Repelling & Trapping Spirits

Here's a post I've been working on for a while, guess it's a bit overdue. . .

Previously I've posted about exorcisms, cleansing, and blessings. But that's not the only potential way to deal with spirits.

There's been an increase in attempts to trap spirits on ghost hunting shows, often using a specially made box, such as the Devil's Toybox (a mirror lined box), a Faraday Box (metal), the Inferno Cage Trap (a Faraday Box with cameras and charms), and the Wraith Web Trap (an electrified cube dreamcatcher with a crystal ball in the center).

It harkens back to the Dybbuk Box (a wine box supposedly containing a powerful Demon, one which was even blamed for the holocaust), and Middle Eastern tales of Djinn in bottles and other objects (where the nature of the spirit wasn't always as cheerful as kid's movies might have you believe. . . by the way, Aladdin doesn't take place in the Middle East, it takes place to the east of the Middle East, so, probably in China. But the point of the comment was that often they were so angry from their imprisonment that they punished or killed the person that freed them).

Logically, it's really a questionable pursuit. First off, paranormal investigators aren't even on the same page concerning the existence and composition of spirits. Then there's the fact that it's often 'evil' spirits they're trying to trap, even though there's rarely any collaborating reports of 'evil' paranormal activity in the area. Plus, on occasion, they've claimed to be successful in blowing up trapped ghosts with dynamite, which creates a lot more questions then it answers (assuming you don't subscribe to Scientology, wherein spirits need a physical body to protect them). 

It also directly conflicts with the concept of NOT destroying possessed objects, because the evil is released and free to find a new home.

Another method of dealing with spirits is simply to repel or otherwise block their attacks. Such efforts date back well into ancient times, with ceremonial bowls being buried under houses, and magical talisman being kept in the house. The ancient Egyptians are said to have used honey to repel evil spirits. More recently in the USA, people would put a baby shoe inside or near a wall (since babies are often considered more at risk, I'm not really sure what this is supposed to do to repel evil, maybe it's just to confuse spirits).

Water mixed with herbs, and sprinkled around, or brushed on mirrors is said to be effective as well. Not to mention mirrors themselves, placed in windows, are supposed to ward off spirits.

Salt has long been used to ward off demons and witchcraft. The whole activity of throwing a pinch of salt over you shoulder to ward off bad luck after you've spilled some, is actually a Christian ritual intended to keep the Devil from sneaking up on you because you wasted such a precious resource (mind you, salt is not as hard to get a hold of as it once was).

Garlic may also be used to ward off demons, of which vampires are sometimes considered a 'sub-species'. Garlic salt seems like it should be a particularly useful tool. Other countermeasures often involve the corpse of the suspected vampire itself; such as pulling out all their teeth, tying them up, nailing the coffin shut (which is still done today), staking the corpse, wedging a brick in their mouth, or carving out their heart, burning it and drinking water mixed with the ashes. Delicious.

The dwelling itself can even be designed to repel evil. In China roofs are curved to deflect evil spirits, which are said to fly quickly in straight lines. So if one hits your roof, the arc will throw it back into the air.

And if all else fails, or you just want to be left alone without bothering the spirits, the TAPS book Seeking Spirits claims that green olives will simply dampen your ability to perceive spirits. But you may need to eat a lot of them to get this benefit, like a jar.

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The haunted Lotus Cafe (Portland, Oregon) is to be demolished

Where do ghost go when the building they haunt is demolished? I don't know. Some people say that spirits haunt the land, which means they don't go anywhere, they haunt the new building. Others believe only objects can be haunted, and that once you remove the haunted object from the property, the haunting ends. John Zaffis comes to mind. There's other theories and combinations of the two theories, but I could get sidetracked discussing irrelevant theories. After all, scientifically, you have to prove there even are ghost before you assert that anything might happen to them.

Point is, sometimes haunted places get demolished, and paranormal investigators are left with questions. Which is exactly what's happening to the Lotus Cafe and Cardroom, which is being leveled for make room for a high rise hotel:

http://katu.com/news/local/after-92-years-sw-portlands-lotus-bar-to-close-for-high-rise-hotel-project

I saw the boarded up building for myself last week, and again this week:

I like to think that people would have tried harder to save a historic building, a haunted landmark, or at least a favorite hangout. But this is real life, the building is pretty worn down, business might not have been great, and a hotel really would be good for other businesses in the area.

