In my previous blog I talked about not going into an investigation guns blazing. In this one I'm going to try to go over a few of the preliminary steps you should take before going into a haunted house. I am by no means an expert on this but I have shadowed many groups on investigations and gotten a chance to see what does and doesn't work. I have also found some of my own techniques that do and do not work. I am simply sharing my opinion here and I encourage you to form your own opinion based off of your experiences. Paranormal investigation is not an exact science, there are several things we can all agree upon and several things we do not, but none of us are right or wrong. First things first, if you are investigation a place of residence for the occupants then there are specific procedures that should take place. If you are going on a fun hunt then most of those procedures are not necessary. I will concentrate on a residential investigation. First what you want to do is sit down with the occupants and get their stories and their experiences. You can either record this on your digital recorder or write them down (a pad and pencil are your best friend). I encourage each of my members to keep an open mind but at the same time check for holes in the story and check to see if it makes sense to you or if there is some other psychological explanation for the occurrences. One of the things I always tell people is that the dead don't scare me, the living do. I will say that 95% of the people I meet are genuine, but oh that other 5%. Some people have simply watched too many movies or too much television and every bump, scratch, or moan is paranormal, when in reality its just the pipes, mice, or the wind. This brings me to the second thing, enter with a healthy skepticism. Not everything is paranormal but if you go in there thinking that it is, you are going to scare yourself and the occupants half to death. If you hear a noise try to find out where its coming from. Do a walk around of the property, are there trees against the house, are there drafty windows, do you see any signs of where rodents could have gotten in, do the pipes look stable, is there faulty wiring. I'm telling you from experience, shady contractors do some shady things and you don't know how many of them worked on your 100+ year old house before you bought it. Check for an explanation of everything that they person tells you, when you are left with no explanation, then investigate it as if it where paranormal. Next take base line readings of everything, inside and out. What is the ambient temperature, identify electrical objects that give off high EMF, trace how far out from that object the EMF field goes. Check relative humidity, find out the moon phase, is the wind blowing, is it raining all of these things make a difference. Ask the occupants if they remember the weather on the nights that things happened. Have them keep a journal and record all of these things to help find an explanation. Keep a pen and pad with you at all times and write down every little variance that seems significant, and some that don't. Research, Research, Research. Go to the town records hall and find out all you can about the property. Trace the property records back to previous owners. Once you have the previous owners names trace those by to birth, marriage, and death certificates. Go through old library news paper files and see if you can find any news stories on these people. Talk to previous occupants and ask them if they had any experiences. The more research you can do the validation it will give any evidence that you find. The next one, and this is the most important, ground and center yourself and put up a spiritual wall of protection before you ever step a foot into the dwelling. Which ever religion you belong to or believe in, find a prayer or ritual for protection and use it. If you are going to bless the dwelling or the occupants be sure to ask them what their beliefs are and respect them. Also as a preliminary exercise you will want to double check all of your equipment and batteries. Spirits drain batteries quickly so keep spares on hand. Keep in mind too, that some batteries, even brand new ones, are faulty. Extreme heat and extreme cold will also drain batteries quicker than normal so document your temperatures regularly. If you experience battery drain, replace the batteries and see if it happens again. If an entity has learned it can drain your batteries then it will continue to do so. So, if it happens again and again then you have something. If it doesn't happen again then chances are you had faulty batteries or the external circumstances caused them to drain prematurely (remember not everything is paranormal). One trick I learned from another group was to always take a group photo just before investigating. They did this and when they kept getting strange shadow people in their photos they where able to match that shadow back up to one of their members by matching what they where wearing (in this case it was a distinctive hat). Remember to always look for an explanation and recreate scenes over an over again, this helps you to find the true nature of the problem and validates the evidence that you have left that has no explanation. These are by no means all of the preliminary steps that should be taken, and I am sure I have left out a few but they are a good start. As you can see these things take time and you may spend one entire day just on preliminaries, but it will be worth the effort in the end. Now as far as a fun hunt goes the only thing you really need to do is to make sure you are protected spiritually and that your equipment is working properly. Keep extra batteries and never go alone. Besides the spiritual possibilities, if you go alone you could slip and fall or badly injure yourself and cell phones have a nasty way of not working when we need them most. If you are alone then you have no way to get help and a bad situation could turn worse quickly. So always at least stay in pairs or with in yelling distance.
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AuthorLead investigator for Archivees
September 2018
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