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6
Dec, 2018
20
Oct, 2018
The Skegness Hell House, Paranormal Lockdown UK & Demonic Entities
2
May, 2018
Social Media’s Immersive Memories and the Paranormal
22
Apr, 2018
The Paranormal Activity Form
The Simpler Form
In my quest to gather as much data as possible, I wanted to make things as simple as possible for anyone willing to assist me. So, with this in mind I thought I would create a really simple and straight forward version of the data capture form that I previous shared to gather data.
Firstly, this one doesn’t require your name and email, should you wish to remain anonymous in this attempt to gather information on paranormal activity. However remaining anonymous does mean I will be unable to contact you (should I wish to) in order to gather further details on your experience.
Simply enter the location name and county in the ‘Location of Activity’ field, then enter the date of the day or night the activity occurred on. Then go ahead and check the box next to the type of activity that occurred so we can categorise it. As sometime we can experience multiple types of activity at once, please feel free to check more than one box.
The Paranormal Activity Form
Again, as ever thank you for your support and assistance in helping me to gather this data. Hopefully it will present some interesting findings.
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18
Apr, 2018
Information and the Akashic Records
Thinking about the Akashic Records…
As I sit in the quiet of the SPR Library looking out at the blue skies over London this afternoon, I find myself recalling a conversation on the Akashic Records that I had earlier today. If you would like to know a little more about the Akashic Records, please check out my brief Metetherial Encyclopaedia post on them here.
Obviously from a scientific stand point the records themselves are not considered a fact as their existence is very much unproven, but they are something that does come up on a regular basis in relation to the spiritual journey of some individuals. I too have encountered them both in research and during a dream like state in the past.
Now as they often seem to be related to the spiritual side of the paranormal I wondered if I could perhaps throw them into the psi theory concept and reconstruct them so to speak within a post that may present them in a different light.
Documenting everything…
So, the Akashic Records are believed to house every deed, action, thought, decision, event and interaction that has ever occurred in the past, present or future. A record of everything of all time. Which is where we begin to meet our first psi theory cross-overs in my opinion. A record of everything would be huge, in physical terms within our reality it would be an impossibility, especially if we liken it to a library. For example, I am sat in a library right now. There must be hundreds of books here, if not well over a thousand. Add in the various magazines and other documents, then you must be looking at thousands of sources of information in one room at the SPR. All on roughly the same subject area, Psychical Research. If you were to document every thought, every action, every event no matter how small that has and will occur throughout time, then I know that wont fit on my computers hard drive!
However this is where the Akashic Records come into their own in my opinion and we begin to perhaps look at other possible explanations, such as Jung’s Collective Unconscious. Oddly this also presents alternative possibilities for some of those more paranormal experiences too.
Its all about information…
One thing we must agree on here is that if the Akashic Records do store everything from all time, then what they store is information. That information will and must interrelate, as in each piece of information will link to another piece or multiple pieces of information, a little like a web. See where this is going yet?
Let’s go back to the library idea. In a library the books are usually in some sort of order, generally speaking this is related to the authors surname and they are arranged alphabetically on the shelves. So, you’ve got Sheldrake’s ‘Sense of Being Stared At’ on the same shelf as Sidgwick’s ‘A Memoir’. Their locality dependant on their author. However, Sheldrake talks of ‘telepathy’ in his book, a term coined by FWH Myers, who’s books reside on a completely different shelf, but by this and no doubt other elements are interconnected. This would be similar for all information especially if it was related to everything throughout time.
What’s even more interesting (perhaps just to me) is that these information correlations also relate to our own memories and what we know too. Think about it for a second. No matter the memory you think of there will be another living thing in proximity that will have a version of those events.
Its all in the memory…
Let me explain with two very different examples. In the first one its your first day at school, it doesn’t necessarily need to be a particular age group as it would work for any. As the child you are likely to turn up with a vague idea of where it is you are supposed to go and what you are supposed to do. Usually guidance comes from the adults around you, teachers and perhaps parents. It also will come from observing others too and what they do. However the whole event is something you remember from your perspective and experience, but there are equally multiple other memories from other perspectives too. The other children will have their memories, the adults too, but there are also possible memories beyond that which we often disregard as present. These are the memories of the animals near by too. Sounds strange to suggest that a bird flying over head may have a memory of the moments you started school or even dog outside the school gate remembers you walking to school, but these should be possibilities we consider.
