So if 99% of the orb photos out there are not true orbs, what about that other 1%? Let’s first talk about the different types of orbs there are, the way they are captured, and how to examine your photos.

Where did you take your picture?
First, it’s very important to understand that no matter where you’ve taken your photo, whether it’s inside or outside, dust, moisture, and other airborne particles will always be a factor.  Even when you’re in an indoor space that you don’t detect any obvious dust in, there are going to be airflow streams that you may not be able to detect clearly that can cause particles to move through the air that will create false positives in your photos.

When you’re inside the obvious places that will be difficult to capture orbs in will be the obvious dusty and damp places like basements and attics.  Indoors you will easily capture what looks like orbs that are actual dust particles, reflections, some moisture, and even tiny lights from other sources that you may not have noticed or realized at the time.

When you photograph outside you’ll find moisture to be on of your biggest contenders with bugs being a close second.  Bugs are one of those things that many people will discount because if the bug wasn’t large and obvious they assume that can’t be it.  Sadly, there are so many tiny gnats and other itty bitty bugs that, if captured in motion in front of a camera, will either look like light trails, orbs, or other “ghostly” visions.  Photos taken outdoors also have the issue of dust and dirt being easily blown around with the wind and breezes.  And any photos taken on misty nights or near any sort of water source, no matter how still, creates a great chance for being a false positive.

What did you take your photos with?
There is a bit of a scientific explanation for why so many people capture orbs beside the great amount of environmental factors and other accidental things that happen like catching reflections.  It simply boils down to the technology of our cameras that we use.  This can get a little complicated so I’ll try and be simple and brief with this explanation.

There are four important components that make clear photos possible: focus, shutter speed, aperture, and the circle of confusion.  You have to focus on your object, allow the right amount of light through the aperture, use the shutter speed to limit the amount of time that light is allowed to be exposed to the film.  When these things happen the Depth of Field is created which is the amount of the image area is in focus according to the human eye.  Everything outside of the Depth of Field creates a circle of confusion.  This is basically where the light waves are confused and create blurry images at the sides and backgrounds of the things that were in focus at the time.

This is where the issue of traditional 35mm cameras and digital cameras become a factor.  With 35mm you can adjust the aperture and shutter speeds manually to take into consideration the different conditions that you might be in at the time.  While some digital cameras, like SLR cameras, will allow you to do this, the more common point and shoot digital camera does this automatically.  Digital cameras also have various auto focus features that use infrared light, which even when the flash isn’t being used, still is often triggered.  This will easily catch things that we might otherwise not think of or notice before taking a picture.

So, what this all boils down to in a nut shell is that if you’re using a point and shoot digital camera you’re much more likely to catch unwanted anomalies in our photos.    But, never fear, you can still use them but there is just a lot more work involved in verifying your orbs.  And we’ll get to that shortly.

What types of orbs are there?
There are a good number of answers to “what is that orb?”  There are about 7 different types of common orbs but I’m going to just address the most common; dust (also sometimes called Close Proximity Orbs), raindrops, colored orbs, and moving orbs.

Dust or Close Proximity Orbs
These are really the most common orbs that we see in photos of orbs, even when we thing there was no dust around to interfere in our photos.  These orbs are captured with an object is very close to the lens and results in an out of focus, often transparent looking, orb of light.  When you blow these orb images up you will often notice what is called a nucleus effect, something that is also referred to as “noise”.  This is when the center appears to be solid and then the edges look either feathered out or as if there are multiple rings within the orb itself.  Dust orbs can also be colored or appear to have auras in them, though this is more common with moisture related orbs.  In a dust situation these are actually reflections of colors from the walls or other objects nearby.

Raindrops
It almost goes without saying that if it’s raining outside and you’re doing any sort of investigation work it’s best to hold off on trying to capture things on film, be it still photos or video, until the weather has cleared up completely. This means waiting for another time altogether to do the work because even an hour or two after a rainfall there will still be plenty of moisture in the air and other things like dust and dirt floating around that will get in your way.  Rain and moisture orbs are often very bright because they reflect and light in the area including light from a camera flash, your focusing or tracking devises on your camera, or any other nearby light source.  When moisture is caught in motion it can take on what is sometimes called “the angel effect” where it looks like an angel or other being is floating up into the sky.  This upward appearance happens because the image first captures the particle in one position making it appear more solid and as it drops down the photo is being completed so only a trail of light is captured.

Moisture related orbs also are commonly seen with the aura or color effect because they capture and reflect surrounding light and color waves easily.  These are also the ones that are get the “face effect”. You may notice in some of your pictures that you can almost make out a face in the orb.  These are almost always the ones that people insist are the spirits of a loved one.  The fact of the mater is that this is an effect captured by the camera showing crystallization of the water within a moisture or rain orb.  Even though it may not be cold or be the winter season, moisture and water drops go through a crystallization process in their path to the earth and this is what we’re seeing.  The lines that are created in the crystallization process can sometimes give the appearance of a face (and honestly the fact that this is what we are often looking for is part of what it’s what we see).

