One of the other websites we run titled “Haunted England – Top 100” (sister website to “Haunted England Search Engine“) is a voting website where paranormal groups and individuals can list their website and have members of the public vote and comment, now in a just world you expect adults to be able to behave and act in a professional manner when proclaiming to be professional. Not the case!

We get three kinds of comments on Haunted England, self reviews where they praise themselves, Team rivalry where 1 person or a team makes attacks against others they dislike for what ever reasons and the third are accusations we fix the rating, here are some of them:

Self Reviews:

Great website, great team!
This team is the best in the worlds.

Aggressive Rivalry:

Boring site, boring content and boring people, half of whom havnt the faintest idea what exactly they are talking about!!! To be sucessful, you must offer something your competitors do not….and sadly, you dont!

dogsmess

What a pile of sh**

total rubbish what a complete con this group are the worst event i have ever been to no organisation and fraud mediums dont bother is my advise.

Accusations Against Haunted England:

Haunted England is fixed for all you mardy I have a nice hats

Haunted England only publish the positive comments.

Addressing intellectually retarded individuals

I’ve not published all the comments here, some are really nasty which can often be real personal and won’t ever see the light of day. I think we’ll address the comments in reverse and talk about the ones made against Haunted England.

The reason we don’t list our main website which we run, “Ghosts-UK” is because it could seem unfair and like a fix, if we wanted to fix the ratings we’d add our own main sites to further self promote but we don’t and we don’t influence the voting in anyway. We don’t touch the database except in occasions where we believe people may have found a way to cheat the system, we then examine the data and take whatever action we deem appropriate. We believe in allowing people a fair chance to be listed without our influence.

So, we have nothing to gain by “fixing” it as some Muppet wrote.

Now to address the issue of only allowing positive comments, I suppose you could say this is true in most cases but only because people struggle to string together even one constructive sentence. Its like a war in the comments section with people having a go at each other because they have some differences or because their groups are competing or just because someone left one group and made their own.

Everybody wants to be a founder!

If you can’t be constructive rather than resorting to animalistic attacks then don’t bother, we won’t set them live.

The self-reviewers, it’s obvious when you do it. You write in the same style, same gramma, same bad spellings and pretty much saying the same thing over and over and over again. It’s boring, stop it!

We once allowed simple comments, but no longer set them live so comments like “good site”, “Brilliant”, and “Fantastic Team” will not go live, there maybe some older ones still in our system though.

The comments feature is not to abuse other websites or to make personal attacks, it’s to give constructive feedback, if their going wrong with their website then how can they fix it, what can they do. If it’s feedback on an event then how could they improve, or what did you love about it and what didn’t you love and why.

Be constructive in your comments, don’t be personal, don’t be aggressive, stop being petty and for goodness sake grow up and be adults for once in your life. There is nothing remotely scientific or professional about some of the conduct we’ve seen.

This is obviously not true in all cases and doesn’t apply to all websites, it’s just a select few and they know who they are.  If it doesn’t stop then we’ll simply turn comments off, end of story.

Life is to short to be angry all the time, if you can’t accept your differences and get on, then just move on.

I then often find I’ve got the website on-line, dedicated hours, days, weeks and sometimes even months only to receive no communication from the third party. They’d disappear just about the time they were due to actually do some work.

Because of that I’ve got some domain names that could really do with being used so perhaps if your reading this with an interest running a paranormal website or you’ve already got a group and the domain would help then get in touch with me through our support website @

http://support.sjbowers.co.uk

These are some of the domains:

Yorkshire Paranormal:

http://yorkshireparanormal.net

http://yorkshireparanormal.com

http://yorkshireparanormal.co.uk

Northern Paranormal:

http://www.northernparanormal.com

http://www.northernparanormal.co.uk

Ghost Experiences:

http://ghostexperiences.net

http://ghostexperiences.com

http://ghostexperiences.co.uk

Haunted Locations:

http://hauntedlocation.net

http://hauntedlocation.com

http://hauntedlocation.co.uk

There are other domains also but this is a start, perhaps you’d be interested in running your club at one of these domains, or you’d be interested in a joint project.

