Paranormally Bad

     I’m going to become a professional paranormal investigator, since there are clearly no actual qualifications necessary to do so. I’m pretty sure that I could conduct a much more scientifically rigorous investigation than many of these “ghost hunter” shows, even with absolutely no scientific experience whatsoever.

     The show I’ve been watching lately that inspires this is Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files. Now, I am entertained by many aspects of this show. I appreciate that they are combining aspects of Mythbusters with the traditional aspects of a paranormal investigation show. Of course, the problem is that in trying to combine the two, we really just get a half-assed version of both.

     Usually I get annoyed by these shows’ immense bias and utter lack of “control” of their experiments. Regardless of what lip service they pay to the idea of impartiality, most of these ghost hunters are going in looking for the paranormal. This is why they get all excited about things like orbs and EVPs, despite the fact that these “phenomena” are obviously pure and utter bull¹. This is also why they put so much stock in testimonials, even though even the crappiest lawyer or first-year psychology student will tell you how hard it is to trust eye-witness accounts.

     See, I’m a skeptic at heart². I want to believe, and I want to see some proof, but my logical brain won’t shut down long enough to let me. Worse yet, I’m also something of a Doubting Thomas: I would need to experience it for myself to believe it. In my mind, any photo or video can be faked, and any witness could be lying.

     On the other hand, sometimes these shows get my hackles up³ for entirely different reasons. Sometimes they don’t do enough to satisfy the criteria that it is legit. Sure, I might not really think there’s a ghost in the house, but if you’re going to bother to investigate it, spend more than one freakin’ night there. In my younger days as a Cub Scout, I’ve spent a few afternoons fishing, but I’ve never caught anything. Do I assume there’s no fish in the lake, or the more real possibility that I’m just a lousy fisherman? There are also episodes of Fact or Faked where they try to recreate a photo and declare “this is how it was done” even though the pictures look nothing alike⁴. Finally, you can argue that even though you could fake it a certain way, it doesn’t mean it was faked.

     The problem with Forteana—like most of our society—is that people don’t want shades of gray. They want black or white, real or hoax, skeptic or believer. We need more people who are skeptical enough to do the rigorous testing that needs to be done, but who are also open-minded enough to accept the possibility that something might be real. Skeptics need to stop thinking that they’ve got everything figured out. Hell, nobody believed gorillas existed before the mid 19^th century⁵. At the same time, believers need to admit that just because they heard a noise they can’t immediately identify, it doesn’t make it a ghost.

     Finally, to those of you who still believe in the Loch Ness Monster: Really? How many people have to come forward and admit to the hoax before you let it go? You have to understand how much damage you're doing the rest of us with your nonsense. A giant dinosaur has not survived in Scotland since prehistoric time, unless he also reproduces by budding. For comparison, I'm more likely to believe that a technologically superior alien race has traveled thousands of light years for the soul purpose of rooting around in the anuses of hillbillies.

     I'm probably going to get some hate-mail for that one...

¹ For those readers who are not familiar with the terms: “orbs” are little glowing balls of light that tend to appear on video and film, and EVP stands for Electronic Voice Phenomenon, when “ghostly” voices show up on recordings. The problem, of course, is that every stray dust particle and bug looks like an orb in a camera flash, and EVPs are usually so distorted and full of static that you can project whatever you want to hear into the white noise.

² Even though, in the Fortean community, “skeptic” is a dirty word.

³ If your hackles stay up for more than four hours, consult a physician.

⁴ For those interested enough to look it up, check out Season 1, Episode 10: Ghostly Guardian. They decided that the ghostly images were probably just the camera strap, even though the example they show doesn’t even have the same colors involved.

⁵ Which is an argument used by many cryptid believers. Of course, we’ve explored a lot more of the world since then, and there are a lot less places to hide the large populations necessary to support Bigfoot as a species. I’m pretty sure if there were thousands of them in Oregon, we’d notice. There’d be at least a few dozen of them in Portland, although we might not be able to tell them apart from the hipsters.