The second example in this is all about you being alone. For example, you are for reasons unimportant located in a room of building. There is no one else there, you’re completely alone. At least that’s the memory you would have of that situation and there would be no human memory elsewhere to back that up. However this is also something we miss in our interpretation of what we remember. You see there is likely to be someone that witnessed your movements at some point in relation to arriving there. They may not have seen you walk in the room or even the building, but we have a human memory timeline from that. Also, there are animals around constantly, so it is likely that there would be memory of you at the location possibly even within the room from an unseen animal. Thus even a memory of an event which appears on the surface to have no connection to another memory is more than likely to have somewhere.
Our desire to appear independent and individuals is something which is constantly driven into our very being. We are presented with the tools to make decisions and walk our own paths on every opportunity. We may even fiercely deny our similarities to our parents and siblings because of this, yet we are a connected species and beyond that we are connected to the other living things around us too.
These memories like the books on the SPR shelves and that which is contained possibly in the Akashic Records is all about information. Information which is around us all the time. In fact these days with social media and cloud technology, our very memories are recorded in word, audio, video and photographs, then shared amongst many that were not present. So, a perspective of the events is even remembered by those not even present.
Now we seem to have a local and even non-local link to memories that occur on a daily basis, it sounds strange just to write it, but in reality its happening. Think about it, when you shared that picture of your birthday drinks, those not present at the events saw it possibly liked it too. Perhaps they showed someone they were stood next to, perhaps someone walking past completely unrelated saw the social media post too. All of a sudden the reach of your memory has the potential to be in several places across the world.
Memories make up a considerable amount of the information here, as those memories will link to actual events that transpired, but we put more than that out there. We share ideas and decisions, we share specific events and even history. The internet is already a huge source of information about everything really, in all forms. Granted its not quite everything of all time past, present and future. However it certainly appears to be of a similar form to the Akashic Records with the resources available to us today.
Locating the Records…
If information that covers well everything ever to happen and that will ever happen is recorded in the Akashic Records then we must discuss where they may possibly exist. Just to clarify, this part is purely theoretical and meant as simply food for thought. We are presented with a few possible locations for the records; another plane of consciousness, another dimension, etc.
I want to begin by throwing out there a truly ‘Doctor Who’ theory for the Akashic Records. What if the huge library existed within a black hole, just past the event horizon of the singularity. A place where time wasn’t normal and matter could be easily manipulated perhaps. Also, to throw caution to the wind, I believe that Hawkins had a theory where he believed information could escape a black hole. Perhaps that information is our connection to the Records themselves.
The consciousness approach is quite interesting as it feeds directly into the shared memories concept we’ve already discussed. That way it links all of our minds together making the information accessible in that way. Of course its suggested that meditation and other relaxed stated can help in accessing this form of the records. This could also be related back to Jung’s Collective Unconscious. It actually makes a lot of sense too. As a physical organ the brain has a huge capacity to store lots of information, multiply that by the number of humans, then by the number of animals and that’s a heck of a lot of storage to access. If we are all connected in that fashion then potentially we have access to well everything, as there’s bound to be someone somewhere that knows something about the one thing you believe no one does! If that makes sense? Hang on connected minds sounds a lot like a network of computers too, funny that!
Combining theories like quantum mechanics, entanglement and neurological networks could possibly be hiding the reality of the Akashic Records.
Relating Paranormal Experiences…
So how does this explain possible paranormal experiences? Without going into too much detail, think of it this way. If we continuously have access to information and its likely presented in relation to what our senses are picking up, then its almost like out minds are continuously ‘googling’ for information based on the space we are in. Add into this mix the probability of telepathic interaction and then the source of the information will be local or even non-local to the individual present. It could even be based on a thought that pops in and out of minds in a split second. Thus you could walk into a room and be presented psychically with the imagine of a past occupant in your mind. However that may relay or overlay what youre senses are acquiring, which then could make it seem as if there is a ghost present.
What you have is comprehension of information rather than survival of consciousness. Well that’s the theory!
