Many people in the paranormal field may be shocked when I state that ghosts do not exist. They do not exist merely because science has yet to accept them as part of the scientific realm. While they are acknowledged as part of the human experience we have been unable to verify them as a “real” phenomenon. So what will it take to prove once and for all that they are real?

When one ponders the question of “what will the best evidence of ghosts be?” a few things quickly come to mind. We tend to think immediately of our experiences and everyday attempts to find the answer to “are ghosts real?” Would that evidence be an end-all be-all photograph of a familiar former living person? Might it be an EVP that sends a specific message from the other side? Or would...

On September 19, 1936, two photographers were finishing up a series of photos for a magazine when one of them suddenly saw a transparent figure coming down a set of stairs in front of them. Captain Provand, upon the request from his partner Mr. Indre Shira, hurriedly prepared the camera and took a photograph that would become the most recognizable ghost photograph in history and would legitimize the possibility of ghosts through this one still shot – or would it? While this famous photograph taken at Raynham Hall of the ghost of the “Brown Lady” is thought to be the best “real deal” photograph ever, there is a little history missing from its backstory that reveals...

Joseph Banks Rhine changed the face of Psychical Research (Parapsychology) when he took experimental research to a new level in the late 1920’s. It was then that he created the Zener cards, or ESP cards, as a new form of testing for Extra Sensory Perception.

ESP can be thought of as receptive psychic energy and can be simply defined as the ability to gain knowledge through means other than the five physical senses or by logical inference. ESP is broken into three categories; telepathy (awareness of information in the mind of another), clairvoyance (ability to receive information from objects or events from present time), and precognition (receiving information about objects or events in the future). Of these three, clairvoyance is the focus in basic ESP card...

Late last year I presented “The Power of Belief in Paranormal Investigation” to an audience at the Northeast Ohio Paranormal Conference in Rootstown, Ohio. In this I discussed some of the belief systems that are in place and how we approach them (I’ll be discussing more of these topics later in future blog posts). One of the topics I touched on was the belief factor in the overall production of ghostly events. This was actually a last minute addition to my presentation, but was one that generated a lot of questions during and after the event.

I am currently writing a second part to my first book, “Handbook for the Amateur Paranormal Investigator or Ghost Hunter: How to Become a Successful Paranormal Group”, and have included a chapter on belief. It is not only a basic concept, but one that I feel a lot of veteran individuals and groups do not fully grasp or realize has a presence in...