So what will happen with the haunting? I've heard stories go both ways. Sometimes the property continues to be haunted when a new building is put up, such as the private home that was built on a site where a rectory had burned years before. Other times the haunting goes away, as was the case when another home owner tore down his porch to get rid of the residual haunting that keeping him up at night.

At the very least it'll be something interesting to keep an eye on if possible.
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Flat Earth & Hollow Earth

I've posted previously on the group still convinced the Sun revolves around the Earth, and as I prepared to write up a bit on those who still think the Earth is Hollow, I found I never actually posted about the next interesting topic in this category, people who believe the Earth is Flat.

Yep, you read that right, it's 2016 and there are people that still believe the Earth is Flat, people that still believe it's Hollow, and people still convinced the Universe revolves around the Earth. And I'm sure there's a lot more fringe groups with similar beliefs, but we can worry about those later.

(Trekky0623's depiction of Flat Earth, 2008.)

You can visit the Flat Earth Society’s website for yourself: http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/home/index.php

And if you're into physics, go to their FAQs and scroll down to the bit about gravity, because it's hilarious and totally inconsistent with their answers to other questions:
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/home/index.php/faq

That probably sounds disrespectful. I suppose it is, but they believe in something and they're sticking to their guns, trying to prove it. If nothing else that shows loyalty and conviction. So, that deserves some respect.

And they do have a point on the Moon landing conspiracy. If a flat Earth were possible with the currently understood laws of gravity, then a spaceship would be unable to orbit the earth because there is no curvature, thus falling back and crashing, so we likely would not be able to reach the Moon. But since Flat Earth doesn't make sense with our current laws of gravity, that doesn't seem likely, it seems more likely that if things 'just fall' the Moon would fall into the Earth. But I'm sure one of them has worked out why that doesn’t happen.

(Map of interior world of a Hollow Earth, from "The Goddess of Atvatabar" by William Bradshaw, 1892)

The Hollow Earth camp seems to be less organized, but they also have websites:

http://ourhollowearth.com/
- This is more of a book advertisement then a Society or Network to be fair.

http://www.hollowearthnetwork.com/
- And wow, I can't even. Just take a look at all that, skim some of it maybe. . . and you'll know what I mean. I wasn't sure if the authors of The Rough Guild to Unexplained Phenomenon were serious about Hollow Earth or not when I was reading their chapter on it, but the sheer amount of content on this site and the fact that it's still being updated suggests the site's authors are serious. And it appears that the Hollow Earth crowd are generally more likely to be religious fanatics then the Flat Earth groupies. Mind blowing.

I think I'm going to need to see if I can set-up some interviews, because honestly the whole thing is fascinating, even if it is hard to swallow.
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Death of the Sunday Update

There's not a lot to tell here. They're making me work Sundays, which means no Sunday updates because there just isn't the time. I don't know if I'll pick another day of the week for updates, but I certainly will keep posting in general.
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Double Week Update 2016/05/23 - 2016/06/05

I keep missing updating alternate weeks, so I'm not sure the Sunday update plan is working quite as I intend. Sometimes I'm just busy, you know?

I finished that book on reincarnation. It got a little new age-y and psychedelic at the end, though I think the author may have mentioned something about not being new age. . . I'm not sure, I fell asleep a couple times (which is not a comment on the quality of writing). I'm thinking I might be done with book reviews, I'm not sure if they're doing me or anyone else any good. I'm still going to read them, and I'll still be adding books to the alphabetized list as sources to find out more info on subjects, but I'm not sure rewriting my notes is helping me, nor am I sure they're being read much by others.

Speaking of which, while I still have a lot to add to the list, I think I'll go update it, because I've already added a lot.

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Deep Dream

If you haven't heard of it yet, Google developed this computer vision AI program, Deep Dream (aka: DeepDream, Inception) which tries to interpret the images it's seeing based on images it's already seen. But it gets things wrong. A lot. It's still learning, you know.

Anyways sometime around July 2015, the team figured this could be used to make surreal art by filtering the images as it tried to interpret them:

 

 

(Images from Google, @brdskggs/Twitter, & Kyle McDonald/Flickr, via The Telegraph)

It really seems to like dogs, bugs, eyes, arches, cars, and pagodas. And the more times you run a picture, the creepier it gets.

 

(I'm not sure where this image came from, but it's just as creepy after I had Deep Dream filter it, especially if you click to view the larger version.)

