Dangers of the paranormal?

[Jeff Crowell]

I fear the danger that lurks is within the paranormal groups themselves. In my opinion, there's no paranormal "community" and the groups seem to be very cultish in behavior. That sounds alarm bells.

Jose you are absolutely correct, in fact in going back and listening to some of the Paracasts previous episodes, I've recently listened to the discussions with John Zaffis and Alexandra Holtzer. I've met John in-passing at two paranormal conferences, and I've exchanged some very casual emails with Alexandra in the past.



Please believe me when I say that I share the frustration with having no cohesivness within the ghost hunting community, and heard people talk about how we need a centralized organization similar to MUFON within our own ranks, even if it's loosely based. Unfortunately it will never happen for several reasons.

1. Too many chiefs, not enough indians. There are too many beliefs out there regarding ghost hunting, how it should be done, and what the driving factors are, and there are too many type A personalities. People won't want to give up the authority and 'bow' to someone elses ideals and concepts.
2. The field is entirely too diverse with people. From simple house wives to college students to plumbers (who are now actors), there's too much of the "common" element in most ghost hunting these days. A standardization by nature implies education and most people in ghost hunting do this as something very casual on the weekends. They don't want to go back to school.
3. Standardization would be expensive. David has often touted the very valid problem of using simple dictation recorders to capture EVP and offered the resolution of utilizing the Zoom H2 instead. I have the Zoom H2 (and swear by it), however even though the H2 is very inexpensive compared to similar quality recording devices it's still far more expensive than a standard dictation device. Again, back to the common element, people don't want to pay $75 - 100 when they can pay $50, and I've not even yet mentioned (caged) EMF detection, ion detection, infra-sound detection, laptops, DVR systems w/cameras, etc...
4. It's impossible to police. We can't lock down graveyards from fly-by-night (maybe literally?) ghost hunting groups, and we can't stop groups from advertising to the general public and doing their own investigations.

There are many other reasons why it would be difficult to standardize but I'm short on time. Believe me, despite the cons I certainly see the pros of standardization but for the reasons above, at least, I don't see it happening any time soon.

 

[Rudolf Steiner]

Thanks Sandanfire for this close look of how works the ghost hunting community.