Joshua P. Warren (1976– ) Paranormal investigator and author, and founder of L.E.M.U.R., the League of Energy Materialization and Unexplained Phenomena Research. Joshua P. Warren was born on October 25, 1976, in Asheville, North Carolina. At age 13 he published his first book.

From 1992–95, he wrote columns for the Asheville Citizen-Times. In 1995, he founded L.E.M.U.R., of which he is president, to conduct Scientific method paranormal investigations. L.E.M.U.R. is part of his multimedia production company, Shadowbox Enterprises, LLC. Among Warren’s notable L.E.M.U.R. investigations were the Pink Lady Ghost at the prestigious Grove Inn in Asheville in 1995 and an expedition concerning the Brown Mountain Ghosts LIGHTS in 2000. There he and his team captured the first known film footage of the mysterious luminosities.

His first published ghost book was Haunted Asheville, a regional bestseller. In 2000, he published a novel The Evil in Asheville. How to Hunt Ghosts: A Practical Guide, a field guide to paranormal investigation, was published in 2003, and Pet Ghosts: Animal Encounters from Beyond the Grave was published in 2006. Warren makes numerous media appearances and is host to a weekly radio show, Speaking of Strange. He produced and starred in a one-man documentary Alone in a Haunted House.

He divides ghosts into five general categories:

• Entities, ghosts which seem to have consciousness and are interactive with the living

• Imprints, ghosts of objects, and of the dead that do not seem to have conscious awareness

• Warps, ghostly phenomena perhaps created by geomagnetic anomalies and interdimensional portals

• Poltergeists, entities that create disturbances

• Naturals, a “rare phenomenon that appears ghostly but in fact is created by some Scientifically unknown property of the present.”

Naturals mimic activity that appears ghostly to casual observation. Warren’s research focuses on the interaction of consciousness with the energy of place, and also on frequencies of light and electromagnetic fields that are associated with paranormal phenomena. Personal experiences with the ghost of a pet led Warren to research animal ghosts. He coined the term “phantimal” to describe a paranormal entity that looks more like an animal than a human. Phantimals may not be ghosts of real animals, but more along the lines of Black Dogs, MOTHMAN, and other mysterious creatures.

FURTHER READING:

• L.E.M.U.R. Web site. Available online. URL: https://shadow boxent.brinkster.net/lemurhome.html. Downloaded April 3, 2007.
• Joshuapwarren.com Web site. Available online. URL: https:// www.joshuapwarren.com. Downloaded August 20, 2006.
• Warren, Joshua P. How to Hunt Ghosts: A Practical Guide. New York: Fireside, 2003.
  ———. Pet Ghosts. New York: Fireside, 2006.

SOURCE:

The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits– Written by Rosemary Ellen Guiley – September 1, 2007