Dr. Mark Farley's Personal Blog

I was recently asked during a tour, “Can a place become haunted without anyone dying there?” I thought about this question for a while before I answered, and my answer was “Yes.” A place can definitely become haunted without anyone dying there.

However, I do think investigators unknowingly skew their evidence. For example, only showing photographs that depict phenomena proving a site is haunted. An investigator takes a hundred photos, and only one has something remarkable, and that’s the only evidence the investigator submits in their post-investigation report.

One of the reasons why this woman was so scared is that we are programmed from birth to fear anything paranormal.

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.

Also, this approach of tearing down and trash-talking turns the concept of paranormal unity into a farce. If we can’t unite as a community, we will never be able to establish standard practices and procedures or sanction ourselves for wrongdoing.

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?

So you capture a photograph of what you think is paranormal. If you’re like me, you’ll spend hours staring at it. Then you post it on social media to share what you captured and, hopefully, receive a little validation.

In my opinion, there are many different ways an investigator could engage in provoking. A good gauge during a spirit communication is to think about how you would like to be treated. In your normal day-to-day interactions with people, you want to be treated with courtesy and respect.

I am rather strict during the investigation because the last thing I want is a team full of thrill seekers. I want professionals; I want standards; and I want quality. If our field is going to be accepted as a legitimate field of study. These are the three traits I feel every team must strive for.

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.