On Spectres and Schedules
I feel like I don’t have much of an opportunity to come and talk to you about the website and about the show. It’s a fine line, I think, between talking about it as much as I’d like to and talking about it way too frequently. That’s a line that I’ve crossed more than I’d like to admit in every previous incarnation of this website. Inevitably, I’d end up only showing up once or twice a month to talk about changes that I wanted to implement but would never get around to actually undertaking.
As I always seem to say, those times are gone.
I started to write this whole thing about how previous incarnations of the site always devolved into little more than glorified contact pages, and how things are different now, but I don’t need to tell you all of that again. Besides, that has very little to do with today’s blog post.
I feel like I’m in a new chapter of my life. I’ve been in this chapter for a year or two now and, to be frank, I’m enjoying it, I’ve got a lot going my way. I’m making the sorts of changes and going down the kinds of paths that I’ve always dreamed I would. Making all of this (my ghost stuff as I call it to friends) a reality has been incredible. This group, this community, this website — it all just keeps growing and I can’t wait to see just how far I can take it!
Someone asked me once if, in doing all of this, I was going through something of an attempt to emulate Zak Bagans and his show Ghost Adventures. At the time, I’d thought for a while about how I should respond and eventually came up with a fairly well thought out and long winded answer that began with the words, “Yes and no” (this answer of mine was so long winded that I can’t remember any more of it than that opening phrase with accuracy).
If they’d waited about a year I’d be glad to shorten that response down to just the word “No”.
Zak, for all his initial good intentions, has done irreparable damage to this particular field. In the article that I had originally slated for today (that this one you’re reading has now replaced), I go on for a bit about how we, as researchers, shouldn’t be afraid to throw a little bit of “woo” and “anti-scientific thought” into the mix every now and then. That exact balance, just like the balance I fight hard to maintain when it comes to update related content here, is a very hard one to find. There’s absolutely something to personal experiences — those unquantifiable encounters that can’t be captured in data. Naming every thing a demon, pretending to black out, and nearly coming to blows with your so-called friends does not fit that bill.
Ghosts just can’t be caught in a bottle.
We can’t schedule this kind of stuff.
It happens when it happens, and if it doesn’t, oh well. Like I say to my co-investigators: worst comes to worst, we’ll just get to hang out in a creepy house for a few hours.
The paranormal doesn’t really behave just how we want it to. Neither do we.
I’ve tried endlessly, it seems, to go and film this one episode in particular (the one that was mentioned in the scrolling bar in the bottom a couple of weeks ago) but it just never happens. It feels like every time that we pick a day and get all prepped and ready something always comes up. This most recent attempt, I ended up coming down with covid.
It’s nobody’s fault that this keeps happening. This is just how it goes sometimes.
Through waiting to film this one, I’ve gotten to thinking about something: did I lose interest in ghost hunting?
It’s a crazy thought, isn’t it, a ghost hunter that doesn’t want to go on ghost hunts? I think it started last summer when we had that run in with the apparent UFO. A lot of what I thought about the paranormal ended up being challenged in that encounter and the days that followed. In short, it was a very eye opening kind of thing for me. In the process, though, I found that I no longer wanted to do our ghost hunts that we’d scheduled for the show. It became less about experiencing something and enjoying all those creepy nights in the dark and more about finding out just how far we could push that mental experiment from the UFO thing.
You can really see it in that first ghost hunt that we did after the UFO encounter. I’m, in the footage, noticeably disinterested at one point. If it wasn’t working, and if we weren’t seeing anything right away, I suddenly found myself no longer having fun. Honestly, I’m disappointed in myself for that.
It is what it is, though.
The point of this particular article, I think, is that I’m trying to get back to basics. I’m wanting to do more classic ghost hunting without getting caught up in those pitfalls that the Zak Bagans’ of the world tend to find themselves in (and tend to lead new investigators in to). Problem is it’s been a long time since I’ve had a good lead on one. I’m asking for help then.
If you need our help figuring something out.
If you know someone who has a haunted house.
If you just want your haunting featured on the show.
Email me. Call me. Leave a message on the site.
Here’s our contact page, please check it out and get back to me.
I hope that doesn’t come off too desperate.
Stay weird! -Scott