This week in Gizmos and Gadgets: Investigative equipment, can you havetoo much? I’ve often been asked, as I’m sure many others can relate, “whatdo I NEED to get started in paranormal investigations?” For most the answeris simple, depending on what your primary area of interest may be. For oth-ers, myself included, who have an affinity for shiny new toys that go ping,there are a number of places to purchase the “newest, best and most tech-nologically advanced paranormal equipment.” Note the quotations; I do thisfor a reason. Keeping in mind that paranormal investigation is still a theo-retical science, in particular, my primary area of research is forensic para-psychology. Even though ParaNexus established the
CIPRIS InternationalStandards
which is freely available on ParaNexus.org, each organization has aslightly different way of conducting business. There is also no specific ghostdetection equipment, despite all the really cool looking lighted boxes that gobeep and or buzz at appropriate moments. Theories abound on what a spiritdoes and does not do upon manifestation and for each there seems to be anew technology that shows up on the market and on television to detect thistheory.Can you have too much? In my humble opinion, yes! While it may lookawesome to roll into an investigation with truckloads of “scientific equip-ment,” realistically, how important is half the stuff? I’ve had several experi-ences where one piece of equipment will cause false positives in one or sev-eral other pieces of equipment. Practical? Not particularly. Frustrating? Abso-lutely! There is also the consideration of evidence review. A lot of team’s aresmall, have full time jobs, and families so evidence review can be tenuous atbest. The more data logging technology you have the more time is spent onreview for that “holy grail” that we all seek.Paranormal investigation is becoming more of an accepted science, espe-cially as of late, so technology
is
advancing, which is the purpose of Gizmosand Gadgets, however, one must use caution when browsing through theworld of paranormal equipment. Research into technology is almost as impor-tant as our own personal research so as not to get bilked with another prettylooking box full of LED lights and buzzers. Others may argue (and that is theirright), “but, I’m for keeping it simple and tangible: audio and video record-ers; still photography; paper and pen, etc.” To me this also eliminates theamount of “theory” that I have to explain to a client which may cloud thevalidity or credibility of any real evidence. This is one man’s opinion only andthe purpose is to spark additional discussion, (
insert disclaimer: the opinionexpressed in the preceding article are those of the author, yadda, yadda,yadda...
), so let’s hear what everyone else thinks. Perhaps, I should changemy primary focus to Ufology; things seem so much simpler there….
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