Not everything is paranormal.

I joined a page on Facebook….it is supposed to be about people needing help of a paranormal team. I have one of those…a paranormal team…so I joined. WOW.

It is scary how many people think that they are experts on the paranormal and their photo is showing…demons, ghosts, unusual animals, you name it. It is pure Pareidolia. Our brains are hardwired to look for “sense” in what we see.We can’t help it.  Many of us have sat outside and looked at the clouds and said “that one looks like an elephant” or ” I see an alligator”. That is us playing with our mind’s ability to “see things”.

When we look at the world and something seems off, whether it is perspective, light, or an optical illusion, it catches our attention and makes us take a second look. How many times have you or someone you know said something along the lines of ” I thought that was a cat on the chair, it’s Bob’s winter hat”.
We do it all the time.

We need to make sense out of what we are seeing, it is a survival instinct that we don’t need as much as we used to when we lived in caves, but it is neuroscience. It is real.

Today the paranormal is HOT HOT HOT. It used to be if you talked about ghosts or hearing things, you were nuts. Today it is almost the national past time (sorry baseball). Cameras do things on their own, especially the newer , more sophisticated automatics. They can create abnormalities, and they can “see” much better than their predecessors, bringing out things that we didn’t see before (especially when it pertains to light). We are now seeing things that were always there, but we couldn’t see them before. They must be paranormal! No, they must not be…..paranormal photographic evidence is the hardest to achieve (audio being the easiest). Cell phones are great at the number of pixels, but that ends it. They are terrible for taking “authentic” photos.

The internet is not only full of pareidolia examples, but fakes. It is so hard to weed out the one in a thousand these days. Everyone wants to have the paranormal photo, even if it isn’t really a paranormal photo, they will make it one , by imagination or trickery.

I have learned a lot on the past few years about what cameras will do. I can tell you that a flash is your worst enemy. Flash creates false photos. When the light is just right, light rain, taken with a flash camera, can look like little balls of fire coming up out of the earth (rain bounces when it hits the ground). The photos look cool, but are not paranormal in any way. Once you see the way light reacts, and duplicate it, you understand what cameras can do. Pareidolia is a whole other issue.

One thing to know is that if you have to point it out, it probably isn’t paranormal. When others say they don’t see anything, it isn’t because they are blind or idiots, it is because they are looking at it critically, which allows them to control how the mind is reacting to some extent.

The worst thing you can do besides take a flash photo, is take one in a mirror or other reflective surface. Never take a photo through a window, in a mirror, or shiny metal surface, you will see all kinds of things that aren’t paranormal, including yourself. We will never use a photo taken in such circumstances as they are too open to not only not being real, but not being provable.

People mention orbs all the time. First of all, we don’t even know if “real” orbs are paranormal, it is just energy. Some may be related to ghostly activity, some may not. It may be a moment when we see normal science . Energy doing its’ thing, remember, cameras see better these days. I have NEVER had an orb guarantee paranormal events are happening. I will see a thousand photos of dust, pollen, pet dander, moisture, or bugs before I see an honest to goodness orb. They are rare, not as rare as a full body apparition, but rare. We don’t call those streaks of light orbs, we call them “light anomalies”. Light anomalies just means, the light is doing something abnormal. The abnormal reaction can be to normal things…including your camera flash. Movement of the light is important in determining what it  is, when it turns at 90 degree angles it is more likely paranormal.

Orbs don’t mean there is a haunting, they don’t mean anything, so most paranormal investigators disregard orbs altogether. Lay people get excited over them , real investigators ignore them. There are much better ways of showing a paranormal event, like an investigator picking up a voice on a recorder when the investigator right next to them does not.

When you have a real paranormal investigating team checking things out for you , they will investigate. That means, they try to find out alternative reasons, they try to recreate it, they try to find an answer, when there is not a “normal” answer, they say it is paraNORMAL, or above the norm. Now, paranormal, means above the normal, beyond what you will normally see, that does NOT mean it is a ghost. It means it is UNUSUAL.

I have lived in two haunted houses, have experience , training and life events galore, and I am so skeptical about most of what I see because I know what the real deal looks like, sounds like; what cameras can and can’t do; what other explanations there are; I know what pareidolia is…..

Not everything is paranormal. When someone says it is not….don’t be disappointed, and certainly don’t be hostile, instead try to capture some other evidence. Now, that being said…NEVER do investigations where you live, in your own home. NEVER take out a recorder and ask if someone is there. Bring in someone to do that, and who will leave and take the communication device with them. When you investigate in your own home the level of activity increases. Some have thought that would be fun, but they thought that for a very short time, then they call in people to stop the activity. Sometimes people, not homes, become haunted and you really don’t want to be that person .

Not everything is paranormal. When you have to imagine or create an image like you do with clouds, it isn’t there. When you have to try to see it, it isn’t there. It is just normal camera reaction 99% of the time.

Happy investigating!

(C) 2015 Dr R M Wolf. May not be used, copied or reproduced without priior written permission.