Colored Orbs
Colored orbs can be a result of moisture or dust.  They occur as a result of unique light wave patterns of that particular object.  This is an effect called “chromatic aberration” and is a result of the camera lens not being able to focus on a single point of light when the photo was taken so various different light waves are picked up at the same time.

Moving Orbs
Again this is a result of air flow, winds, and simple light breeze.  Even in a room where all seems still there is a path of air flow. There is a phenomenon called “intelligent flight path” that is often captured on film and is through to be a determining factor in finding “true orbs”.  The problem is that it’s hard to know in the examination of the evidence what the air patterns might have been light if they weren’t noted ahead of time.  These videos, and sometimes photos, might show something like an orb flying quickly from one spot to another and then right back to where it originated from, or appearing to move from one person to another who are in the frame of the shot.  Again, it’s hard to ever truly determine these so they are often left as an undecided piece of evidence in an investigation. 

What can I do to ensure I’m going to capture true orbs in my photos?
Catching a true orb is not easy but there are some steps that you can take to help you know eliminate some of those false positives.

1. Be sure that when you start taking photos that you write down in a journal the date, time, location, and conditions of when the photos were taken.  If you’re using a camera with time stamping you can use that but most photos now have that information stored as part of the file.  You want to make sure that you have some record of what the conditions were like when you took those pictures later.  A photo that you might feel is a spirit may have been taken when you clearly marked down that the room seemed damp to you, for example.
2. Don’t use your flash.  Using your flash is the first way to guarantee that you’ll pick up false positive orbs in just about every possible fashion.  If you’re working with other people who are taking photos at the same time be sure to either ask them to turn off their flash as well, or better yet, take your pictures in turns.  Call out that you’re going to start photographing and ask the others on your team to hold off on taking any more of their own until you are done.  Even the infrared tracking from someone else’s camera can cause a false positive in your own photos.
3. Work alone.  When you’re working in teams and you’re trying to capture orbs having just one person in the group taking those photos eliminates a number of interfering factors.  First you eliminate the possibility for catching a reflection from another person’s camera.  Second you eliminate someone else kicking up dust or dirt or even doing something as innocent as sneezing next to you right when you took a photo which I can tell you from first hand experience can create some really amazing false positives with orbs!
4. Record EVPs.  This helps to create a source of corroborating evidence which is the key to all paranormal investigation.  You need more than one result of something to tip the scales in favor of spirit activity.  If you have a recording of an EVP from a session while you were taking photos and you capture a sound that is determined to be related to location history at the same time you caught an orb (again, time stamping is important), you’ll have some more to back up your claim of capturing something genuine.  An example of that would be investigating at a sight where a murder by gun shot happened and while calling out to the spirits you hear what sounds like the clicking of a trigger or a clear gun shot. You capture this on EVP and in a photo taken at the exact same time you also catch an orb.   While this isn’t the  determining factor it’s a major start toward possibly proving you have a true orb!
5. And remember you’re trying to capture evidence, not take pretty pictures!  So don’t worry about flash and framing and all that.  When I’m doing photos in a location I almost never even look through the lens because half the time I can’t tell what I’m looking at walking through the dark. I just keep clicking away, blindly pointing the camera around the room.  This is also how you run a better chance of both seeing an orb with the naked eye and capturing it on film.

Common Criteria for True Orbs
There are a few things that are commonly accepted as the ways to determine true orbs verses false positives.

1. The orb must clearly be generating it’s own light.  It cannot have any sort of transparency and cannot be pale in color.
2. The orb must be in focus without any blur in the photo.
3. The orb must be perfectly round.
4. The orb must be solid with no rings or nucleus. Because of the issue of matrixing (i.e. seeing patterns in random imaging where none truly exist; sort of like looking for shapes in clouds or seeing the “man in the moon”) things like faces being visible are not considered valid.  However there are investigators that say the nucleus effect actually is the determining factor in an orb being spirit generated but the fact that this is common among dust, dirt, and some light moisture orbs makes it really impossibly to differentiate.
5. The orb must have intelligent movement captured on video and in a place where drafts and obvious airflow interference are not a factor.
6. The orb must have corroborating evidence such as an EVP, high EMF readings, measured temperature readings, or video evidence.
7. The orb should have been visible to the naked eye before the photo was taken and it should ideally have been visible by two different team members.

One thing that I loved when I trained for my CPI was that we were taught to always hold our evidence to the theory of Occam’s Razor:

In the absence of full information, the simplest explanation is likely the correct one.

And in my experience with the paranormal this is extremely true.

There is a grading system that’s used for determining the level of probability that an orb is true or not, however, because this post has become so massive, I’ll save that for the next post in a few days.  I’ll also share some of my own orb photos and give you some photos that you can test your understanding of orbs with.  That post should be fun. 

Until then pull out your orb photos and see how they hold up to this information.  Do you have anything that you think is a true orb?

