One thing I’ve seen bandied about lately is the use of personal experiences as evidence in a paranormal investigation. Many say that something must have happened because a person witnessed it. But that is a false idea. Looking at the fallibility of human perception can indeed show that there is a good chance that they may have witnessed an event that was totally fabricated by their mind, especially when it involves poor lighting, senses being heightened by adrenaline, as well as psychological contamination.

With human senses, especially concerning vision in low light situations, the possibility of seeing a “shadow person” aren’t that remote at all. In fact, I have seen several cases where someone reports seeing a “shadow person” yet the video evidence collected from a IR camera does not support their report, and actually shows that nothing was there. This can only lead to a few conclusions: A) The person’s eyes played tricks on them, or B) The person’s mind played tricks on them, or C) The event was only detectable by some unknown interface with the human mind.

Now all three of the above examples are possible, but without knowing which one then how can it be used as evidence? Remember, evidence needs to demonstrate whatever the claim is and needs to be a fact. In this case let’s say the cause is ‘A’, the person’s eyes played tricks on them, but our investigator assumes the event is caused by ‘C’. As can be seen in this example, including that personal experience, along with the investigators conclusion, it has steered our conclusion in the wrong direction.

Another problem is a person’s recollection of what they thought happened. A prime example of this is from episode 315 of the TV show “Ghost Hunters”. In that episode, one of the reason’s they used to lay claim that the image of the statuette was paranormal was because of Steve’s recollection and reasoning of how he got up off the couch. But for anyone who’s seen the clip when he explains this will quickly see that his accounts of his arm movement when he gets off of the couch are the opposite of what he recalls.

There is still another issue with personal experiences, and that is they cannot not be reviewed like video evidence can. Currently there is no way to retrieve a memory with technology, and even then with how memories can change over time there is now way to be sure that what would be recalled would be accurate.

What all this boils down to is the fallibility of people. People are very fallible whether intentional or not, and because of that fallibility they cannot be used as a source of credible, verifiable evidence. While personal experiences may be good to note for reasons to investigate a site, they cannot be used to support the idea that the paranormal exists.

I have heard that there are investigators who still believe that the K-II Safe Range EMF Detector, is still a worth while piece of equipment.  While I can understand why an investigator may use this to detect man made EMF, and if it’s their only piece of equipment, but only then.  If a better meter is available, it should be used because of the very benefits laid out in the article: K-II Safe Range EMF Detector.

Now some will say “We’re just experimenting with it”, I ask “To what purpose?”  If it’s for “spirit communication”, any serious and professional investigator would dismiss all the results because of the random spikes the unit receives.  Any investigator worth their salt would know that data collected from this device is useless, regardless of coincidence.  Coincidental data is subjective, and subjective evidence does not provide measureable results, therefore, cannot be used to provide logical, specific conclusions.

On the otherhand, if you want a good party gimmick, or you wish to fool anyone who does not understand the ease with which this device can be manipulated, then pull out one of these things and have fun.  The only other use I can think of is if you wish to fool the audience of a television show, where the flashy lights mesmorize the masses.  It’s always amazed me how people love those little LED lights, and how those lights seem to lead them to believe a device is “high tech”, when in all actuality, what it really says is the device is cheap, especially if those little lights are used to display a numerical readout.  Having been in the electronic business for 30 years, I can tell you with absolute certainty that the reason a device such as the K-II uses 5 LEDs, instead of an LCD readout is because of cutting corners on cost of the unit.

One thing that I see happening with experimenting with this device is that investigators are wasting research time and that by doing so they may miss the opportunity to collect some valuable data.  There is also the risk that they will be lead down a path of irrational logic that does nothing to help advance paranormal research, and more than likely will result in taking the field backwards, especially if the are part of a larger organization that influences many other groups.

Other equipment that I’ve seen used is the Thermal Imaging Camera.  This too has become an instrument employed by the paranormal TV shows, and has been represented in a way that is far from scientific.  It’s primary use on TV is to get the best anomalous result as possible so the viewer has no idea what they are truly seeing.  And in the case of one TV show, it has been used to pass off a thermal reflection as the apparition of a Civil War Era soldier.  Because of how they have the cameras settings adjusted, the device produces some very anomalous displays.  If they wanted to really see something with the device they would first learn how to adjust those settings to get clearer images, which would help rule out normal objects and show that much of what is captured is nothing more than people, reflections for things such as lights, and things suchs as rodents.  But that would take away the ‘wow’ factor from the show, so I doubt the viewers will ever see anything along those lines.

One thing I urge investigators to do is before considering any piece of equipment that will be used in investigating, is to take the time to research the device, the physics behind the device, and learn how to properly setup the device to collect the clearest and most concise data that can be gathered.  If an investigator does not know these things about devices that they are using then how can they honestly interpret data?