasts showed off an app on their phone that they use to allegedly detect apparitions.
Eventually, the exchange ended with the ghost hunters being sent on their way by the game wardens, who opted not to issue any citations over the weird incident.
Whether they'll incorporate the ghost hunting techniques on their next stakeout at the cemetery to entertain themselves during stretches of downtime remains to be seen.
Source: Duluth News Tribune