A Paranormal Investigators’ Manifesto

The history of paranormal investigation is a controversial and, at times, sordid story. With such a complicated past it is important that those that consider themselves to be paranormal investigators act in accordance with one’s conscience as well as “standard” ethics.

As a paranormal investigator one should dedicate themselves to:

• To providing honest, unmanipulated evidence to the client and paranormal community at large, as well as to make said evidence available to the general public whenever possible.
• To providing accurate information to the client without embellishment or inference.
• To debunking all normal phenomena that may appear to be paranormal in origin.
• To making every effort to putting the client at ease, no matter the outcome of the investigation.
• To recording as much data at every investigation as possible and to do so in an accurate and organized manner.
• To always acting in an ethical manner and behaving in a professional fashion.
• To respecting the dead, their final resting places and any other items that may have been important to those that have passed.
• To supporting your fellow investigators and collaborating with them whenever possible.
• To furthering the scientific and intellectual understanding of what happens after one dies.
• To respecting the beliefs and traditions of others, particularly those regarding the dead.

Obviously, not everyone can follow all of these guidelines all of the time. (Heck, I myself am guilty of violating a few of these rules on occasion. Professionalism, anyone?) But I feel that striving to do so whenever one can must be an important goal for all those that consider themselves to be a paranormal investigator.

You. Can’t. Run.

My first post with actual evidence! I’m so excited to share it with you all. Now this isn’t my first EVP, but it is the first of what I still have. I’m extremely excited to share it with you.

So… a little bit of background: This was recorded in a tiny cemetery in Lebanon, Oregon. It was recorded in broad daylight. The other voices you will hear are me (Leaha) and my husband A.J. and some shouts from a near-by home, as this cemetery sits in a residential neighborhood. I have declined to cut it down for fear of altering any context there may be. The whole recording is available to be listened to. (This is a link to my own youtube page, as the audio couldn’t be uploaded here. )

LINK:http://youtu.be/iR7Q0l_-kJ0

There isn’t too much I can give in the way of commentary. Just a little EVP session for the hell of it. Now, listen carefully around the 2:26 mark to about 2:29. Hear it? Go back and listen one more time. Is it as clear to you as it is to me?

No personal significance. Meant nothing to me until I told my great-aunt, whose house is across the street from the cemetery I recorded this in. What she told us floored me.

My cousin had been going to a friend’s house one night and decided to cut through the graveyard to save some time. As he was passing through he heard a voice near him, telling him “You can’t run”. He then had his legs knocked out from under him.

He doesn’t cut through the cemetery anymore.

More importantly, I had no idea this had happened until well after my own recording was made. In fact, it only came up because I brought up what we had caught there. Obviously, this isn’t the most significant EVP ever recorded or anything of that nature.

But it is so much different when it happens to you. Your blood runs cold as you realize the dead did hear you, and they responded.

Wendigo…?

You might think I’m crazy. Hell, maybe I actually I am. But I saw the damnedest thing…

It was a while back… but within the last two years or so. That’s as long as we’ve lived here, and now that I think of it, we didn’t have any curtains in the windows. So it must’ve been somewhat early on, so a little over two years ago.

It was morning, as I was making breakfast, and it was a lovely morning: sunny and clear out. I happen to glance out my window. I saw something rather scary. It was incredibly tall, like a tree. It was thin and pale. It looked like a walking birch tree, actually. I thought I might be imagining things, so I turned back to breakfast. Some thirty seconds plus I turned back (I was using the microwave, so yeah I know how long I was turned) and happened to look in that direction again. Again, I saw this thing move. This time in the next window over.

It was one of the more scary things I’ve seen. Not the scariest, but up there. It didn’t have the same “wrong” feeling as my scariest experience. However, this was a bizarre thing to see. Twice. In broad daylight.

You get my picture.

When I finally told someone they were amazed. “What was it?” I wondered aloud. My friend suggested that it might have been a Windigo, an evil Native American spirit of the cannibal variety.

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendigo

Was what I saw a Windigo? I  have no idea. I only saw it for a couple seconds each time. I was, however, struck by the oddness of this spirit’s visage. Whatever it was, it was weird.

They See me

Obviously, or maybe not, I still don’t really know how all of this works. I know it does, but there was no instruction manual. I have no idea what the mechanics are. It is very disorientating traipsing through life with a distinct knowledge that no one experiences reality as you do. Makes one question things a whole lot more.

As far as I am aware, no one can See things the way I do. It’s kinda lonely. Maybe that’s part of the deal. Who knows? I sure don’t. And nobody else is telling…

Here’s one thing I do know. They can See me. Spirits, or whatever it is I can See and communicate with (it’s kind of telepathy-like, not verbal) have a way of seeing me, noticing me and my ability. I don’t even like thinking about it. I feel like it makes me more noticeable. Sometimes it worries me, I’m sure it’s a vulnerability.

The truth about ghosts….

The truth about ghosts is that we really don’t know a lot. And I mean really don’t… Almost everything we know about ghosts is actually speculation. We have reason to believe what we do. (By we I mean paranormal investigators, despite the fact I’ve never done a formal investigation.) However, there is currently no way to verify most of the things we know, and even less ways to do so scientifically.

You see, one of the rules of scientific evidence is that scientific evidence must be replicable. However, we don’t know enough about the laws of nature that spirits must abide by to make that a realistic expectation. We know so little about how spirits operate and the conditions in which they can. It’s almost impossible to replicate most “evidence” because of this. Well, that and the fact that spirits appear to be (at least sometimes) conscious beings that we can only ask not command. These factors make obtaining truly scientific evidence nearly impossible.

So what is known is, as I said before, actually speculation. I’m not saying this to be repetitive. I get upset when people claim to know things about ghosts that they cannot, or make assumptions about the motivation of spirits. It’s more, and less, complicated than it has to be.

All of this being said, my point is simple. We really don’t know all that much about ghosts. We have lots of ideas, many of them will be proven correct. And many will be proven to be incorrect. That is the nature of science.

I’m betting some of you disagree with me and thinks science proves ghosts to be fake or imaginary. Nope. Science cannot prove a negative. Simple logic, it is impossible. But most of you are think that if ghosts were real they’d be proven by now. But really, science is still very immature and despite the miraculous strides science has made already, it will make strides in the very near future that dwarf everything we already know. So…

The truth is we still know virtually nothing.