Sunday, December 20, 2009

Griping About Other Paranormal Groups

Why is it that some paranormal groups, most of them actually, feel such a need - for lack of a better word - to bag on other groups? I think a lot of them talk trash because of their own insecurities, trying to position themselves as elevated by trying to keep you down. Craziness. Most groups are in this to help people, and if you're not, you really shouldn't be doing it. Yes, it's an interesting hobby, but you can't forget about the people you help.
"They use such and such equipment, they do things this way, they do things that way." Grow up.
One thing that we don't do is bag on others, whether it be their method or their equipment. The only exceptions being groups committing what we consider to be paranormal fraud with fake evidence, groups who present everything they caught in the field but didn't, or barely, sifted through it to remove evidence with obvious and likely terrestrial sources, and those who are dangerous to themselves and others, having no clue nor care that there are real dangers in ghost hunting (see definitions of ghost hunts and ghost investigations in previous post). And groups who bag on us, and even then it's rare for us to bother. Oh, and groups who use (shudder) Ouija boards. Ouija is the French Oui (yes) and the German Ja (yes) put together, making it a Yes Yes board. They should be renamed Nyet-nine boards, or No No boards. We'll do another post on that later.
It makes no difference to us if you use different equipment than we do. We don't care. Whatever works for you, you should use. For instance, I'm not a fan of compasses as a tool, but many ghost investigators and ghost hunters swear by them. Use them by all means. I'm not going to disparage you. Dowsing rods too. Same with K2 meters, though we'll probably get one soon, but I doubt that I will personally use it.
Even within our own group there are members who use tools I wouldn't use, and that's fine. If this tool or that tool is what enables you do get to the truth, great. Use it. As long as it isn't Ouija board.
A classic example of this weird bias is theshaowlands.net. Twice they've denied us a listing for no particular reason, though our standards are excellent, our methods are excellent, we throw out any evidence which is in any way suspect (we get a lot of evidence and post a lot, but you'll never see over 95% of what we gather because we're very strict in our standard of proof and verify everything), and we have a whole flock of investigators with a great sensitivity to the other side, just as we have a good number of skeptics. We've also been doing ghost hunts as individuals independently since long before they even existed!
We in this community ought to be working together rather than trying to set ourselves apart. It will not happen as long as there are haters, and they will alwayd be there.
I guess it's true, that which a sage once told me: If you don't have haters, you're not doing it right.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

A Ghost Hunt Vs. Ghost Investigation

This post is about the difference between ghost hunting and ghost investigations.
There are two schools of thought on this, so I'll address that first.
The first school of thought is that a ghost hunt is simply people going out with or without equipment such as cameras and voice recorders to look for ghosts. They hope they catch one, and they have no interest in any aspect of scientific explanations for the existence of ghosts, nor do they try to disprove that which they might or might not have captured evidence of. Very low burden of proof standards. A ghost investigation is a scientific approach to ghost hunting, replete with cameras, scientific gauges like EMF detectors, K2 meters, etc., and the application of logic and reason in an investigation. These tools and methods rule out evidence in an effort to delete false and bad evidence, and what you have left which is unexplainable is submittable evidence of paranormal, or spirit, activity.
The second school of though is one we like a little better. Ghost investigations are exactly the same as above, but "ghost hunts" are not such an informal event, and the evidence is taken very seriously. For us a ghost hunt is the first step, like a preliminary investigation. If we go to a location that is either reported to have paranormal activity, or we suspect might have paranormal activity, the first step is a ghost hunt. This will let us know if there's a need for an actual ghost investigation. We'll use cameras, voice recorders and personal experiences to come to a conclusion as to whether or not to continue with a ghost investigation, at which time we'll schedule a follow up visit to disprove earlier findings, as well as focus on areas to investigate further. If we come up blanked on a hunt, we will not investigate further. This seldom happens because we choose our locations with care, and don't do many random ghost hunts.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