Much like how we create boundaries with the living we need to be strong and willing to take control and create boundaries with the spirits as well.  These same principles need to be applied from the human experience to the spiritual experience.  There really are no differences other than how we perceive these interactions as being on different levels.

Approaching spirits like you do people will make you feel more empowered and less afraid.  If you find that you don’t have much issue with creating and holding boundaries with people, but you do with spirits, taking this approach will help you to feel more confident in how you handle your encounters.  Here’s another reason why this is so important; someone who is fully possessed within themselves cannot be possessed by anyone or anything else.

I talk a lot in our Law of Attraction discussions about owning your power because if you own it and you have power over yourself then nobody else can have power over you.  This is the same thing with spirits and the idea of possession.  It’s about owning and holding our sense of self, our energy, and our power.  Possession is not nearly as common as movies and paranormal television shows would lead us to believe.  But it’s even less likely to happen to an individual that has a strong sense of self and a strong sense of control over their lives.  When we see these depictions of possession, both fictional and based on real life stories and experiences, there are some common themes with the possessed individual.  They are often dealing with mental or physical illness, depression, loss, or have in some other way because energetically compromised making them a weak and easy target for an entity looking for a host to reside in.

In Katie Boyd‘s fantastic book “Devils & Demonology in the 21st Century“ she lays out quite simply the stages of possession which occur as a result of a demonic attack.

1. Invitation – This is the welcoming stage where the person has done something, often without their full knowing or understanding, that has welcomed in the contact with spirits.  Things that we often find happening during this phase are people playing with ouija boards, casting spells, working rituals and using other occult technologies without any real knowledge or understanding of what they are doing.  Typically these are people that just pick up a book and recite a spell without any understanding of what it means or how it works.  While often the lack of intent and understanding means the spells and rituals will likely yield no results they do open up psychic and energetic channels for the individual.  Thing of this phase with this analogy; a house that has been abandoned for years one night suddenly has all the lights on and the neighbors all come out to see what’s going on and check it out.  That’s what happens here; the internal psychic and spiritual light turns on after years of being off and all the spirits want to come see who’s coming out to play.
2. Infestation – This is basically the stage where an entity just starts to attach itself to the individual and wants to make themselves known.  They’re coming in and getting comfy in your home and in your life.  This is the time when manifestations of things occurs; tapping, knocking, growling, dark shadows, and the possibility for extreme things like poltergeist activity.  The point is they want your attention and at this point they’ll have it.  This is really when you should contact someone for help.  When we let these things go unchecked things only get worse.
3. Oppression – This is what I like to call the “freak out” phase.  At this point the activity will be heighten to where you are hearing things, seeing things, and thinking that things are happening to you or around you that are actually not real at all.  During this phase you might have moments where you look and think you see things like snakes crawling around your kitchen floor or the walls are cracking in front of your eyes, when in fact none of this is actually happening and you suddenly realize it’s all in your mind.  The entities at this phase are trying to make you feel trapped and as though you have lost your ability to have any sort of control over anything, including your own mind.
4. Possession – This is the deciding stage and the last stage of a possible demonic or spirit attack.  This is the point where either you decide to keep fighting them off or get the outside help necessary to do it or you give in and just allow the spirits to take you over.  At this point you’ll see signs like unbelievable levels of strength, voice and facial feature changes, personality changes, speaking in languages that you otherwise don’t know, and writing or symbols appearing on the body (scratches, welts, etc).

It’s important to understand that many of the common symptoms of a demonic or spirit attack are very similar to those of many mental illnesses.  Anyone who believes they are experiencing such an event should absolutely be evaluated by a mental health professional and treated traditionally either first or in conjunction with any spiritual or paranormal remedies.

In future posts we’re going to talk more about suggestions for dealing with these various stages, but I will tell you that I’m a huge fan for getting the clergy (mainly willing Catholic priests) involved in these instances, especiallyi if you believe it’s demonic.   These folks are specifically trained to deal with these issues in a way that most investigators aren’t, and even in a way that many psychics or other gifted folks on a team may not be.  But there are some things you can try and we’ll talk about them another time.  For now let’s talk about creating the boundaries to prevent ever having to get to that point.

If you’re afraid of the spirits it will only make them stronger.
Much like our human relationships, when we show fear it only gives more strength to those that oppose us.  Let a bully know that they have you afraid and they will bully you more.  Think of these malevolent spirits as bullies and rather than show fear, stand up to them.  Verbally and powerfully let them know that they have no hold over you and that you do not fear them.

Sometimes ignoring them is the best first step.
I know it sounds a little silly and maybe even ignorant, but trying to ignore the spirits that are trying to get to you can help to minimize the effect they have on you while you work out the way you’ll get rid of them for good.  When you pay attention to them it only adds fuel to that connection they want to have with you.  It’s just another tactic for letting them know they don’t have a hold over you.