You can try it for yourself, either downloading and setting up the open source software, or just using one of the easy access sites where you upload an image, like this one:
http://psychic-vr-lab.com/deepdream/

Here's what happened when I ran one of my cosplay picture through once (yeah, I probably haven't mentioned here that I cosplay before, I'm the one on the right):

Time to play spot the difference; the other girl's hand got turned into a dog, there's a ghost above her spear, I seem to have some extra eyes in odd places, the overhang behind me seems to have become a fish, and the girl  in the black dress behind me appears to have grown a demon monkey head, among other things.

You're welcome for the nightmares!
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Weekly Update 2016/05/16 - 2016/05/22

I posted on the value of skeptisim. With that in mind I replace one of my normal research periods with some perusing of skeptical articles. You know, like a purge day for my mind, except I like reading both types of opinions and theories. Anyways, according to an article in the May/June Skeptical Inquirer, there's some study that suggests people with sub-clinical (I think that's fancy talk for not bad enough to medicate) disassociation are more likely to interpret images as having paranormal sources (which they then interpreted as belief/interest in the paranormal). Additionally, people with mild ADHD are more likely to believe in Bigfoot, aliens, and cryptids, 'because they're cool'.

Which naturally brings me to all the reasons I don't believe in Bigfoot, cool as they may be. Of all the tracks I've seen in woods of Bigfoot country; deer, elk, bears, dogs, birds, rabbits, feral goats, horses, humans, I've yet to see a Bigfoot track. Granted, there are supposed casts, but we all know this kind of thing can be faked. And the list of animals I've seen on the side of the road and trails is even longer; deer, elk, rabbits, horses, dogs, coyote, fox, beaver, otter, nutria, opossum, mice, rats, shrew, weasels, cats, raccoons, goats. . . and that's just the mammals, but it does not include Bigfoot. But just because I haven't see it, doesn't mean it isn't real right? Of course. But almost all the evidence presented turns out to be known animals or too contaminated to be useful. There's been a real boom in sightings lately, but historically, there's not enough to suggest a breed-able population of Bigfoot.  

It's not evidence I don't have ADHD, but that's not the point of my rant anyways. I just feel like I would have seen it by now, even if it is rare. Hey, but maybe I'm wrong. How long has it been since Gravity Falls ended? Because I feel like someone's more likely to stumble upon that supposed statue than Bigfoot.

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Double Weekly Update 2016/05/02 -2016/05/15

There was no time to post last week. It is what it is. Read into that whatever you like.

I've continued my studies into Past Lives, found new leads I need to look into. One point of view is never enough to trust. Trust no one. Also, there may be a statue of Bill Cipher out in the woods somewhere, Oregon, California, or Toronto. I figure it wasn't still out in the woods when the Gravity Falls finale aired, but there's some convince arguments I spent a couple hours sifting through today.

There's some fun stuff one the internet. There's also nightmares, wonderful nightmares. Apparently to some the lowest level of conspiracy theory's hell is The Despair Code. I'm looking that up as I type this. - It appears to be some coding via telephone/etc that causes prolonged depression. Details are vague. There's probably a reason for that. Slenderman.

Fave quote about it so far:

“You don't have to believe things that are true.”
(-dapperjabber)

I'm not really sure whose side thon is on (note: thon is a genderless pronoun, a contraction of 'that one'). But it linked here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammarion_engraving
So read into that whatever you like.

I had stuff I was going to tell you guys, stuff I could still remember hours ago. . . but okay. Along the lines of conspiracy theories, I've also recently encountered one called the Phantom Time Hypothesis, which basically suggests three centuries didn't happen. Fun.

See you next time!
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Post Your Proof

If you've got video or photos of something paranormal, or simply a really good story, you may want to consider uploading them to Destination America's current promotion.

The website their commercials give is:
http://www.destinationamerica.com/PostYourProof

Which redirects to:

http://www.destinationamerica.com/share-your-supernatural-sightings/

That probably means somebody along the line decided the second one was to complicated for consumers to remember and set up a redirect.

Of course this is the kind of PR stunt that's going to attract hoaxes and wild stories, but hopefully we'll get some intriguing evidence out of it as well. Sorting through evidence for hoaxes and truly unexplainable cases has long been a part of Paranormal Investigation, so it's pretty much just standard operating procedure.

And don't forget you can always submit stuff to me for analysis and identification as well.
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Weekly Update 2016/04/25 - 2016/05/01

So, Sunday again. Studied some more on reincarnation, as I seem to be focused on that for the time being. It's a strange concept in Western culture, where most religions don't include a second chance at life (unless you know where to look and who's logic to follow, but that's a topic for another time I think).

