Critical Articles of Paranormal Investigators

[PPI Brian]

During my daily paranormal ramblings, I often stop by the James Randi Educational Fund website for a while. I have noticed some particularly scathing articles about paranormal investigators from some of the JREF writers lately. This one was exceptionally harsh:

IOWA COUNTY ? A NEW LEVEL OF IDIOCY

A building built in 1855 called Chatham Oaks, which houses people with physical and mental disabilities, will shortly be visited by a four-person ?Carroll Area Paranormal Team,? all adults and thought to be sane. Johnson County officials have given their informal approval for these ?ghost hunters? to check out what was once an insane asylum to see if any spirits are hanging about. This brilliant decision was made by apparently otherwise sober officials of the Johnson County Board of Supervisors, who took the initial action on a request from the Johnson County Historical Society, which gives tours of the 153-year-old building and seems to think that the citizens of the area will now be better protected from any beasties and banshees that might be in the area. Can?t be too careful, you know, even if you look like damn fools and have folks tittering as you pass by them in the street.

Mr. Brandon Cochran, Museum Operations Assistant for the Johnson County Historical Society, says that there have never been reports of ghosts or bizarre happenings at the building, and that bringing in a paranormal team is ?kind of taking the pre-emptive approach.? Wise man, though maybe a trifle ?teched,? as they say. You know, Brandon and his fellow employees can probably add and read, yet they believe in ghosts and demons! Probably taught school or had responsible jobs, at one time?

Brandon wants the Iowa-based paranormal investigative team to come in for one night of ?scientific? investigation, but he sure hopes they don't find any paranormal activity goin? on! The Team, we?re assured, will use the usual useless means of finding spirits ? thermal imaging equipment and voice recording systems tuned up so high in an environment jammed with signals from cell phones, intercoms, various media transmitters, and private/commercial communications, that anything within miles will sent the instruments off the scale ? and signify nothing. But, count on it, there will be reports of faint words and strange sounds that the Team will shudder and gasp over, like teeny-boppers at an Alice Cooper show?

The Chatham Oaks officials said there wouldn't be a problem with the paranormal team coming in ?as long as it didn't disturb residents,? said county facilities director Dave Kempf. Get real, folks! A bunch of gawking dumbos looking for ghosties are not exactly conducive to sanity and good mental health among patients. But actual adult human beings will solemnly sign papers approving the decision, the farce will take place, and common sense and rationality will again yield to juvenile ideas of what passes for truth?

Although I have nothing against healthy skepticism, some of these articles have become increasingly harsh of late. The bold statements regarding the recording equipment used by the paranormal team picking up cell phone and other RF transmissions as an air tight explanation for all anomalous audio captured during an investigation is absurd. These writers bash paranormal investigators for claiming to use scientific methods for conducting their investigations yet they make arguments based on hearsay rather than scientific fact.

Anyone else find articles like this on the web lately?

[MichaelF (FPIE)]

Thanks for the read.  I stumble across articles myself, but normally just read them then move on, I'll start to link what I find.

Articles such as this are to be expected and they will get far worse before they get better.  For a long time, people who believed in the paranormal were considered kooks and crazies, whether they believed in ghosts, UFO, ESP or whatever.  "Intelligent" people could titter and laugh at the believers, who were a fringe society.  Yet as Paranormal research evolves and more and more "educated" people start to believe in things such as ghosts, this becomes vastly more offensive to some people.  Keep the paranormal goofy and obscure, but by no means look at it rationally and scientifically!

In the current article, if the investigators were wearing tin foil hats, conducting seances, and utilized other means thought laughable, the reporter would not have been nearly so offended.  He may have reported on the joke then moved on.  Yet it seems like the actual scientific nature of the investigation is what offended him the most.  In fact he even tried to discredit the scientific means of data collection, to the point of disinformation.

It's sad to say that things will get worse before they get better.  Teams like PPI (and others) work to gather evidence and enhance the scientific understanding of the paranormal.  Hopefully, in doing so, they will advance the field; yet ironically as the field gets advanced and more evidence is gathered, that is when the more "serious" critics will arise.