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9
Apr, 2018
‘THE GHOST STUDIES’ BY BRANDON MASSULLO
A little about the author…
One of the first things that struck me as interesting about Brandon Massullo was his career background. Often the subject of the Paranormal draws in many individuals from quite a few different walks of life that have an interest in the subject matter and often apply to it things they have learnt in their day-to-day careers.
Brandon is a clinical therapist from Northeast Ohio and has worked within the Neurological Institute for the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic. Whilst he was there he conducted behavioural health consultations. He has since moved on to become the director of behavioural health at a local hospital.
With an undergraduate degree in psychology and a graduate degree in clinical counselling from the university of Toledo, Brandon has some good knowledge and experience that can be applied to the Paranormal field. This is also topped off with an MSc in psychological research methods, which he picked up from the university of Edinburgh. Whilst at the university of Edinburgh he studied under the supervision of Dr Caroline Watt within the Koestler Parapsychology Unit. His research centred on neurobiological correlates of ghostly encounters, which is something else I must ask him about I feel.
Brandon’s fascination for Paranormal phenomena has lead him to participate and speak at many a paranormal forum and event. This has included the Parapsychological Associations 60th Anniversary Celebration too. With his research also cited in many Parapsychological journals, news articles and books, Brandon Massullo is certainly adding to our understanding of how this phenomena may occur.
However if you’ve not heard of Brandon, don’t panic I hadn’t, its likely because the true research side of the paranormal doesn’t get quite the recognition it should in my opinion. Which is a massive shame as there is so much we could learn, understand and use to progress our understanding here and that is where ‘The Ghost Studies’ fits in too.
On to Ghost Studies…
I will be totally honest I don’t recall how Brandon and I began to chat, but I am glad we did. It certainly wasn’t long before ‘The Ghost Studies’ arrived at my home and I set about reading it. In fact its arrival was well-timed as I was just finishing another book at the time.
What’s good to know straight of the mark is that the book is not huge in length and not written in such a fashion that you would need to have attended university to read it. As a matter of fact I found it very easy to read and it flowed from one chapter to the next with ease.
Something else that really appealed to me about Brandon’s approach was the structure of the book. Not only did each chapter tackle a particular point in order to help build us towards the Massullo’s hypothesis, but each of those chapters were broken into smaller sections in order to look at smaller parts that make up the bigger picture. He also added a ‘summary’ at the end of each chapter to remind us what we had just read about, but also how it was beginning to tie in to the other points the book had raised in previous chapters too.
Throughout most of the chapters Brandon engaged our understanding of various points with a few anecdotal stories he had gathered from various sources. Each of which were ideal for the chapter they were placed in amongst valid points that continued to lead us towards the final understanding. In fact he even brought a couple of these stories back later on to reapply what had been learnt since and how his theories were beginning to tie into them.
All in all the book is well structured and like any good book, it builds the picture gradually before delivering in the conclusion.
What’s it all about then…
This is always the hardest part to write, as I want to tell you a great deal about the book, but equally I don’t wish to ruin it for you. Firstly, if you have an interest in the paranormal and theories surrounding what ghosts may be, then this is certainly a book you should read.
Massullo jumps straight in at the deep end and tackles some of the hard questions within the paranormal without even flinching. He looks at the cause of ghostly experiences, why some report encounters and others do not. He also takes a look at crisis apparitions and how they fit into the mix too. In fact we barely make it to the end of chapter one before he offers up his; ‘ingredients of a ghostly experience’ with an interesting little equation, so to speak.
Massullo writes; “By combining previous research in psychology, bioenergetics, and universal consciousness, this book identifies a simple equation that sheds light on ghostly experiences.”
As a matter of fact it’s a neat little equation that does make actual sense to me and is in my opinion certainly a large step in the right direction for the field. Rather than presenting a singular reason for ghosts and potentially spirits, such as that of a deceased person attempting to communicate. Massullo presents a combination of factors that are required to enable an experience. An approach I totally agree with, its not a simple singular answer that will explain these strange occurrences after all.
Throughout the book Massullo adds to his hypothesis by discussing many an interesting area of the paranormal. Looking at aspects which are favourites of the modern ghost hunter, such as energy or electricity. Which brings the latest favourite into view, EMF. He then moves onto looking for ghosts in and out of the laboratory, discussing Persinger, Koren, Braithwaite and more. Certainly a lot of detail in regards to EMF, MF and even GMF’s.