I like it when the sources I'm reviewing have references to further sources, places I can learn more, check facts, validate information. . . all that stuff that's fun if you're studying something you're interested in.

I guess that's all I got. Later.

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Quotes about Psychic Powers (Clairvoyance, Telepathy, etc.) and Witchcraft

I promised some posting this week, didn't I? Well, here's some quotes on psychics and witchcraft at least (I know they're not the same thing from a practitioner's point of view, there was no malicious intent to lumping them together):

“We are always mentioning people, and in that very instant they appear before us. We laugh and say, 'speak of the devil' and so forth and there we drop it. It is a cheap and convenient way of disposing of a grave and puzzling mystery. The fact is it does seem to happen too often to be an accident.”
(Mark Twain)

“I was brought to a realization of the seriousness of trifling with the hallowed reverence which the average human being bestows on the departed, I was chagrined that I should ever have been guilty of such frivolity and for the first time I realized it bordered on crime.”
(Houdini, on preforming medium acts)

“. . . things that did not really happen . . . which only took place on some boundary between real experience and fantasy. . .”

(Blake, “The Poison Tree”)

“Innocent lives are taken, and by a new alchemy gold and silver coined from human blood.”

(Cornelious Loos, on witchcraft trials)

“I'll readily speak your wine [aka desire].”

(Jacotte Colin, offering to confess to witchcraft)

“God's death witch, if you budge I will smash both your eyes with my stool.”

(Demenge Grand Cole, to a supposed witch)

“. . .relatively few correct predictions are heralded and therefore widely remembered, while the much more numerous incorrect predictions are conveniently forgotten or de-emphasized. . ."

(Prof. John Allen Paulos, on the 'Jeane Dixon Effect')

“Even the dark side of the human imagination demonstrates our unity.”
(Dominic Alexander, Spellbound, on accusations of black magic)

“So far as we can see, all that is proved is that some record of life on Earth is laid up in some unearthly archives, and that under the right circumstances, this record is accessible to the minds of the living.”

('Review' on spirits and psychics)

“Magic was a kind of technology to control the supernatural.”

(Dominic Alexander, Spellbound)
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Weekly Update 2016/04/18 - 2016/04/24 (w/ 2016/04/11 - 2016/04/17)

Okay, so I missed last weeks update, but that's okay, because there's not much to tell. I was crazy busy and had to deal with an emergency.

Continued researching NDE and Reincarnation this week; found a promising book on kids remembering past lives. There's a bit of evidence-less speculation at times, but in general the events and information are presented in a clear, matter of fact, narrative manner.

This of course means not so much progress on researching medieval ghosts and other medieval beliefs, but that's the way deciding what to research in the allotted time works.

Fiddling with writing something up a couple things on spirits; might combine them, that makes sense [to me]. Should probably finish my water monster guides as well. Maybe when I've finish and posted all three, I'll do a revised version with some extras as a eBook. Or maybe it is better if I write something new and keep it completely secret until release?

Have a great week everyone, I'll try to make sure I post some stuff this coming week.

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Quotes about the Unknown, Investigation, Research, and Determination

As might be expected, I come across a lot of quotes I like when read/watching things for paranormal research. Here's some nice general ones relating to the mysteries of the world and investigating them:

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious, the source of all true art and science.”
(Einstein)

“I do it because I genuinely want to know.”
(Ben Redford, sceptic - on why he instigates the paranormal)

“There is a vast gulf between impossible and impossible to imagine.”
(Sherlock, 'Elementary')

“Why is it so noble and respectable to find whence man came, and so suspicious and dishonorable to ask and ascertain whither he goes?”
(Hyslop)

“Cryptology is the science of writing secret messages that no one except the intended receiver can read. Cryptanalysis is the science of reading them anyways.”
(Chuck Missler, Cosmic Codes)

“The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.”
(Einstein)

“When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you.”
(Keith Richards)

“If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn't seek to show that all crows are; it is enough you prove one single crow to be white.”
(William James, on psychical research)

“They say when you have a case coming up, you will know because stuff will happen to you.”
(Susan Benzine, on paranormal investigation and exorcisms)

“I never said it was possible. I only said it was true.”
(Charles Richet)

“How does this happen? . . . I do not know.”
(Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, on dreams of others, idea transposed on ghosts)

“How are we to interrupt all those tales, passed down by the literate of the Middle Ages [Clerics], . . . that assert as a given what we have great difficulty admitting; that the dead appear in full daylight to people who were wide awake and of perfectly sound mind?”
(Jean-Claude Scmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages; the Living and the Dead in Medieval Society)

“I know there's things it the world we aren't told about; I hear them every day.”
(Ted)
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Weekly Update 2016/4/04 - 2016/4/10

It's been a week already, amazing. Not the week mind you, the way time passes.

