About 1,000 people came to explore all things paranormal and unexplainable at the Oregon Ghost Conference on Friday, March 23, to Sunday, March 25, at the Seaside Civic and Convention Center. The event features dozens of classes related to the spirits, as well as a ghoulish walk through downtown Seaside that showcased the town’s most haunted spots.

This year, however, some of the participants were more junior than in years past. Children came to explore the Kids Paranormal Zone, where they were invited to make spooky crafts, learn about ghost-hunting equipment, take pictures with the Portland Ghostbusters or, if they dare, attend a haunted toy show-and-tell.

Aaron Collins, a lead investigator at NW Paranormal, showed youngsters a variety of electromagnetic field detectors and lasers professional ghosthunters use to try and identify spirits.

“I love teaching kids,” Collins said. “I love their eagerness. They ask such intelligent questions. They are truly curious — when they ask something they truly want to know.”

Two of those kids were Luna and Autumn Rodgers, the daughters of Stacy Rodgers, a fellow ghost hunter at Big River Paranormal based out of Portland for the past six years.

“I’ve always had an interest (in ghosts),” she said.

Stacy Rodgers came to participate in this year’s conference and decided to bring the kids to the paranormal zone based on their interest in the subject matter. She has never had plans to teach her passion of ghost hunting to her kids deliberately. Instead, she said her daughters seemed to stumble across the interest themselves after one of her daughters started seeing a spirit in the hallway, she said.

Stacy Rodgers hopes educating her kids about ghosts will eliminate some of the fear that is often associated with them.

“I like to have my kids be open-minded. I want to give them to tool to make the decision for themselves whether it is real or not,” she said. “I wanted them to know that if it does happen, if they do have an experience with a spirit, that it’s not an experience based in fear. I don’t want them to be scared of it.”