How to Dress for a Ghost Hunt

How to dress for a ghost hunt or a ghost investigation?
Comfort is the first word which comes to mind. Appropriately is the second word.
The former is a no brainer. If someone, man or woman, is wearing stiletto heels on a hunt, they're nuts, and they are endangering themselves and others. In you're under dressed in the cold, you will be less effective. The same goes for overdressed in the warm, but you always shed layers.
About those layers.
We did a hunt recently in which three of our investigators showed up in all black, or very dark colors. This is not such a problem on a daylight investigation, but in the pitch black? Not so much. First and foremost they endangered others and themselves, and secondly they ran the risk of contaminating evidence due to poor viewing or people placement.
At least one light, or white item should be worn by everybody. I've thought about purchasing photographer's vests in a light color and putting our secondary logo on the front, and for good measure, an individual reflective strip on the back of each vest, so we can recognize by the reflection who is who if all else fails. Plus they have a lot of cool pockets for gadgets. This I haven't done yet because of the cost, and because the next thing they'll be expecting is liquid nitrogen cooled flux capacitor ghost zappers or something.
Hats. This is an unpopular subject, but it's the way I feel. Leave them at home, unless you're baiting ghosts in period dress that requires them, or unless they are part of your personnel identification system. Baseball caps irk me a bit, not because they're hats, but because like most hats, they obstruct some of ones field of vision. Everything above the bill is blind to you. You could easily miss an important clue, or bonk your head on a low hanging object. I recently observed a ghost hunt where everybody was in super long billed caps with the sides way curled in so as to block not only the horizontal above the bill, but a good deal of their peripheral vision as well. If you have to wear a baseball cap, turn it backwards so as not to blind a portion of one of your most important senses: your eyes. Or forgo them all together and provide everyone with birthday party hats. Problem solved.
Dress appropriately.
Comfortable shoes. First rule.
Why do so many ghost investigators I see on TV and on YouTube dress like utter slobs? Black t-shirts with band logos and scenes on them. Shorts all the time (I wear shorts almost every day of the year, but not on investigations), looking scruffy. Doesn't this perpetuate the myth that most ghost hunters can't spell perpetuate, let alone define it? And isn't it somewhat insulting to the spirit world? Maybe they don't get offended. They're dead right? They're in no place to judge.
Bullsh. If you're working an investigation outdoors, in a field, jeans, t-shirts, OK. If you're investigating the Queen Mary, you should take it up a notch or three. A theater? Dress as you would on a date to the theater, as if you're making an effort to impress. If you're going to be on camera, almost dress as if you're interviewing for a job, because every person who sees you from then on, on YouTube or TV, you're doing just that. If you're investigating someones private residence, why not make an effort to NOT look like a felon, rather than the reverse.
Perfumes and colognes. These should be kept to a minimum if worn at all. A lot of times ghosts use smells as cues to their presence, but if anybody and everybody's smelling like they just came from the sample counter, you loose the sense of smell, which is important.
Effectiveness and respect. That's what it's about.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Why do we do it?

Apparent Demon we caught at a cemetery.

Ghost hunts. Ghost investigations. There's a difference, which we'll save for another entry, but the question is, why do we do them?
I can't speak for other groups, nor can I speak for other members of our own group, http://claranormal.com/, but I can speak for myself.
Like most people who do as we do, I grew up experiencing paranormal activities of one kind or another, and like many of these people, my sincere desire is to bring comfort to others in the knowledge that we don't just fade to black when we our bodies expire. That it isn't like somebody flicked the light switch and you're in the dark, then nothing more, cancel Christmas. I, myself, have in person seen, heard and experienced enough in my life to know that isn't the case. We continue. The soul God placed in our body lives on.
If on the way we can also help a lost soul or two, living or after-living, great. That doesn't mean that we go into a haunted location and yell "Go to the light!" or any such other Hollywood nonsense. Many ghosts know they stayed behind, so you're not telling them anything new. "Oh! Is that what I'm supposed to do with the light? I was wondering! I've spent the last 50 years making ghost shadow puppets with it! Silly me!"
Some don't know though, whether it's denial, or the way that they passed, they are utterly unaware of that they've passed. The Queen Mary's engine room for example. We've had a revisit on our "To Do" list for a while now, so that our newer members can experience a truly haunted location, but also for my own sort of selfish reasons: to get more information from one ghost we caught on an EVP who stated his age, "Forty," and followed later with ..."I don't know what happened to me." We plan to ask him his name, what year he last remembers. From that and any other info he volunteers, we will research it and bring him answers.
Claranormal is a service, and a service should serve...


Monday, November 30, 2009

New scary pics posted at Claranormal.com

We recently went back to some of our old ghost hunt photos from Claremont's Oak Park Cemetery and found some amazing photos!
What we found in some of the pictures defies logic and reason, one because we didn't find the ghosts in these pictures before, and two, they were just plain weird. We've added them to the Oak Park Investigative folder at:
http://claranormal.com/investigations/oak_park_cemetery/ghost_photography.htm. The new pics are down towards the bottom of the page.
These blew our minds, and they'll probably blow yours too.
Some just show more of the time/space.energy distortions present here on occasion, another shows what looks like a demon, but the interesting series of pics is that of a visitor to the cemetery.
While we were there, an older gent showed up to apparently visit with a departed loved one. I say this because we didn't speak to him, but rather saw him drive in (alone), park, and walk over to and sit on one of the concrete benches. He got caught in two photos by accident (we blurred his face out) and his vehicle was captured in those two pictures, plus one more. It's his vehicle that was interesting, or rather, what shouldn't have been there, but was.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Final report on the Granada Theater, Ontario, California

We did an exhaustive investigation (twice) on the Granada Theater, and an meticulous review of the evidence, and though we dismissed a boat load of evidence, we were still left with quite a bit.

