Over the last several hours I've engaged in an online conversation about research in this field. Our team certainly takes a specific approach, and it seems difficult to find like minded teams. We take more time educating ourselves on meteorology, geology, how to actually use a FLIR and interpret the imagery correctly, we learn about audio and other things. Our online discussion started off by how the paranormal conventions have kind of worn themselves out. Same "celebrities", selling the same stuff, going to events year round. Some of these folks appeared on
My Ghost Story, and with most of the orb and other questionable evidence, should barely call themselves investigators and much less celebrities. Then we somehow circled into the basis of what is research in this field these days. Going out and collecting EVP's? Collecting dousing rod experiences, seeing if your
EMF spikes (and by the way, if you have an EMF spike, what does that really mean?) and other subjective experiences. Many teams don't even realize that if you have a base EMF reading of say 0.3 and then it goes to 1.2, back to 0.3 then down to 0.0, there is probably a natural or man made reason for that. Sure you could ask a question and get those changes, but what does it mean if the meter goes down in number? What if it goes up in number? Do your theories and beliefs account for all of those scenarios?
One person who got into the conversation spoke of putting together some form of a para-unity project in her area, but was quickly disillusioned with egos, sexism and other things not related to the paranormal at all. This might or might not be news to you, but
paranormal UNITY does not exist, it never did. If it did, why all the groups and not one big group? I'll tell you, the people who put these small groups together, find others who believe like them and then refer each other to investigations. If anyone from outside that group questions their methods, tools or statements, that someone is then just argued with. This person decided to just leave the field, too much BS. I don't disagree.
Then we spoke of a paranormal educational series that would be a weekend type of seminar geared towards researchers and not the "fans" or "Celebs" of the field. Our team has been working on such a thing for months, but you know what? I'm not sure it would ever float because of those same egos of people who believe they already are the best or do things right. How would you convince them they need extra education or knowledge? These are the real issues that plague our field. If I were a spirit today, I wouldn't want to be the one caught as indisputable evidence out of fear my fellow ghosts would be mad that some idiots are trying to become famous off of it.
