What do we want? Such a loaded question. As we all walk in the field we love so much, the answer seems pretty obvious. We all want to experience something or enhance our gifts. We want proof that something is out there and we aren’t just walking around empty rooms with expensive equipment.

So, if experiences are what we want, the follow up question should be “How do we have them?” That part is simple I believe. Just keep doing what you’re doing. Let me explain…

A few years ago, I worked with a parapsychologist and our group would have debates about the paranormal. I know riveting stuff, but it is how you kill the time. His belief was that we should take people to places that we know aren’t haunted and let people have an investigation there. His thinking was that people who felt things at these places could be outed and the rest could learn what an “unhaunted” place felt like. I would disagree. I think you would embarrass the people you were trying to teach and scare them off for good. I also know for a fact that nobody shows you how good of a fisherman they are by taking you to an empty lake and wasting your day. To me, you take them to a place you know is haunted and let them begin the process of sorting out their feelings and begin the long process of collecting their evidence. I also found thinking like this to be very elitist. For our field to be taken seriously, we need to be more mainstream and we can’t do that by destroying interest in it.

So, step one to having experiences is going where the action is and two is a natural result of this. You see, all of us have psychic ability, just some of us are further along than others. The rest of us have to rely on just getting noticed. I have a theory that I call “The Lighted House Theory”. Late one night, you are driving down a dark road and you don’t have your cell phone. Your car brakes down and you need help. Now before you are three houses. House #1 has no lights on at all. It is pitch black. House #2 has a tv on. You can see it through the window. Maybe upstairs, a lamp is on in a bedroom. House #3 has all the lights on. Music is playing and it is lit up like the Fourth of July. Which house would you be drawn to for help? Unless you have a death wish, you would avoid #1. Who knows who lives there. #2 may do in a pinch but #3 is where 98% of us would make a beeline for. Why? All the lights are on and that means someone will be there to help.

In the spirit world this holds true too. Psychics and mediums have their lights on brighter than the rest of us. “Ghosts” are drawn to them. Why? Because someone will be there to listen. Some of us are House #1 and we don’t want to believe or are too afraid. Who would be drawn to us? Most of us are House #2. We just need to turn on more lights. How do we do this? By going to more haunted places and having more investigations. I really believe the more you look for them, the more they see you. This process helps us turn on more lights and in return will help you have more experiences. See how I tied it all up there?

Ray Couch
www.SouthernGhosts.com

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What are Orbs?

Orbs are the blessing and the curse of most paranormal groups. We get asked about them daily and orb photos do get people interested in the paranormal. Here is the bad news. Almost every orb photo you have is nothing but dust. Sorry to burst your bubble, but if you go into a room that has been closed off for awhile or are taking photos in the rain, you WILL get an orb photo. Now, with digital cameras, ANY environmental contaminants in the air will show up as orbs as the flash captures them in mid air. You can prove this yourself by walking into a room and kicking up the dust and snapping a photo. Now the good news is that I said ALMOST every orb photo is nothing.

My good friend, Julie Pelligrino, has introduced me to black and white photos taken many years ago that contain orbs in them. This is fascinating to me. Our European ancestors told tales of fairy lights and will o’ wisps and ghost lights from hundreds of years ago. These were balls of light that would dance or “haunt” a location. Usually an outside area like a country road. As a matter of fact, the first crop circles were from hundreds of years ago and were known as fairy circles.

The Native Americans told of ghost lights and considered them warnings. They would pass these tales on to the settlers and warn them away from farming or hunting in these areas. Every culture has its own tales of ghost lights and what they mean to them. Swamp gas can’t explain them all away. We can’t use every orb photo as proof of the paranormal. I will sometimes use them only when they are tied to areas with a history of hauntings or the photographer felt “something” when they took the picture.

We also can’t just make a blanket statement that all orb photos are nothing but camera defects or user error. Sometimes the answer lies hundreds of years in the past.

Ray Couch
Southern Ghosts