How does it fit?
One of the most important parts and most difficult parts of being a paranormal investigator is remaining objective. An investigator that loses sight of their objectivity, has already begun to lose the battle. What I mean about remaining objective is specifically aimed at the collection of evidence, the review of evidence, and interpretation of the results of the investigation. No matter how large or small the investigation or the number of investigators involved, there are four steps that need to be followed. Each step of the process is as important as the next. The time spent on each specific step will vary from investigation to investigation, but will not diminish any one steps importance to the overall process. I will name each step and then break down them down in the following paragraphs. The first step is learning the legend or getting background information about the specific location you plan on investigating. Where the place is, should not influence the amount of time spent on the research. A private residence deserves as much time as a historical building. The second step in the process is gathering the evidence. This can be handled in many different ways. Some use personal experience, some use scientific equipment, and personally in my groups, Eastern State Paranormal Investigations, we use a combination of both. After you gather the evidence you need to review it. The review process is the most tedious and time consuming of all the processes. Often times there are hours of video and audio recordings to go over and analyze. Once this step is done, the final one is to interpret how the evidence fits with the story involved with the haunting or if it fits at all. The background story to an alleged haunting is important to an investigation. You need to know what is going on at a location in order to properly plan a successful investigation. Some places are easier to research then others. Historical sites often have well documented stories that are verified by several different witnesses or thorough records on inhabitants of the location. Private homes, another very typical setting for an investigation, is usually not as easy. Often you are going to spend hours in a library or at a courthouse pouring over old records to try and find a few minute pieces of information. If the person’s home is not located in a town you are very familiar with, you might not have the knowledge of any rumors or legends about the location. A good source that often knows of these, is a local historian. The town’s library should know of who is the local historian and how to contact them. Each investigation deserves the same amount of depth and thoroughness in background research. You wouldn’t treat a private investigation different then you would a historical site when gathering evidence, if anything you are more professional when dealing with someone’s private residence. Skipping the research in the end only hurts your investigation. If you can’t find what you need, don’t give up, continue researching until you find what are looking for. The only way to fail at the research process is to give up too soon. The most exciting and fun part of being a paranormal investigator is the collection of evidence. Everyone wants to get out there and search for evidence of the afterlife. This process of gathering evidence is an important one. Probably the most important of the entire process. If the evidence is not collected in a proper manor, you could end up discrediting your entire investigation. There are steps that a group leader needs to take to ensure that the investigation is going the direction it is supposed to go. Not all the emphasis of the investigation going right falls on the group leader, they can only do so much with making the plans, it is up to the individual investigator to follow these plans and act in a professional manor. If you are supposed to be in a specific location at a specific time, be there. The plans are made to ensure that all areas are covered, people are safe, and time is used to it’s maximum potential. Not all groups go about it | in the same manor. Some groups rely solely on personal experiences. If this is the case, documenting your experience to the most minute detail is of the utmost importance. If the group uses strictly scientific equipment to conduct investigations, then recording all the results and the readings of the equipment used is crucial. Neither way is right and neither way is wrong. In our group we use a combination of the two, with a stronger emphasis on equipment. If our equipment can verify what a person is experiencing, I consider this a win-win situation. No matter which method is used to conduct the investigation, putting the time into properly planning and then properly executing the plan is critical. Probably the most time consuming part of an investigation is reviewing the evidence. Obviously, if you only use personal experience it won’t take as long to review everything. You will have to go through each personal detailed report and decide what you feel is a legitimate paranormal experience and what can be explain as a natural cause. The use of scientific equipment increases the time needed to review the evidence. Video cameras are uses as well as film or digital cameras and often voice recorders. Other equipment such as emf meters, temperature guns, or motion detectors as well as any other device that gives a reading, needs to be looked at against the video, picture, or audio evidence. Spending the time to watch the hours of video that was recorded is important. Remember, for every hour recorded on video, you need to multiply that by the number of cameras, which can be a daunting task. Even with split screens I would not recommend watching more then two videos simultaneously, you obviously can’t be concentrating on two separate videos at the same time. When something is found and questions it is important not to automatically assume that it is paranormal. We need to find all natural reasons and eliminate them before it could possibly be supernatural. Having a photo of an orb at a stairway doesn’t mean there was a ghost descending the stairs. An orb is usually dust, bugse and what can be explain as a natural cause. The use of , moisture, or any number of natural causes. An orb photo with video evidence of the orb pulsating in response to questions asked as well as EVP’s of a disembodied voice responding to an investigator, would convince me much more of the validity of the orb photo. One piece of evidence, by itself, does not carry the same weight as multiple pieces of overlapping evidence. That is why it is critical to go over evidence many times, looking for that other piece of proof that can help us establish whether or not a place is actually haunted. Personal experience or scientific equipment, both require ample study of the evidence and analysis before any sort of decision is made. The final piece of the puzzle of the investigation is looking how the evidence gathered stacks up against what was reported at the location. It is important that we look at this objectively and don’t make our evidence fit what is already known. It is easy to interpret the same orb photo mentioned before, as a civil war hero that lived in the house in the past and has been seen by several witnesses. What we don’t know is if this orb is in actuality a spirit, who’s spirit it is. The reality is, without a full body apparition it is hard to definitively state who we believe a spirit may be. We can’t force evidence into a box it won’t fit. It’s the square peg in the round hole scenario. No matter how badly we want a place to be haunted or not haunted we need to look at the facts how they are presented to us. If you were invited to do an investigation once, chances are you will get to go back. There is no need to rush to judgement either way. If you feel that you did not quite get all the evidence you could have, alter you plan, and go back again. Multiple investigation at the same location can reveal different results. Greg Swatt Founder, Eastern Pennsylvania Paranormal Investigations Director, East Coast Paranormal Alliance |
