Entries Tagged 'Couch’s Corner' ↓

What do we want? Such a loaded question. As we all walk in the field we love so much, the answer seems pretty obvious. We all want to experience something or enhance our gifts. We want proof that something is out there and we aren’t just walking around empty rooms with expensive equipment.

So, if experiences are what we want, the follow up question should be “How do we have them?” That part is simple I believe. Just keep doing what you’re doing. Let me explain…

A few years ago, I worked with a parapsychologist and our group would have debates about the paranormal. I know riveting stuff, but it is how you kill the time. His belief was that we should take people to places that we know aren’t haunted and let people have an investigation there. His thinking was that people who felt things at these places could be outed and the rest could learn what an “unhaunted” place felt like. I would disagree. I think you would embarrass the people you were trying to teach and scare them off for good. I also know for a fact that nobody shows you how good of a fisherman they are by taking you to an empty lake and wasting your day. To me, you take them to a place you know is haunted and let them begin the process of sorting out their feelings and begin the long process of collecting their evidence. I also found thinking like this to be very elitist. For our field to be taken seriously, we need to be more mainstream and we can’t do that by destroying interest in it.

So, step one to having experiences is going where the action is and two is a natural result of this. You see, all of us have psychic ability, just some of us are further along than others. The rest of us have to rely on just getting noticed. I have a theory that I call “The Lighted House Theory”. Late one night, you are driving down a dark road and you don’t have your cell phone. Your car brakes down and you need help. Now before you are three houses. House #1 has no lights on at all. It is pitch black. House #2 has a tv on. You can see it through the window. Maybe upstairs, a lamp is on in a bedroom. House #3 has all the lights on. Music is playing and it is lit up like the Fourth of July. Which house would you be drawn to for help? Unless you have a death wish, you would avoid #1. Who knows who lives there. #2 may do in a pinch but #3 is where 98% of us would make a beeline for. Why? All the lights are on and that means someone will be there to help.

In the spirit world this holds true too. Psychics and mediums have their lights on brighter than the rest of us. “Ghosts” are drawn to them. Why? Because someone will be there to listen. Some of us are House #1 and we don’t want to believe or are too afraid. Who would be drawn to us? Most of us are House #2. We just need to turn on more lights. How do we do this? By going to more haunted places and having more investigations. I really believe the more you look for them, the more they see you. This process helps us turn on more lights and in return will help you have more experiences. See how I tied it all up there?

Ray Couch
www.SouthernGhosts.com

If you have questions or ideas for upcoming articles, please email us at southernghosts@bellsouth.net.

I’ve been busy recently. Real, real busy and a huge part of that has been writing and looking at evidence on the internet. There is a growing trend that has started to disturb me. That trend is “fake” evidence.

Now “fake” is in quotes because I don’t think the intention is always to be a hoax. I think some people actually feel that what they are posting is real. Usually this evidence is the result of lazy investigators. The rest of this “fake” evidence is dickhead hoaxers. Why would people fake evidence? Fame my friends.

As paranormal tv shows become more and more popular and as we share info online at record paces, regular people are quickly becoming stars. Much like Kim Kardashian, all you need to become famous is a video and the internet. And every day, more and more people crave this fame. They put a video online and sit back and watch the hits, but what to do when you don’t have anything web worthy? Easy, you just make it up. With new features on many cell phones or internet applications, you can add a ghost to any picture. I have already seen several websites with these type of pictures posted on their sites.

Video is even better at being faked. In the UK, for some reason, ghost videos are being faked weekly. As “Most Haunted” became a huge hit, these videos began to spring up all the time. Some are girls with cell phone cameras having friends hide off camera and come out in costume. This video has over two million hits.

Another is the video of a guy’s kitchen in the midst of a poltergeist outbreak. As pots and pans flip around on camera, you begin to feel it is too perfect. Several other groups have torn this video apart. They say there is evidence of someone using green screen technology to fake this video. I actually agree with them. Something just seems wrong with this video and the story of why the video was taken doesn’t add up. One key point is with everything flying around, the precious camera is never touched or damaged in any way.

There are several others, some include tricky editing, ghosts from a hundred years ago caught on film wearing new tennis shoes and even special effects added to normal videos. This all damages our credibility as investigators. We have to remain vigilant and try to stay on top of all these new technologies and cons.

