You walk down one of the many maze-like hallways of the abandoned asylum while clutching the flashlight you were given earlier. You pass a doorway and notice a bit of movement out of the corner of your eye. You freeze and gasp in icy air. Was the air this cold a minute ago? You breathe out and your eyes widen as you see the steam. You definitely don't remember seeing that a minute ago. You're sure that this is the moment you've been waiting for. Your first ghostly encounter.
You take one more deep breath before using every bit of your courage to turn toward the doorway and shine your flashlight at what is sure to be a restless spirit of a tortured patient. Just as your beam of light hits the room, something flies out of the room and attacks you. You scream and your flashlight tumbles down the hallway. The light bouncing off the walls as you fight off your ghostly attacker.
It's a bit furry for a ghost but this is your first encounter so you have nothing to base it on. The furry fiend bounces off of you and darts down the hallway just as you hear yelling. The ghost hunting team sprints down the hallway to your rescue with looks of concern and horror on their faces. They pick you up from the dusty floor and ask you what happened. You recount your harrowing tale as quickly as you can and point toward the room where it all started.
One of the team members points their flashlight into the room and everyone follows them inside. Once inside, you can see a broken window directly across from the door which is letting in a constant stream of frigid air and rain. That would explain the icy breath from before. The team searches the room only to come up empty handed on evidence of the furry ghost who assaulted you. Everyone turns around to exit the room just as your furry assailant zooms past the room and down the hallway. A squirrel. Your terrifying ghostly experience has been broken down to an open window and a squirrel.
You were the victim of assuming a place is haunted without proof...so every noise became paranormal. That actually happens extremely often in the ghost hunting world. If a team goes into a location to prove that it's haunted, that's a huge red flag. The job of a ghost hunter is to rule out the normal. To rule out every single possible explanation so that you're only left with one answer: It's haunted.
This bring me to the point I was trying to make: skepticism is your most important asset. It's easily the most important tool you carry from location to location. If someone calls you to investigate a haunting, you don't go in there wielding a proton pack with your finger on the trigger. You first and foremost rule out every possible natural cause for what's causing your clients to be afraid. Once you've eliminated the normal, you can switch focus to the paranormal. That is how you get real results. It's not about the newest REM pod or how effective your EMF detector is. Ghost hunting is field that requires you to be a detective. You've been brought into a location to solve a case. You must use your logical brain to look for clues, ask the right questions, and conduct experiments. This is very much a science. It's nothing like what you see on TV. The tools are the same but not so much how they're used.
If you're hoping to one day start ghost hunting or you have a paranormal problem and need help, don't forget to look for the red flags. If the team is WAY too enthusiastic about your home being haunted or if they do what is known as "taunting", immediately find a new team. Your team should be investigating, not instigating. That's always a great motto for any team to have.
See you in the next blog!
