Haunting Research
Home of the Northern Minnesota Paranormal Investigators
Evidence How-To
This is a page of our website that has been a long time coming. There are so many groups in the world presenting bogus evidence and calling it "real" paranormal evidence. People have been putting out in the past their own standards and attempting to get everyone to do it their way and calling them catchy names to see if anyone would fall for it. These "standards" have been far below N.M.P.I.'s standards that have been in place since the inception of the group. I would very much like to share these standards with everyone so that the people out there with possible paranormal issues can determine who is credible and putting out the "real" evidence vs. those "thrill seeking" groups that are just running around in the dark for a fun time and not really researching the paranormal.
1. The first rule in paranormal research/evidence collection is that if the evidence is collected on digital equipment it is not evidence of anything at all.
I do need to elaborate and explain why this is. If I were to see a ghost and draw a picture of what I claim to have seen, would you consider that evidence of the paranormal? I should most certainly hope not! This is exactly what a digital image is. Simply a re-creation of what the lens of the camera saw, an interpretation and not a true "capture." If we are to believe what we see on a digital camera, we then should also believe the picture I was drawing for you a bit ago.
A lot of people don't realize that digital photographs are NOT admissible in a court of law as evidence. Okay, some people say "what about forensics and police that get to use digital?" Yep, police and forensics do get to use it, that's a fact. What these people are not understanding is that they are dealing with a tangible thing such as a dead body at a crime scene and many officers (whom the court trusts) are allowed to testify that these photos are true to what the crime scene looked like. If the average person takes in photos of a fender bender accident, they are NOT admissible as evidence of the accident because they must have a negative. If digital photographs cannot be considered evidence of a simple car accident, they CANNOT and MUST NOT be considered evidence of the paranormal.
So, to close the first rule of "real" evidence collection, we must state simply that "any evidence captured on digital media is worthless and CANNOT be considered as paranormal evidence."
2. Location Security is the second rule of good evidence collection. You have to be able to account for everyone in the area or you will not have evidence that you can ever call paranormal. This is why there are so many pieces of evidence that get discounted when they are sent to N.M.P.I. for scrutiny. They are taken in public places with people milling around and doing what ever. In these types of situations, you cannot eliminate the mundane causes for anomalies in the evidence. Thus, you have to throw it out. When you conduct an investigation you have to stick together in your group and you have to know where everyone is at all times. If you don't, or cannot account for everyone you have bogus evidence. When you conduct an investigation, you MUST have tight security at all times to ensure that there are no outside people coming into your area that you are investigating.
We see a lot of so called evidence that is collected on tours and in public places that just simply isn't evidence of anything. Without security, you don't have an investigation and you don't have evidence of anything.
3. The next thing to look at is hard-wired vs. wireless equipment. Have you ever been on the receiving end of interference on your television set, on your favorite FM radio while you were listening to your favorite song? Well this happens when you use wireless equipment. If you had a direct line feeding your car stereo with the broadcast signal directly from the station, you would never get interference but that is more ludicrous that using a digi-crap camera! It became all the rage a couple of years ago to use only wireless cameras and run the feed directly into the lap-top. Well, besides being digi-crap and not evidence, it is wireless and susceptible to any number of signals floating around in the air.
In the summer of 2007, a woman with a wireless baby camera in Chicago was able to pick-up the direct feed from the space shuttle Atlantis to NASA. She was able to watch the space walks and everything they did for the week that they were in space. All of this on a wireless baby monitor that just happened to pick up the frequency. This can happen at any time without warning...thus destroying the use of wireless cameras as paranormal evidence.
