A good Op-Ed posted at Digital Journal last evening gives a little history of the field. The article also hints to why we are behind in advancements in the areas of science and technology. Below is a portion of the Op-Ed.

Throughout the years, engineers in the field of paranormal investigation have been making great strides in creating equipment to better access the existence of apparitions and rule out the possibility of real world contamination. One such engineer, Gary Galka, most recently seen on an episode of Ghost Adventures, was motivated to create such equipment after he lost his 17 year old daughter in a fatal car crash. According to Gary, Melissa began communicating with the family right after they came home from the hospital and he has been compiling evidence ever since. Gary’s creation the Mel Meter, named after his daughter, is a standard instrument now used by most paranormal investigators. He has created over 30 devices used in investigations today. He recently demonstrated some of his devices on that episode, capturing what appears to be his daughter’s voice communicating with him saying, “Daddy, I love you.” and “Miss you guys.” The device he used to capture her voice is the exclusive P-SB7 Integrated Spirit Box, which is an AM/FM scanner with glow in the dark buttons for easy use in the dark. The P-SB7 utilizes a milli-second adjustable Forward or Reverse frequency “sweep” technique in partnership with high frequency synthetic noise or “white noise” distributed between frequency steps. The idea is that a ghost can use the white noise or frequencies to communicate with a person in real time rather, than recording on a digital recorder and having to wait for playback. Since its debut, it’s been used in various investigations by the Ghost Adventures team and Psychic Kids investigations. Gary Galka lives and has his business in East Granby, Connecticut and donates one third of the profits from the sale of all of his paranormal devices to bereavement groups, including The Cove Center for Grieving Children in Wallingford and Mary’s Place, A Center For Grieving Children in Windsor, both groups help children deal with the loss of a brother or sister.

The Dead Files, another show on the Travel Channel has recently been gaining more attention for its investigative premise rather than it being a ghost hunter’s show. Amy Allan, a psychic medium and Steve DiSchiavi, a homicide detective are not in the business of capturing ghosts but rather investigating your unusual activity within your household. Steve being the skeptic looks at your issues from a logical at times scientific standpoint looking into the history of your location and the events that have happened there while Amy uses her psychic abilities to find out what is going on in your location that could be considered paranormal and causing any of the issues you might be having. They do not communicate during their investigations and are not aware until they arrive exactly what or where they are investigating. At the very end of each episode they will get together with the owners of the location and look through their findings for the first time together. Each time they sit down to discuss their findings I am continually blown away by the similarities in what Amy is able to see with her abilities and what Steve finds out from local historians and historical documents as well as witnesses, if any. It’s a very interesting take on Paranormal Investigating.

It is said that some of the oldest places in the world will find the most activity. A place that holds severe trauma such as a war or murders will be extremely active with spirits. The old south is said to hold many ghostly phenomena, because of the civil war and slavery. Within history there is place memory, objects, houses and buildings that hold on to events and emotions that may have happened in another time. Place Memory or Residual Haunting is like a recording of a past event that has imprinted itself on the environment. You may see the same apparition doing the same things over and over again, hearing the same sounds. It is a playback of an event that happened in the past, this is not a spirit, but a recording of an event many hauntings are said to be Residual and not a spirit communicating in real time.

Throughout history, photographs have captured of what appear to be ghostly apparitions, The Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana is home to the spirit of a slave maid who is said to have poisoned the wife and two children of her master, with whom she was having an affair with. She is said to haunt the home along with the spirit of the wife and two children. EVPs of soldier’s voices have been captured at a military base in Europe. We are constantly surrounded by reminders that what happens after we die. Is just as much a mystery as how life begins. For the next hundred years, we will still be investigating and researching what truly happens when a spirit leaves the body and how we can live hand and hand with ghosts. As our culture grows more fascinated with the afterlife, it pushes technology to advance at a faster rate and we are able to test the limits to what modern day technology can do to further capture the unexplained. Interacting with spirits gives people the closure that they need, the peace of mind to know that after we die it might not be the end, maybe one day we will be with our families again and our body really is just a shell to house our spirit until it’s ready to move on. Right now we don’t know the truth but we are getting closer to finding more evidence and that is a start. Being curious and wanting to know more are part of the human spirit, it’s what drives us to invent and create and it has helped us to make some of the biggest advances in technology in the history of the world. At one time space travel was deemed a thing of SciFi novels, yet in 1972 we had our 11th and last man mooned expedition. There are many things in this world that continue to be a mystery to us, but it’s the explorers, those that brave the unknown, that allow us to discover new and exciting truths to our existence. And hopefully with all of this newfound knowledge, we can help not only to understand our future but to reconstruct our past.

Many of the products mentioned in the article were not designed for paranormal investigation as many of us know. Not unlike many other products in other fields they seem to work for us. Have we made any stride to scientifically prove the paranormal with this equipment? Have we even changed any minds?

It has been my experience that the people who could actually advance the field are more worried about their marketability then true advancement. Who can blame them right? There were only a handful of people who were making a living in paranormal research just four years ago. Now when you have what could be a breakthrough product or idea you can join the paranormal “circus” of event management groups and make the speaking circuits.

Much of the equipment we use can not provide a scientific explanation for paranormal phenomena. The good news is that there are people out there that are working on software and other equipment that will attempt to do it. Since R&D on these advancements are usually absorbed by the inventors we have to expect the costs to be high. The costs usually limit availability to only a handful of investigators causing slow advancement.

All of this leads to the question, how do we get real advancement throughout the paranormal community? What are your thoughts?

Full Article | Source: www.digitaljournal.com

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