V. Records To Keep

The decision to keep records on investigations is an individual one, however, we wanted to add this section to aid you in understanding the information that has been ostensibly deemed important in the paranormal field. We will give you the what, sometimes the why and, where needed, a more in depth explanation.

Why Keep Records?

There are two reasons we feel it is necessary to keep certain records.

1.     If you plan to offer up what you have collected in paranormal evidence for scientific scrutiny.

2.     If you want to attempt to determine what conditions your most amazing photos, videos, or sound were captured under so you can possibly duplicate the results in an attempt to back up theories you have formed or are forming.

Place and Date. These are the two most obvious items to keep track of for investigations. Knowing these two pieces of information are usually all you need to submit a photo or EVP to a website should you choose to.

Of course, it is good to have this for your own records as well so that you know where you captured your evidence and when.

You could keep this information in your memory, but if you go out investigating as often as we do, the location may not become fuzzy, but chances are the date will. It’s the old adage of “time flies when you’re having fun” and before you know it, several months have gone by and you’re not even sure what month you caught the sound or strange photo.

Time. If you plan to investigate the same location on more than one occasion, keeping track of your investigation start and end time is a good idea.

The word is that the best time to conduct an investigation is between one and three in the morning. We have tried this on several occasions, but have not had any kind of outstanding results. However, many other factors can apply, so we are not ruling out the possibility, but time of activity is bound to differ from location to location.

By keeping track of your investigation time, you may be able to determine the best time to gather evidence at a particular location.

Let’s say you go to your local cemetery at 3 p.m., 6 p.m., 9 p.m., and 11 p.m. on the same day. Upon viewing your photos and listening to sound, you discover that you captured nothing at 3 p.m. or 11 p.m., 6 p.m. was mediocre in evidence, but 9 p.m. brought out some amazing paranormal anomalies. Looking back in your records, you can see that you were only out from 9 to 9:15 p.m., but caught a great deal of activity in only 15 minutes. Knowing this, you can again test the activity of the cemetery from 9 to 9:15 p.m. on another evening, or you can try going four times again in one day to see if results are the same.

If you are testing activity in this way and you begin to notice a pattern of activity always occurring at the same time, it might be a good idea to do some research to see if anything of consequence happened at that location at that time that would help explain the possible activity.

Process of elimination in this way can offer the possibility of successful investigations though it takes a bit of time to determine the best activity time at each location.

Equipment. Keeping track of the type of equipment you use on an investigation is mostly for the purpose of proving authenticity of evidence. This information is what will be needed should you have to send a particular photo, video or sound bite to the appropriate specialist to determine if what you have captured is due to some fault in your equipment or something truly unexplained. Knowing the equipment that is used, especially if you’re going out with a group of people can be beneficial.