When a spirit is aggressive with you, be aggressive in return.
This doesn’t have to mean that you’re going to get “in their face”, so to speak, but that you’re going to be in your power and you’re going to stand up for yourself.  Some people will, in their mind, be standing up for themselves but really they’re doing it in a timid way because something is holding them back (usually things like guilt, fear, and not feeling they deserve to stand up for themselves).  Stand up for yourself and be strong.

Belief is a huge element in possession; if you believe you’re possessed, you’ll be possessed.
Belief is a big part of paranormal activity and how it increases and becomes more and more difficult to deal with.  If you believe something is happening to you, whether it’s really happening or not, you’ll feel that it’s happening.  That’s the power of  fear and the mind.  Many times people who claim to be possessed aren’t truly possessed but have convinced themselves that this is what is happening to them so they have drawn all kinds of negative energy to themselves and created this condition in their mind.

Remember your free will!
Just because you’re dealing with spirits doesn’t mean that the same laws of free will don’t apply. Remember this when you’re starting to feel that you’re being attacked or bothered by a spirit.  You have the free will to take control of your life.

Create and hold your boundaries, stand up for yourself, and remember that you ultimately have control over these situations.  But when in need seek help! Don’t let a suspected spirit attack

A residual haunting, also sometimes called psychic recordings, imprints, or place hauntings.  These types of hauntings are the result of very strong and deep human energy connected to a specific event becoming trapped, or imprinted, on a location.  The energy from these events can become trapped in the land as well as the physical buildings on the land.  Some people who experience these types of activities will do things like attempt to demolish a location and rebuild only to find that it doesn’t help matters because the energy is in the land too. The imprint is not only part of the energy of the land and the physical place but also on time and space.  And because of this it makes dealing with a residual haunting very difficult.

What happens in a residual haunting?
A residual haunting is identified by the same events happening over and over again in the exact same way, at the exact same time, or with the exact same triggers. This could be that every day at 5pm you hear a train whistle go by outside your kitchen window when there haven’t been train tracks there for 100 years.  Maybe every Christmas Eve you hear the sounds of the thumping feet of children in the middle of the night going down your stairs when your own children have been long out of the home.  These events had such large amounts of emotion and energy behind them that the event left a mark on the space and time where it happened and now the event plays on a loop, over and over, like a DVD on repeat.

The Battlefield at Gettsyburg is one of the most famous sites of a residual haunting in the United States.

These events are always happening.  The children running down the stairs is replying constantly but the energy was most pitched on Christmas Eve so that’s when the ripple in time, so to speak, is strong enough for us to perceive it.  Some residual hauntings have events connected to them that have them reply only at certain time of the year or, like the train whistle, every day.  Each residual haunting and psychic impression is going to be different.

Both tragic and happy events can leave imprints but we seem to mostly notice the tragic ones.  One of the biggest known residual hauntings in the United States is on constant repeat is at Gettysburg.  Thousands of people who visit the site each year come away with stories of hearing cannons go off or hearing the sounds of soldiers screaming in pain.  There are no spirits there to be afraid of (at least in this instance) because the majority of what is being experienced on the battlefield is just an imprint playing on loop. 

How do you know you’re dealing with these kinds of events?
The first thing to understand is that there are two general categories that paranormal events are classified under; intelligent and non-intelligent.  What this means is either the ghosts involved can communicate with the living or they can’t.  In the cast of a residual haunting, because it’s the result of an energy imprint, we’re dealing with a non-intelligent haunting.

The next thing to keep in mind is that with non-intelligent hauntings no harm will come to you.  The ghosts and the energy related to the events are not able to connect to or communicate with the living, so there is nothing to be afraid of, it just becomes an annoyance.

So if you’re experiencing something that you notice every day at the same time or in some sort of regular pattern, and the event is always the same, you’re likely dealing with a residual haunting.  If you know that every Wednesday at 10pm you’re going to hear a scream and dishes smashing on your kitchen floor, prepare to try and interact with the energy one week.  Go into your kitchen with a voice recorder and run it starting about 5 minutes before you normally experience the activity.  After it happens give yourself a minute and then call out to the spirits or ghosts that you feel may be there.  Do you notice any changes in the atmosphere?  Do you hear anything?  Do you sense anything?

After about 5 to 10 minutes turn off your recorder and listen to the playback with headphones on. You may need to re-listen a few times to be sure of what you’re hearing.  Was anything picked up on the recording in response to your attempts to communicate?   If no, for the sake of being sure, try this experiment again two more times.  If you still get nothing and everything seems to happen in the exact same manner each time, it is safe to say you’re dealing with a residual haunting.  If you do get any sort of response, then you’re dealing with something else and we’ll talk about intelligent hauntings in the future.  But chances are if you’re experiencing anything like what is described here, you’re dealing with a non-intelligent residual haunting.

An intelligent haunting occurs when a ghost is able to communicate with the living in some way. They can reach out to us in a way that is impossible for a residual haunting.

