Selecting the right equipment for the right job is key to any endeavor, whether it be driving a nail, trying to figure out if there’s fish in the water below the boat you’re in, or trying to establish any truth to the paranormal when it comes to the dogma or simply what is. You certainly wouldn’t play baseball by using a golf club, and you certainly won’t find the temperature of the air by using a non-contact IR thermometer or thermal imaging camera.

So the first thing that must be done is to figure out what you are trying to establish. In this case we are going to look at magnetic fields and test the dogma of whether or not magnetic fields are related to paranormal experiences. Typically I would stress the need to shield from RF propagation (Radio Waves), but in this case it is not necessary since we are simply asking the question, “Do magnetic fields relate to paranormal experiences?” And since we want to study the environment in the conditions that occur during the reported events, shielding would actually be detrimental in this case since it would screen out a source that is there when past reports were made. Now if we collect data that suggest this is the case and we want to get to the bottom of what type of magnetic field influences our test then we would need to start screening out man made influences. But for new we want to see if there is a correlation and to screen any magnetic influence would be counter productive at this time.

In our case we need a way to measure magnetic fields. Many investigators will suggest various devices to measure EMF (varying magnetic fields), but in our case we are looking at magnetic fields as a whole; both varying and static. In this case an EMF detector is worthless since it does not measure static magnetic fields. In our case we need a magnetometer. This will not only record varying magnetic fields (EMF) but natural or static fields as well. To do so, we could choose from a number of commercial products available on the market, but the cost would be huge since we need more than one meter. In our case we will be using a custom design and build (schematics to follow soon).

Cost is most often the issue when it comes to equipment, and is often why investigators are often inadequately equipped to do much in the way of providing meaningful data. In the case of EMF, investigators often have a meter or two, and usually a single pole/field meter at that. The main reason for this is cost, though several Para-TV shows have also made one of the worst meters on the market the most popular: the K-II.

While we’ll save the rest of this discussion for another article, the point with what has been discussed is to show how to go about selecting equipment, and that you don’t want to simply buy a piece of equipment because that is what everyone else is using, or you just want to play around with it. Equipment selection should be based upon what you plan to achieve with the equipment. In the case we discuss above the plan is to establish whether or not magnetic fields have anything to do with paranormal experiences. Notice how we don’t simply grab an EMF detector and rush to our chosen location and simply wave it around looking for spikes in EMF that could be caused by a number of sources. We actually look at what we want to prove/disprove and examine equipment to suite our needs.

Let’s look at another topic real quick, just to re-enforce this concept. Let’s say we want to examine the concept of cold spots. First off, we’ll need to measure air temperature since that’s what we want to examine. To do this we first look at non-contact surface thermometers, but in doing so we find out that they are not capable of measuring air temperature and can only measure the temperature of solid object. Well, that’s not going to help us out one bit. We want to measure air temperature. So, we look at digital thermometers that employ a fast acting thermal couple and find that it will suit our needs as it will measure air temperature and it can provide a relatively quick response in doing so. We could have gone on with a trend that I hope is dying and gone with the crowd and bought the non-contact IR thermometer, which would have been a total waste of money if our goal is to measure air temperature, but since we first examined the capabilities of those devices we found that they were in-adequate and found a device that would perform as our needs dictated. By doing so we not only kept from wasting money on equipment that didn’t suit our needs, but we also found the right equipment to do the job.