Secret Life of a Ghost Hunter

Far from the staged spookiness of cable TV, part-time paranormal investigator Dan Sturges pulls back the curtain on a decade spent searching for spirits.

Photos by Alison Brockhouse

When we meet for the first time at a Midtown Barnes & Noble, paranormal investigator Dan Sturges is dressed in loose-fitting blue jeans and a short-sleeve shirt that exposes his thick arms and tattoos. His right forearm features a portrait of his beloved late dog Gus, and another of the Bruce Springsteen lyric “Learn to live with what you can’t rise above.” Sturges, forty-eight, is a burly guy with blue eyes framed by pale blonde brows and lashes, a bald, shiny head, and a pink complexion that makes him seem slightly overheated.

While investigating, Sturges, who lives in Inwood, on the northern tip of Manhattan, likes to travel light, but this wasn’t always the case. When he first started dabbling in the paranormal business, he was all about the gadgets. He had a digital video recording system, cameras equipped with night vision and a $3,000 microphone that recorded subhuman hearing frequencies. Then, he says, he started thinking with a level head. “You reali…