How do I get rid of it?
In the case of a residual haunting, because it’s not creating energy or able to interact with the energy of the living, there is nothing to be worried about and nothing to be afraid of.  But, as the same time, there is also little that can be done to get rid of it.  The long and short of it is there is nothing that can be done to get rid of a residual haunting.  Much like a horror movie that might be scary to watch or hear, it’s just a movie and it can’t hurt you; there is nothing to truly fear.  That’s the same here.  These types of hauntings can’t hurt you because they aren’t “real”, in way, and they can’t interact with you.  There are no actual ghosts or spirits attached to it.  All we can do with these types of hauntings is learn to either live with them, ignore them, or move away from them.

The energy of a residual haunting is often what makes up the feel of a place or it’s part of it’s history and legend.  Without the events and energy still playing over and over at Gettysburg there would be so many people that wouldn’t have such great stories to tell about their trip there.  People go there because they know they’ll experience this and they expect it.  If you have this sort of thing going on in your home, take some time to visit the town hall or local library and find out if there might be some sort of lesser known but interesting story to the events in your area.  Maybe there is some great urban legend attached to that phantom train whistle after all!

It’s not that these people haven’t tried. In fact most of these people have done a few things to attempt, often on their own, to be rid of the problem.  Most of them try a simple house cleansing.  Others try to do protection spells or protection work for their home.

This makes me think of a scene from the movie “The Skeleton Key”.   Caroline uses a protection spell to keep things from harming her, declaring that she doesn’t believe in the spirits and in magick, but the spell wasn’t to protect her from getting hurt from something or someone else but to protect her from being able to move or leave the space she was in, therefore making her a sitting duck, so to speak.  I don’t know…that just comes to mind when I hear about some of the things that some of the people I’ve talked to have tried to do when it come to spirits bothering them.

First, let’s talk a moment about protection spells.  Or any protection work for that matter.  It’s all good and it’s all something that i would highly recommend to someone that’s dealing with problems with spirits or ghosts.  However, if you’re just doing protection work and you’re not doing anything to try and be rid o the actual problem, you’re just putting a bandage over a wound that’s never going to heal.    You will need to do your protection work over and over again because the energy will be sapped by the entities that are bothering you.  So it’s not that your protection spells aren’t working, you’re just not addressing the real issue.

Second, your power is paramount in these situations.  If you’re not in control, someone or something else is.  You need to be willing to stand up and be powerful.  You know the phrase “fake it ’til you make it”? That works in these cases.  If you can just muster up the energy and the courage to stand up and be strong, even if you don’t believe 100% that you’re as powerful as you’re trying to come off as, you’ll get there.  Your belief will grow as you do the work and you feel yourself being powerful.  But it takes time for some people.  Just because you don’t feel it the first time you try and confront something, that doesn’t mean you aren’t going to be more confident the second or third time.

Third, and something that I think is really important, don’t call something by a name if you don’t really know for sure what it is.  I have people tell me all the time that the cloud of bad luck that seems to follow them around is a demon and that they have had this demon around them for years.  My first question is “have you called it a demon all this time?”  I’m always surprised at the number of people who say “yes”.  When you name something, even if it’s a generic things like “demon” you’re giving it power, and possibly power that it otherwise wouldn’t have had.  Bad luck may very well just be bad luck, even if it’s lasted for 10 years.  That doesn’t mean it’s a demon.  Demon’s are something very specific and, frankly, not nearly as common as all those paranormal shows on television would have you imagine.

I had a friend who said that he would tell clients to start calling the “big bad energy” by something else, like “Fluffy”.  If they were calling it a “demon” he would tell them to never use that word in talking to it or referencing it and instead to call it “Fluffy”.  If they would have a visualization of this thing in their head, even if they’d never seen it with their eyes, he would tell them to change the image and make it a clown or a little girl with a pink dress and a lollipop the size of her head, anything that was the opposite of whatever it was that was scaring them. That new image, and the new name “Fluffy” would help to change and minimize that power it had over people.  He said a month later he’d have people calling him to say that not only was everything gone but that they felt more powerful and in control of their space.

HOT DAMN!  That’s the point!

So, like I said, I’m going to do some posts on these sorts of situations in a more in-depth manner soon, but the topic just seems to me haunting me lately.  (Pun intended…I’ll be here all week folks, tip your waitress!)  In all seriousness, in the next few weeks I’ll be working on some posts about dealing with shadow people, info on demons, and how to clear your home or space of those things that might go bump in the night at your house when you’re rather they went away and left you in peace.

We recorded the segment this morning and we talked about how people interact with spirits, why they might experience these interactions, the difference between residual and intelligent hauntings, and the issue and process of sending spirits “to the other side” or “to the light”, as some people call it.  And in-between there was a lot of talk about the role that belief in these things play, the differences between ghost hunting shows and the average paranormal investigation, and a little about “shadow people”.

There were a couple of brief things that occurred to me after our talk that I didn’t get to mention that I’ll mention here briefly.