Haunted Locations:

As you will see there are already two websites on this domain, one is hidden behind a template and is in fact wiki which was going to be a place for people to document historical information, ghost stories, location photos and the other website was going to be a directory of public domain contact details for locations

Ghost Experience:

The original owner of the domain wanted to run a commercial project but backed out.

I was then going to use it as video hosting website similar to that of Google, Youtube but for all things paranormal.

Northern Paranormal and Yorkshire Paranormal were originally for start-up paranormal groups that ended up not paying for the domains or using the website

Get in contact if your interested in some form of partnership or you wish to run your own website.

Make-A-Wish Foundation® have teamed up with Fright Nights to bring you what could be the paranormal event of the year raising funds for a charitable cause.

I was contacted by Francesca Towson today whom was looking to promote this good cause, now although I’m no fan of commercial companies such as ‘Fright Nights’, I still see and understand the need to raise funds and whom better than Make-A-Wish foundation®.

Anyway she wanted me to post a press release so here are the details from their website.

Oh one last thing, if you can’t make their event, then why not consider just donating direct to them, every penny counts, if you do manage to attend their event you’ll have a hard decision to make, and that would be which on of the fantastic locations to go.

http://www.make-a-wish.org.uk

Charity Registration No. 295672

The Great British Ghost Hunt

For one night only, 15 allegedly haunted locations across the UK will be taking part in a unique and truly hair-raising event.

Make-A-Wish, in association with the Fright Nights Team, invites you to come along to one of the following locations and take part in the first-ever competition to find the UK’s Most Haunted Location.

Each attendee will join experienced mediums and clairvoyants, with their help and with the use of authentic ghost hunting and psychic equipment gather information on haunting activity from each site, which will be collated to identify the UK’s most haunted venue.

The exciting night will be taking place on Saturday 15th December 2007 across the various locations as follows:

Scotland – Niddery Street Vaults in Edinburgh and The RRS Discovery in Dundee – for further information contact Amanda Hillhouse on 0141 8890220 or email amanda.hillhouse@makeawish.org.uk

Northern England – Ordsall Hall in Salford, Bolling Hall in Bradford and Stanley Palace in Chester – for further information contact Francesca Towson on 01904 567319 or email francesca.towson@makeawish.org.uk

Eastern England – Galleries of Justice in Nottingham and Peterborough Museum in Peterborough – for further information contact Natalie Martin-Loat on 01733 894495 or email natalie.martin-loat@makeawish.org.uk

South East England – Buckingham House in Portsmouth –for further information contact Frances Heath on 01962 820302 or email frances.heath@makeawish.org.uk

South West England – West Country Inn in Bideford and Woodchester Mansion in Stroud – for further information contact Natalie Taylor on 01179 678819 or email natalie.taylor@makeawish.org.uk

Wales & Western England – Pembroke Castle in Pembroke SW Wales, Oxford Castle in Oxford, The Commandery in Worcester, Bordesley Hall in Alvechurch Nr. Redditch and Woodchester Mansion in Stroud – for further information contact Jennie Mould on 01527 64406 or email jennie.mould@makeawish.org.uk

Northern Ireland – TBC for further information contact Darren Fowler on 02890 805580 or email darren.fowler@makeawish.org.uk

At the same time as being frightened out of your wits you will be raising money to grant magical wishes.

There website is here: http://www.make-a-wish.org.uk

Still a little off now, but mainly only the cough left.

So if anyone is reading this and wondering where I’ve been, then don’t worry I’m not dead not at least yet………………………

On the plus side I got to spend some quality time with Jennifer Love Hewitt, I mean watching Ghost Whisperer thanks Virgin Media who have the whole of series one on the ‘On Demand’ service, so yes I watched 22 episodes of Ghost Whisperer. If you like me and you enjoyed watching the show when it was on TV, i.e. not back to back then I would avoid doing as I did it kinda ruined it a little for me in all honesty, watching them back to back made me realise just about every single story was the same but different, here’s the plot

- Ghost contacts Melinda or haunts a close friend or family member

- Only her Husband and close friend believe her

- The family of the ghost or the one whom the ghost is wishing to contact, denies the existing of ‘the afterlife’.

