I first got an inkling that entertainment might be a problem back in the mid 1990′s when a certain well known web site for ghost investigation suddenly became a site for paid membership. Not long later they were selling more books, online courses, and ghost hunting gear than anyone else online at the time.

Around the same time, I finally got around to reading the book that the movie, “The Exorcist” was based on. I would later get a better report on the actual case.

Not long later, I read more about the facts behind the case of the Amityville Horror and how that was blown out of proportion for a hit movie.

Now, to be fair, the case behind The Exorcist was a real one. Real things happened. But Amityville, and now, it seems “A Haunting in Connecticut” were made up almost whole cloth.

I was really hoping there was something behind the Conn. case, because one of the investigators involved is a friend of a friend. Alas, it seems to have started as a book deal between some of the people involved.

This greatly saddens me, as it does a great disservice to those of us trying to investigate these things rationally. It ends up not being science, but rather pure entertainment claiming to be based on a true story.

One REAL, world famous case is that of the “Christmas Ghost” at Hampton Court Palace in December 2003. As is typical of real cases, it didn’t get a lot of press except when it was happening. It seems that for a number of days, a door alarm would sound at one set of fire doors. When security went to investigate, the doors were once again closed and no one was around. This at first looked like it might be bad wiring or some other electrical fault. To test this, the security people aimed a camera at the doors in hopes to see what was going on. Around December 18 or 19, the camera caught the doors opening and someone closing them. The person looks to be dressed in 16th century clothing. No one in the area was dressed as such at the time. Other security cameras showed no one coming or going from that area at the time. You can see the video here and a frame by frame analysis here. The case was mostly dismissed because the figure didn’t look very ghostly. That still doesn’t explain who the person was or how they avoided all the internal cameras. A subsequent “investigation” which had absolutely nothing at all to do with this incident showed there was no correlation between visitors’ feelings of a presence and the supposedly haunted areas of Hampton Court Palace. Thus, the whole incident was neatly swept under the carpet and left as a historical anomaly.

I give this as one example of a sighting with good, hard evidence that got NO proper follow-up investigation. It is typical of a real “ghost” anomaly in that the ghost seems solid and real, but appears and disappears without a trace. It is typical of what is called an “intelligent haunting” in that the apparition seems to interact with normal reality rather than what is called a “residual haunting” where the apparition seems more like an echo, disconnected from this world. These terms of course, are only working terms as we haven’t proven anything, but they accurately describe what is observed.

Most real hauntings go un-investigated. Most of what you see from Hollywood is presented not for documentary evidence, but purely for entertainment. Lately, I have come to be very wary of any investigator who seems out to entertain. It makes me question the motives involved, and as the Amityville and Connecticut cases show, also make me question what really happened.

If you have even cursorily studied the science of parapsychology, you’ve heard of Zener Cards. These are the cards invented by perceptual psychologist Karl Zener in the 1930′s to test for psychic ability. They consist of 5 simple shapes: a circle, a plus sign, a series of waves, a square, and a star. You probably remember seeing them in “Ghost Busters”.

The Zener deck’s symbols were chosen to be as psychologically neutral as possible at the time. According to some, that is also their downfall. You see, studies over the years have shown that emotions are more easily shared by apparently psychic means than anything else. With the lack of emotional cues, the cards fail to show any strong signs of psychic ability.

As a test, I’ve devised a new set of cards I’d like to see people try. My Psychic Testing Cards use the symbolism of Western Alchemical elements: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and AEther or Spirit. The cards contain a depiction of the standard symbol for the element in its standardly accepted color as well as the element’s name, also in that color. There are 50 cards, 10 of each element. Thus, in testing, pure chance will yield a 1 in 5 chance of being guessed correctly — the same as the Zener deck.

There are two common methods of using this sort of deck in psychic testing. One tests for telepathy and the other tests for precognition.

Telepathy Test: The deck is shuffled thoroughly. A “sender” then looks at the cards, one at a time. The “receiver” then indicates which card s/he thinks is being “sent”.

Precognition Test: The deck is shuffled thoroughly. The test subject tries to predict what the next card in the deck will be.

Of course, these are very simplified instructions. Separating the sender from the receiver in the telepathy test would be good scientific practice, as would a set timing sequence, in order to rule out any possible signals the sender might be giving which were not paranormal. A mechanical shuffle machine might be in order, and like in casinos, it might be a good idea to use multiple decks shuffled together to preclude any chance of “card counting”.

Be sure to keep a good score sheet with accurate results as well as any other info that might be useful, such as time, date, location, how the participants are feeling that day, etc. One possible example is this Psychic Testing Score Sheet.

Over time, you might notice patterns emerge. You might get better results under certain conditions and worse results under others. Some studies show that boredom reduces psychic ability. Disbelievers often exhibit what is called “anti-psi” where they get an above chance number of incorrect results. Additionally, the effect is usually very small, and in order to get any statistically significant results, you’ll need to conduct a very large number of tests, conducted over numerous sessions.

If you’re looking for an EMF detector on the cheap, look to your local hardware store or home improvement department at your local bog box store.

You’re looking for a “non-contact voltage detector”. The one I found at my local Walmart was around $10 and looks kind of like a bright yellow blocky pen. These things are typically used to see if an AC circuit is “live”. They happen to work on the same principle as EMF meters and can be used to locate areas of very high AC EMF activity caused by non-paranormal devices like wiring, TVs, and computer monitors. They are great tools to rule out normal sources of EM radiation.

There is, of course, a down side. First, they are detectors, not meters. The audio signal and flashy light won’t give you an accurate measurement of the field. Second, they are not the most sensitive devices in the world, but they’ll do for locating the source of explainable AC EM radiation. If these things detect voltage where you spend a lot of time, you might consider moving away from the source of the radiation…

But for the price, and small size, these might be a good addition to your investigation kit.

I just got a new toy for investigations: a professional sound recorder.

This thing is amazing.  I’m still in awe as to the sensitivity and relative ease of use.

It’s an “American Audio Pocket Record” which I got from Music123 here:
http://www.music123.com/Musicians-Gear-Pocket-Record-Hand-Held-Stereo-Digital-Recorder-582222-i1432656.Music123

These are on sale for $99 with free shipping. ($199 MSRP) Yes, they are not cheap… but OMG…

I began recording with the internal microphones and from about 4 feet I could *clearly* hear a VERY quiet whisper.  It came with 2 lapel mics, headphones, USB cable, and AAA batteries.  It is much larger than the audio recorders PEASE and TAPS usually use.  This thing is a low end Pro Audio quality recorder meant for bands and it shows.  There are 128 MB of internal storage and an SD card slot.  The machine saves as 44KHz MP3 files by default, but can be set to save as WAV in 8k-44k sampling rates.  It boasts a 5 hour battery life in record mode and a 6 hour playback life. It also comes with a line out and separate headphone jack.

I opened an MP3 file in Audacity and it worked first try with no hassles, no software to install, no drivers needed, etc.
I can’t wait to try and get some EVPs with this thing.