VII. Sharpening Your Instincts

Instincts. We all have them. In our opinion, instincts are the best tool to find good locations to focus your investigations. But, like other physical and mental capabilities, instincts need time to progress. The more investigations you participate in, the more your instincts will develop.

We are a quick fix society. We all have stretched our time to the limit and have come to depend on fancy gadgets to do our work for us, therefore dulling our own innate capabilities. But, in our experience, developing your instincts will actually give you more time to focus on the big picture.

An example might be in order. Take, for instance, fishing. I’m willing to bet many of you have seen some fishermen with their fancy radar equipment to indicate whether there are fish at their location. It’s funny because many times you’ll see these guys spending more time trolling up and down the lake with their eyes glued to the radar screen trying to find a location rather than taking the time to fish while the old man in his putt-putt boat is quietly reeling in his limit, enjoying the activity he’d planned. Ghost hunting is much the same way.

When we first started out, we had the whole gamut of equipment. Gauss meter, digital thermometer, two way radios… James Bond all the way. But the more we used them, the more we realized that our focus was on the equipment, not on the actual hunt. If your focus is on listening to whether the gauss meter is indicating electromagnetic energy or your eyes are on the thermometer looking for temperature changes, you will be oblivious to the environment around you. That’s not to say the instruments are worthless, it’s just a reminder that they are tools. And again, we are delving into unexplained phenomena and these tools are only instruments based on a theory, not fact.

As we have emphasized throughout this book, we are not experts, and there are countless ways of doing things, but these are some suggestions to help sharpen your senses and instincts that might be helpful for future investigations.

Vision. Observe, don’t just look. When you are at a location, say a cemetery, it’s really important to observe your surroundings. For instance, notice how the headstones appear. Do they have unusual markings on them; is there a significant date or unusual image on the stone? You’ll be surprised by what you can see and maybe possibly discover that what you notice is not a coincidence.

You may also, through the practice of observation, be able to catch a glimpse of an actual Orb, shadow, or apparition instead of just seeing it later in a photo on your computer. It’s no different than a proof reader training themselves to see mistakes. At first, they may have to read every line, but as time goes on and their eyes are trained, they may then be able to just skim and find the mistakes.

There is no guarantee that training yourself this way will enable you to see things that others can’t see, but then again, how do you know unless you try?

Hearing. To sharpen the audio senses, practice, preferably in the daytime to start, by standing still in one area with your eyes closed. Slowly turn your head from one side to the other and carefully listen from the ground up. Get an idea of all the sounds you hear – leaves rustling; grass swishing; squirrels running; wind in your ears; even airplanes flying over. After a couple of minutes, open your eyes and take a good look around to see what you’ve been hearing. Use the observation you’ve practiced to see what your ears may have missed.

Once you have attuned yourself to the daytime sounds, try doing the same at night. Night time sounds are very different. Our minds do not pick them up in the same way. Most night sounds seem to come from a greater distance than during the day. Think about a time when you’ve been lying in bed and you hear something. It takes much longer to determine the source of that sound in the dark than it does in the daytime whether we have our eyes open or not. It may even be something that you are so familiar with in the day time that you don’t notice it, but suddenly, at night it becomes noticeable to you because the world seems to be much quieter at night.

If you can, practice both skills in a city or town, then practice them in a more rural area. There is, again, a huge difference in these places. The more you practice in different areas, the more in tune your ears will become to even the slightest unusual sound.