An Experiment in Psychological Contamination

A few years back I became curious about how investigators reacted during an investigation based upon what they had heard about a location.  Where investigators who had foreknowledge of a location more likely to experience something?  What would happen if they didn’t have any input beforehand?  These questions we so intriguing that I decided to conduct an experiment to see if a simple story could influence an investigators perception and result in them experiencing things that simply didn’t exist.

First thing to understand is that this investigation is but a single data point, but after investigating for decades and comparing some experiences in the past with what this experiment bared out I have to say that the data that I have seems support this single data point.  One thing that would be nice is if we could get several groups to perform similar experiments and compare notes.  Hopefully in the near future I’ll be able to conduct this experiment again, and do it repetitively with several groups of people.

The Hypothesis

Telling investigators what to expect will often cause them to perceive those expectations.

The test

The test was comprised of taking two teams to a location that had no reports of paranormal activity, and had no deaths occur at the location.  Team 1 would be told nothing more than they were there to investigate to see if they experienced anything unusual or that could be considered paranormal.  Team 2 was fed a somewhat elaborate story of the death of a little girl, some shadow beings, and was supposedly supported by locals as being true.  Each team would visit the location at different times and then the results of each teams reports would be compared.

The Location

The house that was chosen was one that I could be sure of the history. Fortunately I had a friend who’s grandparents had a small farm that they sold in pieces to their children and grandchildren.  The original farmhouse was built by his grandparents, nobody had ever died in the house or on the property, and never was there mention of a ghost haunting the place, even after his grandparents died.

The house was a little creepy looking because of years of neglect and it not being lived in, not to mention the architectural style just gave it a little bit of a creepy feel with the large front porch and Victorian influence.  It also had a couple of windows which were boarded up with plywood, and the maple trees that towered next to it had no leaves on them, which had since fallen all around the place giving it that much more ‘creepy’ appeal.

Information told to team 1

Team one was told nothing more than we were there to see what we discovered, and that we were there on request to see what we would discover.

Information told to team 2

Team 2 was fed a much more elaborate series of stories.  They were first told about the tragic death of a little girl in a blue dress who was killed by a tree branch as she ran home one day during a storm.  Her favorite place was to play in the yard under the trees, and she had been seen by several teens who were seeking thrills and adventures, as well as people who had been driving down the highway out front of the house.  There were also tales told about how the man had become one of those old men who chased kids from his property with a shotgun, and after his death would roam the house.  Many witnesses had seen his shadowy figure, mostly upstairs were he was reported to move from room to room, peering out the windows, searching for hooligans trespassing on his property.  To help cement the idea that this was a local haunted location that the teens frequented, the team was told that they needed to be careful when entering the place as we may find teens trespassing in the house and that we may need to chase them off.

The Results

Team 1

Team one found nothing of interest, even after I had twice mentioned seeing a shadow upstairs.  None of the investigators experience anything and even though there were a couple of sounds buried in the background noise on the cassette recorder we were using for EVPs, they were quickly shot down as nothing.  The conclusion they reached was the place showed no signs of paranormal activity.

Team 2

The results from team 2 were quite different.  While I won’t go into great detail, I will mention the highlights.

Team 2 wasn’t experiencing anything for a good portion of the beginning of the investigation, but that quickly changed when an investigator checked his watch with a blue, LED flashlight, that illuminated his shirt and reflected off of one of the windows.  This was immediately interpreted as the spirit of the little girl running around outside.  Seeing this the investigation moved outside where 2 of the 3 investigators began seeing shadows moving in the upstairs windows.  Turns out what they were seeing was a variance in light from the clouds above that was reflecting off the glass in the windows above.  Moving back inside and upstairs, just about every sound was interpreted as paranormal, and a few EVPs that were similar to team 1′s were interpreted as “leave” and “go”.  The final conclusion was that there was paranormal activity and the reports of a haunting were true on both accounts.

Summary

While this is a single data point, I have seen similar events on other investigations where investigators let their imagination get the better of them as it seemed pretty apparent that the story of the location had influenced their interpretation of events.  Because of this experiment and other data supporting it, I would say the last thing a lead investigator would want to do is to tell his team what they may expect to find.  Often is the case where investigators, regardless of how well they are trained, will poorly interpret events because their subconscious mind influences their conscious decisions.  Once that happens it tends to go downhill from there as the adrenaline kicks in and emotion begin to run high.