Ghost hunts and investigations have their ups and downs, and they are a bit different than you might see on TV. Here's a few examples.
The Good: Adrenaline rush from doing something scary.
The Bad: It's dull, the need for quiet being paramount.
The Good: You meet interesting people on both sides of the veil.
The Bad: You meet "interesting people" on both sides of the veil.
The Good: Collecting lots of evidence, fair to top quality.
The Bad: Going over the evidence, (which becomes quite tedious) the pay offs being few and far between. Every hour of evidence requires 1.5 to 5 hours to analyze properly.
The Good: Lots of great people in the paranormal community willing to help you.
The Bad: Lots of jealous jerks in the paranormal community who think, for no reason at all, that they are better than everybody, and nobody knows anything but them. Many of these are "Evidence Nazis." This isn't to trivialize Nazis, all of whom I'm sure are having a very bad afterlife, nor to make light of Nazis. An evidence Nazi is someone who trivializes everyone Else's evidence as bogus simply because they didn't capture it. They'll come up with all sorts of cockamamie explanations for a crazy picture that is not their own. What's important to realize is that they're out there, the closet skeptics, and to not let them under ones skin.
The Good: Ghosts do occasionally get caught in images or in sound recordings.
The Bad: Ghost don't show up, talk, materialize on command. It's easy to forget, even for us, how many hours of recorded material is needed to catch a 1 second anomaly.
The Good: You help people on both sides of the divide.
The Bad: If you're ethical, you don't make a dime for your services.
The Good: You could become famous, or get on television.
The Bad: You could become famous, or get on television. From then on, due largely to the jealousy factor, the potential is there for you to become labeled a sell out, not strict with your evidence, doing it only for money, etc. As long as you know your motivation is good, sincere, none of what the jealous set says matters much.
The Good: You get to help people. That should be the number one goal. Secondary to that is having fun, satisfying curiosity, and getting the crap scared out of you on occasion.
The Bad: I got nothin'.
On tools you'd need to get started, they are, in order of importance:
1. Integrity. You can do a hunt stark naked with no equipment or a group at all if you have your integrity (BTW, NEVER do a hunt alone! Always be in a team at all times of at least two people!) Loose your integrity and you might as well join a traveling carnival, because your ghost hunting days are done. Documenting findings is problematic though, so you'll need...
2. A sound recorder. If you go with analog tape, be sure that your tapes are always new, and never, ever used twice. I had someone in my group send me a sound recording. He was all excited. "There's piano music bleeding over from another dimension." I was stoked. "Cool, crazy abnormal evidence! Send it to me" I said.
Well, it was a recording that a friend of a member made on location with analog tape. Used tape. This guy was a vocal music student. The piano music was the guy's taped lessons. Seems he inadvertently was lightly pressing on the "stop" button on the recorder while recording. This caused the recording head to come off the tape slightly, allowing the previous music session to stay and mix with the EVP session. It took me about .21 seconds to figure this out, and another .21 seconds to call our member up and, well, I wasn't very happy. There are also analog tapless recorders, but I have the best luck with my trusty Sony digital recorder. And it's far easier to load onto a computer for examination than analog.
3. A camera. If you're good with film (I am not) use a film camera. Do know that the costs for developing can get pricey. After a few rolls with nothing to show this cost is going to become an annoying burden though. When you do get results they can be spectacular. Unfortunately for every 100 to 200 hundred photos you might get one anomalous photo, if that. Digital is cost effective, but a bit more prone to false orbs (yes, I know, TAPS says orbs are almost all dust or bugs (or moisture) but the actual number isn't quite that bad, at least as far as my research shows. Still, we do disregard 99.999% of orb photos. Bill Cook, a 20 year veteran in this field told me the other day "If I see even one more orb photo I swear I will throw up!" Bill runs the Haunted Barstow tours.
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