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You Are The Ghost Hunter: How Would You Proceed?

Analogue Boy said:
As I said upthread, a plumber would be more useful in identifying knocks and other settling house noises.
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Sharp intake of breath... :pipe: "hmm… Oh dear, oh dear... tut, (another sharp intake of breath)… ain't gone-a-be a cheap job!"
 
One thing that I would like to suggest (not sure if this has been discussed above), but not only have your team go in blind (so they don't know where they're going), but also do a mix of places where ghosts have been reported, and places where nothing has happened, as a control.

Of course, the danger is that if you take your group in an un-haunted location and they "claim" to experience activity, they could retort with, "hey! we've found a new haunted location!" So, you can't win.

As for claims of activity, I am always very dubious. I am contacting many venues asking if they have experienced anything fairly recently as even paranormal phenomena dries up. Some of them reply, "oh yes! We've had groups in and they experience a lot of stuff." Obviously, having been on a few of these ghost hunting bonanzas, the people there are so hyped up that even the tiniest thing is misconstrued as definitely due to ghosts; after all, why settle for a mundane, rational explanation when a supernatural one will suffice?! So, I ask if these venues have reports from people going about their day to day business? I find these are the most convincing, when people aren't thinking of spectres. Naturally, I put this very tactfully but a lot of venues don't reply. Its almost as if the don't want to feel conned or have their belief bubble popped.
 
DrPaulLee said:
One thing that I would like to suggest (not sure if this has been discussed above), but not only have your team go in blind (so they don't know where they're going), but also do a mix of places where ghosts have been reported, and places where nothing has happened, as a control.

Of course, the danger is that if you take your group in an un-haunted location and they "claim" to experience activity, they could retort with, "hey! we've found a new haunted location!" So, you can't win.

As for claims of activity, I am always very dubious. I am contacting many venues asking if they have experienced anything fairly recently as even paranormal phenomena dries up. Some of them reply, "oh yes! We've had groups in and they experience a lot of stuff." Obviously, having been on a few of these ghost hunting bonanzas, the people there are so hyped up that even the tiniest thing is misconstrued as definitely due to ghosts; after all, why settle for a mundane, rational explanation when a supernatural one will suffice?! So, I ask if these venues have reports from people going about their day to day business? I find these are the most convincing, when people aren't thinking of spectres. Naturally, I put this very tactfully but a lot of venues don't reply. Its almost as if the don't want to feel conned or have their belief bubble popped.
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Places will almost certainly say that they have had activity in order to keep the groups booking and paying.

Sending a team into a neutral location would be interesting but also a huge drain on time and resources (if you do a full investigation). People will have to take time away from families and not be happy that it was a control test. Night time investigations ruin your whole next day and evening and takes a toll on your sleep patterns. Wading through the collected material must also be done but secretly you would know that 5 or 6 people are wasting a whole day listening or looking for stuff that isn't there.

However, I would suggest visiting 5 locations during one evening. In each location, the same experiment is carried out in the same way. Maybe one EVP test, one hour of surveillance and one hour of walking around. You know that only one location is said to be haunted. The team must then see if any of the tests stand out.
 
If you took people to an unhaunted venue, would you ever admit it though? People might be pissed off that they'd been deceived. But you would get a handle on who has been deceitful with their reports and behaviours.
I remember in one ghost hunt, we all took it in turns sitting in groups in a partially underground tin air raid shelter. One of the teams reported banging, knocking etc. A veritable Halloween! But every other team, both before and after just experienced mundane noises, the sort you'd expect from an old structure settling and do forth.
It was clear to us that one team was in cahoots and embellishing stuff. But of course they'd say, "oh, yes we're just more sensitive than the rest of you!"
So again, you can't win.

I've had friends on ghost hunts, people I would normally trust, and from their experiences, it was clear that were exaggerating/embellishing/fabricating. It made me wary of them, and our friendship.
 
Analogue Boy said:
‘You see mate, what you’ve got there is the restless, tormented spirit of a 17th Century scullery maid stuck in the boiler. I can fix it but I can’t get the parts until tuesday.’
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they usually can do it for a "cashie" though.
 
Whilst I don't believe that ghosts are spirits of the dead, if I did subscribe to that view and were attempting to contact someone from many centuries ago, I would do some research into the language of the time.
The YT video I posted on the Waverley Abbey thread features a ghost hunter trying to contact Cistercian monks from around 900 years ago.
The investigator uses phrases like "Hello. Is there anybody there?", "Did you live, die, work here?" and "Did you come here to chill out?" .

Now, given that we struggle to understand even Shakespearean language, let alone the Middle-English of Chaucer, how on Earth is a 900 year old monk supposed to make head or tail out of that? I can picture the ghosts looking at each other and shrugging sadly at the apparent gibberish being spoken.

Even the word "hello" is only some 150 years old and, in Middle-English would be something closer to "‘Al hayl" and "goodbye" would be "far weel".

Or are we supposed to believe that, in the afterlife, ghosts have access to some sort of celestial Duolingo, that is updated regularly throughout the ages, and keeps them abreast of the latest quirks in language?
 
After decades of organised "ghost hunting" with sophisticated equipment, no one has found definitive evidence of ghosts existing. However, phenomena referred to as ghosts have been experienced and reported by seemingly honest witnesses for centuries or possibly millennia.

Most reported ghost sightings are from people who least expected it — and in many cases they did not realise that it was a ghost until afterwards when they put two and two together.

How are we going to hunt for something that is most likely to be seen when no one is looking for it, and we may not realise what it is when we see it?

I am reminded of an old verse relating to happiness: Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp. But if we may sit still for a moment, it may alight upon us." (Other versions are available.)

Applying this principle to ghosts, I wouldn't go hunting them. I'd spend my unlimited resources on an interesting tour of castles, priories, andbattlefields. If something anomalous happened to appear when I least expected it, I'd savour the moment rather than wasting it in my frantic attempts to take a blurred and inconclusive photograph.

Of course, sooner or later, I might be expected to justify my unlimited budget. I would respond by writing a book full of unsubstantiated spooky anecdotes; there are people who lap that sort of stuff up.
 
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