I've been thinking about what a skeptical ghost hunter should do if asked by a client to investigate an alleged haunting. Most ghost hunters focus on the site and leave the homeowner out of the process, which seems to me precisely backward. If the issue isn't really the house, but how someone interprets what's going on in the house, then leaving that someone out misses the point.

Another common method is to present "alternative explanations", AKA debunks to the client. Although that's part of this balanced breakfast, I think it misses the point. You can explain everything that's already happened, but what about what happens tomorrow night? By leaving yourself as the arbiter of what's real and what isn't, you leave the client no better off than before when they start hearing strange noises at night. It's easy to come off sounding dismissive or condescending when doing this. It's no wonder many clients rebel at the idea

Teaching the skeptical toolkit seems to me the most effective option. Rather than focusing on the site itself, start by making the client a skeptical investigator, as much as is possible. That's a tall order, though– much tougher than setting up some cameras and looking for strange-looking dust specks. How does one do it without coming off preachy? What exactly should one try to teach?

Here are some random ideas of mine. I'm hardly an expert on this, so I'm looking for some feedback.

Understand what the client wants. If the client enjoys having a haunted house, who am I to disagree? I'll still work to find common ground and at least leave them with an understanding of the skeptical mindset, though.

Find the skepticism. Almost everyone is skeptical of something. Sound out their set of ideas and see what they don't believe in, and why they don't believe in it. The idea here isn't to try to catch them off-guard– "See? Ghosts are no more believable than UFOs!"– but to introduce the idea of standards of evidence. (I have met a man who appeared to believe in everything I found dubious. It only just occurred to me what I should use as an example of something he was skeptical of– anything I said! There's some twisted logic there, but it might have worked.)

Show how we can be fooled. Humans are lousy observers. Although it seems that our eyes are perfect portals to the world, for example, we can barely see details without glancing around, and we're blind to color unless we're staring at it. Our other senses and our memories are similarly fallible. There's a reason that many good skeptical investigators have some magical training. I'd love to put together a small set of magic tricks just to demonstrate human fallibility.

Explain what the scientific method is. At least getting across the idea of evidence-based research might be good.

Teach good evidence-gathering and record-keeping. These are the keys to skeptical investigation. Exactly what to teach here is worth discussing. Journal-keeping? So long as you can make sure that the client will write down only what he or she experienced.

Explain hypnagogia and sleep paralysis. If your client experiences something between going to bed and getting up in the morning, sleep paralysis or hypnagogia are high on the suspect list. A good explanation of what these are, and how they are not dreams, might be a good starting point. It might be useful to avoid specifically saying, "I think your experience was a hypnagogic hallucination." Just explain the concept and let the client make the connection.

Explain the holes in standard ghost-hunting technique. A client might ask why I wasn't setting up cameras and putting down digital voice recorders. I would need to explain that although those can make for some amusing TV, there are problems with using EVPs and blurry IR footage as evidence.

I think that that would be the cornerstone of my approach to ghost hunting. Sure, check the place out and look for evidence of paranormal activity, but the real win would be to turn the client into a skeptical investigator capable of doing the job him- or herself.

What do you guys think?