So there’s one thing I’ve recently realized is going to benefit the house occupant should he or she ever be faced with a home occupied by Ghosts. I use the word Ghosts loosely as the word Ghosts could apply to variety of things. For this read we’ll just say entity or entities plural. The thing I’ve learned that are important to an investigator entering your home is the need for good documentation. Documentation of events.
The compliment I get the most from teams entering my home is the level of detail of which things have occurred. Be it a paranormal team, minister, clergy, Priest, Bishop or reverend the need for good documentation is important. Most paranormal web sites if their worth their weight in gold should have a downloadable PDF or word doc questionnaire. The questions be they generic at times are important and should be filled out in earnest by anyone trying to get to the root cause as to what events if any are happening in their home. The things I’ve learned over time helps complete those questionnaires more quickly and efficiently is one’s ability to keep good notes.
There is a such thing of mediocre documentation and good documentation. I humbly say do it good or don’t do it all. In dealing with the paranormal I can’t over stress the need for good documentation. So how do we define it?
The process is both simple and complex. You’ve already asked the question. Is my house haunted? The answer immediately should be why do you think your house is haunted? What’s happening to make you come to that conclusion? Or better yet maybe you haven’t reached that conclusion but need and want to. Guess what good documentation will help you sort it out.
Obviously if you’re having thoughts of your house being haunted - there might be a governing piece worthy of setting up to reach yes or no conclusion. Perhaps a Tier 1 level of deduction you want to sort out before escalating to Tier 2. Tier 2 being any individual living outside the home that may be able to help you. In the realm of good documentation there is no such thing as too much information. After all the answer to your question might be days, weeks, or months away. How many of us can remember the subtle things happening in our home say last night? Well try remembering the subtle things 3 months ago. Here is where documenting helps the most.
Good documentation is simply keeping a record of weird things happening in your home you think may or may not be ghost related (there’s that word again).
Here are my tips for documenting the paranormal or normal I should say.
What should I document? The rule for documenting has both a liberal and conservative approach to it. Obviously there are many things in the home not worthy of documenting. The refrigerator re-filling the ice tray is one of them. But if there’s something in your home that makes you pause and by pause raise an eye-brow and have a mental thought as to “what was that?” if that “what was that moment” has happened more than a few times – it time to start documenting. Keep in mind if you can rule it out with logic then strike through it labeling it a false-positive. In all practical purposes false positives will occur. They’re supposed to.
Why am I documenting? Shouldn’t the paranormal investigators document when they get here? To document means to trust your gut instincts. No one knows your home better than you. The human body can detect an foreign object and go to work immediately ascertaining what’s its purpose, friend or foe? If foe steps are auto-kicked to begin the removal process. Homes are the same way. Trust your 6th sense while at the same time don’t give into paranoia Paranormal teams will always document when investigating a home. Those that don’t – kindly show them the door. What helps them is your good record keeping. The ability to compare notes. Ascertain and troubleshoot are more paramount than ever before. As human beings we tend to forget things rather quickly. Things with little consequence early on get over written memory wise by other current events. We keep documents i.e. journal, diary, log keeping to assist us later on. In a field where one size never fits all, good documentation is probably the most not sought after constant within the realm of paranormal investigations. If a team is not going to sit down and go over the events you’ve documented before, during and after they start their investigation once again kindly show them the door.
What does documenting consist of? “We don’t know what we don’t know” Since we’re talking about the paranormal pretty much anything and everything. Remember think conservative and liberal. Ex. if you hear a loud BANG of unknown origin not only should you document the bang itself but equally important is the time of the bang, the day of the week the bang occurred, where were you when you heard it. Where were others in your home when the bang occurred. How loud was it ?(use a scale of 1-5) and assign a number value. What were the events prior to the bang? What were the events after? Are you starting to get the idea? In June – July of 2012 in my house loud bangs would begin at 8:04. Not 8:00pm But 8:04pm. It took me weeks before I realized that. Interestingly enough by the time I realized that and updated my record keeping the bangs started an hour later and got louder. Those particulars are extremely important. Most never make sense right then and there but trust me, someone investigating your case later on will regard your documentation as the notes of Mozart. It takes time, effort and dedication.
Who should be documenting events in my home? Good question. Easy answer. The adults of the home. If something is happening in your home that causing you to raise questions, wake up in mid sleep, retrace your steps, constantly ask your spouse if he or she turned off the lights to a room you was just in then the one documenting might as well be yourself. The need and will to document is not for everyone. Me personally I love documenting. I’m a IT project manager and documenting and the importance gets drilled into us from day one. Just ask the PMI organization. That being said no one should go it alone. If others in your house are witnessing and seeing stuff then it’s important you document their accounts. I have one word that’s important to you if you are to take up the task of documenting. “Verbiage”. How it’s being talked about is exactly how it should be recorded. Remember that cop show called “Dragnet”? I love it when that lead detective would take down notes from the witness and his tag line which became famous was “just the facts ma’am , just the facts.” If your son saw a little green man walk across the room while going to the bathroom how he reports it should be how you record it. Remember the noise being heard is what’s being documented there is no such thing as noise (too much info) in good record keeping.