Of course, we also sometimes screw ourselves. We catch a video or evp that we can’t explain and so we really don’t try. I would like to give you a few tips to look for and just bring your attention to a couple of other points.

Things to look for:

–When you take a video or picture, you will focus on a point or person and make them the central piece of your picture. When someone gives you a video and the central figure is off to the side but a ghost pops up in the central point, you should smell the faint whiff of bs.
–When the evidence seems too good to be true, it always is. 99.9% of all ghost photos are caught by accident.
–Beware when the people hand you edited video. If they do edit it first, ask for the original. What they edit out can speak volumes about their evidence.
–Don’t get involved with people who have evidence and seem to want to be famous. Every real piece of evidence I have ever been given, has been by someone who actually seems confused or even shy about what they have experienced.

A quick tip:

When we do evps in groups, we always remember our questions, we never remember our spontaneous outbursts. I was involved in an investigation of a home in Kissimmee, Fl with Central Florida Paranormal. Tim had caught something on his digital recorder after he asked a question. We played the tape, but we all had problems with it. It sounded too good. Luckily, Tim had video recorded his evp session too. This was the key in breaking the case. Tim remembered asking a question, but he didn’t remember making an off the cuff remark to the home owner shortly after that. The video proved that he had and so the evidence had to be discounted. We should get into the habit of video recording all evp sessions. That way, there won’t be any doubts.

I know nothing hurts worse than having your excitement dashed against the rocks of reality, but as soon as you post “fake” evidence, you destroy your credibility. I have always said, the trust that is placed in us is very precious. Once we damage that trust, it will never be completely recovered. So, if there is ever a doubt about your evidence, you really have two options. Don’t post the evidence or post it and explain the doubts you have.

Thanks for reading and I will be back soon.
Ray Couch
www.SouthernGhosts.com

If you have questions or ideas for upcoming articles, please email us at southernghosts@bellsouth.net.

There is a question I get asked quite a bit. At some point, someone will find out what I do and ask “What do you think about that show _________?” Insert any of the “ghost” shows here. It really doesn’t matter. What they are really asking is “Is ________ full of crap or is it real?” That question is a lot more interesting and harder to answer.

I will answer that for you here today with a few glimpses into the past. I have also realized that it will take two parts to answer this correctly, so part two is coming in a couple of weeks.

When I was younger, I would watch Mark Nesbitt’s amazing “Ghosts of Gettysburg” specials on the History Channel. I loved this show and it gave me some great insight into the ghosts which have spun out of this tragic war.

My other favorite ghost shows were the ghost segments on “Unsolved Mysteries” and “In Search Of”. Both of these shows helped me realize just how strange and wonderful our world really was.

Once again, all of these shows were more overviews of a particular haunting and focused more on the ghost stories than the investigations of those hauntings. (There was a reason for that.) These shows made me want to do what I do and take groups into these haunted buildings and let them try to capture some evidence that a building or location is actually haunted.

Fast forward to now. I have been asked to be on several shows. This isn’t particularly a pat on the back. If you stay in this field for more than a year, you will probably be approached too. I have turned almost all of them down and the few I have done is because someone I know asked me to be involved as a favor.

You are probably asking “Why?” Because almost all of them want to focus on the negative aspects of a haunting. I have been involved in some cases that exposed something very dark or “evil”, but for the majority of my cases, the “ghosts” seem to be more confused than anything else.

Yet, the producers will always say, “We just want to really put a scare in the viewers.” This isn’t true to what I have witnessed, so I don’t feel comfortable doing it.

When I was a kid, a local tv newsman came to our school. A girl in my class told him she wanted to be a reporter too and he gave her some advice. To this day, it is the most honest advice I have ever heard about the news. He said,”You have to be change your thinking if you want to be a reporter. It never rains; it pours. There is never a fire; it is always an inferno. Every problem is an epidemic. You have to be ready to up the drama to draw an audience.” This is a good description of these tv shows now. They focus on the worst case and they have to play up the drama.

The truth is an investigation can be very boring. You sit in a dark room with or without equipment running, and you hope you see, hear, smell or feel something. Most nights, you go home empty handed. This won’t do for a good tv show. So, they have to make a huge deal about every sound or feeling. The investigators aren’t lying, they are just being dramatic and trying to give you a good show.

As they say on tv, To be continued…..