There seems to be an absolute glut of paranormal shows these days.  One of the commonalities amongst them is their "common sense" approach.  Now…one can argue whether or not they are actually displaying common sense.  That is another matter.  I am only distinguishing between that type of approach and one of a truly scientific nature.  They can say the word "scientific" all they want and use fancy-schmancy equipment…yet…this does not entitle them to lay claim to actually using a scientific approach.

So, they are using a common sense approach to find and substantiate the paranormal.  Fine.  I will use some recent real life experiences to show another side to things.

A couple of weeks back, I was walking my dog late at night (maybe 1am).  I do so because it's generally quiet and people aren't walking their untrained and unleashed dogs around.  I live by a large pond.  Buildings are built around it.  There are also a ton of trees and plenty of snow on the ground.  At that time of night, the temperature was maybe in the mid-teens.

As I was walking the dog, a car alarm went off.  No clue why.  As we turned around a corner, I could see the flashing lights of the car so I definitely knew the location.  As Nyx (my dog) and I continued our walk, I noticed a couple of things.  First, the car alarm wasn't turning off…which is somewhat odd and sort of rude given the time of night.  The other thing…the sound was really bouncing around.  From our location, the car was SW.  Yet as we moved, the alarm seemed to be coming from the West.  Then the NW.  We passed some trees and suddenly the alarm was now coming from the East.  Throughout our walk (maybe 20 minutes or so), the sound changed directions around ten times.

I shared this experience for a couple of reasons.  First, to illustrate how poor our Sound Localization skills can actually be.  It is incredibly hard at times to figure out where a sound is coming from, especially outside.  The other reason is to show that by merely standing still and listening hard (which is what we do when trying to locate a sound) isn't the best course of action.  If I merely stood in one location at the pond, I would have been dead wrong in determining the location of the car alarm.

Just last night, I watched an episode of Paranormal State which featured the Scooby gang out in the woods.  They were "certain" they knew where the noises that they were hearing were coming from.  Yet, they remained in the same location.  From my example above, can one truly determine where a singular sound is coming from in the woods if one is not trained to do so or not familiar with those particular woods?  I would say that it's highly doubtful.  A wiser move for the group would have been to split up and try to triangulate the sound.  Of course, that leans more towards the scientific so, of course, that wasn't done.

Another aspect is the EVP's and sounds caught by Ghost Lab.  They are big on recording sounds and trying to determine whether or not they are "intelligent or residual."  Very little is done in the way of finding where exactly the sounds in question are coming from.  Why is this?  Isn't determining the actual location of a sound the best way to figure out what the sound could actually be?  Of course, this would lead to the conclusion that every single noise captured on tape isn't paranormal…and we wouldn't want that now would we?

Many times I've whined and cried about having additional high-end equipment recording along side their crap recorders in order to verify these EVP's.  To date, this hasn't been done.  There has also been little to no effort in bringing in equipment to determine where a sound is actually coming from.  From my standpoint, I am very skeptical of any sound recorded on these shows and used as evidence of the paranormal.  There just isn't enough effort to prove or disprove what these sounds are.

The other experience…I'll save for later.  This is turning out to be a much longer post than I thought.  So I'll continue when I have more time.  Until then…discuss until your heart's content…