Growth

Well, As you can see I haven't been blogging in quite some time. I have had a number of new developments in my life. Mostly for the better, some not so much. I figured it maybe best to explain my absence from here, before picking this blog up again.

Where to start?

I suppose from where we left off. My last blog stated a new job, that demanded my attention, and the forming of my paranormal investigation team. Well the new job went good for a little over a year. At which point I was layed off, with no call back. Basically meaning your fired. The job was of no real importance, was just a good job, for this area. The best thing about the job, was meeting a number of really good friends, family even. One person in particular.

I met my fiance. A wonderful woman, who reigned me in. She's given a lot to me in such a short time. For one a daughter she had with a previous man who has nothing to do with them. His loss my gain. As I claim her daughter as my own, and will from this point on when writing about her, only refer to her as my oldest daughter.

This one single development should easily explain my absence, as honestly it is the main reason. I became a father, and husband. This is honestly a full time job, no vacations there.

As to my paranormal investigation team. Well it didn't get off the ground. For a few reasons. One I didn't pursue it to my fullness once I met my fiance. This in turn made it hard to find like minded people to form the team. But now, I'm not even trying anymore as my family has become my main priority. One day I hope to get back into my investigations and research. But for now, it's something that just isn't financially reasonable.

I've since gotten another job, and even more important, am expecting another daughter.

So, thats it in a basic nutshell. I will be picking the blog back up though, in my spare time.

So, until the next time...

E

New Job

Sorry guys I haven't been blogging much this past month.

I got a new job and its been taking up a lot of my time. I am also building my new investigations team, and that has been taking up a lot of my writing time, as i have been focused on getting together numerous documents for that. Be on the watch for the formal release of my new team shortly. I promise I will try and make some time to blog more soon.

E

Psychics and Mediums and Bears...Oh My!

In this lovely day and age of the ever so popular paranormal television show. The world has become inundated with the self proclaimed psychic and medium. There has been such a flood in recent years, that it resembles the spiritualist movement of the 1800's through to the early 1900's. It is pretty much the same thing, only now days they call them selves new age.

They make claims of having various powers or as they call them “gifts”. Anything from Clairaudience, Clairsentience, Clairvoyance, ESP, Precognitive abilities, to mediums channeling deceased persona's, and a number of other special powers. It some times gets to the point, especially when a number of these individuals are gathered in one place comparing abilities, to begin to sound like some sort of list of powers from a comic book. Each one out doing the next with their special powers, to the point they often times begin claiming they have numerous abilities.

I hope you can tell by now, I am not to fond of psychics and mediums. They all to often use various techniques such as cold reading, to exploit the grief of their clients. People that are wanting to communicate with a passed loved one so badly, that they are willing to believe nearly anything. All it has to be is close and they will apply it to them selves. I personally would be quite insulted if some psychic or medium belittled the memories of my father by claiming he was in contact with them. My reaction would be none to pleasant.

Now, whether or not these people making these claims are simply delusional, or they have some other intent in mind, be it a money making scheme or what ever, i have no clue. All I know is there is not a single shred of evidence to support a single claim of psychic or medium ability. There is even a million dollar reward offered to anyone, that can display these abilities, in a controlled environment offered by James Randi, a skeptic, debunker, and magician. This reward originally started out as 1000 dollars in 1964, but has since been increased to 1 million dollars. As to date, not a single person has passed just the preliminary test. The test is agreed on by both parties before hand, so the psychics and mediums know full well what they are getting into.

In the past I have worked with a number of psychics, and mediums while conducting paranormal investigations. The most disturbing part about working with such individuals. Is their demanding attitude that all attention be on them at all times during an investigation. As if they are the most important tool present on site. What i have also seen on numerous occasions. Is when some thing begins to happen in another part of the site, that requires the attention of the investigators. The psychics and mediums will all of a sudden start getting something, so as to keep the investigation steered toward them. Often creating a missed opportunity. This is why i will not work with one or the other anymore.

Now, don't get me wrong. I do believe in the possibility of psychic or even medium abilities. I think its very well possible that a very small percentage of people may have such abilities. But it is no where near as common or prevalent as so many would have you believe. Just go on line to any paranormal forum, or chat room. And listen to the numerous claims of this ability or that one. You would think these abilities are so common that we all have these abilities in us, only that they are laying dormant. Oh wait, That is exactly what many claim.

Anyway, until next time.

E

The Big Paranormal Problem

Here is something that often isn't ever addressed until you find yourself or your team or group in the middle of it. An that is, the competitive nature of the paranormal investigator, and the ego's. This competitive nature and ego problem leads to another problem. The unwillingness to share collected data, and information with fellow researchers and investigators.

It's as if they think there is some great notoriety or money in this research. The truth of the matter is, there isn't.

The competitiveness and ego's all to often lead to fighting between teams, and groups. Fighting and arguing on message forums, and other forms of Internet communication, is one thing. But when you get into real life fighting between two teams or groups that are in the same area, It then can quickly get out of hand.