Massullo continued his journey by looking at the psychological elements of this equation and discussing Jung, Freud, Rhine, Jawer and Sidgwick, covering off a variety of considerations including repressed emotions and emotional crisis too. This lead to internal energy and bioenergetics, looking at Pert’s theory on the ‘molecules of emotion’ and beyond.
We move on from the bioenergetics to external information acquisition and once again return to the work of Jung (personal favourite), but this then took us onto the work of Sheldrake and his morphogenetic fields. Which for me was very interesting as I had too made this connection previously. It’s always good when someone else makes a similar connection as yourself in the paranormal.
Brandon even throws a little entanglement and interconnected minds in there too just at the right moment. Which is something that’s been received with a positive and negative response over the last few years. Personally I do think it plays a part and we are still a little way off figuring out exactly how.
Finally, Massullo presents his theory and its important processes to enable it to work before bringing back those all important stories to show how it fits and explains the scenarios at hand. I am not going to explain the theory here or even the hypothesis, as I feel its something you should read and gain an understanding from. Brandon applies it to haunted locations too and I have to admit the theory is quite compelling.
It is a well structured comprehension of hauntings and how they could occur, giving the reader a fascinating possible hypothesis to why they happen. One that doesn’t simple re-write old approaches, but builds on what we already know.
In my opinion…
‘The Ghost Studies’ is one of those books that if you’re into trying to understand the true questions of the paranormal like I am, you should really own. If you’re anything like me you will probably read it through in a short space of time, but then keep referring back to it, just because its full of information cover to cover.
Brandon has constructed the book really well and has been careful to make it very accessible to most in the field I would say. Its well written and engaging throughout, which keeps you turning the pages at a good pace. Although he covers a wide range of topics and disciplines within the covers, they never seem to be presented in too much of a heavy format that has you losing interest.
He sets out the plan for the readers journey right from the outset and from chapter one you know exactly where you are going, gradually building an excellent case to support his hypothesis.
If you’re interested in reading about paranormal theories and possible explanations for the cause of ghosts and hauntings, then this is the next book you should read. The hypothesis presented between the covers is well put together and to me at least made excellent sense. A quick flick through the notes section and you can easily see the work that has gone into this theory, not to mentioned the wealth of knowledge on the subject that Massullo obviously possesses.
In all honesty I am not sure if I 100% agree with the entirety of the hypothesis, but then given the subject at hand there are bound to be a few things we wouldn’t agree on. That’s half the fun of such a wide-ranging and complex subject. However please don’t misunderstand me, as I agree with a large majority of what Massullo has put forward in this excellent book. Hopefully the source for future discussions, I will certainly be applying some of what has been learnt from this book to my own research now.
Closing the cover…
This is one of those books that I was pleased to read and I am very glad that I have. The hypothesis presented in under two hundred pages is excellent and in my opinion highly probable given the extensive supporting work. It is certainly food for thought and gets the old grey matter going.
I would encourage you to grab a copy of ‘The Ghost Studies’ as its likely that it will spur additional reading and research, which is always a good thing. It may not answer the hard questions of consciousness and its survival just yet, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book and cannot sing its praises enough. If you’ve enjoyed many of my psi theory posts then you will more than likely enjoy this too. Although I have now finished the book, I am more than certain that I will be referring to this one on a regular basis for a long while to date.
Finally, I would like to thank Brandon Massullo for giving me this opportunity to read his work, it was indeed an enjoyable journey.
If you want to grab a copy of ‘The Ghost Studies” by Brandon Massullo click below…
If you have a book you would like me to review on my paranormal blog, then please get in touch…
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31
Mar, 2018
Looking for Patterns – Anomalous Experience Form
Investigating in a different way…
Often when we discuss the paranormal and investigating ghosts, we think about wandering around dark old buildings with various gadgets and our trusty torches.
These are concepts and approaches that have now become common place understanding, which have been backed up by mainstream media and TV.
Personally my beginnings in the field involved more of a research perspective with me reading many books and constantly seeking answers. The concept of investigating over night is actually relatively new to me, I have only really been out on over night investigations for the last twelve years really. Okay so twelve years may seem a while, but before that I spent over twenty years in libraries and looking stuff up online, once that became a thing.
