Dr. Mark Farley's Personal Blog

When you visit a city and want to take a ghost tour, always look for a local tour company. You’ll get an authentic experience and help the local economy. The tour guides from local tour agencies work in, live in, and investigate the areas they tour. The stories they share are their own, not intellectual property owned by a large corporation.

You can tell a professional paranormal team from a thrill-seeking team by the amount of preparation they do before the investigation. The actual investigation is only the tip of the spear. Researching the site and interviewing witnesses is the basic foundation of any paranormal investigation. Because without research, how does your team know what they are investigating?

With social media and the chance to monetize, everyone wants to be an influencer, and the chance of becoming famous is a hell of a temptation. Today, it seems the main motivation for people to become paranormal investigators is to gain fame and appear on television. As a community, we need to rise above these temptations.

A haunting is nothing more than an attachment that enables a spirit to interact in our world. Without that ability to interact in our world, we would never know that a site is haunted. In fact, I surmise that paranormal investigations consist of nothing more than investigators collecting evidence of these interactions.

So, what should you do in the beginning? First, don’t go out and buy a lot of equipment. I know veteran investigators are against using cell phones, but really, they are the best tool to have. They already have a quality camera, and you can download a voice recorder app for EVP’s.

I also think investigating cemeteries is extremely beneficial for new investigators. Until you get established, investigations are hard to come by, and if you rent out haunted locations, it can be rather expensive. Cemeteries are free, open year-round, and a great opportunity for investigators to gain experience.

Now most major cities have a "Hitchhiker Annie" story, and St. Louis is no different. Now, the basic premise of every Hitchhiker Annie story goes something like this. It's usually a dark, rainy, or snowy evening, and a motorist is traveling down a desolate road next to a cemetery. The motorist sees a young woman walking along the side of the road and stops to offer her a ride.