- A small amount of information is given and then they believe in life after death

- Ghost passes over and we all go skipping off happily ever after into the distance.

Maybe the endings don’t include the skipping but I’m sure you get the gist, it’s the same thing over and over and over and guess what….. yep you got it over and over and over again, when watching them you may also notice some errors in the story lines between one episode and another.

Despite all that though I still find myself compelled to watch one after another, like I was feeding a drug addiction or something, I couldn’t stop and I suppose others feel the same I know the show has a fairly big following maybe it gives inspiration to people I don’t know, I do know some people believe the show to be factual though, I wonder if they are also Derek Acorah loyalists too?

Well Series two of Ghost Whisperer started recently on ‘Crap TV’ also known as ‘Living TV’, I try to avoid that channel as a rule to escape the cringing performances on some of the paranormal shows they air, but exceptions may have to be made for the ‘Ghost Whisperer’. lol

I’m a member of various on-line forums, under various pseudonyms and the amount of back stabbing, nasty vindictive remarks I’ve seen is absurd and ridiculous.

Well I suppose you get it in all walks of life, I may just notice it more because of my involvement in this field. Sometimes I just want to shout “get a grip people this is a hobby, a passion, it’s not a corporate nor commercial venture” oh hold that thought, lets scratch it out, I forgot it is a corporate venture now as with more commercial groups an increase in hostility has also been noted.

Could that be the cause of all this hostility?

I’d be naive to believe it’s the only cause but I certainly see it as one of the major ones.

Perhaps its all caused by those experts out there, or those ‘UK top psychic mediums’, or those with credentials coming out of their ears and believe they are leaders in their field. I come across so many web sites of groups and clubs proclaiming to be the most recognised and professional around with experts leading the way in this field of research.

OK so your reading this article, your a medium, one of those leading experts, put your hands up, go on if your the most recognised, if you are the UK’s top medium, go on don’t be shy, no one will laugh.

So what makes you, what you claim to be?

Ho do you become the top medium of the UK, does it go on popularity?

If so then ok I could understand a little better.

Does it go on ability?

if so then prove it………….

And how do you get real credentials which make you those experts?

I see no real official recognised qualification backed by a real educational institute, I see no GCSE’s, Diploma’s, Doctorates, or other recognised qualification.

So if you have some credentials then whom are your peers that recognise you as an expert?

The paranormal as it stands now is nothing more than a Pseudoscience, and the definition of expert being:

Quote:

An expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of knowledge, technique, or skill whose judgement is accorded authority and status by the public or their peers. Experts have prolonged or intense experience through practice and education in a particular field.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert

Quote:

recognized expert by peer group or professional society certification.

www.state.wv.us/admin/personnel/clascomp/Docs/define.htm

Are you still an expert?

If all these so called experts and mediums are ever going to accomplish anything, then perhaps egos should take a side step and allow professionalism a chance to step up to the table.

As well as forums out there on Internet, we also run a series of websites ourselves, some are geared toward listing links to other groups which allows members of the public to review their website and leave constructive feedback, perhaps I should define constructive too as many people seem to miss the point.

I know I’m generalising a little much in this article as not everyone involved in the paranormal are the same, in fact there are some fantastic people out there and I’m meeting more all the time, it’s just the minority that ruin it and get a bad reputation for the majority.

I side tracked again as I usually do, back on track we we go, one of sites in particular that we run receives an enormous amount of feed back for other websites every day. Out of every 100 comments left as feed back about 5 make it live onto our website if that, simply because most of these comments are one word reviews, abusive, and downright nasty.

We can always tell which two or three groups have a dispute with each other and it’s rather amusing sometimes to read the comments, although I have to say you can see the lack in education of those whom wrote them.

So the question being, one ego or two?

Perhaps it’s time to get a grip people.

This article was written for Ghosts-UK

So what’s happening?

Perhaps the Most Haunted Fad is now over, and people are seeing the light again rather than orbs, or perhaps they’re just bored with it all, maybe there is only so much patience one person can have whilst waiting in those dark locations for something spectacular and hair-raising to happen.

I suppose the first sign of things slowing down where around the beginning of 2007, now it’s normal for on-line activity in the paranormal to have it’s up’s and downs in regards to popularity but certainly in the last 5 years or so since the first Most Haunted, this has to be an all time low.