However early on I knew that these opportunities to visit historic locations overnight should not be wasted and I took it as a chance to try and document as much as possible. In fact that was how my website originally began, as a place I could share the details of my investigations with other like minded individuals. So, please check out some of my investigations and cases over the years.
Documenting experiences and these investigations was something that seemed relatively common place to me at that point, especially as much of what I had read had come about in a similar fashion.
Strangely as I became more involved with over night investigations or ghost hunting, I began to realise that documenting those experiences or writing up investigations was not as popular as I had first thought. Don’t get me wrong there are many out there that do document their investigations and do share them too, but many don’t leaving a wealth of information lost.
Once I joined the Society for Psychical Research I was happy to once again discover a wealth of information related to the paranormal. Most of which has now been compiled over more than one hundred years of research since the SPR was founded back in 1882. However it also highlighted the need for good hard data to back up any research I may do moving forward.
It’s not quite as exciting as ghost hunting…
The first thing I want to make clear is that by asking to look more at the data available, I am by no means saying that people should give up ghost hunting or overnight investigations. Although there is a lot of data out there that I feel needs to be ‘crunched’ in order to find patterns that could provide answers to the many questions we regularly ask.
As a matter of fact the continuation of ghost hunting may actually be key to this in order to maintain the new experiences and add them to the ones we already have. The most important thing is that we should document these experiences in order to comprehend the possible bigger picture.
I know that keeping track of all of our paranormal experiences isn’t always practical in the moment they occur, but we should do our best to do so. Granted that focussing on tracking this is considerably less exciting than standard ghost hunting, but still its something you could do afterwards.
Gathering lots of this kind of data is actually a million miles away from exciting, unless like me you have a thing for stats! Yes, I am that guy that gets a little excited about data, as you’ve probably guessed by now.
However there is a real need nowadays to capture this data in vast quantities in order to see if there are patterns, which could help us understand more. The problem that I see more and more of is that many of us are guilty of going out ghost hunting, but fail to gather any data. The strange thing about this is that these days we have so many gadgets and access to media devices, but we fail to document simple information on the experience.
Now don’t get me wrong there are a lot of people taking photos, capturing video and audio during their investigations; but we need to think a little more outside the box. Unfortunately these on their own are not really enough and if we want to gather ‘evidence’ for science we need more than that.
You may recall a previous post that I made, asking Could Artificial Intelligence Help Understand Paranormal Experiences. The cold truth is that this is already beginning with AI and Machine Learning looking at vast quantities of data in order to look at problems and seek patterns. In fact I was only contacted today by a group that are already looking into this by analysing ‘Phantasms of the Living’ using machine learning. Please take a look at what Maryland Paranormal Research have already achieved here..
This highlighted a fantastic opportunity to start looking at some real data or information to find those all important patterns we all seek. So, hopefully I will be giving you a little more on this in the near future after a few more emails back and forth between Maryland Paranormal Research and I.
Here’s where I need your help…
In order to understand more about paranormal activity, something that I have been looking at is gathering data on experiences that many of you may have had at some point. These experiences could be anything really in the realms of the paranormal, from simple feelings of temperature change to seeing a full blown apparition standing there waving at you. The experiences could be equally psychical too, that way even the interactions a medium has become relevant to this study. This is something that I know needs to be done in order to fully research some of my own ideas around psi and my theory of telepathic interaction too.
This approach of gathering data on the experiences of many people is certainly not new, in fact the SPR conducted a census back in the late 1800’s to first look into this. A census that has been repeated at least twice since. In fact there has been quite a few studies over the last hundred years of this manner.
As a little background on this, something else that I am doing is to gather data from other sources and reports to add into this piece of research to ensure I gather loads on this. Which means hitting the books and returning to the libraries too. So, that means the study will incorporate data from you guys using the link below, data that I have looked up in the SPR Journals and Proceedings, information from various books, information from various websites and of course my own investigations too.
However if you wish to help me out and tell me all about your experiences, please follow the link below and complete the form.
The Paranormal Activity Form
The form does ask for quite a bit of information, but don’t worry enter what you know for now, the more the better though. Also, if you’re not comfortable sharing your own home address and phone number then just enter NA in those fields. The location where the activity occurred is important though to enable me to tie it to other reports for the same location.
