Being nice to ghosts pays off.

By Audrey Parente
Staff Writer

DAYTONA BEACH — On the night she prowled through Riverfront Park in Daytona Beach,
all ghost hunter Dusty Smith knew was that Brownie, a stray dog that became a local legend, was buried by the river.

She carried her camera and some dog biscuits, and trudged through the park until she found
the grave marked by a stone near a topiary bush, sculpted to look like the pooch. She started talking aloud.

“There wasn’t anybody in the park. People think I’m nuts anyhow, but during the conversation
I felt a warm sensation on my left leg, When my other researchers came there, the sensation went away, so I quickly stood up and said, ‘Please let me take your photograph,’ and snapped a picture.”

Ghost hunting is a thriving business for Doris E. “Dusty” Smith. She seeks out spooky spirits in cemeteries, haunted houses and public places where they are reported to roam. She captures their presence in photos, on video and by recording changes in temperatures.

Giving year-round ghost tours near Pinewood Cemetery on Main Street in Daytona Beach and in downtown DeLand, she says, also is paying off. And selling small books about ghost hunting is another growing occupation for the single Holly Hill mom.

Her reputation as a spirit chaser is growing fast. Tales of her escapades have been written up in seven books. Soon she will have a book out about a haunting she documented in Deltona. And a TV producer recently called to propose filming one of her attempts to document paranormal activity. Even the AAA wrote her up in their recent travel publication under ‘Ghost Trails.”

It’s not exactly what Smith expected she’d be doing when she escaped Long Island winters and moved to Florida in 1979 as a wealthy teenager with a Harley Davidson.

“I actually was a high school dropout and had my high school equivalency diploma before my class even graduated,” she said, surrounded by skulls, crucifixes and grave ornaments which decorate her living room in a modest single-family home. “My father had passed away and left me an inheritance, and I had been living on my own. I was a horrible, rebellious teenage daughter. I bought a house and thought, ‘Wow, I can hang out and be a biker.’ ”

The reality of life set in, of course, and Smith went from one project to another getting certificates, diplomas and degrees in everything from hairdressing and nursing to marine biology and theology. She married a few times and had a son, but not until she used up most of her money did she come upon the real thing she wanted to do as an adult in 1993.

“A friend had taken me to St. Augustine for my birthday. He took me on a Ghost Tour. I always had been fascinated with the paranormal and was always thrilled with cemeteries,” she said. “You can learn history, and the sculptures are just amazing to me.”

During the birthday tour, Smith took some photos (available for viewing at www.dbprginc.org), but when she picked up the snapshots from the developer, something was wrong.

“I thought the kid had screwed up my pictures, but he said, ‘Lady, it’s on the film,’ ” she recalled. “One photo was a picture with 183 orbs — some smaller and some bigger, and some could have been further away. They seemed like balls of light. I thought maybe I had captured ghosts, so I got on the Internet and started looking at stuff about the paranormal.

“I was hooked.”

She discovered the “orbs” in photos wouldn’t hold up as evidence of ghosts, but she found information about using magnetic sensors and infrared thermometers. She acquired as much equipment as she could and set out to “debunk all the local folklore” from St. Augustine to Oak Hill to DeLand and Deltona. Home study courses with the International Ghost Hunters Society and online classes through Flamel College (a school specializing in paranormal studies in Sacramento, Calif.), earned her ghost hunter and paranormal investigator certifications.

“We weeded many ghost stories out, but there were those few that we studied and documented.”

One, she said, is the story of the town dog, Brownie — mentioned earlier — which “made himself at home on the Beach Street district.” When she found his grave, Smith said she asked Brownie’s spirit for “permission to take his picture,” as she always does with spirits.

Smith’s Web site (www.dbprginc.org) has a photo of the dog from an old newspaper article and a snapshot — which she said has not been enhanced. The snapshot captured an “orb” of light. The enlargement of the orb appears to contain a dog’s face, she said.

Her interest in cemeteries led her to Pinewood Cemetery on Main Street, where she investigated the “residents” and searched for their spirits. The research resulted in a walking ghost tour around the Main Street area.

Smith said the tour provides some hair-raising fun all year. She recited from the script she uses: “Pinewood sits on four-and-a-half acres. There are 425 gravesites with 17 still available . . .” She said tours have been continually booked three to five nights every week, year-round, except during Bike Weeks, Biketoberfest and Black College Reunion — for two to 40 people.

“We also don’t operate Halloween night out of respect for the dead, and business is steady year-round. We don’t pick up during October like you would think,” she said. The tour costs $8 per person. She also has a representative who conducts a similar tour in DeLand, but she quit doing a tour in the downtown area of Beach Street where Brownie the dog is buried because of construction and a reconfiguration of the Jackie Robinson Ballpark area. Also, a Haunted Halifax River Cruise she used to do ended when last year’s three hurricanes scuttled the party boat she used.

Smith also established a non-profit research team of more than 20 people, including a demonologist, field investigators, “sensitives” and electronic equipment operators. She charges no money to investigate a haunting. “Most cases are for low-income families who are scared people who need help,” Smith said.

Smith is mentioned in “Encyclopedia of Haunted Places,” “Ghost Hunters of America,” “Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits and Haunted Places,” and “Weird Florida.” But when she started her own small press, which has published 26 small books and seven compact discs on subjects from the paranormal to magic, Smith began to attract public interest.

“I have sold more than 1,000 copies of ‘Ghost Hunting 101, a Guidebook for the Beginner.’ ”

A manuscript Smith recently completed, which is contracted to Publish America, documents “a case we worked in Deltona, which started out as a Friday night cocktail party joke.” But she said participants ended up witnessing a shocking and violent haunting.

In addition to her businesses, Smith started a cemetery-preservation community-service group, and serves as president. The local group under International Association of Cemetery Preservationists has taken responsibility to maintain Gethsemane ( Orchard St., Ormond Beach), Saints and Sinners (Oak Hill), and Mount Arrarat (Bellvue in Daytona Beach).