Ghost Hunters- Closed minded?
As you visit websites, hear or see teams present themselves to the public you will notice the phrase “we have an open mind” pops up. Other phrases that people should notice are “we believe”, “we can help” or the most classic “we want to find the truth”. There is a Catch-22 more than often as you learn more about today’s Ghost Hunting Teams and it’s not stopping.
Claims to believe? If a person makes the conscience choice to believe in such things as ghosts how exactly are they going to help out in certain unexplainable situations? They have already established that they believe in everything the “client” is willing to throw at them. Perhaps the phrase should be “we understand, for now”?
Not all paranormal claims can be explained. Therefore “helping” clients is nothing more than an exaggerated declaration made by teams that perhaps need to validate themselves. Making sense of the situation, well, in the real world, that is what we do. We attempt to make sense of the unexplainable events to make the, well, explainable.
Finding the truth is not as easy as it sounds. Truth is based off of facts. Let’s face it. The paranormal field as a whole has nothing factual about it. The only thing that may have a firm grip to reality could be history. But we all know, there is flaw in history, especially the history of brutal murders, suicides, hangings and so on. History is documentation presented by a persons opinion, especially when it comes to pulling history from newspapers, diaries, journals and of course witness accounts.The newspapers can only report so much. The truth is, there is no truth. There is opinion. This is what teams do. They visit locations, conduct an investigation and do nothing more than offer their opinions on the subject. Opinion is not fact. Yes, this even applies to me.
The truth may not be screaming banshees in the hallways or tapping on ones chamber doors. The truth may be that there are mice, rats, raccoons, electrical problems and of course over active imaginations of clients and ghost hunters.
Teams will throw in the phrase, “we have an open mind” usually hear during media stints and moments of public recognition. It bothers me to the fullest that I am skeptical about such things as “ghosts”, therefore I do not have an open mind? Having an open mind is also thinking outside of the realm, speculation and expectation of a location being haunted. It’s applying critical thinking and a rational mindset all of the time. In my years of research, I have noticed too many times that the phrase “open mind” has become converted to “one track mind”. It’s okay to believe, but there should be a stopping point when it comes to paranormal research. More and more teams show up to locations and find ghostly activity. They are either creating it themselves through unintentional taught hysteria or they have mastered the art of blind ignorance. The rare occasion that there may be something “ghostly” on the premises is now being overlooked by pure exaggerated ghostly greed and the closed mindset of one team’s protocol and methods of investigation.
Before anyone suggests that I may be harsh on this subject. I wanted to state. I do believe and I want to believe you. But, I want to think rational and apply critical thinking to help you make sense of your ghostly inhabitants. I want to witness what you have witnessed and to help others understand the importance of possibility verses proof of my opinion.
Not all things that go bump in the night are ghosts. The closed minded behaviors of teams across the nation and locally are creating more “ghosts” than working to find the truth that they are claiming to seek. In reality, they are not seeking the truth. They claim they believe. They just want people to believe them and their opinions.
Sincere Blogger,
Tonya Hacker
Paranormal Eyes
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Comments
Yep! They believe and therefore whatever they discover will be examined through the filter of that belief…
Another thought provoking blog!!
What is belief? An assumed understanding of reality based on implicitly connected ideas. I believe in Jesus. Because there is a church. The church teaches things written down around 55 AD. Jesus was crucifies around 30 AD. These are facts. The gap between 30 AD and 55 AD is where faith comes in. Did some crazy, desperate people make up a sill story, then all die pretty horribles deaths? Or did it happen? Scientists in the eighteen hundreds developed an idea called “Social Darwinism”. The gist is that some races are geneticly inferior to others. This was a fact, based on evidence they found at the time. Or was it?
Ghost hunting has been polluted. Its modern life had it reborn in a world of gullible, silly people. A world populated by fundamentalist atheists breathlessly bopping the head of anything paranormal-sounding in creation, and delluded scifi-natics who believe every sound heard is a ghost and every eerie feeling they have is a psychic impression of a spector. We live in a world where all truth is lost. It is generated in massive media campaigns and by political spin doctors, and transmitted on the cover of gossip magazines and tv shows.
It takes something beyond our selves to know ourselves, a booster seat to see above all the lies, distortions and misinformation. It is etherial and transcendent, outside the control of our little minds. This is what we are searcihng for.
Without it, science, faith and humanity are lost.
Great blog, again. Also, great comment from William. Our team doesn’t take the stance that “we believe it’s paranormal” or “we have an open mind”, we take more of the stance that “We believe, you as the family feel, hear, and are frightened by something. We believe that you are sincere in your fear and explanation of it.”
We work with the families, not necessarily the evidence, in helping them acclimate back into their home.
Our motto has always been “We Believe You”. That has not now, or ever meant that we believe that a location is haunted. We Believe You means that we believe that someone feels they may have paranormal activity (at least in our case). Sure, we get our share of “nutcases”, but most folks believe they may have something going on beyond their realm of understanding. We also like to think that we are open minded. Going into an investigation with a closed mind means to us that no evidence will ever be good enough to show activity. On the flip side, believing everything you’re told means to us that any evidence will show paranormal activity and not warrant any further investigation into the real cause of whatever is happening. In my opinion, open minded is a good thing until you start reviewing evidence.
Well put. I think you might have helped people by opening their eyes, and actually help them to find the desire to try to find out the truth on their own before they call someone to come out and help them. Once they have tried to find out what has been bumping in the night, and think they have done all they could do, and are still having the same problems, then they should call.
Everyone should just remeber to look at the possiblities around them, like what was mentioned, mice, elect. or pipe problems, anything can set things off that might seem paranormal.
You can email me at tonya@ghouli.org
This seems to be a growing concern within this community: dealing with the too many (ill-prepared) cooks in the kitchen syndrome. Insightful. Thanks for posting this.