What is cool about this link is once you’ve been on an investigation, if you’ve experienced something then you can simply follow the link above and detail it. Then there will be a record that only took five minutes to log. You can even do it on your phone too! Just bookmark it for use.
The form does relate to one experience at one point in time too, so not for a sequence of experiences or events that took place over a longer time frame. However if there are several significant experiences that occurred over a length of time please feel free to add one for each.
The link does use a mail list subscriber, which I manage, but will not be sending you random stuff from, as that’s just not cool right! As the list is related to documenting paranormal experiences the only thing I may use it for is to gather more information on your experience from you by email if you’re happy to do so..
So, please click on the link and tell me about your paranormal experiences. In advance I would just like to thank you all for helping me with this, its greatly appreciated and please keep an eye on this website for more details as the research progresses.
If you want to know more about my research and the data I am gathering, please comment, like and share below…
17
Mar, 2018
Do You Seek Evidence or Experience ?
What are you looking for?
As many of us know that pass up on sleep in order to try and gain an understanding of those elusive haunted locations around the world, often we head home with more questions than we first arrived with. The paranormal field for me has always done this and each time I feel I find an answer, ten more questions come to mind off the back of the discovery of that one answer. However this may be the very thing that keeps us fuelled on energy drinks and giving up that all important nights sleep. The problem is though that there often becomes a point where you come to a conclusion that the approach may not be benefiting your progress after all. At least that’s something I came to realise over the years.
It’s at this point that generally we begin to question exactly what we may be looking for and why!
A particular term (and I’ve mentioned this before I know) that I am beginning to hear more and more recently is; that many ghost hunters out there just appear to be doing the same old that they’ve been doing for years and in fact; things in the field haven’t really moved forward since the Victorian era. As much as this may be correct it couldn’t be more from the truth and oddly is only based within the ghost hunter community itself. Perhaps within the spiritual field too.
This is really where as an individual and to an extent a team you must begin to ask what it is exactly you are looking for whilst you are giving up you hours of sleep?
Let me explain a little from my own perspective. When I first began to do overnight investigations I started from an understanding that I would aim to debunk in order to leave anything unknown as anomalous phenomena. What happened though was that whilst debunking I found more questions along the way. Part of this approach was to gather ‘evidence’ or at least what we called ‘evidence’ back then. I am of course referring to audio, video and photographic captures, which is something that has become common place representation of ‘evidence’ especially thanks to the boom in paranormal reality TV shows.
In fact it was these three types of ‘evidence’ that helped me to see that as a matter of fact they are far from categorical evidence of the paranormal at all. You see I managed to capture two things during some of my investigations; 1) crystal clear audio or EVP, and 2) video of a moving object. Both of these communicate as being fantastic proof of Paranormal activity by todays comprehension of the ghost hunting approach we have been made all so familiar of thanks to those reality TV shows. The problem was something I hadn’t been expecting at that time, but comprehend much better now. Both elements were rigorously questioned and alternatives were presented which placed the ‘evidence’ I had into question, in fact it highlighted them as being very weak evidence of the paranormal. Now I am sure there maybe individuals or teams out there reading this thinking that perhaps they may be able to provide better ‘evidence’ to support the paranormal in the form of audio, photographic or video. However let me just say, what you know about a piece of ‘evidence’ needs to be beyond doubt when it is comprehended by others that were not present when the said ‘evidence’ was captured. I guarantee that those not present will always have more questions and will be less likely to accept what you have captured, which in reality is how it should be.
This for me, this presented the question ‘what are you looking for exactly?’
A personal experience is okay too…
Over the years one thing I have realised is that although I enjoy the research and searching for solid answers, from time to time I do enjoy a good old fashioned ghost hunt. Now I often approach these in a couple of ways, which is often defined by whether its my investigation or an investigation ran by a friend where they wish to obtain good data; or its an event someone else is running.
I often like to just join a group or head out on a Paranormal event to visit a public location that has had reports of various paranormal activity over the years. It is actually these such events which may lead to me returning to a location to conduct my own more in depth investigation later on. These kind of events are excellent for allowing yourself to simply immerse yourself in the location and its potential haunting. This is usually the time where experience is the more likely result rather than something a little more solid. That said personally, and this is only a personal choice, I still like to jot down a few notes in my journal.
Anomalous experiences after all are where Paranormal research and investigation may begin, understanding what someone believes had occurred somewhere and then looking deeper into that occurrence to gain a better understanding is where my research once began.