Different Types of documenting Now when one says documenting one immediately might think that applies to just writing stuff down and you’re right it does. Nearly 90% if not more of good documentation requires pen and pad. Or does it? Ladies and gentlemen behold the 21st century and the era of the smart phone. Pen and pad is great but let’s face it those items can go missing just as quickly as a your missing set of car keys which if it did go missing better be logged in your documentation. Where was it taken? When was it taken? When was it last seen? What was it last used for? Who touched it last? Etc. So to prevent the documentation of evidence from becoming evidence there’s something you can do. Electronic documentation. Technology will become your best friend if you but knew how easily accessible it was. It’s all around us now. The best form of documenting electrically is emailing yourself. Email accounts are free to setup. Within minutes you create a Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook account and you’re in business. All 3 can be accessed from a smart phone and guess what when you email yourself or anyone for that matter there are multiple time stamps taking place. Make sure to document within the email the actual time the event occurred and send email to self. Reason for this some networks have lag and the time stamp shown in your inbox might not be exact time the event occurred. Remember you want to be concise as possible. If a light went off at 10:15pm don’t round up or down. Log it as Example “light went off and on at 10:15pm Tuesday, was baking cookies, weather is clear, 54 degrees outside, 68 degrees inside.” Why is everything I just listed important? What if the lights going off and on is a weekly thing? Every Tuesday at 10:15pm the lights go off. Well I doubt you bake cookies every week let alone at 10:15pm but if you’re like me you’re going to forget the time you actually was baking cookies once 7 days have passed. But an investigator combing your logs or maybe even you combing over your own logs notice a pattern of the lights going off at the same time once every week. On Tuesday. Last week you was baking cookies. This week you was……..balancing your check book at the kitchen table. The week after that at 10:15pm you was folding laundry. But guess what at 10:15pm the lights didn’t go off. And by lights I mean a particular light down stairs. Is it starting to make sense now? The reason for good record keeping is for you and I to rule out events in the home being paranormal. 99.9% of all events are not paranormal. But keep in mind while you’re attempting to rule out something you might be ruling in something. One of you reading this will be that 1%. And if you are, good documentation will be important. Now here is where some of you reading this will part company with me. But to the home occupant stay put and don’t go nowhere.
There are some in the paranormal field that say documentation is not evidence. Guess what? There wrong. Not only are they wrong these investigators you never want near your house. The need for documentation has several components attached to it. The first component is the obvious one which most paranormal investigators will agree with. Ruling out the obvious. There a trillion different things happening within a home that when revealed to some people might cause them to suspect ghost activity. If you just came back from seeing the latest and greatest scary movie at the local Regal cinema you might want to delay documenting your home for 6 months. J/K LOL
Just saying. The purpose of documenting is to determine what’s home grown i.e. house noise, people noise, tree noise, dish washer trying to tell you it’s about to die, etc. Those things be they man made, human made are not going to escalate. They plateau immediately. The second component to documentation is capturing the things that are not man-made. Those things be it paranormal (but we don’t have enough to go on yet) tend to escalate and repeat themselves. There are two words worth remembering here. Trend Analysis. Study those words for a second and incorporate it with two other words: Common Sense. The best evidence of all is common sense. If a chair slides across the floor. By all means document the occurrence but guess what you’re no longer living in the ‘do I have a ghost in my house phase’ The ghost just answered your question. Congratulations you’ve entered a new phase. Might not be the phase you was hoping but congrats non-the-less you’ve reached it.
Be your culprit a Ghost or human. Good documentation is going to reveal one or the other over time. Documentation is evidence - it is the precursor, the preamble and the index to what is or what isn't happening in your home. Let no one tell you otherwise. Is it the Holy Grail evidence? No such thing. But once again depends what you documented. All evidence is relative. Some will find value in what you documented. Some will say its hog wash. Experience has taught me those that find value in documentation i.e. your documentation are in fact the one’s worthy of being in your home. 90% of Paranormal Investigative work is labor intensive. There are no short cuts. Combing through pages and pages of written material is equally as important as walking down a hallway with a voice recorder.
Remember the decision to document is for you if you already have begun the thought process of suspecting weirdness in the home. It could be a raccoon in the attic. Maybe it is . Maybe it isn’t. Time will tell. If it’s a raccoon what have you lost? I’ll conclude with one final example. If you have guests over and a guests walks up and tells you they keep getting the feeling of something pushing or brushing their hair. Is that evidence? Should it be documented? Tic toc tic toc. The answer is yes. Once again liberal & conservative actualities must be weighed in conjunction with common sense. If you’re child has been telling you the same thing for weeks – definitely document it. And if you’re like me – email your friend days later and kindly ask them to re-live that moment. Get their verbiage in email form. The thing I noticed about activities escalating in the home is #1 their unpredictable. You, me, us, aka the house occupant are usually the last to know when activity is escalating. But I challenge anybody to go back and review their good documentation and not see the trend of where the activity is spiking.
Won’t make sense now but if you are the 1% that has paranormal events in your home. Good proactive documenting will go a long way. Good teams find it useful
Thanks
Submitted December 29, 2015 at 11:17AM by macqdor http://ift.tt/1kpbg72 Paranormal
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