When two teams begin to fight over a location it does none any good. It ends up most of the time with these two competing teams going back and forth to a client telling the client this or that about the other team. Resulting hopefully in, neither team getting into the location.

I have been lucky thus far, to have not been involved in any of this behavior. But i have lost count in seeing this happen on numerous forums and chat rooms.

All this behavior does is hamper the forward progress of the paranormal community, to an extent. And lets face it, most of the teams and groups that behave this way, aren't really contributing much to the paranormal community. They certainly aren't sharing data, or conducting any kind of ground breaking experiments. So for the most part as a whole, the community isn't losing much.

There are a few organizations that are attempting to span the distance between teams, and groups. One such organization is International Paranormal Investigators. The organization is the brain child of Ryan O'neill, of Scottish Paranormal, who seen the need to try and bring together as many teams and organizations through out the world that he could, in order to share data and research. Thus far the undertaking has been a success. Boasting the cooperation of multiple teams in 36 states, 3 continents, including Canada, Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales, Scandinavia, and reaching out to teams through out Asia, Australia and new Zealand.

E

Orbs - The Paranormal Burden

For the most part, the paranormal community as a whole has begun to ignore these troublesome anomalies, that are too often seen in photos taken while on site of an investigation. There are still the occasional team and group that present these burdens as positive evidence of paranormal activity. These groups and teams are most likely novices that simply don't have a lot of experience in the field. We can only hope at some point they educate them selves on the numerous possible contaminates that plague photos with these little round globules.

Perhaps some of you are wondering what an orb is. An orb is what the paranormal field has labeled as a small or large round ball of light generally visible only in a photo, with the rare occasion of being seen with the naked eye. And that these orbs are paranormally related being either that they are some how the compressed form of the dead, or some unknown being yet to be discovered. 99.99% of the time these anomalies are nothing more than air born particles reflecting the flash from a camera. Depending on the proximity of the particle to the lens of the camera, will give a differing size to these anomalies. An example is given above, showing numerous different sizes of an orb in the same photo. This clearly shows the closer they are, the larger they appear.

There are numerous opinions on the matter. Being that the more solid looking the orb appears the more likely it is a true spirit orb. However those of that school of thought, tend to forget the differing make up of the numerous different kinds of air born particles. For instance, house hold dust is made up of dander and dead human skin cells, these appear more transparent when photographed. Where as dust from a gravel road is basically a rock that is small enough to float on the air, this particle will appear very solid, and not be see through. There are hundreds and hundreds of different things in the air at all times that reflect the lights from a camera. Far to many to ever be able to say, “This orb is real, because there wasn't anything present in the air.” Just off the top of my head, there is dust, house hold or other wise (numerous), water, in its numerous forms, dander, pollen, lint, insects, etc. The list could simply go on an on.

The fact that for years now these things have been lumped with paranormal activity, is where the burden lies. We in this field try to use scientific means to establish ourselves. But all to often find our selves looked down upon by the scientific community being labeled as pseudoscience. The orb is simply one of a varying field of reasons for this in my opinion. Were so scientific that a large part of the paranormal community can not identify a contaminated photograph.

It is good to see these days though that more and more teams and groups are looking past the orb. Realizing their not paranormal. Though there is still the school of thought that these orbs are simply natural energy forms yet to be discovered. I'm not sure what i think about all that. As i have seen nothing that would suggest this. Though this or ball lightning may explain the orbs that are seen with the naked eye, as rare as that happens.

Until next time.

E

Cemetery Hauntings

There are numerous paranormal investigation teams and organizations, that investigate random cemeteries all the time. A lot of time these groups are merely a group of kids out looking for a thrill, or their a new team lacking experience, and private cases, so they hone their skills in the cemeteries. I don't fault the later. However, the thrill seekers do create problems. As these kinds are more likely to come to the cemetery drunk or on drugs, if not doing both of those things there at the cemetery. This in return creates vandalism, and in some cases the arrival of the police. What is it these thrill seekers tell the police their doing? Ghost Hunting! This in turn makes it extremely hard for any group or team that is wanting to investigate this cemetery, due to the false allegations of these thrill seekers.

Now, here in lies a problem for me. Why would a cemetery be haunted in the first place? If it is due to this being the location of their body, then I see flaw in that reasoning. Especially if your a ghost or spirit with free will still. Sure I can possibly see some vain person not wanting to let go and perhaps spending a bit of time with their body, but for the most part, wouldn't an intelligent being want to be with loved ones at best? The free will thing is where i have issues with the above reasoning.

But then there is also the portal hypothesis. That some how, some way, every cemetery is a gateway to and from the other side. Now, the lack of depth to this hypothesis alone gives me grief. The portal is just magically there, no way of explaining it. As you can see I have a problem buying the portal hauntings.