1. Spirits vs. Ghosts – A lot of people in the paranormal use the terms interchangeably, and I often do as well for the sake of simplicity, however I do see them as two different things.  All Ghosts are Spirits but not all Spirits are Ghosts.  Ghosts are those that are earthbound and are haunting a place.  Spirits are any disincarnate being that we connect with, like Spirit Guides, who aren’t necessarily hanging around a location or haunting people, places, or things.
2. Hunting vs. Investigating – I don’t refer to what I do as “hunting”.  That seems to more imply that we’re trying to capture something or trap something.  I call what I do “investigating” because I see myself as an outside party trying to find answers to a situation that involves both spirits and humans.  The living are just as much a part of an investigation as the spirits are.
3. Debunking vs. Disproving – We touched on this very briefly and I wanted to mention it again here quickly.  I don’t call what I do “debunking” but rather “disproving”.  I approach my paranormal work as an “open minded skeptic”.  I don’t ever take anything at face value or believe reports of hauntings form clients or observers without investigating it first.  I need to be able to prove these things are happening before I can say that it is what the person is claiming.  To “debunk” something is to expose and ridicule it.  And certainly that’s not what I do!  Instead my job is to prove or disprove paranormal activity in order to set the client at ease.

So please be sure to tune in to tonight’s show and hear this interesting conversation that we had!  It will air tonight at 6pm PST/9pm EST at After Hours Radio.  An encore replay will happen later this week as well.

Encore presentation will be heard on Wednesday April 20th, at 7:30pm PST/10:30pm EST.
Be sure to tune in and listen and then visit the After Hours Radio Facebook page to share your thoughts on the show!

This Ghost Hunters show gives us a bit of a behind the scenes look at what goes into being a member of TAPS. Steve and Tango fill the roles of teacher foe the academy, leading and guiding 5 individuals hoping to graduate and be given a spot on the team as a new investigator. Talk about job placement! As the semester (i.e. season) rolls on, if someone isn’t making the grade, they will be eliminated and a prospective student on the waiting list will be called up to fill the shoes of the dismissed member. In the end it all comes down to finding someone that will make a great investigator and be able to fit in with the TAPS team.

On the first episode Steve and Tango took the students to Fort Mifflin in Pennsylvania. Fort Miflin has long been known as an investigation destination for teams and individuals in the paranormal. This was certainly an exciting place for the team to go to for their first investigation together. There are five prospective team members right now:

• Heathyr- a 24 year old medium who leads her own paranormal team back home, the Arizona Research and Mediumship Society.
• Chris – a 24 year old science student who has mainly an interest in the scientific side of things in an attempt to gather concrete evidence of paranormal activity.
• Karl – is a 20 year old recent member of the Northern Colorado Paranormal Society and amateur investigator.
• Susan – is a 22 year old aspiring DJ who is a member of the League of Paranormal Investigators.
• Ben – is a 20 year old amateur investigator who has a big love for using the gadgets and equipment for paranormal investigation.

In this first investigation all five came up against some challenges and Steve and Tango weren’t easy on the, Heathyr opted to not participate in the pre-investigation walkthrough because she felt that it would compromise her ability to use her psychic gifts on the investigation. While that could certainly be true, I found that to be one big strike against her; she’s there to be an investigator, not a medium. When you’re an investigator who has psychic ability, that’s great, but you’re there to be an investigator first and foremost. It also puts the rest of the team at a disadvantage because now at set up and during the investigation you have a team member that doesn’t know the hot spots, doesn’t know about the predetermined set up and so on. Chris found himself getting a lesson in the power of suggestion from Steve and Susan learned the hard way about keeping secrets from your team mates.

It was a really interesting episode and shows that this could be a promising series from TAPS and the Ghost Hunters franchise. If you missed this episode catch it in replay or OnDemand and be sure to catch the next episode. The show airs Wednesdays 10/9c.

Mood: working

I gave the sort of blow by blow of how their investigations go in my post about them last week so I really don’t need to get into it again because this episode followed the same format as the last one.  Silly instigation of spirits, putting themselves in potentially dangerous situations (both physical and spiritual) for the purpose of gathering evidence or creating some shock factor footage and just in general showing no respect for the spirits and locations being investigated.  However it’s the first segment, the one that deals with a Voodoo curse in Louisiana from 1915 when a supposed Voodoo Priestess named Julia Brown places a curse on the whole town.  A hurricane came several days after her own death killing just about everyone in the town.  And in come “Ghostman” and “Demon Hunter” to check out the validity to the hauntings that have been reported in the area since.

They use a coffin as an altar, they invoke Papa Legba, Baron Samedi and Mama Brigitte (they invoke her with sparking water which I found interesting because I had always known that rum with hot pepper was appropriate to her).  There is suddenly a sound of drums from somewhere and two of the guys take off and start exploring the woods and leave the “Demon Hunter” behind to hang out at the coffin altar.  When they call to him to ask if he saw something that they saw and ran after they get no response so the come back and Nathan is laying on ground, mouth agape and eyes wide open looking paralyzed.  Wow…really?