The problem I find and this is perhaps a personal thing too being I do love a bit of data, is that often those personal experiences are not documented properly and remain events in memory alone. Alternatively only part of the experience is documented leaving out fundamental details, which when questioned often end up discounting the experience.
Remember its those experiences that if they are documented and analysed properly could help us understand a locations activity or even activity as a whole. Which is why it’s so important to gather some information, if you do experience something.
I know that if your aim is an experience and you’re not really concerned with an understanding or even documenting then that is absolutely fine. At the end of the day we spend our lives having experiences and learning new things, so if that is your approach then to be quite frank that life.
I guess for me I am always thinking about various elements of the paranormal, so even an experience is documented to help with that comprehension of how it all works. Which is why I tend to keep notes on my investigations and experiences on a regular basis.
Searching for evidence and meaning…
Of course if you’re looking for a little more than a random experience that if you’re like me leaves you with a tonne more questions than when you started out, then you are probably trying to find some evidence or meaning in the Paranormal.
Let’s return to that earlier statement about approaches not having moved on since the Victorian era. This is actually extremely far from the truth. Ghost Hunters utilise all kinds of tech these days in order to discover elements of the paranormal, where back in the day the approaches were relatively limited. However the approaches adopted by modern day ghost hunters are on the surface appearing a little stagnant these days.
One of the problems is something I am going to call; ‘the reality TV format mirror approach’! Basically this means that the team or organisation approach their ghost hunt from the perspective similar to that of a TV show. They walk the location discussing its history and activity, then they setup equipment, conduct vigils and then pack up and conclude. This isn’t a bad approach in reality, personally back in the day my investigations followed a very similar structure and it was one that many were happy with. However if change is to occur then perhaps these approaches need to be evaluated and new ones proposed.
Whilst looking for good data and understating within an investigation, one approach that I adopted at smaller locations (especially free ones) was to focus the investigation in one area/room for the night or even bring in approaches such as seances to bridge the gap between the spiritual and the science. These more focused approaches would make documenting the location and events more easier too. Especially as you can cover off the variables in a small area easier and keep an eye on one room much easier.
The problem is cost in regards to most of the locations many of us seek to investigate, you simply couldn’t justify paying for a location and only focussing on one room. Which is a shame, but we understand why the places charge as they do. Well in most cases we do as its to assist with the upkeep and maintenance of a historic location, which we are lucky enough to explore in quiet of night. Granted there may be some out there that the intentions for their high changes may fall into question, but the simple answer is if you don’t like or cant afford it, don’t pay it!
Sometimes the answers aren’t in the dark…
I would like to finish this particular post by highlighting a place that has provided me with more information on the subject of the paranormal than any overnight investigation ever. I am of course referring to the library and the extensive amount of resources that are out there available to those with an interest in the field of the Paranormal.
These days, a little like the odd tech a modern day ghost hunter may have, a library isn’t just a building in the centre of your town governed over by a stern librarian that peers over her glasses at you as you head towards the Paranormal section. Our local libraries are much more interactive and modernised, there is a tonne of online information if you search beyond Wikipedia and there are many academic resources that provide access to some very interesting information.
For example; back in the late 1800 the SPR conducted a census of hallucinations in order to gain a better understanding of anomalous phenomena. Bearing in mind that their use of the term ‘hallucinations’ didn’t mean that people were seeing things due to mental illness as we often associate it today, but more along gathering information on the things people had seen which were not physically present. ‘Phantasms of the Living’ was published around this time by the SPR and discussed more than 600 cases of apparitions probably linked to telepathy. Think about that for a second, 600 cases discussed in one place. That as a resource to build on nowadays is fantastic.
The point I am trying to make here is simple; if you wish to progress the field then you need to build on what has actually already been achieved. Those achievements are not by the popular TV shows, although they have brought more to the field which is great. The advancements were made by the giants of science, the fellows of the SPR and Ghost Club alike as they built the foundations of the field and research approaches. However that has now been picked up by more and more universities pushing the boundaries of research into the field of psi. I remember the day I read my first Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, I immediately thought I had to up my game and do so much more in order to become published in such a journal.
So, as you investigate in a darkened historic location, simply ask; what do you truly seek?