Paranormal Theories – Are you fighting against yourself?
By any measure there are thousands of theories that abound regarding the paranormal. How to investigate, what tools to use, are people sensitive to the spirit realm and if so, should you use them and many, many others. One of the theories I would like to address in this article is the theory of EMF (electromagnetic fields) and how paranormal investigators use the existence or lack of to determine if a spirit may be present.
Many investigators use a very simple approach, which is the most common: If you do an EMF sweep before your investigation and determine the “base” level of EMF in a location, you have something to compare to during the investigation. For instance, a base EMF level of say 1.0 mg during your baseline sweep gets your investigation started, but during the questions being asked during an EVP (electronic voice phenomena) session your EMF meter registers spikes as high as 2.0 or 2.3, to which you determine was a response to your questions in some manner. Pretty standard methodology, and a spirit could have been attempting to communicate. However, let’s talk about EMF and how most do not consider into their theories and methods.
First, let’s talk about materials that can naturally cause an EMF signature in combination with other factors. For instance, a corrugated metal surface such as a roof, siding, awning or mobile home skirting can vibrate in wind and or heavy rain, causing it to resonate at a frequency your meter can detect for short periods. Most paranormal folks like to investigate during storms, believing the charged environment gives the spirits the opportunity to really manifest themselves. So did you consider that building materials might be the cause of that brief EMF spike? Did you just think “wow, we got a response” and continue with the session?
Secondly, I’d like to cover the topic of the reverse of the previous example. If you have your base 1mg reading, start asking questions, and the EMF reading goes down, what just happened? Did the electrical source you previously measured get turned off? Did a spirit draw that energy to manifest itself in some way? Many theories about ghosts include the belief that a spirit has to draw energy from people, batteries, electrical products, etc. in order to manifest themselves, so if the EMF goes up, is that the spirit manifesting itself by expelling energy? What happened to the theory of drawing energy from the environment? If the EMF goes down for no apparent reason, then you get an odd spike later, did the spirit draw energy then try to use it to manifest? Did you account for the loss of EMF concurrently with any spike in EMF readings? There are so many basic theories people have read or heard about, or were just told by someone they trusted that “If the meter goes up, there might be a spirit around” without really considering all the possibilities.
The last piece to consider is this: There could be other reasonable explanations such as atmosphere, building materials and other factors and if you’re not educated in those, proclaiming to have evidence of the paranormal based simply on EMF spikes, is just not good science, it’s not good methodology and is just not credible.
Bio:
Dave has been in the paranormal field almost 14 years having investigated private homes, public locations and both indoors/outdoors. He’s primarily a skeptic who has experienced things his knowledge has not been able to explain, so he continues to seek knowledge and experiences. There are things in the universe that man has yet been able to fully explain, and Dave believes that continual research by those who aren’t simply thrill seekers, and who put together educated hypotheses to test will be amongst the group who may ultimately find the key to the answers we seek.