Moving Day

Dear Blogger

After so long it feels like I'm... moving on now. Thanks for the memories. You were great. No, it's me - not you.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

Join the new party at
http://randomizd.wordpress.com/

Still Haunted?

I'm getting a real kick out of working this far in advance of Halloween. I don't know why, exactly. I've been thinking about how people get all twisted up around the idea of ghosts or spooks, and how to get rid of them.

Instead, let's say that I tell you there is a unicorn in my closet. I know this is a fact because he is pulling clothes off the hangars and into piles in the corners. He flips my light on and off! And sometimes when he is angry, I hear his hooves on the floor!

How do you catch a unicorn? I’m glad you asked, because there are two basic schools of unicorn catching.

1) Believe there may be a unicorn. You give me the benefit of the doubt, and try to find the unicorn. Set up your cameras, thermal detectors, magic field finders, and hoof sensors. If you find any evidence that way, you’ll be inclined to believe you really did find a unicorn. That’s what you were looking for, isn’t it?

2) Believe there might not be any unicorn. Using this method you would investigate the hangars to make sure the clothes should have stayed on them. Is there anything in the closet that could have knocked the clothes off? Check the piles of clothes to see if it is just normally discarded laundry (ew!) or if it has anything else going on. Does the light switch have a second circuit, a faulty switch or a loose lightbulb? Check out the floor carefully for construction faults, noises caused by seasonal expansion and contraction from heating systems or air conditioning. Lastly, you’d think about getting an evaluation of me at the hospital, because most sane people don’t believe they have unicorns in their closet.

If you can’t explain what is going on with method number 2, you may not have probed the issues far enough, or you may actually decide that maybe I do have a unicorn in my closet. In this case, the term ‘unicorn’ is an agreement with me that something odd is going on, even if there is no beast in there with a single horn growing out of its forehead.

These are the two main differences in approach to paranormal investigation in a nutshell. The careful investigator might use both methods. Are you going to find a unicorn by method 2? You may find a simply unexplainable phenomena. Or you may decide it was all just my cat.

I'm way ahead of you. Yeah, it's my cat.

http;//hauntedhomeowners.com

Are you haunted?

It's a little early for Halloween. But I've been working with some spooky material anyway.

In the past week I've written and posted the content at http://hauntedhomeowners.com. It is a site designed to help homeowners who believe they may be haunted.

If you watch the ghost busting shows on cable, you might think there is some science to paranormal investigations. However, it really is nothing much more improved than the seances of the spiritualism movement: in the dark, letting the ghosts play instruments, talk to the living, rap on tables, and so on. The movement died when Harry Houdini and other skeptics publicized the frauds and con men running the spectacles.

It's possible that the hosts of the shows on cable are well intentioned. But there is going to be enormous pressure to present a "show", and negative results of any kind on an investigation is a turn off to the viewers. Some content has to be fudged just to keep the show interesting, whether the spooks actually showed up or not.

It's possible that they honestly believe what they are doing shows paranormal activity, and that osme of what they show is exactly that.

On the other hand it is entirely too easy to believe that it is just show business with a great hook.

So that's why some friends on a message board were talking about a survival guide for haunted homeowners. How do you know you're getting a reputable group? How do you know if they really know what they're doing? Are they even using the equipment correctly? Can the equipment be faked?

Good questions. Hopefully, I had some answers. With the advent of furnace season, the reports of hauntings will start going up, just in time for Halloween.....