*cue the Ghostbusters theme music*
Why do people choose to pay (a lot of) money to spend all night wandering around in the dark in a building with a group of like minded people, often with little boxes that have flashy lights (I like flashy lights) whilst calling out to ghosts and spirits to make themselves known?
There’s a new hobby in town, I say new – it’s been around for a long time, some purists would say hundreds (if not thousands) of years but its only in recent years with the advent of programmes such as “Most Haunted”, “Ghost Hunters” and other such shows which are often shown on Living TV that this has become massively popular.
There has been a plethora of companies spring up in light of this, offering normal people the chance to have “a Most Haunted-esc” experience. Generally this will entail having a group of people meet in a place, you’ll have a team consisting of mediums, historians, hosts and gadget folk and you’ll investigate said place for evidence of a paranormal nature.
I’ve been on a few of these events now, whilst I haven’t seen anything as such and I’m still firmly on the fence, I want to believe. I want there to be something there.
The main thing for me personally is I find it fun. In fact no, there are two elements to it. I have the fun side, the part of me that enjoys being scared shitless, wandering around a dark building with a bag full of gadgets – I also have a part of me that’s interested from a spiritual point of view.
Now I’m not religious, although I was brought up a Roman Catholic, I hated going to church, I found the whole thing mind numbingly boring. I have nothing against people who worship whatever deity they see fit though – each to their own and all that but its not for me. Whether or not I’ll be a hypocrite when I’m lying on my death bed I’ll see.
I guess I fell out with religion proper when my grandad died – it hit me pretty hard and I lost all belief in any higher power – the whole “if there was a god, my grandad wouldn’t have gotten cancer and died” argument. Sounds silly now, but it made perfect sense to me when I was younger.
Years later, I was forced to do a Religious Studies GCSE at school and I purposefully failed it – writing stupid answers to questions. I say I failed it, I still managed to get an F, which is technically a passing grade – I regret that now, it was a stupid thing to do – but it was my way of rebelling. Yay for fighting the power!
So – now, back to ghost hunting – I want to believe that there’s something there after we die – I want to know what happens. It’s the big question isn’t it – what is there after death? where do we go? what do we feel? When you start to go down the road of thinking about these questions, your brain goes into meltdown and you don’t have any answers – I can’t believe that when we die, theres nothing there, just nothing – I’m sat here at the moment writing this blog post, I’m sat on a sofa – it’s a lovely sunny day outside and I can hear the traffic on the road outside. I’m conscious. I’m consciously writing this and I’m conscious and aware of my surroundings and whats going on. I’m not willing to accept that when we die, theres nothing. I’m hoping that these events will maybe help me to find the answers to some of these questions and If not – I’ll have fun scaring myself shitless. It’s all good.
Although I want to believe, I’m a massive skeptic, and thats nothing to do with the size of my (now shrinking) body mass index – theres just the logical part of my brain that questions everything – if theres a noise – what could it possibly have been - building cooling down? another member of the team wandering around elsewhere? – The initial shock of a noise happening might make me jump (and inevitable mutter a curse word of some description, okay well shout/scream) but there has to be a logical explanation doesn’t there?
We’ve started to amass a range of Ghost Hunting equipment. We have an EMF meter with a needle that whines to let you know there is some Electromagnetic field somewhere nearby. I also have a K2 meter which is also an EMF meter but has flashy lights. We’ve got a torch each (very important – needed when moving from room to room and walking up and down stairs in an otherwise pitch black environment). I’ve also got a pocket radio which has been modified to allow non-stop scanning to assist in hopefully making some EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon).
Whats funny about the equipment we have is we’re a little bit like the Ghostbusters at the start of the film – you come up against something downstairs in a library and you can take measurements, take photos but other than that (GET HER!!!!) – and we know how that turned out. Whilst I know the proton pack and trap are theoretical movie gadgets, I’d still feel a little safer with an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on my back – you know what I’m saying right? I quite like this hobby, it gives me something to do with Sue – funnily enough my brother and a couple of friends are really into it too. Whilst I don’t agree with the way that Most Haunted do things sometimes theres no denying its opened up the door for people to carry out investigations into the unknown.
Now the main downside of these events is the cost – they can cost from £30-£70 per person, per event. Thats an insane amount of money to be spending. Its a good night out, don’t get me wrong but still, its not the cheapest night out – I’m sure you could spend the night getting jolly in Leeds at a fraction of that – the fraction might be 2/3 but still, its a fraction nonetheless.
It’s not cheap, and if we’re going to continue to investigate we’re going to have to find a cheaper way to do it…