Here is the first part and I’ll include the second part as well but if you watch the first part you’ve seen all you really need to see.  Although if you watch the second part you can get to see them mark the the whiney guy with chicken blood and put him inside the coffin altar, bury him alive and try and provoke spirits while the guy is in the coffin.

Honestly, I think that regardless of how ridiculous these guys are, this is just unbelievably disrespectful!  The whole episode pretty much opens up with Shaun saying “We’re gonna mess with Voodoo for the first time in 15 years of investigating.”  Keyword here being “mess”.  Maybe it’s just me but that’s where my shock and awe comes in, the disrespect.  It just doesn’t seem as though they’re working with the practices in the rituals  from a place of respect or anything of that nature but more from a place of shock value.  It’s like a 15 year old that dyes their hair green, gets a tattoo and starts doing things to freak out their parents; they don’t know what they’re doing, they aren’t doing it for any real reason, they’re just trying to get a reaction.

You know what the WORST part of all of this is?  I can’t tear myself away from watching this train wreck.  I’m sure if this does end up coming back on A&E as a regular show I wont watch more than an episode or two.  There are two things that would make me less annoyed with this show.  First, incorporating some ACTUAL experts in their investigations when they are going to do things like rituals.  So with this Voodoo ritual they should have brought a Voodoo Priestess with them rather than just going and talking to one.  Second, it would be great to see them do some research with their evidence after the investigations rather than just “hey we found some stuff let’s go home”.  Their “evidence” of EVPs and their heat sink evidence are pretty suspect without any sort of follow up.  When you see heat sink evidence of someone sitting somewhere when the three on camera personalities are in view of the shot that doesn’t automatically mean it’s a spirit, especially when you’re dealing with people that have a camera crew following them around.  So who’s to say who or what that is?

Yup, cheat thrills.  The real shock and awe for me is how many people seem to be loving this show based on the comments that A&E is getting on their Facebook and Twitter pages.  It’s also surprised me greatly that there are people saying that this is what they would rather see other than shows like “Ghost Hunters”.  It just makes me realize that we’re still not really in a place for television shows about true paranormal work and experiences.  I guess in the meantime you can always check out the awesome team of Beckah and Katie Boyd and visit their site Supernatural Hotspots and watch their investigation videos and check out their stories.  Until we start demanding better of the media and these “reality” paranormal shows we’re going to continue to be nothing more than a Halloween freakshow all year round.

“Extreme Paranormal” appears as though it will be the latest in the A&E psychic and paranormal shows, something that the channel is getting quite deeply involved in. The cable channel is airing the two part pilot on the two Mondays leading up to Halloween (naturally).  On October 19^th the first of the two shows aired and it was quite a scene.  This show is very similar in style to “Ghost Adventures” (which you can see how I feel about that here).  Basically three guys with equipment that go running around provoking spirits only to later run away.  And they seem to have no purpose for doing what they do other than to freak each other out and “catch evidence” of a spirit.

The best, or really worst, part of the show is the “occult expert” Nathan, AKA “The Demon Hunter”.  I can’t even being to tell you the number of eye roll/giggles that this guy gave me in the hour of this show.  In this episode Nathan, along with Shaun, AKA “Ghostman” and Jason, who has no cool “Top Gun” call sign, went to visit the New Mexico State Penitentiary which saw some of the most brutal inmate deaths during The New Mexico Penitentiary Riot during two days of February 1980.  One of the brilliant ideas that these guys come up with is to visit the cell of a victim that was pulled out and burned alive and use fire and blood to try and draw his spirit out to make an appearance for them.  They get one guy to lie on the floor in the exact spot where the inmate died (there are burn marks on the floor showing how he was positioned at the time of his death), they outline the body in chalk, use a flammable gel to outline that, Nathan cuts his hand and draws out blood to draw “The Tree of Death Rune” inside the outline and then lights it all on fire to get the inmates spirit riled up all while basically verbally taunting him as well.  Seriously!?!  As for “The Tree of Death Rune” I honestly don’t know what he was talking about.  The rune he drew looked somewhat like Algiz upside down which was interesting since that’s not so much a rune of death but protection.  If anyone could shed some light on this I would love to hear it because I’m seriously wondering if this guy maybe spends too much of his time playing World Of Warcraft when he’s not being “The Demon Hunter”.  Which, by the way, they have the nicknames because they have a site and podcast called “Ghostman and The Demon Hunter”.

But after going nuts cutting bars off cell doors, lighting fires, screaming like little girls and generally acting like idiots they just leave.  No discussion, no assessment of evidence, no real purpose to their visit.  “Hi, we just want to come in and light shit on fire and maybe use a power saw to bust up some cell doors.  Mind if we spend the night next week?”

