A recent status post on Facebook from Dave over at Paravizionz got me to thinking about the topic (which I touched on briefly in an earlier blog) about evidence and the quality, believability, and authenticity. In his post, Dave was warning other groups that the website scifake.com and someone (Ron Tebo) was going around investigating groups’ websites and “mocking” their evidence. A quick look at the SciFake website reveals that they are nothing more than a group of what I would call modern day witch hunters. They target most, if not all, of the para-TV show personalities in an effort to discount and nullify the evidence they’ve captured.
I’m not against putting our group’s evidence out there for everyone to see. I feel that I write fairly well worded explanations of each of our cases, outlining the investigation from start to finish. I detail who was there, why we were there, how we went about attempting to figure things out, and what we used to do this. Recently, I’ve also started including relevant info about weather and the phase of the moon. All of this is done anonymously (for private residences), for mostly privacy reasons. The evidence I put out there is scrutinized first by myself (I’m the tech department, so it’s my job to review all the footage), and then I turn what I’ve found over to the group for their input. If it passes their inspection, it is included in the final evidence package which is turned over to the clients. There have been times when something I thought was an EVP was explained away by investigators that were there. I feel this adds a second layer of “fact checks” to our evidence.
However, there are many people out there that totally discount all things paranormal with the reasoning that it cannot be duplicated in a lab setting. Unless someone builds a “lab” over a Native American burial ground (or some such “paranormal hotspot”), there is no pristine setting in which to conduct our research and investigations. Our investigations take place out in the real world, and the real world is an imperfect place. The mere fact that we’re investigating the paranormal dictates that there’s nothing normal about it, and hence not reproducible in a lab.
I will go on record saying that there are groups out there (not just in our area, but all over) that are less than reputable. I have personally seen websites that look like someone in the 3rd grade put them up—replete with spelling and grammar errors (which irks me to no end, but that’s another blog) as well as obvious fake or misrepresented evidence (oh so many dust orbs!). If your group is doing this in the name of science and furthering paranormal research (as many websites, even ours, claim) put a better foot forward and try to legitimize yourself. You only look foolish with your spelling errors and dust photos.
As I believe I’ve mentioned before (at least, it’s on our website), our group does what we do because we enjoy it. Each member has his/her own talents that they bring to the group, and we utilize a lot of what we do in our work lives. Some are techies, some research property, others have medical backgrounds, and still others are naturally curious and problem solvers. In and of itself, what we collect and post to our site can be considered the best “college try” at replicating the situation and conditions and explaining what we think is happening. Our science is not an exact one by its very nature, but we do what we can.
I feel that all the groups that we associate with are honest and legitimate. They all have different investigative strategies, and some try a lot harder than others to elicit some kind of response from whatever might be there. I don’t consider any of them as hoaxers or manufacturers of evidence. If someone out there wants to try to shoot holes in what we have on our websites, they can feel free to do so. However, they should approach it with the same mindset that we do: open-minded skepticism. I read a quote somewhere that went, “keep you mind open, but not so much that your brain falls out.” I feel that’s a good motto to live by, especially when doing paranormal research. Don’t go into a situation totally disbelieving everything, and by the same token, don’t approach it with total belief and acceptance. Good evidence should stand on its own merit.
Very interesting and true. While one cannot prove the paranormal as the mainstream sees it as an undeniable fact which directly contridects the definition of the word
ReplyDelete,
"the range of normal experience or scientific explanation" or that indicates phenomena that are understood to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure."
Which would obviously not be reproducible in a lab.at least not anytime soon and when it does it will no longer be PARAnormal, it will be naturalistic science.