Posts Tagged "research"
Hayley is a ghost
When I became tangled up in the web that is ‘paranormal research’ at the age of Eighteen, I did so because I was looking for information and answers. In all the subsequent years I have found information, I have found answers and I have discovered more questions.
The more I have learnt, the more I have discovered I do not know.
I am open minded and curious, more than most people involved in paranormal research can truthfully say. Most people have their minds made up one way or another, but I don’t. Some people involved in ‘the field’ have an agenda or are aiming to gain something from it, but I’ve never really aimed for that. Even though some people think I have.
It’s concerning that so many people are content to say something is a ghost and be so sure of it when there is no rational way such an explanation is reasonably sound. The main problem with paranormal research is the amount of people who are so sure of their own ability (and not just ghost believers, either).
A lot of people involved in paranormal research need to just chill the eff out.
Since the age of Eighteen I have just been exploring the world we live in through curious eyes, and that has led me to be the skeptical individual I am today. I used to believe a lot of naive things and I learnt better. I still believe a lot of naive things, and over time I will learn better. Being critical of ourselves is the best way in which we can develop our understanding of the very nature of our existence.
I became involved in paranormal research to discover things I didn’t know about, and I continue to do that to this very day. Everything else has just been opportunities people have passed my way that I’ve taken them up on. All the talks, all the writing, all the interviews…
They’ve all been great fun, and they’ve enabled me to discuss my ever changing story with other people who’ve never held the curiosity in the paranormal that I have. It’s helped me make other people think about things, and it’s helped me meet like minded people and be challenged by the questions I’ve been asked.
Over the years I have come to believe that the answers to why people experience strange things lies within psychology and neurology. We (as the human race) are starting to deconstruct myths that have for a long time baffled many, and scientists and researchers are offering up explanations about things masses of people experience.
There is a lot still to be learnt, and a lot of what is being discovered is exciting and confusing, but progress is being made.
It’s why last year I decided to change the way in which I approach my exploration of the subject. I’ve started to study psychology with The Open University in the hope that when I’m much older I’ll be a bit more satisfied with how I understand the world.
The way in which people believe, perceive and think has always fascinated me, and I hope to be able to dig deeper and learn much more over the coming decade as a student.
This does mean I’m not going to have as much time to dedicate to as many projects as I did before, but I don’t see that being an overly negative thing.
I recently revamped the ‘Ghost Field Guide’ podcast and renamed it as ‘Talk About Strange’, I don’t think it will be a regular show but I will update it as and when I can with interesting pieces and interviews (of which I already have some to edit down). The Righteous Indignation Podcast was recently put on hold, but that doesn’t mean it has totally vanished. We’re not sure what will happen in the future with it, and sometimes it’s good for things to not have a long term plan. Life is a spontaneous thing, and I think it should be lived that way too. There are over 104 episodes of RI (if you could the Unlucky Dips) and I am really proud of the show and all it has achieved, and will continue to achieve. I will always be an indignate 
Project Barnum is my baby and there are some absolutely fun things coming up for it. On January 5th Project Barnum launched the Monthly Actions for people to participate in with ‘The Horoscope Challenge’ and I’ve seen some really interesting feedback already. I do believe that when I launched Project Barnum I didn’t do so in the most organised of manners, and I let other peoples ideas influence the direction it launched in too heavily. However, this year things should be interesting on the PB front.
There are some really decent people supporting it, and so many people have reported back to me that the site and the resources have genuinely helped them that I think I’ve done something right there (and I’m not just doing a Colin Fry and allegedly blowing my own trumpet…)
I will continue to blog as I always have. Both here and over on The Vigilantes Blog too. I don’t see there ever being a time where I wont share my thoughts with those who follow me on this site. Blogging has been the foundation of everything I have done since the age of Eighteen, and it will continue to be so for as long as I shall live.
