Ok, so here’s the tricky part of being a paranormal investigator. Classifying evidence, and trying to validate it as something possibly paranormal, or of man-made origins. Some of the methods we employ at IKOPS are outlined below. We will never introduce evidence that we know is questionable and at the very least, we spend quite a bit of time trying to debunk it where possible.
One of our methods includes multiple verification. What that means is that when we believe we have experienced something, we try to validate it with multiple methods. For example, if we have unexplained EMF spikes, we’ll also run a digital voice recorder to see if we capture voices or sounds not audible to the human ear. We may also snap a few pictures with a digital camera to see if anything shows up in the picture that we could not see with the naked eye. We use several combinations of equipment to try and verify that something did happen, and wasn’t just a “personal experiece”.
Now that we’re on the subject of personal experiences, let’s talk about that for a second. When an investigator feels something touch them, or thinks they heard a voice or sound, without corroboration from a scientific device or someone else also experiencing the event, we call that a personal experience. You can’t validate it, but you, and only you, knows for sure it happened. These experiences are not considered evidence on their own, but when combined with other evidence, can help to form a picture of what’s going on at a location.
We use night vision/IR cameras so that we can see dark masses or anything in complete darkness. There are some in the paranormal world who say that investigating in total darkness is useless. That if a presence is there, it is there all the time, and not based on whether there are lights or not. They go on to say that investigating in the dark is only for the “Hollywood” crowd. Others say that if a haunting is intelligent (meaning that you get active responses to questions or commands) that the entity is aware of it’s surroundings and may prefer a specific time of day, whether that be light or dark. We try to employ different methods of investigating, to try and entice whatever activity that may be there, to happen while we’re there.
More to come later!!