I start out most of my talks by relating some stories. Granted I have not had very many chances to conduct these “talks” with large audiences, however, the small groups that I had worked with had enjoyed them. I connect to my listeners that way, by reliving some of the more humorous things that I have experienced during my life. Like the time that a friend and I decided to do an investigation of a cemetery.
It was a long time ago. We had gotten the itch to do something that evening. It was a regular thing at that time, we would go to “haunted” locations and walk around with some of our equipment and see what we could find. The night went on like any other, pitch black and quiet. We walked through the graveyard talking about what we hoped to find. It was just a normal night.
As we walked, we split up. I followed a strange EMF reading, and him walking down a small path. Mid-sentence my friend lets out an ear-piercing scream and jumps straight up in the air. “Jesus Christ, what the FUCK!!!” He literally cleared two headstones and was making his way, very quickly I may add, up the slight hill in which the cemetery was situated. After a rather hilarious sprint uphill, an exhausted and quite flabbergasted friend looked at me and smiled. “Did you see the size of that damned dog?”
Apparently, unbeknownst to us, the farmer who lived next to the cemetery had released his dog Rox, who happens to be a black Bull Mastiff. The dog, thinking that we were a couple of guys that he could play with, decided that a playful full-speed nudge would get us to play with him. To this day, I am not sure if he saw us walking around the cemetery and thought it would be funny, or just let his dog out to use the restroom. Either way, my friend almost had a coronary.
This other time, not so long ago, I was with a small group of investigators who was invited to investigate an old building in a local small town. According to the records, this building had been used as the town’s only mortuary in the late 1800’s. For the last few years the building has been turned into apartments and storage space. We spent the whole night on the third floor, conducting EMF sweeps, doing EVP sessions, and looking for whatever we could to explain the reports of voices and footsteps.
As we were walking through the building, we noticed that in the back of the building there was an old dumb waiter-style elevator. The story, according to the property owner, was that they would park the wagons downstairs at street level and use the elevator to raise the bodies up for preparation and showings. We decided that this spot would be a good spot to stop and do some provoking. We did this for like fifteen minutes. “You know, if you are here I don’t think that you are strong enough to do anything.” That type of stuff.
I said that we were going to leave because whatever was there was weak, and we started to move away from the elevator. Just as we took a step, we heard a creak. We froze, turned around, and the rope holding the elevator broke sending the whole thing to the basement.
BOOOOOMMMM!!! Dust flew everywhere, and the whole building shook. If felt like the whole world was rocking because of this. We dove to the ground and laid there for what seemed like an eternity.
The whole crew ended up outside, all of us needing a cigarette. I don’t even smoke, but I did then. Nobody went back in for an hour, we just let our equipment run. The owner was beside himself. He wanted to make sure we were not hurt, and I think he was scared out of his wits. The next day, we went back in and found that the rope was dry-rotted and just the weight of the elevator brought the whole thing down. We just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Either way you look at it, we were scared to death when it happened. Some of us might have had even to change clothes after that, I think I did.
I tell these stories to show that not everything that happens during an investigation is boring. Some exciting things happen, however, they are not always going to be paranormal in nature. You always have to be alert to everything that is going on around you.
I have not always been that way. I started doing this when I was nineteen. We would go off to spooky spaces, and see what we could get. Of course, when I first did this it was for the sheer fun of it. I loved to scare myself. The fear response was like a drug to me. I had to have the hair on my neck stand up as often as possible. That was my start in this field. A thrill-seeking adrenaline junky, that is what I was. I loved it. I admit it, I started doing the same things that I hear other people distance themselves from. However, the more I went out the more I wanted to find out what actually was going on. I never wanted anything big. I joined some small groups in the late 90’s early 2000’s. They showed me what I was doing wrong and how to conduct myself in a more professional manner. I still did public locations, and I admit I trespassed a few times (as evident in the cemetery story).
The more I went out with these groups, the more I learned. I used new equipment, I found out that I could conduct EVP sessions in new ways, and I generally grew up. I wanted to focus on the science that involved.
I still went out with friends on occasion. Once I took a car full of friends who were a bit younger than I was to a local reservoir that was reportedly haunted. As we walked the trails, I would look straight ahead and lean over to talk with one of my friends who was right beside me. After a while of not getting any response from her, I looked over where I had seen her standing in my periphery, and nobody was there. The group was actually a good ten feet behind me. I asked if they had been up with me, and they said no. They went on saying that they had been sitting back watching me talk to myself and wondered what I was doing. I told them what I had seen, and swore that I saw one of the girls standing beside me. They got spooked and that ended that night, even though I wanted to stay longer and see if it happened again.
Time passed and I learned how to conduct investigations in the same manner as the groups I was learning from. I came to understand that there were certain things that I had to do in order to be scientific. The more I learned the more I felt that there was something missing. I could not put my finger on it yet, but I knew that there was something more to conducting these investigations.
In 2003 I went back to school for the first time. This did not last long as an accident, and a lack of funding, stopped me from continuing further. I started learning what science truly was. Even though this first attempt did not start so well, I did begin to recognize that there were things that these paranormal groups did/or did not do that just did not sit well with what I was being told. I knew that scientific investigations of the paranormal did not fit into the normal concept of science, but something was off. I could not figure out what it was.
For the next few years, I tried to research these ideas on my own. I still went out with my friends and other groups who were investigating these things; however, I could not shake what I was feeling. In 2005, I went back to school and started focusing on psychology. During this time, I put some of my interests aside and focused on the goal, of my education. However, at times it slipped through and made things complicated.
I graduated from a small community college with an associate’s degree in Psychology. This did nothing for my questions. In fact, I ended up with more. I knew that I really could not do anything with an associate’s degree so I moved on. Of course, I picked up my Substitute Teachers Permit first. From there, I moved straight to Ball State University and proceeded to get my BS in Anthropology.
The more I learned about the nature of science, and what science is, the more I began to question some of my prior teachings. Of course, even though I tried to stop it, my interest in the paranormal started to bleed through again. I found that some of my interests had new ears in the departments in which I found myself working. This spawned new concepts and ideas that I could try to adapt to the paranormal field. One of these concepts was the implantation of a methodology that could be used to bring a more scientific approach to a hobby I have had for a long time.
I found that the manner in which data was, and is, collected was not the problem, but the lack of coherent methodology was. Everyone claimed that what the field needed was Peer Review to be scientific, however if nobody really knows how you are collecting your data they cannot fully review your findings. During my courses, I came to realize what I was missing. Everyone claims that what he or she is doing in the paranormal field is scientific. Now I have begun to see what it takes to carry out scientific research, and I can see what is missing in paranormal research at present.
I found that there are only small groups of “fringe” investigators who seem to be pushing for something similar. However, as a whole, it seems that those in the field miss the point. You cannot claim to be scientific without using the core values of the discipline.
This, I know, tends to be criticized by those in the paranormal field. It is something that I have grown over time to understand. We need to find a way to marry the ideas of science and to be scientific, with the paranormal field in such a way that skeptics will not be able to easily pick apart. They claim that what we do is not scientific. If we address these critiques and correct our practices, then when skeptics look at our findings and theories, there is more weight to our arguments that cannot be easily dismissed.
