As for the charge of trying to ruin people, once again, I think Lewis is being less than honest. Exposing charlatans is a valuable public service, whether it be financial experts destroying the world’s economy or paranormal investigators preying on peoples’ gullibility and lack of critical thinking skills. It’s just too bad that our local newspaper and its reporters didn’t use some good journalism to do the job right the first time.

BTW – Note to the Post-Gazette: If you want a real paranormal investigator, contact Joe Nickell at CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims Of the Paranormal), or James Randi – people who do actually use scientific method.

In a way, I think we are just holding our separate beliefs. We’re expressing ours on this blog, and you’re expressing yours with a bit of positive media attention. No one is being forced to believe anything (which is impossible, practically speaking), and I don’t think either of us have met the minimum amount of force required to be rightly described as “pushing” beliefs on others; we’re just expressing them.

Nevertheless, the discussion (i.e., calling you out on your baseless claims, in this case) is important for the simple reason that we care about truth. For the person concerned with truth (no matter what the implications of truth might be), it is incredibly important to differentiate between true and false explanations for a given phenomenon, or of the nature of reality itself. It seems to me that the search for truth must begin with the desire to distinguish truth from its counterfeit. Only by so doing can we rightly be said to love or pursue truth. Developing this heuristic and fine-tuning it rigorously to distinguish as accurately and reliably as possible between fact and fantasy should be the goal of everyone who wants to know what is and admit to be false that which is not.

If we are willing to say that truth can be defined by preference, a strong desire, or anything that speaks to us personally in a way that we feel is superior to other beliefs, then we have given up the only meaningful aspect of the definition and have retreated into the worst form of postmodern relativism: the realm where a surgeon or historian has no more place in society than a maniac. Much of the time, truth will probably be uncomfortable. It’s that result you don’t want to get, or that conclusion you don’t want to come to, that the search for truth itself has demanded of you.

I’m not sure what makes people compartmentalize certain pet beliefs and keep them exempt from the same threshold of evidence required of all their other beliefs; perhaps it is just a result of the unexamined life. But if your standard of evidence is so low that you will believe in ghosts based on some photographs of orbs, random electromagnetic data, and some funny feelings, I’m not sure why you’re not a member of nearly every cult in the nation. We should start with the idea that every claim and idea has to hold up to scrutiny. Things have to be shown to exist before we accept them as real.

If we reject that standard and assume that lunacy is just as valid as honest results, we’re rejecting one of the most precious aspects of our humanity: reason. And that’s why we post on this blog.

I personally do not believe in ghosts, souls, paranormal phenomenon or mystical overlords. Your statement about having faith in something is somewhat correct, in that what propels human kind forward in life is the belief that the advancement of science will lead to something greater. What you perform is a form of pseudoscience, and I am shocked that the above “news” reports would give it such a boost in credability.

As someone who processed film for several years, part of my job was to explain to people what was wrong with their cameras or their film that caused their orders to be filled with crappy shots like yours, that we didn’t charge them for. Our lab would take the time to explain these problems to our customers, and even give them demonstrations to help them avoid them in the future. Sure, it would’ve been easier and funnier to say, “and in this frame you’ve captured a ghost!” and charged them for those prints. But I am honest.

I believe in plenty of things, Mr. Lewis. I believe in good photography. I believe ghosts can be great fiction and entertainment. I believe that it is asinine to report unscientific nonsense as fact on news programs. I believe that your evidence would not stand up to peer review. And by peers I really mean experts, not your actual peers. Because I also believe that your peers are mentally unstable too.

Honestly I am sorry for making fun of you now that I know you are actually a bit ill and not just a charlatan out for some cred so you can start charging people for your BS services.

Please link away. I’ll be happy to take your traffic. Especially if they’re news reporters who are interested in doing a better job than what’s been passing for journalism around here lately.

I certainly won’t be deleting this post. It’s now my favorite! Thanks for that!

Why don’t you do the true research and look the the actual science of what we are doing.

And as for the red “Vortex” in the photos you seen, Those pictures were taken with a Minolta SRT-101 35mm camera that is in MINT condition. There is no cracks in the casing anywhere, and the film was changed in complete darkness other than a small pen light pointed straight up to give me enough light to start the film. There was no film mishandling in anyway. If there was the WHOLE ROLL would have been messed up not just two pictures.

I understand that you do not believe in anything, and I find that very sad. I feel sorry for you. Having belief and faith in SOMETHING is what drives us humans forward in life. It gives us a purpose. It is very sad that your belief is to suppress everyone else from having their beliefs by pushing your own onto them, and the rest of the world. You are no different than any other religion or Dictator that tries to control the public by forcing them to follow their beliefs.

I will be linking up to this page to show the world how ignorant you really are. And it will be a copy and paste do that if you try to delete the blog entry, it will still be there for the world to see.

Again I feel sorry for you.

As for the previous comment, we base our findings on about 13-14 hrs of collecting evidence. We then take 2-3 weeks to carefully scrutinize every piece of evidence we gathered. If we have something that we can not agree on as evidence, we do not claim it is.

After we gather up what we feel is evidence of paranormal activity, we then take it to the client and have them see if they can see or hear what we do. If so, then it is included as evidence of their haunting.

This is NOT something that is done by “Hunches” or “Mystic Feelings”. We do everything by scientific methods.

Again thanks Eliza for the great review. It is nice to know that we even have a skeptic backing up our evidence.