Though we dismissed more than 90% of our EVP evidence due to contamination from terrestrial sources, we were still left with a large volume of unexplainable sounds. Most of these are displayed at http://claranormal.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhIjLWpNCfc.

The disregarded terrestrial sources are things such as aircraft, loud cars passing by, trains in the distance, investigators whispering without identifying themselves (we're working on fixing that) and team members and guides making sounds. This is in additions to odd acoustics of this theater and the office building's hallways that surround it. At one point on the ground floor of the theater I thought I was onto something important: Strange noises coming from the stage. Nope, it was at least one guide asleep and snoring.

On the video evidence, almost all of Steve's video from the initial investigation was worthless (camera set wrong) and Justin's video is stuck in his camera (oops!). The exception to this is the Ovilus video/audio recording at the first investigation. See this at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9K5offGMLQ

However, on the second investigation Steve left two cameras rolling in two separate locations. The first was in Emma's Hallway, which watched over a gaggle of candy suckers we left behind to see if they moved. They did not. However, the camera did move. See this at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7r7azWblKk. The second camera was set up in the small basement of the theater. On the first investigation, we caught an EVP (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixRNXGti5iQ) in the basement which, when played backwards, tells us to "Get Out" twice, so it was a natural place to set up our old video 8 analog camera (if it fell over and broke, no great loss...). This video captured taps on the camera, weird ghostly music, a flying orb, something blowing into the camera mic (lost footage) but most disturbing is that the camera's recording shut off for no explainable reason, with at least a half an hour of tape left, and more than an hour of battery left. Some of the tapping sounds we hear sound like water dripping, and in fact in a one frames we actually saw a drop of water fall, but there was no water on the floor when we left the camera, nor when we retrieved it. See video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST5W4LkGIeI.

Image evidence. This is a topic that we have to deal with very carefully, because it's very easy in a dark setting, especially, to make faces out of pixelation, and for the mind to see shapes that are not there. We studied the photos very carefully, and after initially coming to the conclusion that we'd captured a lot of amazing images of ghosts, we winnowed it down considerably. For instance, the pictures of the sound booth lady from the 2nd investigation we invalidated, but the image of her from the first investigation could not be invalidated. Likewise the robo looking guy in the balcony. We found that most of his features were caused by the background and ceiling of the theater, but not all of them. He does in fact move, from frame to frame. The visages who look like, and we call, "Rasta Man," "Ben Franklin," 'Light Man," "Andrew Jackson," "Big Ear Guy," and "Uncle Fester" we can not eliminate either, though Fester, Light man, Ben and Rasta could very well be pixelation interpretations.
On orbs, yes, we did include a lot of images of orbs, even though most of them, if not all, were created by dust in the air. We included these for a couple of reasons. One was that some of the orb images also have other interesting things in them, and the other is that there are some people who are orb fans, and these are presented for them. Our official stance on orbs is that they are usually dust or bugs, but now and again, you catch gold.

My last official word on Granada is copied from an email I sent one of our investigators:

"I did get a definite feeling, and I really want to say it was from THE BUILDING ITSELF although I know that's crazy because a structure can not have a memory, feelings and such, that the Granada is ashamed. Ashamed of it's current condition. Angry at it's neglect and mis-use. Sad and pining for it's glory days, when the people came in excited and happy to be there, rather than quite and reflective in it's use as a church. People inquisitive, scared, sometimes horrified, like entering a "House of Horrors" with all the ghost investigations, rather than in happy expectation that a night (or matinee) away at the movie brings. The building feels that it can still be put to good, wholesome use, possibly hosting the school districts plays, regularly scheduled old movie nights, etc.
I know it's not the building projecting this, but rather those who left their indelible imprint, and those who stayed behind, as well as those who come back to visit. And many they are."

Saturday, November 7, 2009

The Granada Theater Investigation, Ontario, California

Wow, what a place.
We did an initial investigation on 10-24-09 that lasted from 11:00 PM until 3:30 AM the 25th, and a follow up investigation on 10-29-09 that lasted from about 9:30 PM to about 11:30 PM.
The follow up investigation was attended by members of the Mount San Antonio College newspaper, the Mountiewire (http://mountiewire.com), who were doing a Halloween piece on a haunted place. We were there primarily to disprove stuff we'd found in pictures, video and and EVP's, and it wouldn't take long. Thus we brought with us an Ovilus, which would surely prove to be entertaining, and might even yield results.
It did.
See a video shot on the initial investigation with this Ovilus at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9K5offGMLQ.
We also set up a video camera on trigger objects in what we call "Emma's Hallway." One member picked up on the presence of a little girl on the second floor of the office building which envelops the Granada theater, and we wanted to see if we could get more.
See footage here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7r7azWblKk

This is new, and a little fun

I'm just setting up the Claranormal Facebook, and decided to add the blog. What fun!

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