Been doing a bit of gardening, since spring is finally here, which gives me time to think. You may have heard the analogy that the mind/soul is like a garden. You got to plant good things and pull the weeds. Simple yes? No, no, not quite. . . You've got have the right tools and some knowledge of plants. There's normal weeds you can just pull up, then there's things like dandelions where you've got to dig up the roots, and blackberries where you've got to protect you hands dig even deeper, and worse still there's plants (I don't know the name of this plant) that take over the whole garden during winter, having a runner root that breaks really easy, making it almost impossible to get rid of them.

If the weeds are really bad, it's tempting to simply take out the hoe and tear it all up, but might still be some good things in there. Asparagus come back year after year as long as the roots are safe, and potatoes can regularly spring up from missed roots or seeds. The best solution to that is to keep up on weeding, once you've weeded the garden, it's easier to remove young weeds as they appear, before they can take hold. Though sometimes it's tempting to leave young plants, until you can tell what they are. There was a lush green plant growing among my sunflowers, and I thought it was a cherry tomato. It had tomato-like leaves, tiny tomato-like flowers, and then little green berries. And suddenly one day, they turned black (without any visible variation of shades between green and black). It wasn't tomatoes, but another member of the nightshade family, Black Nightshade, which can be poisonous. Though pretty with the striking black berries, I have nephews that know I grow food in the garden, so it had to go.

What does this have to do with mental or spiritual health? Well, you have to recognize the bad things in your life. You prepare yourself to deal with them, and taking preemptive action almost always works better then procrastination. It probably won't be easy, but you're doing it for you, and you're doing it for those you love.

Okay, the mushy motivational stuff is over.

OpenOffice likes to try to predict what I'm typing. Typing 'better' it suggests 'betelgeuse', and typing 'love' it suggests 'Lovecraft', this probably says something about my mind garden. . .

I also looked into some books on Near Death Experiences and Reincarnation, so far nothing that doesn't make me scoff with skepticism about poor research and manipulation when it comes to supporting their personal theories, but I'll keep looking. Looking into a couple of investigative leads as well. I think it'd be interesting to investigate a fairy case. Even in these modern times, patches of trees in farmland left for fairies (or more logically, wildlife), are surprisingly common.
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It's Doomsday Again!

So, apparently today (April 6th) is another Doomsday, according to the Church of Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints. But with how little time is left in the day, and with their leader in prison, I'm seriously doubting any apocalypse.

It also didn't make Wikipedia's list of Doomsday Dates:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events
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Weekly Update 2016/3/28 - 2016/4/3

My blog posting has become increasingly sporadic (blame it on whatever you like; work, family, summer, laziness, evil spirits), so I've decided to give weekly Sunday updates on my research, experiences, and investigations a try. I don't know how well I'll do at this, but I felt it was worth a try.

I should be doing a large update to the ParaDex soon. I've got a lot of locations and book references to add, as well as few TV/Movie ones. I'm also researching places from an old collection of haunted locations in the US, to make a list with their current status (since I couldn't find an update list already posted anywhere), so I'll probably make a whole post out of that.

Lately I've also been reading up on the Medieval attitudes towards ghosts. It's some interesting stuff, heavily affected by the Catholic Church, clerical officials of which usually recorded the majority of ghost stories from that time. So there may be more on that in the not too distant future.

Also, The Story of God w/ Morgan Freeman started tonight. So far, there's not been too much I didn't already know about, but the change in prescriptive is nice. It's probably worth a watch if you're curious about different religions.

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Is Ghost Hunting a Sin?

Here's an interesting moral question; is ghost hunting a sin?

Here's the logic, in some religions (Judaism, Christianity), necromancy is considered a sin (while in some other religions it's a perfectly normal part of life, but that's a topic for another time). Now, does ghost hunting count as necromancy? I've always thought of necromancy as summoning and seances, Ouija boards even, trying to get answers from the spirits. But trying to communicate with spirits is part of ghost hunting, isn't it? The attempt to capture EVPs and other responses.