Is this a bad thing?

I certainly don’t think so, perhaps now we’re starting to whiteness a new revolution or rebirth, something that many may have long forgotten, hmm what’s that word again? Ohhhh yeah ‘Normality’.

Quote:

a drastic and far-reaching change in ways of thinking and behaving; “the industrial revolution was also a cultural revolution”
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

The old timers of the paranormal, I’m sure you’ll remember the days gone by where you used to get contacted by locations having alleged paranormal activity, and they’d ask ‘How much do you charge?’, more often than not your reply would be something like ‘oh charge, erm…. we don’t do that, but a nice cuppa and perhaps a donation to our travel costs would be good’. When you contacted a location and it was free, then more than likely you’d have made a donation to them, especially if they had staff there too for the night.

Now you don’t get contacted, you have to contact them and are often faced with ridiculous charges.

Will this be the end of commercial paranormal groups?

Personally I don’t think it will be, there are still people out there willing to pay large sums of money to spend a night in alleged paranormal locations, and I’m sure the commercial paranormal companies are still thriving. Although saying that have you actually seen how many of them are out there now.

I’m sure there are a lot of established groups out there that pre-date Most Haunted, are hoping for the collapse of such companies, many believe they are the main cause for locations either closing their doors or charging extortionate prices, well that and of course Most Haunted which some people refer to as Most Taunted, or Most Farted, thanks to http://www.popnoodles.com/mostfarted/ If you’ve not watched the Most Farted clips then I’d urge you to pop over there and do so, personally I find them hilarious.

Did you know some of the commercial paranormal groups out there, now have contracts with many locations that prevent all other groups including none profit groups from accessing the location.

Provoking thoughts

I know the thoughts and opinions of various groups and individuals out there with regards to the television programs such as Most Haunted, Ghost Towns, etc. They feel that this type of media does indeed get people interested in the paranormal and opens it up, but it doesn’t provoke thought, criticism or logical thinking (at least most of the time), when most people get involved with the paranormal they expect it be a thrill seeking night like what these shows portray it to be, however the reality is far from this, investigations tend to be monotonous, with most using their digital camera’s and catching the ‘DORBs’ or ‘ABPORBS’ (Dust Orbs and Airborne particle orbs), many believe there are no possible scientific explanations or non that are credible as shows like Most Haunted have in the past suggested, and because it’s on TV they often see this as fact.

The problem as I see it is that most people are either total believers wanting to prove everything or total sceptics wanting to disprove everything, which often leads to heated debates from both sides of the fence that often results in abuse being thrown about.

A belief gives people hope, it warms their hearts, and comforts them in believing their loved ones are still around, and that everything they do in life will mean something once they pass over themselves. I have no problem with belief of any kind albeit religious or spiritual, but it does dishearten me when people have blind faith, you know what I mean, having a belief or faith were they actually know nothing or very little about it.

Personally I’ve had experiences which could be deemed as paranormal, but only because there was no visible and logical explanation, however this doesn’t mean it’s actually something supernatural, it could just mean I either didn’t look hard enough or further research would be needed. This is of course based on the definition of paranormal being unexplainable by modern science.

Quote:

Phenomena which seem to defy the known laws of science.
library.thinkquest.org/C0120993/glossaryfull.html

The word paranormal comes from the words “para” meaning beyond, and normal. So the term paranormal really means something that is beyond the normal scope of science or being beyond a scientific explanation.
knorton13.tripod.com/id33.html

Beyond normal experience.
www.thepeacefulplanet.com/glossary.html

I bet some maybe wondering why I’m writing about provoking thought when this article is about how quiet the paranormal is, well if people don’t question themselves, and try to improve what they are doing both with knowledge and experience, they will eventually bore of it all.

I could go on about why the paranormal is so quiet all day, but I won’t. So in summary the paranormal does seem to be getting rather quiet, there could be many causes for this, people getting on with their life’s, they could just be bored with it all, or perhaps they are just fed up with all the bickering that happens.

Are the ghosts back in the closet? I don’t know, maybe we’re waiting for a new birth of life, the next generation, or things may get back to normal, you know the way it used to be, before all the glamour and lights it’s attracted.