I have so many books to catch up on, so many research reports to read, and so much ahead of me to learn. It’s going to be exciting. 2012 is going to be the year in which I step up the quest that the Eighteen year old me started. Things have only just begun.
Ghost Investigations Today
Back in February I was on a panel with Professor Chris French and Trystan Swale at the QED conference in Manchester. The panel was called ‘Ghost Investigations Today’ and that was exactly what we were talking about.
The Vigilantes are watching…
I don’t think I’ve properly blogged about the fact that the British Anomalistic Research Society has changed – it still exists but has simply become a more informal site with less people contributing.
BARsoc had some awesome people on board who simply weren’t able to comit time to the site and it became quite obvious that the aims BARsoc had weren’t acheivable with only a couple of people.
The Vigilantes was born from this; three of the BARsoc bloggers (myself, Bob and Gavin) have moved over to The Vigilanted Blog with all of our previous BARsoc articles to continue doing what we do best.
The reason I felt the need to blog about this move is because a few days ago Bob wrote a brilliant piece on the site detailing his investigation into a dodgy looking video claiming to show a ghost caught on CCTV in a ‘Phones4U’ shop.
Many were calling it as a fake, but Bob went a little deeper and found- well, why don’t you go and read about what he found? Also, while there, subscribe to the site, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter….
Going back to my roots, a shock laid in wait…
Back in 2002/2003 I hadn’t yet become involved in paranormal research but had started to explore the interest I had in ghosts, paranormal phenomena and hauntings. I did this through watching television shows and reading books.
Then one day my mum discovered a website called ‘AsylumCam‘ (now known as AsylumsGate) on which the owner of a supposed haunted house allowed people to watch webcams placed around his house in the hope that they might capture something ghostly in the house.
I joined up and formed fast friendships with the other members there. We would chat for hours and hours in the chatrooms and the forums and it was like a home away from home. I even have a t-shirt with the website slogan on it somewhere.
Here are some examples of images caught and believed to be paranormal by the majority of people on the site:
A ghostly face? Or pixels?
'The soldier' was a 'top cap'
After a year or so on the site my belief in ghosts strengthened, confirmed by what the people on the website chat and forums were telling me were facts. They were experts, or at least spoke as though they were and there were some members who were sensetive to spirit. I was naive and believed their claims and their ‘facts’ and soon went on to start investigating the paranormal as part of my own team (in 2005) using the ideas presented to me via that website and its members.
Then, around 2006 or 2007 I became more skeptical of what I was doing and being told and the things I believed in as a result. I ‘came out’ as atheist and stopped the research team from using pseudo-science on investigations. This wasn’t as a direct result of being Atheist, but as a result of the rational way I was now able to see things in.
I was soon banned from the ‘Asylumcam’ website by the main moderator ‘MoeBanshee’ (who now actually owns the website in question) for being openly skeptical and Atheist on the forums and in the chat.
Roll on a few years, and a couple of weeks ago I was invited to join a group on facebook called ‘Ex-asylumnites’ for people who used to frequent the website but had since stopped.
In the years since I was banned I have changed a lot and have developed my understanding of the phenomena I investigate. My stance and take on things is completely different to what it was in 2007 and I presumed that the people in that group would be the same.
However it has become evident that this isn’t the case at all. Many members of that group conduct pseudo-scientific paranormal investigations, with some members gushing over orb photos and EVP recordings.
There are posts from people who say they’ve just encountered something ghostly – a door opened when it was locked (I’d say the lock was faulty, they say it’s their resident ghost) – and there seems to be a general worshipping of the television show ‘Ghost Hunters’ that followed TAPS around from place to place.
The TAPS team in question use pseudo-science, a bad definition of science, night vision camcorders and demonists to conduct their scientific investigations…
I’ve been non-vocal about my skepticism and rational stance in the group, until the other day when I commented on a post about an episode of ‘Ghost Hunters’ that the TAPS team aren’t actually very scientific at all.
