Posts Tagged "hunters"
What can grassroots skeptics do about ghost hunting?
I’ve often been asked how grassroots skeptics and grassroots skeptic organisations (such as ‘skeptics in the pub’ groups) can deal with pseudo-scientific ghost hunting teams on a local level. This was also a point raised by the lovely Andy Wilson who hosted the ‘Ghost Investigations Today’ panel at QEDcon in February 2011.
There certainly is potential for such groups to get involved on a local level but the key is taking the right approach, and knowing what to look for. That’s why I’m writing this post in the hope that it can help those wanting to approach ghost teams, or deal with the nonsense and associated fear they often spread.
Using lasers to hunt ghosts
Last week I wrote an article for the Wiltshire Phenomena Research website about the latest ghost hunting fad, Green laser grids. You can read the article by clicking here.
For those not in the know, Wiltshire Phenomena Research is the investigation team I helped to form back in 2005.
As I’m sure many of my readers are aware, there is a trend amongst ghost research teams to collect and use as many different gadgets as possible while on the search for ghosts. The use of these gadgets is inspired largely by paranormal television shows, as well as misinformation from other researchers.
The latest of these pieces of equipment to be causing excitment in the ghost hunting world is a laser grid that fills a room with small green laser dots that, apparently, will help you spot shadow figures and ghost moving around the room.
Yes, I know, turning the lights on would be easier, cheaper and safer.
Ever since the article was posted we have had a lot of hits to it, mainly from people who are searching for the following.
“laser grid paranormal equipment”
“ghost hunt laser grid”
“laser grid ghosthunters”
“laser grid for ghost hunters”
If you read the article on the WPR site, you will know that the use of laser grids on ghost hunts was first suggested to the masses on Ghost Hunters – a US paranormal television program.
I feel confident enough to say that the majority of people searching the above terms who end up on the WPR site are probably looking to buy a laser grid for their research team.
Isn’t it a sad state of affairs when the majority of people in the research field are taking their tips from television programs that have shown time and time again that they have no interest in rational investigation into paranormal phenomenon?
You only have to read this free PDF, ‘Top 5 ghost hunting mistakes’ by Ben Radford to see how the show Ghost Hunters are anything but scientific.
I think it also shows just how many researchers have double standards when it comes to their methodology. So many people will deny that they are influenced by dodgy paranormal television shows, yet they copy everything
the television shows promote.
It’s very doubtful that Jason and Grant from the show Ghost Hunters will read this, but if they do I have one thing to ask them. In the next episode you film, will you please wear foil hats?
I cannot tell you how much I would love to see copy cat ghost hunters wandering around a graveyard with a green laser grid pointer, an K2 meter, a night vision camcorder, a dictaphone and a foil hat.
It would make my day.
Back the ban bitches!
I’m sitting here and I’m feeling ridiculously stupid and relieved all at the same time. You may have become caught up in the whole fury that surrounded the ‘Urban fox hunters’ blog in which a group of friends from the Victoria Park area of Hackney claimed to be drugging and killing urban foxes because they were fed up with them and hated them.
I blogged about it and spoke about it on twitter as I was generally shocked and upset by what I had read on that blog. I didn’t dream that people would pass on what I had said to their friends who would then share it with more (and so on…) until there was literally an online mob baying for the blood of the urban fox hunters. This was scary.
I was quoted by The Times and The Mirror (without my permission, I might add…) and the urban fox hunters blog was getting more and more comments threatening the life of the people involved. People were angry and were threatening these people in ways that I didn’t feel were justified.
Then earlier today I noticed the blog had been removed by the admin (not by blogger, the host) and I wondered if there was any chance these people would be caught. My heart sunk at the thought that the people openly threatening to kill the hunters may have pushed them underground where they would be undetectable.
I despite cruelty and violence in every form but I don’t believe the answer if voilence in retaliation. Justice can be sought in other forms.
I blame ‘The animals of Farthing wood’ for turning me into the do-gooder that I am.
The reason I had been so vocal about what I saw on the blog in the first place was because I am 100% against fox hunting and I knew that the recent media hype about “urban fox attack” was likely to make people support fox hunting. This made me angry because foxes are generally docile animals that keep themselves to themselves. They wouldn’t even pick a fight with a cat if they could avoid it.
It turns out that it was a clever hoax by Chris Atkins (you may know about Starsuckers) and Johnny Howorth. It was intended as a satirical swipe at what they believe (and I too believe) is media hysteria over the danger of urban foxes.
You can read more here. I am so glad and think a lot can be taken from this.
Back the ban people!
p.s. If you want to quote me, please ask first 
p.p.s My deepest apologies to Chris Atkins, Johnny Howorth and company for calling you ‘cowardly’ and ‘pathetic’ on facebook, the blog and in the papers (though the last part wasn’t technically my fault.)
Hunt is a four letter word
I dispise any form of animal cruelty, it’s why I went vegetarian after I saw what the meat on my plate went through while it was still alive.
I, like many other people read the news stories about the babies that were attacked by a fox in their home, and more recently the story about the 13-year-old girl who was bitten on her leg by a fox while camping in her garden.
Apparently, this is just cause to go and hunt urban fox down and brutally kill them using anything you can get your hands on according to people things like this.
Other people in cities that have a large population of urban foxes are snaring foxes to use as bait in dog fights by chaining them up and unleashing dogs on the fox. A fox is lucky if it wins a fight with a cat, let alone one or more dogs!
Urban fox hunting has been around for years,* I wont pretend it’s a new fad, however, the spotlight the media have put on the recent “fox attack” stories in the UK have fueled these peoples actions and have provided the “hunters” with something that justifies their cruel actions.