But note, there are Jewish and Christian ghost hunters and psychic mediums (which is pretty much the modern term for necromancer), famous ones even (like the Warrens). So, is there a key difference? Is the intent and goal of the action reason enough? Because not everybody thinks so, or that the intent/goal is even different. You're still looking for the spirit to give you information you didn't have before.

Or maybe it's possible to ghost hunt without committing necromancy? To resist the temptation of asking for signs and communications, and simply record the evening without an EVP session?

Of course, the next logical question is should they engage in blessings and exorcisms? It's hardly scientific, but neither is asking a ghost to turn on a loose flashlight.

Further Reading and Resources:

“Christians and Ghost Hunting”
Ministry Matters (last modified 2012-10-12)
http://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/3323/christians-and-ghost-hunting

Christian Ghost Hunting (discussion):

http://theparanormalchurch.ning.com/forum/topics/christian-ghost-hunting

“Dangers of Ghost Hunting”
Spectral Intelligence Solutions (last modified 2013-01-01)
http://spectralintelligencesolutions.com/dangers_of_ghost_hunting.html

Krulos, Tea. Monster Hunters: On the Trail with Ghost Hunters, Bigfooters, Ufologists, and Other Paranormal Investigators. Chicago: Review Press, 2015.
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Valuing Skepticism, heck, Valuing Everybody's Opinions

Okay, so, there's this attitude in modern society that you're either Believer (spiritual) or a Skeptic (scientific) when it comes to the paranormal (as if humans are not capable of enough abstract thought to consider both possibilities, or at least the ones with IQs over room temperature). And often this is clearly this is a case of closed mindedness on both sides. Neither party wants to admit they could be wrong, and neither party wants to see the other party's evidence.

And occasionally you run into a third camp, Forteans. Many of them put on this guise of being scientific, while really they’re just putting stock in an alternate paranormal belief from the Believers. You're going to hear a lot more about this when I finish slogging through The Rough Guide to Unexplained Phenomenon by Bob Rickard and John Michell (expect a healthy does of respectful sarcasm in that post). But one glaring example is that of an air field where lemming tracks were found in the new fallen snow, shallow at first, but deeper as they headed towards the long grass, and it's suggested they fell from the sky, completely ignoring the obvious interpretation of such tracks. The lemming headed for shelter when it started snowing!

Fortean studies probably fall into what skeptic Sharon Hill would probably call 'scientifical', a term she uses for fake science used in paranormal investigation, and ignore evidence contrary to their claims. It lacks debunking, criticism, and communication. And she has some personal experience with such investigators, and let's face it, we all seen those paranormal shows where everyone gets jumpy and dramatic, but the audience doesn't see anything even closely related to evidence.

We need these people, all of them (whether you're a Believer, Fortean, Skeptic, or something in-between).

If you're bothering to try and prove something isn't real, as opposed to just shrugging it off, you're just as passionate as someone that firmly believes. As skeptic Ben Redford started about his participation in paranormal investigations, “I do it because I genuinely want to know.”
 

Skeptics hold Believers and Forteans accountable for their investigations. As paranormal Investigators, we need to use the scientific method, we need to seek help in testing areas that are not our expertise, and we can't allow tests to be bias. Heck, I've always felt this way.

But skeptics shouldn't just dismiss paranormal evidence either, it works both ways.

 

And if you have a different opinion of what causes said phenomenon, or what x creature actually is, it should be treated no different from any other hypothesis. It should be tested, using the actual scientific method. We don't have any way of knowing whose crazy theory will turn out to be correct, or lead us to the actual answer. Several cryptids have turned out to be descriptions of rare or diseased animals. Before '92, the Saola was nothing more then local legends about gilled antelope that could breath underwater.

Think of what we could accomplish if we all took each others' opinions seriously. It doesn't mean I'm going to believe in bigfoot, but I'll review your footage to see if I can identify the animal in it.

Resources and Further Reading:

Doubtful News
http://doubtfulnews.com/
(Note: This source was not used, but may provide believers with a better view of real skeptics then the standard, 'you just don't want to believe'.)

Krulos, Tea. Monster Hunters: On the Trail with Ghost Hunters, Bigfooters, Ufologists, and Other Paranormal Investigators. Chicago: Review Press, 2015.

Rickard, Bob and John Michell. The Rough Guide to Unexplained Phenomenon. Italy: Rough Guides, 2007.

“Saola”
Wikipedia (last modified 2016 - 1 - 18)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saola
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