When did Claranormal Begin?

I spoke with a reporter the other day who seemed to have a problem wrapping his head around reconciling the creation date of Claranormal.com with our hunt/investigation tally. Pretty sure he's going to try and make that an issue, lol. The name Claranormal was registered as a "dot com" in 2008, but the group itself, the name Claranormal, came into existence in 2007, and it's members had been investigating under experimental names up until then. Ghost Emergency, lol, Ghosts R Us, and a few others we tried out but felt the names either didn't "gel" with our mission, or really didn't identify us. Then one day it hit, Claremont Paranormal, Claranormal. Considering that many of us had been experiencing paranormal activity in Claremont, myself included since moving there in 1997, it was sort of a duh moment, the name not coming sooner. On our tally. When you first start "ghost hunting," like anything new to you, you're at it at every opportunity, 2, 3 times a week if you can find enough places and participants. That's where our tally really expanded, but over time I learned that twice weekly, weekly, or even bi-weekly investigations really are difficult to pull off unless we were going only for the "wow" factor, the thrill of it, and were unconcerned with the evidence itself, or had no lives or jobs outside of the paranormal field itself. I learned that too many hunts at a time meant that we would get sloppy. I learned that proper preparation, researching a location or a person/people, takes time. Gathering not only people, but the right people, takes time. The investigation takes time too, but that's what you're there for. Most importantly, evidence review takes time. A lot of time! I have learned first hand that for us weekly, even bi-weekly investigation are really not conducive to quality evidence gathering, and it really does the clients and the field more harm than good to rush from one place to another with a backlog of under-reviewed or un-reviewed evidence, so now we may do one investigation every two week, or one a month, one every couple months. Bottom line is that I have learned that there is more to life than looking for dead people, that life really does belong to the living, so we take it as needed. On our group: We also have been investigating as individuals for, well, literally decades. I myself have been going to supposedly haunted locations as early as the mid 1970's, but never actually "hunted a ghost" until about 1990. All excursions prior to that circa 1990 event were for much the same reason that one rides a roller coaster: For the thrill of it. Go to the rumored to be haunted cemetery, or the house on the hill for the thrill of being frightened, the chance of seeing something unworldly, getting a taste of something "supernatural," for much the same reasons that many of today's novice ghost hunters get into the field. I just happen to predate them by decades. However, the first time I actually went someplace to "hunt a ghost" rather than going to a place for the "fright factor" of it, that is, to try and find, see, experience, capture evidence of a spirit or a ghost (there is a difference), as opposed to going someplace for "jollies" was after watching Chuck Henry do an "Eye on L.A." piece on the Queen Mary being haunted. I had never heard of it being haunted, never gave it any thought, so this surprised me. I had always been drawn to that beautiful ship, so I had to see this "haunted" business for myself. I have been a huge fan of the Queen Mary ever since going to visit her on a school field trip in about 1972 or 1973, and as an adult I used to visit her every couple months or so from about 1980 on, and never saw or heard anything out of the ordinary, although I could always sense the history and importance of this treasure. I and a few other like minded people I knew couldn't wait to go aboard and find more information about this, and go to the actual places where all these eyewitness accounts occurred. Within a couple days we were organized and on our way, hoping to either disprove or disprove these stories. We called out for the "ghosts", in the supposedly haunted areas, spoke as if talking to an actual person who just happened to be invisible. We took with us film cameras and that's all, and we caught absolutely nothing in pictures, saw nothing, heard nothing, so as far as I was concerned the QM was not haunted. Ah, how much we learn over time. Like a lot of novices, we made the arrogant assumption that just because we didn't experience anything this first time out at a "haunted" location, it must not be haunted. In 1996 the Queen Mary being "haunted" came to be a reality that I can not discount, as I saw my very first full bodied apparition down in the engine room, and he looked as solid as you or I. That is until he vanished. Up until then I was a full on skeptic, and always said I'd believe ghosts, spirits existed when I saw one for myself. I saw. I do.