Interview
The house that chased them to the car: meeting Ghost Crew Norrbotten
14 October 2026 · 8 min read
They had placed REM pods in every ground floor room of an abandoned house deep in the forest. All of them went off at once. After switching everything off and asking out loud whether anyone could make a sound, they heard heavy footsteps on the floor above. Sara, Karin and Johan now run Ghost Crew Norrbotten as a business in northern Sweden, with a podcast, films, equipment they build themselves and house cleansings. This is the night that became their origin story.
The abandoned house stood deep in the forest, no neighbours and no street lights. The three of Ghost Crew Norrbotten had placed REM pods in every room on the ground floor, small sensors that sound an alarm when something comes close. As if on cue, every one of them went off at the same moment.
They moved from room to room trying to film it. The unease grew. In the end they switched off every instrument, stood completely still in the dark, and asked out loud whether anyone could make a sound.
That was when they heard the footsteps. Heavy steps across the floor above them, moving towards the staircase where they stood.
”We can promise you that we flew out through the door and into the car.”
They drove off as fast as they could along the dark forest road, eyes on the mirror and out through the rear window, convinced that something was following the car.
Today it is a funny story. At the time they were terrified, and the question has stayed with them: who was walking across that floor? Nobody else was in the house. Of that they are certain.
Three who turned the interest into a business
Ghost Crew Norrbotten is Sara, Karin and Johan. They are a paranormal investigation team and, these days, a registered company as well, based in northern Sweden around Luleå and Boden.
The business is wider than cameras in dark houses. They produce film, a podcast, lectures and events. They build and sell their own ghost hunting equipment, perform house cleansings and read tarot. The podcast and the YouTube channel started because their curiosity kept pulling them towards new corners of the subject.
They run tailored ghost hunting events at Sandträsk sanatorium for the hardened crowd, and a newer format they call a ghost walk for anyone who wants something gentler. The rest of the year they tour Swedish fairs to meet their audience.
”It isn’t a job, it is a way of life, and it comes down to a conviction deep in the soul.”
The meeting at Sandträsk
The three met at an event that Laxton Ghost Sweden held at Sandträsk sanatorium. They knew each other slightly beforehand and decided to hunt together that evening.
It went surprisingly well. So well that they booked again, and a few more times after that, with the same result.
Then they booked a joint trip to Borgvattnet vicarage and hostel in Jämtland, one of the most talked about haunted houses in Sweden. They rented both buildings for a full day and night.
That was where it caught them. Ghost Crew Norrbotten was formed on the spot and eventually became a registered company with, in their own words, more work than they can get through.
The body first, the instruments after
They came to the subject from different directions. Sara was born with the sight and has always spoken with spirits. Karin and Johan had their interest sparked by Swedish paranormal television, and later by finding Laxton’s investigations on YouTube.
That has shaped how they work. Most teams start with the meter and look for something that sets it off. Ghost Crew Norrbotten reverse the order.
”We tend to say that our own bodies and feelings are the most reliable instruments we have.”
The equipment is there to corroborate, and to make the experience visible on film. They describe it as quite powerful to sense a presence, to feel that it is a man, say, and where in the room he is standing.
Only then do the devices come out. They put a REM pod, a Deadbell or their own Ghost Distans Detector on that exact spot and wait for it to sound. They point the Kinect at it, the camera known in ghost hunting as an SLS camera, which draws a skeleton on screen when it believes it sees a human shape. Then they start a spirit box.
”We get through: hi, my name is Daniel. That is how we work.”
They build the equipment themselves
Beyond what is already mentioned they use an Ovilus, a K2, a dictaphone and a portal. The list is long, but the interesting part is where it comes from.
They build most of it by hand, and that is a deliberate choice.
”Then we know how it works and how it doesn’t. That gives confidence and reliability to what we do.”
The equipment doesn’t stay with them either. It is sold on through their web shop, which makes them one of the few Swedish teams that both investigate and manufacture.
Good sleep, plenty of food and a good mood
Asked how they prepare, they give an answer that has nothing to do with technology.
”Good sleep, plenty of food and a cheerful mood are the cornerstones of a good ghost hunt. Then your energy is high, and that draws the spirits in.”
After that comes the practical side. The equipment is checked over so that it is in top condition, and where possible they research the location thoroughly in advance.
From the knock on the door to thanking the house
An investigation by Ghost Crew Norrbotten follows a fixed order.
They knock and introduce themselves. The cameras are already rolling before they step inside, and that is not only routine. In their experience things most often happen right at the beginning, because the spirits know they are coming and are eager to start.
On the first pass they work through the building systematically to find hot spots, carrying a fairly mobile kit: a REM pod, a K2, the Kinect, a Deadbell and the Ghost Distans Detector. The aim is to map what kind of activity sits where.
On the second pass the experiments begin. They run their portal, leave trigger objects with a camera on them and use the Estes method, where one of the team sits blindfolded with headphones wired to a spirit box while the others ask questions the listener cannot hear.
