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Before we begin our crash course on ghost hunting at the Ghosts of the Prairie web page, let’s stop for a moment and build a foundation for the things to come and allow me to post a few notes about how to deal with the evidence that we are trying to collect. I can’t make it clear enough how important it is to be very careful with the evidence that you have... evidence which you claim to be genuine. Can you back up that claim? You had better be able to!

I have never seen the logic behind collecting paranormal evidence, only to present that evidence to ghost enthusiasts and other researchers only. What does this prove? This is like smiling in the dark.... it feels really good to you, but no one else knows you are doing it! The idea behind doing research is to try and collect evidence that might sway the mind of a non-believer... how can we do this if we never take a chance and allow someone to try and debunk the evidence that we have? If we are so sure the evidence we have is genuine, then we should have no problem with presenting it to someone besides other ghost hunters!

But how do we present that evidence and how can we be sure that it is real? That’s where being cautious with your evidence and your claims of authenticity come into play. In a nutshell, I never claim that evidence is genuine unless I am sure that it is!
Unfortunately, many other people do not feel that way....

Over the several years, there has been a surge of new interest in the paranormal. There have been many new ghost hunters and research groups which have surfaced. I have seen literally dozens of ghosts hunters, groups and web pages appear in the last year.... only to see these same people fade away and lose interest. On the positive side, this new wave of interest has brought a lot of energetic and hard-working researchers to the field.

Unfortunately, there have been a lot of other researchers who have not been so hard-working and who are out there presenting evidence that is questionable (at best) to the general public. I think we are all aware of the kind of damage this does to legitimate researchers.   These pseudo-ghost hunters are the people who public assumes must be representative of the entire paranormal community. They mostly consist of hobbyists who are too lazy to do proper research, have never heard of confidentiality in private cases, are too far out there with their metaphysical theories to recall what planet they are on, or are too misguided or ill-informed to understand that camera straps in photos are not ghosts.

Don’t get me wrong.... some of these folks are nice people and even mean well, so I am not here to point fingers at anyone. I don’t have all the answers. As you will probably hear me say many times, there are no such things as experts when it comes to the paranormal... no matter what people say or who claims to be one. My goal here is to try and pass on to you the information that I have gathered in my own experience as a ghost hunter and for you to adapt that information to work for you.... and hopefully it might, in some small way, help to keep you from making the mistakes that some of the previously mentioned "ghost hunters" are making.

In my day, I have been accused of being many things, but one of the worst was probably that I was a "skeptic". Of course, this was in reference to my failure to accept every piece of evidence and every photo that I saw as genuine, daring to point out natural causes for many of the "anomalies" I saw.

First of all, I am a skeptic... but in the truest sense of the word. A skeptic, by definition, is a person who keeps an open mind about everything. Unfortunately, the true definition has been corrupted over the years to mean someone who is close-minded to everything. I am not this sort of skeptic... I am a believer in ghosts although I do not believe every story that is told to me. I believe in haunted houses... although I will rule out every natural cause for a haunting before believing that a ghost is causing the activity. I do not believe that ghosts are metaphysical creatures... I believe that ghosts and the paranormal are a natural part of our planet... but are something that we do not understand yet.

For these things, I am considered an enemy to some, but I am yet to find fault in believing through evidence. That is what I am searching for... evidence of ghosts and spirits.. not weird theories and mumbo-jumbo.

Regardless of how we go about it, I believe that most of you who are bothering to read this all want the same thing... to try and obtain the most authentic evidence of the paranormal possible.   People do make mistakes and even the best researchers are often fooled into believing that an erroneous photos is real. Sometimes our imagination, and our need to believe, is so strong that they override our logic. That is something that we must be careful of because wanting something to be does not necessarily make it so.

I have seen literally hundreds of photos that supposedly show ghosts and spirit energy which do not. These photos can severely damage the credibility of photos that are genuine and I urge all of you to look at your photos carefully before presenting them to the public. I certainly don’t claim to be perfect.... everyone makes mistakes, but we must be careful about presenting something that we are not sure about as the real thing.

I suppose that the point that I am trying to make here is a cautionary one. I believe paranormal research is starting to make a rebound in plausibility with the general public. I think the public is beginning to see the nuts and fruit cakes for what they really are... the dwindling few and not the representatives for ghost hunters everywhere. What the rest of us can do is to make a concerted effort to display the best information and evidence that we can. So what if we are criticized for being too cautious? It is better to be too careful than to make foolish mistakes which destroy the precious credibility that we so desperately need in this field.

If you get nothing else out of this short introductory section, then remember this... always be careful with the evidence that you collect. If you plan to display it to the public as genuine, then do everything that you can to make sure that it really is. Your career as a ghost hunter may depend on it!

© Copyright 2004 by Troy Taylor. All Rights Reserved.

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