I thought perhaps the people there might be interested to know what I based my ideas and beliefs on and I was surprised to discover that actually, despite me providing them with links and sources for rational information, they weren’t interested at all. In fact, they were actually keen to dismiss science as being on par with belief led investigations (suggesting they don’t know the difference between theory and scientific theory…)
It genuinely shocked me that after all this time the people I had once considered the authority on the subject were so closed minded, even when provided with the sources for the research that showed a different conclusion to the one they had reached in their mind.
It strenghtened my belief that it is important to make the correct information available to people, but you can’t make them accept it unless they’re willing to. It also showed me that age has nothing to do with knowledge.
How do you hunt for a ghost?
Numerous people have pointed out that I’m rather quick to point out how you shouldn’t conduct paranormal research but I don’t outline how you should (or more specifically, how I personally) conduct paranormal research.
Recently I began to produce ‘The Ghost Field Guide’ podcast that will be a short series of podcasts that look at various areas of paranormal research and the flaws or mistakes people make without necessarily doing so. The topics that will be covered by me and my guest hosts are mistakes that I personally made when I first began conducting paranormal research, I thought it would be useful to look at the general gaps of knowledge I had, what I found difficult to understand and what I could necessarily find information on easily and focus on these things in a bid to help others.
However, to summarise my methods of investigation and research in a nutshell is what people want me to do, and that is what I shall try to do here in this article.
To answer the question in the title of this post, how do you hunt for a ghost? – You don’t. You can’t. Not without flawing your research from the start.
It’s quite difficult to explain what it is I actually do when confronted with a possible case of ghost phenomenon because no two cases are alike. One case could be in a pub where six members of staff work on a rota and experience weird things in the kitchens, another case could be in a family home where a single mother and three children reside and are terrified by odd noises and the sensation of being watched or the feeling they’re not alone.
These two cases throw up different sets of problems and different opportunities for research and study. For example, to go straight into the home where the children reside could be unethical – it might be easier to give each family member a diary in which they can note down anything strange that concerns them. A problem shared and all that.
If you can identify patterns that emerge from what they are writing down, that can really help you to identify what could have caused the odd experience.
With children, it’s very likely that one reporting of something strange can lead to numerous reports of numerous strange things that didn’t necessarily happen. Children often play up to what is expected of them and it’s important to be able to see past this and to not include testimonies that aren’t as sound as they could be in the overall case.
When I have a case reported to me I don’t like to instantly assume the best action is to visit the location – not everyone wants that, and sometimes doing so can issue a false authority that because a paranormal researcher has visited a location, the location has something paranormal there. It is a link people make in their heads and it’s something I’ve learnt through mistakes.
When telling some people that you don’t think anything paranormal is the cause you could be greeted with odd looks and the question “why did you come here then?”
It’s not a logical link to make, but then if you don’t know anything about ghost phenomena and you have a horrible feeling a ghost is in your house you’re probably not going to act logically all the time – fear is consuming. It can be very easy to presume that a paranormal researcher is an expert in what they are doing – this means any claim made is accepted as fact.
Generally the best thing to do with a reported case of phenomenon is to try and understand what is normal about the place it happened .
How can you tell what isn’t normal is you don’t know what is normal? You can’t.
A lot of ghost hunters visit a location one or two times and that will be all they need before they reach their conclusion – but in my mind that doesn’t make any sense. I have to be used to a building before I can even start to consider questioning what may have caused the reported phenomenon/phenomena.
There are various locations that I have been investigating for years and it’s very much an on-going process.
Normally, simply by spending time at a location it’s quite easy to pinpoint causes for the odd things that have been experienced – especially if you haven’t gone there looking for a ghost like a lot of people do.
I hope this can give you some insight into what I do if, and when, I have a case of phenomenon reported to me, it’s not as exciting as running around in the dark with some gadgets that beep and “detect ghosts”, it’s not as thrilling as table tipping or a seance, but it’s certainly more realistic.
Check it out…
