Happy Spooky Season, Fright Fiends!
I know. I know! Where the hell have I been? Busy. Learning and doing and handling my business. But today, I need to take care of some business that’s giving ghost hunting a bad name.
Also, figured it was about friggin time I wrote another blog post. It’s only been a whole-ass eternity nearly since the last one.
Anyway.
What. The. Fuck. Have you seen these chuckleheads on YouTube, with their “ghost hunting” videos? I won’t link to any of them because they do not deserve the attention, but you’ll know them when I describe them. Night vision cameras, graveyards, always spotting some old woman or child among the headstones. There isn’t just one of these alleged “content” creators, either. It’s tons. And they ALL SUCK!
If you’re entertained by their antics, just knock it the hell off. The videos are clearly fake. As someone who has stood toe-to-toe with legit paranormal phenomenon, let me lay down the basic facts so you can see why this pisses me off, and how anyone with half a brain cell could do better.
First, extremely few things happen in a cemetery that there would be any reason for a ghost, if they do exist, to hang around those places. “But the dead bodies!!!” You’re probably stupidly shouting at your monitor. Shut up. I can’t hear you. Ghosts associated with deaths or traumatic events haunt the places where those events happened, or the living people involved. Those events do not happen in cemeteries. If ghosts were so attached to the decomposing meat carcass that was supposedly their earthly husk, every cemetery would be overrun with specters. So, we only occasionally see one here or there because…? Same reason you are very unlikely to be attacked by a shark while at your local library is why you aren’t likely to find anything in a cemetery, unless they were just so super emo goth in life.
Second, these YouTubers are the worst fucking actors, and even shittier storytellers. I watched one spot an old woman sitting in a chair in a crypt, and say to the camera they don’t want to disturb her, so they’ll leave her alone. In a cemetery at night. Without a flashlight. Regular sane people who visit cemeteries do so during the day, because idiots and YouTubers are the only ones dumb enough to wander a cemetery in the middle of the night..
Something about the situation should have set off alarms in the brain of this YouTuber, assuming the zombies had not eaten it. They think you, their viewer, are too stupid to realize a set up when you see one. And when you buy into their bullshit, you prove them right.
Third thing, why are they always talking to their EMF detector? An EMF detector is meant to detect electromagnetic fields. It’s not a walkie-talkie to the afterlife. HUMANS (not ghosts) are sometimes affected by electromagnetic fields. When they are, they experience a sensation known as “The heebee jeebees”. There’s something about the way electromagnetic fields interact with our biology, and while it does not cause harm, it does cause a sensation of unease, sometimes nausea, often coupled with a sense of being watched. I’ve witnessed this phenomenon first hand, with an electric fan. It gave off a pretty strong EMF. Visitors to my home that would report feeling uneasy. Removed the fan, those reports stopped.
Any horror fan knows the heebee jeebees is some kind of “Spooky-sense” in movies, but when you’re creeped out any odd occurrence is going to take on a spooky element. The EMF detector is just a tool to rule out those moments that are caused by external factors that aren’t supernatural, like a fan motor rather than disembodied Grandpa Joe. You would use the detector when there are reports of feeling unease to rule out normal shit that causes it, like electrical boxes, power converters, and technology that we don’t generally take notice of causing these sensations.
The idiots talking into it and getting excited when it randomly lights up are just super excited to be talking to themselves and have poorly calibrated their toys. It’s embarrassing to watch, honestly.
As for ghosts having the ability to manipulate electromagnetic fields, there is no evidence to suggest this is the case, because we have to prove ghosts are even real first to be able to suggest they can manipulate electromagnetic fields, and aren’t just an effect of electromagnetic field manipulation itself.
And while we are on the topic of talking to ghosts, never bring a psychic to your ghost hunt. You bring a psychic when you want to do a seance. Psychic ability is not proven. Psychic ability to talk to ghosts, or see them, or in anyway determine their intentions, also unfounded, and in most cases debunked as a scam to prey upon the grieving. What they are going to do though is add to how creepy you feel, and further prime your brain to see ghosts that aren’t actually there. They’re better storytellers than most YouTubers though, so I’ll give them that.
Lastly, turn on the fucking lights, you idiots. NOTHING indicates ghostly phenomenon requires an absence of light. In fact, the very idea ghosts drain camera batteries for power before manifesting–an unproven idea–would indicate you actually lessen the likelihood of experiencing ghostly phenomenon by killing the power. You greatly improve your chances of injury though, because an idiot in the dark is an idiot in the dark. “Why do they do it on TV then?” You blather, still unaware I can’t hear you. Because it’s dramatic. Also way easier to hide shit like wires and things on the shows that manipulate the results for ratings.
Plenty of spooky encounters happen in broad daylight. The really interesting ones happen around 2 in the afternoon on a Tuesday when you aren’t even thinking about it. All the dark does is makes you, a living person and not a ghost, blind and because of a naturally occurring behavior of the brain to fill in a lack of stimuli with noise which we then try to interpret as something else, and we dress it in whatever belief system we were brought up with. Its what you see when you play Blood Mary at sleepovers.
What a fucking buzzkill I am, right? Would you rather be wrong about easily explainable shit, or would you like to see something really fucking weird? I’ll take the real fucking weird shit. And believe me, there is still plenty of real fucking weird shit without having to fake it or fool yourself into seeing things.
I once conducted a ghost hunt where 12 minutes of conversation every member of my team remembers in vivid detail didn’t happen as we recalled it, but we instead stood around in a trance that none of us would have known about had we not left the camera running during our wrap up. No camera malfunction where the audio cut out or anything like that. One second, we are having the conversation we all recalled in post hunt interviews, and the next, we’re all staring at each other while the wind blows and crickets chirp. And we stand like that, unmoving, for 12 minutes. Then, as though there wasn’t an extended moment of awkward silence, we resume talking and wrapping up our hunt. And all the conversation that happened during those minutes, the jokes made at each others expense, observations and suggestions for equipment and future expeditions, gone. As though they never happened. Yet seven individuals distinctly remember those jokes, that conversation.
Seven eye-witnesses. Seven ghost hunters. Six of those hunters were so freaked out by what happened, they seized the tape and destroyed it so the seventh, me, was unable to study it further and find answers, and is only left with this story and tragically no proof. There is still freaky shit in this world. There is plenty of unexplained phenomenon left that if you just keep the equipment rolling, and have patience, you’ll find it.
Or it will find you.
