Paranormal Investigations

So, you want to be a ghost hunter?

The paranormal has become quite a hot topic over the past few years and a lot of that is because of television.  There are mixed feelings about the effect of television on the paranormal field.  On one hand, it has made it much more mainstream and acceptable.  People are much more open to talking about their ghostly encounters these days and tourism is booming when it comes to locations with haunted history.

On the other hand, it has everyone thinking they can run out and buy some gear and hunt ghosts.  What happens then is that people become reckless, often times scaring the bejesus out of innocent property owners by telling them they have a house full of demons when in truth they have crappy plumbing.  People see all these “as seen on TV” gizmos and think they have all the answers to the afterlife.

If you watch much paranormal television, you will see several different gadgets, thingamajiggys, and do-dads used to “detect ghosts.”  Some of the gadgets actually print “The Ghost Meter” on them.  There’s the EMF Meter, the KII Meter, the Tri-Field Meter, the digital voice recorder, the Ovilus, the thermal imaging camera and so on and so on…

The truth of the matter is none of these electronic goodies detect ghosts.  These gadgets detect changes in the atmosphere.  It is theorized that when a ghost is present, there are changes in the atmosphere; however, the existence of ghosts has yet to be proven, so this is all really conjecture and somewhat educated – and more often than not, uneducated – guess work.

People that want to start their own paranormal investigation teams often say they will do it once they can afford all the equipment.  I’m here to tell you, the only equipment you need is a camera, digital or 35 mm, a video recorder, a tape recorder, a flashlight, a notebook, and the most important and least expensive piece – good old common sense.

A lot of paranormal enthusiasts get irritated at groups that always seem to be “debunking” hauntings.  It’s just not nearly as fun as having a bona fide haunted house.  Debunking is not a negative thing.  It’s the responsible thing to do.  For example, if you are examining a haunting and the occupant is complaining of sleeplessness or “seeing things” and you notice their bedroom is full of electronics such as televisions, DVD players, CD players, alarm clocks, lamps, etc., it could very simply be that they have too many electronics in their bedroom and not ghosts at all.  High levels of EMF have been found to cause hallucinations among other physical ailments.  Of course, if you go into that room with your Ghost Meter, it’s going to go crazy.  The occupant’s issues will likely cease upon removing all the EMF from the area where they sleep.

My partner had a similar case where the occupants were complaining of the baby not being able to sleep and other odd things taking place around their house.  She noticed that all of the switch plates were metal.  She had them rearrange the baby’s room and told them they needed to contact an electrician.  It turned out their house was not grounded and there were high levels of EMF being emitted into the rooms.  Once the electrical issues were fixed, there were no more “ghosts.”  Now, yes, I did say a camera was an item you want to have in your ghost hunting arsenal.  But you need to know how to use it properly.  There are a lot of paranormal folks that will swear those orbs they get in their photos are ghosts.  Well, they obviously didn’t get the memo.  Science has proven most orbs captured on digital cameras are caused by dust, reflections, bugs, moisture, smoke, etc.  If you don’t believe me, run your finger over a door ledge and snap a picture – you will get a ton or orbs.  Coincidentally, there’s an awful lot of dust being stirred up in some of the abandoned locations and cemeteries.  It’s also interesting to point out that before digital cameras came along there weren’t nearly as many orb pictures as there are these days.  I am not an expert photographer by any means, but when one person wrote to Canon to inquire about orbs, this is what they were told:

“We have checked your camera and are happy that the camera meets all design specifications.  The problem you have been experiencing is due to a phenomenon not associated with the camera.

When a picture is taken and reviewed afterwards, circular spots may be noticed on the picture. The problem does not occur with every picture.  Additionally, the spots are randomly positioned throughout the picture.  Highest concentration is in areas closest to the flash unit when the picture was made.

The cause of the problem is common to a lot of digital cameras with small CCDs, not just the Canon digital cameras.  Such digital cameras have a greater depth of field compared to 35mm cameras, due to their smaller focal distance.  This occurs in even higher degree when the camera is set to wide angle.

Because of the above, small dust particles, droplets of water, etc., drifting in the air close to the camera and not within depth of field for normal 35mm cameras, are within depth of field for digital cameras.  Under normal circumstances this is not too big a problem, as these are very small.

When flash is used, its light illuminates these dust particles or water droplets, and these therefore show up and are extremely obvious on pictures taken.  The problem is worsened, because the flash unit is positioned close to the lens barrel.

Due to the setup and operation of digital cameras using small CCDs (charge coupled device), there is nothing that can be done about this phenomenon.  You can take some measures though, to prevent this problem from occurring as much as is possible.

Switch off flash in environments where there are likely to be small dust particles or water droplets in the air.  To compensate for this lack of flash, you can increase the ISO value on your digital camera if this feature is available on your camera.

Use an external slave flash unit further away from the camera and partially cover the camera’s flash.  These units are not available from Canon, but there are third party companies producing such units.  Make sure a slave flash unit is chosen which can also be set to synchronize with the second flash as used by Powershot cameras.  With Powershot cameras, the first flash is used to measure, the second is the actual flash.”

(Canon customer correspondence)

This is not to say that nothing supernatural ever gets captured on a digital camera.  This is also not to say that orbs are never anomalous.  There are strange things sometimes captured on cameras, but the sensible thing to do is to have them analyzed and not just assume it’s ghostly.

One of the new toys in the paranormal world is a gizmo called the Ovilus.  It’s also referred to as digital dowsing.  It’s a device that creates phonetic speech from the environment.  It is pre-programmed with a set of 512 words that sometimes coincidentally make sense in certain places.  Each word is assigned a number and when the EMF changes, the words are spoken.  It’s very random.  Since EMF is not ghosts, I think it’s pretty safe to say the words generated from this device aren’t coming from ghosts either.  Is it interesting and entertaining?  Sure.  Is it ghosts talking to you?  Not likely.

I am pointing these things out because it’s all too easy to get caught up in all the hype of technology and throw common sense out the window.  People think they’re being “scientific” with these gadgets but without an incredibly good working knowledge of the technology behind them; they are in reality being reckless and ignorant.

All of these items can enhance an investigation if the operators are educated about them and understand the margin for error and realize that they are not in fact detecting ghosts with them.  It’s not necessary to break the bank getting these things if you’re seriously looking into investigating.  I contend that a good amount of common sense and a library card are the best pieces of “equipment” you can have – and they’re both free.