I personally don't think many cemeteries are haunted at all. That is unless some event took place on the grounds, that would imprint a haunting, or leave something behind. Such as a murder or a death of some sort. This would be the only reasoning I could think of for a cemetery to be haunted. Although it could be argued that cemeteries are more apt to have residual hauntings. But, these residual hauntings, would be most likely those of still living people. And this would only be possible if say at a funeral the grieving was so strong that there was such a release of emotions that this event leaves behind the residual haunting or imprint. So what you would be possibly encountering isn't the ghost of a dead person, but more likely if anything, the emotional release of a funeral.

The only other reasonable/interesting reason would be something I read one time, on a study of pheromones, and their possible reason for residual hauntings. Was an interesting hypothesis, i don't know how far the researchers for the project got into experiments and testing the hypothesis. But it was an interesting read. The jest of it goes like this.

That since it has been scientifically proven that pheromones do have an effect on us. Then a cemetery could very well be full of them. And through time these pheromones that are underground and buried are then released with decomposing gases and what not. Where we then interact with them, and are then effected by what chemical memory is stored in the pheromone. This could also explain why haunting activity increases a lot of the time when home owners are renovating their home or remodeling. The pheromones left behind in all the nooks and crannies with in the walls and every crack are getting kicked up, and being interacted with. Granted more research in this hypothesis is needed, but its interesting none the less.

As oddly as it sounds to some. I can easily enjoy myself at a cemetery. Yes, I still go to them. But not to ghost hunt or investigate, unless a haunting or activity has been reported. But for the peaceful atmosphere and depending on where you go, their beauty. I enjoy photography, and probably my favorite subject to shoot is cemeteries. To be more specific, Victorian era garden cemeteries. In the old days, Victorian era and what not. Cemeteries were almost like parks. People would go for the day and picnic and lounge around all day in them. Nowadays their just a place to discard dead bodies. Their beauty from the past have gone, and we're left with bland identical rows of faceless headstones for our loved ones. You rarely find one anymore of recent times that would allow a person to raise a 30 foot obelisk as their mark on this world. Let alone plant hundreds of different plants and flowers through out the cemetery.

So anyway, I rant enough.

E

E.V.P. - The best and worst of paranormal evidence. Part One

E.V.P. Electronic Voice Phenomena is the paranormal phenomena of capturing disembodied voices on audio recording devices, such as a tape recorder, digital voice recorder, or video recorder, that is not heard at the time the recording was made.

There are a number of hypothesis' on how the voices are made, and where they come from, and by whom they come from. Anything from alter-dimensional beings making contact, to the worlds collective subconscious some how being accessed by a 20 dollar voice recorder, and most likely the most popular hypothesis is the disembodied voice of a deceased person, a ghost, or spirit. The later is what I will be focusing on through out this article. As you see, nothing is set in stone in regards to E.V.P., and for that matter, the paranormal.

E.V.P.'s come in different classifications. This is to make it easier on a researcher during categorizing their recordings. There are 3 classifications, that most follow. I'm sure some researchers classify their own recordings in their own way, but for the most part, there is a kind of standard classification system.

It was created by Sarah Estep of AA-EVP – The American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena.

Class A – E.V.P.
Is a recording that is clear and distinct in what the voices are saying. Everyone that listens to it will agree on what is being said, with out having to be told what is being said, or any kind of enhancements.

Class B – E.V.P.
Is a recording that maybe loud, but not exactly crisp and clear in what is being said. This is the typical Class E.V.P. that most researchers will get. It will be audible, however it may require some filtering or amplification through audio editing software. Most people that listen to it, will either need to be told what is being said in order to understand it, or each person will hear something different from the next person.

Class C – E.V.P.
Is a recording that is generally very low, and hard to hear. What can be heard is generally unintelligible.

An E.V.P. In my opinion can be the best as well as the worst kind of paranormal evidence. There is truly nothing like capturing a class A – E.V.P.. When you capture a real class A you know it, as the thing tends to grab you in a place that honestly, unnerves you a bit.

An then there is the flip side. Class B' and C' can really get to annoying you when nothing can be understood. Sitting around for an hour or more trying to filter out noise and trying to amplify the audio to a legible level get tiresome. Not to mention that if any kind of enhancing has to be done on a recorded clip in order to be heard or understood, then that piece of evidence is pretty much null and void. As the process of cleaning up an E.V.P., most of the time damages the audio. This is why you are to never enhance the original clip you may have captured.

In this day and age of the over night paranormal team. Sites are popping up left and right with all of these new teams and organizations displaying their evidence. There is good and bad in this. Good by way that more people are becoming open to the possibility of paranormal phenomena. Bad that, most of these teams are inexperienced not only in their research but even worse, in their analysis of their possible evidence. They then upload this evidence to their websites for the general public to listen to, and look over. With out fully knowing what it is they have captured if anything. This only will confuse the less informed public. Not to mention, makes the paranormal community as a whole look really bad to the scientific community, that quite honestly, we want to be excepted by so badly.

More to come at a later date.

E