And then they went to a lake to hunt down a serial killer which was even more ridiculous.  They constructed a large circle with pentacles and a triangle attached to it out of foam with bit clear plastic party cups glued to the top to act as makeshift candle holders for tea lights and then they send it off afloat into the lake where this spirit apparently resides.  Nathan tells Shaun to go in the water but to stay in the circle because he’ll be “protected by God” as long as he says in it…because meanwhile Nathan and Jason will be, you guessed it, lighting a circle on fire on the beach and summoning the spirit of the serial killer out of the water.  Yes, a fiery ring of invocation, complete with skulls and all, on a beach at a lake while some guy is floating around with a flashlight in the water inside some rejected NERO prop.  Really!?!  And naturally they piss off the ghost which comes up from the water and grabs Shaun by the back and tries to pull him under, however Nathan will be sure to point out to him that it happened because he left the circle!  OH NOS!!!

Honestly, this is just getting to be too much!  There are enough of these paranormal shows on and a few of them, mainly the “Ghost Hunters” shows, seem to serve a purpose in trying to help the living and the dead cope with and understand their unique situations.  Things like this and “Ghost Adventures” are just silly and pointless.  At the beginning of “Extreme Paranormal” there is a disclaimer stating that portions of the rituals have been cut and that you shouldn’t try this at home.  I can only assume that the reason for “cutting out parts of rituals” is so that they don’t encourage people to light their living room floors on fire or anything like that in order to call on spirits that might be in the house.

On a somewhat brighter note, after that monstrosity ended a show I hadn’t seen before came on called “Medium/P.I.” This show stars one of my favorite magickal people and psychics, Jackie Barrett as she works with her friend Sean Crowley who is the Captain of the cold case homicide division of the NYPD to try and solve cases.  This was an interesting show and I enjoyed it since it showed people with the gift of sight working to HELP people, not just piss off ghosts for the hell of it.  Besides, it was nice to see Jackie Barrett back on TV.  She was the runner up of Lifetime’s show “America’s Psychic Challenge” back in 2007.  Sadly this didn’t seem to list any upcoming episodes beyond the one that I saw.  However another episode of “Extreme Paranormal” will air next Monday what the paranormal triple threat visit an insane asylum and put Jason in a straight jacket in an effort to “draw out ghosts”!  Good times.

Ghost Adventures
aka
Extreme Ghost Hunting
aka
Are You F’ing SERIOUS!?!

That’s about the progression that I go through with the show in the first few minutes during the episode preview and the opening credits. Any show that opens with the words “Raw…Extreme…These are our Ghost Adventures” is opening itself to public mockery.

And then you see them…and…well…yeah…

So anyway, I’m not really “picking” on them, I just think they’re silly. And I was starting to think after the last few series of Most Haunted that there wasn’t going to be much to top it but The Travel Channel again managed to find something crazy to fill their schedule. Imagine, who thought that a pair of plumbers from Rhode Island were going to be the most sane television paranormal investigators we’d see! And if it wasn’t for my Dad I never would have given TAPS a look (after Mad Mad House I sort of wrote off “reality television” on Sci-Fi, or SyFy…whatever they’re calling themselves now).

I’m just not a fan, and we’ll leave it at that and move on to talking about why I still watch this show ever week. It cracks me up! Here, this is a clip from last week and the episode from the Ancient Ram Inn. This is a good “catch all” of what to expect in an hour of this show…

Yeah.

So I started to write a drinking game to go along with the show. I figured this would make this show more enjoyable and, since this is on not once but TWICE (back to back, same episodes) before Most Haunted comes on this would also make Most Haunted more fun (and would help me get over the fact that Brian Shepard creeps me out).

So here you go…
Rowan’s Ghost Adventures Drinking Game!

What You’ll Need…
1. A mixed drink of some kind (Vodka and Red Bull seems most fitting…it’s EXTREME)

2. A bottle of one of the alcohols from your mixed drink (we’ll go with vodka here, but have the good stuff…for the love of the Gods no Popov! If you need to be spend thrifty at least get Svedka. If you’re looking to mildly enjoy your vodka get some Ketel One or Grey Goose.)

3. A shot glass (for the vodka in our case)

How To Play…
You’re going to take a sip from your mixed drink when any of the following happens…

1. Someone duct tapes an “X” on the ground for later.
2. Any time someone says “dude”, “man” or “bro”.
3. Any time someone gets bleeped.
4. Any time someone screams, yells or otherwise freaks out.
5. Any time someone taunts a spirit to get a reaction from them to produce activity.

You’re going to do a shot of your chosen alcohol any time one of the following things happens…

1. When the guys go into “lock-down”.
2. Any time someone is supposedly chased out of a room by a ghost or runs out because they got scared.
3. Any time someone gets freaked out by something mundane in a room like a picture on the wall, a piece of furniture, etc.
4. Any time Aaron gets left alone or is sent on his own to investigate an area.
5. Do another shot if Aaron whines like a little girl about it as if he doesn’t know this is coming at some point.

I was trying to think if there was more but, to be honest, these are quite enough and should keep you well and pissed through most of the show. If anyone would like to make some suggestions on some more possible adds to the game, please, let me know!

Happy Drunken Extreme Ghost Adventures!