What keeps you going in this field? What makes you excited? These are two great questions and we should ask them of ourselves every so often to ensure that we are staying true to ourselves. For me, I love solving problems and figuring out puzzles. Paranormal investigation is like a puzzle to me. We are presented with a question: “What is happening in this location?” or “How do these strange things happen?” I know that there are a lot of people who BELIEVE they KNOW what is happening and what is causing activity. But I am not big on belief, I want documented proof. Maybe that is why I fit in so well in Missouri, it is the “Show Me State.” 

So when I say I enjoy solving paranormal puzzles, what does that look like? 

For example, there is a location that I frequent that has consistent claims of the sound of footsteps on the second floor of the house. I have investigated this location on four different occasions and placed a stationary camera in the suspect hallway every time. So I have roughly 190 hours of video/audio coverage of this one location in the building. The more time I spent reviewing evidence, the more I came to notice that the footsteps didn’t occur when we were at dinner and the house was empty. For reference, the footsteps do occur when no one is on the second floor but there are still people in the house. So the next time I visited, I decided to test an idea.What if when we walk around downstairs we cause what sounds like clear footfalls in this particular hallway. 

In order to test this hypothesis, I spread several members of my team across the second floor hallway and asked them to sit still and listen. Then I sent one member of the team downstairs to walk from one room to another. He did this multiple times and every time he walked from the kitchen into the dining room, we all heard walking on the second floor. This wasn’t even slight footsteps, it sounded like a man walking down the hall and it was heard by everyone on the second floor.

Next, we switched out team members to see if someone with a lighter stride would cause the same effect. Once again, the team member walked from one room to another and we heard the same walking in the hallway as he crossed from the kitchen into the dining room. I began to get excited. Did I figure out one of the more consistent claims of this location? We repeated the experiment several more times and ultimately concluded that we were causing the phantom footsteps in the second floor hallway. 

I was thrilled by this result! 

Next, I asked the team to conduct an additional experiment to better understand the occasional strange voices I find on my recorder in this exact same spot. I wanted to know if this was the sound of our team members talking on the first floor. So, I put a voice recorder next to my camera and then asked all of the team members to sit in a different room on the first floor. My hypothesis was that voices would be distorted as the sound traveled up the back stairway. I had everyone repeat the same phrase in a loop and was unable to replicate the EVPs (electronic voice phenomena). I also switched team members from one room to the next to make sure I was testing different voices in different parts of the house. Still no similarities to the previous recordings. I could clearly identify every one of the team members and there was no distortion of their voices. After half an hour of this, we took a break to discuss. 

While we had debunked the footsteps, the EVPs still had no clear explanation. This tells me that there is reason to continue investigating the location to better understand the phenomena. In addition, there are several other types of phenomena happening in the location that we still have been unable to capture or replicate. I was incredibly excited to further explore these ideas while other team members felt a little disappointed. 

This is where it becomes important to recognize that we all have different goals when it comes to paranormal investigation. I am trying to solve a puzzle while others are wanting to have an experience or just communicate with the dead. I want to be very clear, there is nothing wrong with having different goals as long as no one (living or dead) is harmed in the process of your investigation. BUT this can cause problems within a group when your goals are not aligned. The group spent time discussing what phenomena still needed to be explained and that the current experiments did not eliminate the possibility of the house being haunted. It just limited the type of activity experienced. 

Ultimately, I left that investigation energized to review my evidence and further analyze the location. Please note that it took hours of observing the same spot in this house to develop these experiments, so I want to stress how important it is to review your evidence and return to the same location multiple times, placing your equipment in the same locations as often as possible. While I find this process thrilling, others will find it boring and disappointing. That is why it is so important to occasionally ask yourself: What keeps me going in this field? And do I share similar goals with my teammates? These two questions will help keep you on the right track and everyone feeling like they are getting what they want out of an investigation. Don’t be afraid to speak up for yourself and advocate for what you need during an investigation. We are all on this journey together, our paths just may look a little different. 

Until next time, Happy Hunting!