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WORD TO THE WISE

For those who chose to investigate the paranormal on your own please read this. I am not claiming to be an expert in the field of the paranormal but there are some concerns that my group and myself feel we should talk about. We do present ourselves in a professional manner and maintain high respect for this field. There are a lot of paranormal investigators from other groups who will agree that there are certain things that are giving people like us a bad name. We are out here to gather evidence for scientific purposes regarding paranormal anomalies. Our credibility goes out the window when you have people who present bogus evidence or do stupid things like trespass.
I have a few points that I would like to talk about pertaining to investigating in this field.

- Please if you choose to investigate a public place i.e.: cemetery, school, abandon buildings, roads, etc. get permission to do so first. There have been people who just go to a location for the thrill and to be quite frank when you just go w/o permission you are trespassing. This has caused those who are serious about the paranormal grief. Its harder for us to obtain permission because the owner of the premises think we are just thrill seekers or are going to vandalize locations.

- When using certain equipment make sure that you don’t combine certain ones together. If you are using a recorder its not recommended to use an EMF reader. We have found it can cause de-magnetization on the tape. Its best to have someone else use this equipment but to stay close by you. When using an emf reader make sure that there are no other electrical sources that could cause the meter to spike. A camera or recorder can cause it to jump if you have those in your hand as well.

- When gathering evidence such as photos, Evps , Videos etc. Please take into consideration natural causes before presenting it to be of paranormal origin. I find this happening all the time out there. Its very frustrating when you have people thinking that the orb in the photo is a ghost. Orbs have yet to be proven as ghosts just as energy. There are so many reasons of why orbs appear and most are not of paranormal decent. From reflections to dust to moisture to lens flare.. All causes of orbs in photos. If you think you have a genuine picture but are still curious about it, present it to someone who knows how to justify the difference.
If you are recording on a location please make sure you use blank tapes. When you record over and over again there are remnants left behind on the tape and can bleed through sounding like you have a ghostly voice. Also always document on tape who is with you, the place that you are investigating, and where you are in that location periodically. I recommend that you state the time every 10 minutes or so. If you do this and there are others recording but they are in the distance you can rule out their voices if they come across as Evps but are soft or appear to be ghostly. It also helps if you do come across something paranormal you have more substantiated evidence that can be compared to other findings at that time. Another thing please note if someone makes bodily noises, whispers or if there are back ground noises.
Video is something that we try to use on locations to witness the activity in real time as well as record it. Those who investigate in this field know that dust can cause the appearance of orbs when its dark and the light is on, on the camera. Another common problem when using a camera at night with night shot you can pick up lights in the background and when you move it can appear like a vortex or light flashes.

Its hard to present genuine evidence for people to review when there are people who don’t consider all the facts. Please, for the sake of the paranormal field, make sure what you are presenting has no other cause.

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