Ghost Hunting Vortex 10-style

Though I had planned to tackle Google's Time Travel feature, I'm all up into Saturday's ghost-hunter experience and have an urge to "debunk" (a word the Sci-fi channel show Ghost Hunters should edit from their vernacular on the basis of overuse) everything Vortex readers thought they knew about ghost hunting. It just so happens to come in a list of ten:

1) Thespian tendencies, like those displayed by Paranormal State's psychic medium Chip Coffey, are best highlighted against a backdrop of ping-pong-in-the-eyeball experiments, the only young, handsome, non-practicing priest in New England, and constant demon whispers.

2) Fist bumps are not required to successfully bring an investigation to closure.

3) The girth of your infrared cameras is directly proportional to your ratings.

4) Eighty percent of true ghost-hunting business is weeding out cracked requests from witches and those who swear they can hear their deceased toy poodle Trixie's toenails clicking on the kitchen floor.

5) If you have no ghost hunting experience but have access to a twenty-thousand dollar heat-imaging camera, fist bump. You're on the team!

6) No day job is as forgiving to ghostly pursuits as Roto-Rooter. Oh, wait. Free publicity. Right.

7) Having a psychic on the team does help at reveal time. While Jason and Grant say, "Yep, you have ghosts. See ya!" a psychic can advise clients on things that are actually helpful with regard to the spirits....like getting RID of them.

8) The Three Stooges are still eye-pokers in the afterlife.

9) I, apparently, have a spiritual entourage with me that talks all at one time in incessant, incoherent whispers. I know these women. They display themselves as the trifecta of creative muses: Confidence, Doubt and Procrastination.

10) Spirits are rarely trapped. Most who choose to stay roam wherever they please. I've wrapped a mental bubble of white light around my closet. Do I really need supernatural witnesses to the awkward ritual of getting into last year's shorts?

A huge thanks to the North Texas Paranormal Investigations team for the awesome informal lecture and for answering the thousand and one questions our writing group had. Visit their site for EVPs and video of past investigations in the North Texas area.

And have no fear, the next post will be on time travel-as if you really had any doubt, right?

What do you love (or hate) about ghost-hunting shows?

The Paranormal State of Things

I've been waiting to blog about A&E's Paranormal State until I was pretty sure I'd seen most of them. For me, there's nothing scarier than a collection of green college students armed with enough technology to freak themselves out entering into a realm of things none of them has experience for.

Ryan, the PRS(Paranormal Research Society)team leader, brings to the show leadership, a genuine, boy-next-door quality and a background in witnessing paranormal phenomenon. The remainder of the team consists of a self-proclaimed occult specialist, a documentarian, a technology wizard and a pseudo-counselor to help families afflicted with unexplained events--none of whom have any psychic or extrasensory abilities to carry out their duties. The only difference between you and I holding "dead time" in an abandoned psychiatric hospital and the PRS team is their ability to call out the heavy hitters when things get beyond their control.

Routinely relying on expert psychics and demonologists, the principle goal of the PRS is to approach each case with a heavy nod toward science and documenting the unexplainable. Not afraid to pull out the holy water and crucifixes when things get seriously wonky, but rarely calling a priest, the team is the equivalent of "warriors" going into battle without knowing how to wield a sword ("Warriors" coming from the self-proclaimed, highly stylistic voice-over to the show's beginning).

Nevertheless, it's fascinating. Although they maneuver their way through cases with roughly the same techniques we used at our sixth grade slumber parties, their interviews and site histories they uncover ground it from slipping away into a ghostly excuse for a co-ed all-nighter.

And where, exactly, was this extracurricular activity in college, anyway? I SO would have been there. Without any Wiccan background and questionable technological abilities, I would have been the one who's job it was to say, "Shouldn't we call a priest now?"

Have you watched Paranormal State? What are your impressions?