Once they feel they have a picture of what the place wants to tell them, they gather and sum it up. Every bit of that debrief is recorded, for a reason anyone who investigates a lot will recognise: investigations blur together in the memory.
The ending is as fixed as the arrival. They thank the house and ask whatever is there to stay behind and not follow them home.
The bedroom where the meter went off the scale
Asked whether they have captured anything they still cannot explain, they say it has happened many times. One of the most recent cases came from a house cleansing.
The person living there was experiencing severe discomfort in the bedroom. When the team measured, the EMF readings were extreme, higher than anything they had come across, roughly as though a very heavy power cable were running under the bed.
They worked through every natural source they could think of without finding one. They even asked the owner to establish whether a cable ran beneath the house. The answer resolved nothing.
In the end they cleansed the house and asked the owner to sleep in a different room. He is happy today and the problems are gone. The team still wonders what it was they measured.
The art of ruling out pine cones on the roof
The list of what they check before calling anything unexplained is long and strikingly down to earth: wifi, power cables, fuse boxes, draughts, crooked hinges, radiators, the cracks and knocks an old house makes as its temperature shifts, and pine cones dropping onto the roof.
”We measure, we climb around, and we test everything we can possibly think of to rule out natural sources.”
It takes time, and they are clear that the time is necessary if an investigation is going to be trusted. Their advice to other ghost hunters is to put in those hours and not to give up easily.
Why it matters, they sum up in a single line when asked directly: to keep their credibility.
The same care applies to the people. They spend a great deal of time interviewing residents and staff before an investigation, and only a fraction of it makes the films. Incidents repeat themselves often, particularly where what they call energy memories are involved.
Sometimes they arrive at a different reading from the person living in the house. Someone who has experienced something often describes it as unpleasant, while the team suspect the intention was something else entirely, that someone simply wanted to pass on something important.
When time and place overlap
The strangest thing they have experienced cannot be measured by any device.
”It is when time and place overlap. For a few short moments you suddenly see something completely different in front of you from what is actually there.”
What it is they are seeing, they do not know. The past, another place, the future. They leave the question open and call the experience both wonderful and a little frightening.
The ghost hunt hangover
An investigation is an emotional rollercoaster, they say. Tuning into the energies of a place means, as they describe it, that you may end up experiencing what the people who were there experienced, and that is not always pleasant.
Some entities, they add, specialise in manipulating emotions. So you keep an eye on yourself and on each other, and keep asking whether what you are feeling comes from inside you or from somewhere else. They call it one of the more enjoyable parts of the work.
They also describe lending out their own energy at times, so that spirits have enough to manifest with. It costs. Afterwards you can feel drained and low.
”Then it comes down to having tools to lift the energy again. Chocolate, humour and looking after each other.”
For the day after, they have their own word. The ghost hunt hangover.
Not afraid of dying
They turn the question of what changed their view of the paranormal around. For them it is more about their view of how the world works.
The knowledge that it does not end when you die is something they describe as rather lovely. That you get to see the people you loved again, and perhaps look down at the earth and drop in.
”We are not afraid of dying. It feels like a new adventure.”
Their picture of what waits is a bright one. They imagine being enveloped by the love of the universe and floating free of all life’s hardships, to a place in another dimension where you get to be with everyone you love.
And they keep the question open in their own way. Everyone gets the answer to that riddle eventually, they note, and it will be interesting to find out whether they had it right.
To anyone entirely convinced that ghosts do not exist, they feel no need to argue.
”Your world seems colourless, we wish you well. Our job isn’t to convince anybody, experiences come when you are ready.”
The most common misconception
The image they would most like to be rid of is the ghost hunter who runs around startling their friends and inventing their experiences.
”That is a very long way from the truth. We work hard and seriously, exactly like any medium, just in a different, more visual and occasionally rather noisy way.”
The equipment beeps and chimes, as they put it. The rest is research, interviews, measurements and many hours in front of the footage.
Alcatraz, Scotland and a battlefield in Finland
The most charged thing they have done is an investigation nobody has seen yet. They have worked a former battlefield in Finland, and the film from it has not been released.
They will say only that it left a deep mark. A great deal of anguish, a great deal of screaming, and what they describe as relevant communication. When it does come out, they say, it will be something out of the ordinary.
The dream locations are further afield. All the great Scottish castles with centuries of history behind them, they say, and Alcatraz.
Sound your horn when you see the Ghost Bus
Asked what ghost hunting means to them personally, they answer in one word. Everything.
It takes up a large share of their lives and their time, they live and breathe it, and they work flat out on the company. They also seem genuinely delighted to be recognised.
”Do come over and talk when you meet us, and sound your horn when you see the Ghost Bus go past. We wish you all the best in life.”
Explore more: California · Jämtland · Scotland · Norrbotten · United States · Sweden
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