You never know if this continues the interest of ghosts and paranormal investigations may become a ghost itself. Hmm I wonder who would investigate that?

This article was wrote for the SJB Network – Click Here

So if your still reading then I gather that your at least mildly interested and if that’s the case you’ll be wanting to know what’s the title of this new and fascinating spin-off and what will it all be about.

‘Most Haunted: Midsummer Murders’ will be venturing around the UK investigating mysteries, in the hope of discovering the darker side of history, will they find it though?

Well it’s television so my guess would be yes!

The stars of this entertainment show will include Leslie Smith whom will form as their resident historian and David Wells who is of course their psychic medium.

The show is due to air in the summer.

So what does Clare Hollywood, of Living TV have to say:

“Most Haunted is one of Living’s most successful, long-running commissions and this new series will bring a new twist to the brand.”

What are your thoughts of Antix Productions’ Karl Beattie and Yvette Fielding new venture?

All I can really say is…………………………

Don’t we already have enough crap on TV, out of over 100 TV channels we have, the one that air this is another one I avoid.

In reality paranormal investigations are rather monotonous, with many unfruitful hours spent on location, out of all the investigations I’ve run or attended personally I feel around 97% are non paranormal related after further investigation, common causes of potential activity may include pipe work in the house, faulty electrics, settling of the house, amongst many other logical reasons. Now the other 3% of experiences without logical explanations is fascinating and even more so when you’ve managed to capture such evidence and data to reanalyse at a later time.

Personally I feel that 3% can be worthwhile, but those of you thinking about getting into this field should really think if that is worth it for you, if we’re truly honest with ourselves you may attend 100 investigations, for 10 or 15 hours at a time, and do something equally as interesting as watching paint dry.

Lets keep in mind that the paranormal can be rather fictitious, with hundreds, maybe even thousands of different unproven theories and types of types of ghosts, some of which include recordings/stone tape theory, anniversary and poltergeists.

There are two main types of research spiritual or scientific, different researchers will use either a mixture of both, or dedicate themselves to one area. If your out in the field for you own proof, then no scientific methods are necessarily needed , however if your hoping to make a breakthrough in paranormal research then pretty much everything has to have a scientific foundation.

Again because the paranormal is not a proven science, in order to become truly scientific would cost millions of pounds. All paranormal research in it’s current state is taunted by false readings due to many factors such as breezes, dust, piping within the house, electrical factors, amongst many others.

The only way to run a true scientific study in my opinion, is to create controlled conditions, lock the whole location down, create a vacuum as such around the location, eliminate all factors which can create false readings, no human interaction, you must run outside filming and data logging, in reality this isn’t possible especially in cases of private residence without mass amounts of funding.

There are certain inventions which can help to eliminate such things as dust and other airborne particles. There is a group based in the USA, whom developed an add-on to their video recording equipment thus eliminating contamination from dust i.e. orbs. Their system named D.E.V.A., or Dust Eliminating Video Apparatus works by creating a dust free-zone approx 6inches from the lens itself.

Quoted from OKCGC

”After using DEVA for only a short time, we noticed a marked improvement. Dust would still appear, but instead of appearing as round orblike balls of light, it was more oddly shaped and definable. So we tried something just a bit different.

We quit using the hotshoe mounted IR extenders on our Digital video camcorders, and started using the detachable HVL-IRC Sony IR extenders. By placing these approx. 3 feet from the camera lens, we found we could effectively eliminate 100% of dust orb phenomenon.

During this entire time, we were quite certain that SOME orbs were indeed paranormal, but distinguishing them from the dust was the problem. After continuous DEVA use for 3/4 of a year, we have yet to see any more flying orbs.”

Their latest version DEVA 3.0:

There are many forms of research that goes on behind the scenes which would be impossible to compile in this article alone. If you have any inventions please feel free to let us know and maybe even compile a detailed article for submission.

Reference:

We would like to thank Oklahoma City Ghost Club LLC (OKCGC) for their excellent work and allowing us use of their photo’s. If you want to find out more about OKCGC and their research please visit their website:

http://www.okcgc.com