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