It no longer just upsets me when I hear about this sort of behaviour, it angers me and when I came across the blog of the ‘Urban fox hunters’ who are so hard that they have to cover their faces and can’t catch the fox they’re going to kill unless it’s drugged I reported it to the RSPCA immediately and they were outraged by what was on the website.
I also mentioned it on twitter and was amazed at the response from people who were also angered by the blog and the behaviour of the hunters who then went on to also report it to the RSPCA, the police or the Met who have a wildlife crimes unit.
There have only been a handful of attacks by foxes this year but for people like the urban fox hunters that is a good enough reason to start hunting them and treating them in this barbaric fashion.
I can’t help but view it as cowards choosing selective victims. I mean, if they’re going to justify their behaviour with the whole “foxes attack humans” argument, then they also need to be looking at domestic dogs and cats that attack humans too. Not to mention that chimpanzee that attacked it’s owners friend, and cows – those bovine devils stampeed and kill people every year.
If urban fox are to be culled it should be left to the experts who know how to undertake such action in a more humane manner. Not by thugs who brag that they’ll continue doing what they do “until the foxes get the message”**.
I would urge anybody here who is equally as disgusted as I am to phone the RSPCA and report it, or the Met wildlife crime unit.
RSPCA – 0300 1234 999
Met wildlife crimes unit – 020 7230 8898 (Monday-Friday between 0800-1600) or e-mail wildlife@met.police.uk
* Funny how the Daily mail branded the hunting as sickening in their 2006 article, and then go on to fuel the behaviour in 2010 through their sensationalist reporting of “Fox attacks”.
**this is an actual comment the owner of the Urban fox hunters blog replied to me with.
Paranormal television
For nearly as long as I can remember there have been television shows where people go to a haunted location with a night vision camcorder or two, turn off the lights and get scared and then call it a paranormal investigation. Bit of a misrepresentation, but there we go…
These shows have always been very entertaining even though some people think they are exactly what a paranormal investigation should be like. Many paranormal research teams are modelled from shows such as ‘Most haunted’ or ‘Ghost hunters’ which is a shame because such shows aren’t always as straight forwards as they may seem.
An interview I conducted for the Righteous Indignation podcast a while ago with Barry Fitzgerald from the show ‘Ghost Hunters International’ revealled that what goes into one of these shows can take up to a week or more at the location in question.
Not only this, but in the past ‘Most Haunted’ which is a very popular show here in the UK have claimed to be filming in one location when in fact they were in a similar derelict building in a completely different location.
You can read more at Tony Youens’ website. He has done extensive research into ‘asylumgate.’
Also, on ‘Most Haunted Live’ scenes have been filmed prior to the live broadcast. These scenes are then tinged with a green colour to make them look like they’re being filmed in nightvision to give them the feeling of being live.
A classic example would be the ‘Mary loves Dick’ incident. Click here to read about it on the Badpsychics website where they wrote a really insightful article on what happened.
All in all, what we can be certain of is that these sorts of programmes are fun to watch and should not be taken seriously despite the fact that on ‘Most Haunted’ Yvette Fielding often insists that everything that happens on their show is real.
Perhaps she genuinely believes that? I couldn’t possibly speculate…
It says a lot for a television show though when everyone involved in paranormal research (no matter how woo) denies watching the show incase it gives a bad impression of themselves. To watch Most Haunted must make you a bad ghost hunter…
Why am I writing about this? Well, there has been recent speculation online that Antix who produce Most Haunted are parting ways with LivingTV. You can read about it all on the badpscyhics forums. Everyone seems to think that this is the end of Most Haunted, and even if it is (which I don’t believe it is) so what?
What about all of the other television shows that take their inspiration from Most Haunted? Ghost hunters? Ghost adventures? Dead Famous?We even have the amateur shows like ‘the paranormal five’ that was aired in my local area – it’s cast were a local paranormal team who were what I call ‘carbon copy investigators’ who are rip-offs of the Most Haunted team.
Even if Most Haunted stops broadcasting there will still be shows that air in it’s place. There will always be people who are allowed air time to spread pseudo-scientific bullshit to the public and there will always be members of the public willing to take what these television shows say as facts. For as long as that continues to happen it doesn’t matter if Most Haunted might be stopping.
The shows always use the ‘entertainment’ get out clause which is fine when the audience realise that means the show is meant to entertain and not teach, but they don’t.
I have the ‘Ghost Hunters’ book written by Yvette Fielding & Ciaran O’keeffe who are both from TV’s Most Haunted. In this book they advise that the best places to look for ghosts are:
- Cemetries (especially graveyards with people who have been murdered.)
-Places of mysterious, violent or untilmely death
- hospitals and nursing homes
- scools (old & in operation)
- prisons and concentration camps
It annoys me that people take this sort of crap from these entertainers seriously. I mean, concentration camps?! Have these people no respect?
It’s normally the teams or the investigators who strongly point out that they don’t watch Most Haunted because it is fake and suspicious who then go on the rip off the show, or hang on every word that the presenters say (such as information in the associated books etc.)
Such a shame that their skepticism of the show doesn’t spread to the other information that the show presents to people. Perhaps their skepticism of the information that spawns from paranormal television shows is selective in the sense that they’ll deny it if it doesn’t fit in with their beliefs in ghosts… but if it does, they’ll hold onto it?
So to conclude, Most Haunted might be ending but that doesn’t make a difference in the bigger picture. I hate paranormal television. It’s vile.
I support…
