I sit here at my hotel room at the Hawthorn in Dayton, Ohio late in the evening on Saturday, August 21st. Today I was a speaker at the second annual Ohio Paranormal Convention here in Dayton alongside John Sabol, the Ghost Excavator and many time guest of the ParaNexus Universe. I noticed a common theme this year at the convention that was touched by only a few in attendance last year; the culture of our field and its influence by the television shows and the internet.

In John's half of our joint presentation he made several comments about how our field has been negatively influenced by television and how our field lacks true direction by performing horizontal investigations instead of connecting with hauntings/apparitions through their culture (instead of through our 21st century technology). I also made many statements that our field was going in circles with the blind leading the blind. Two television shows were represented by guests in attendance at the convention; Patrick Burns from "Haunting Evidence" and Scott Temperman of Ghost Hunters International. One would think that these guys would command a lot of "star power" and influence from the audience, not so. While the speakers at the event seem to all have a special respect for each other (they are all class acts to me, yes, even Patrick Burns was friendly and down to Earth) the audience did not view these "stars" in as positive of a light that I had expected. They too seemingly are fed up with the public perception of our field and the silly belief systems handed down by those who have defined our culture for the last six years. Three other speakers made many comments (or plan to on Sunday) about the culture of our field as well as the negative influence and direction of it.

On Halloween of 2009 I was a speaker at the Northeast Ohio Paranormal Convention. This was a highly successful (packed house) event despite being on a holiday Saturday. I stuck my neck out with a presentation titled "The Power of Belief in Paranormal Investigation". This presentation challenged a lot of the basic belief systems held by ghost hunters/paranormal investigators. The power of the full/new moon, geomagnetic activity, solar storms, etc. having an effect on ghosts, Ouija Boards being evil, investigating in the dark, and other pieces of our culture that are commonly accepted as "just the way we do things around here".

My original intent was to do this presentation for the folks at Dayton, but deciding to work with John Sabol and developing a subsequent joint presentation with him changed this direction. I decided, however, to take this presentation and turn it into a short video production that I would show at my table through my lap top and projector along with the short videos I have created for some of my team's investigations. While the Ohio Paranormal Convention is technically only half way over at this point in time, I want to share that video presentation here on ParaNexus. While it took several weeks to put together the presentation, I put this video together in just a few short hours: