Provoking Spirits
There’s a common practice among ghost hunters today. It’s called ‘provoking’. The theory is that you can goad a spirit into action by angering or distressing it. Investigators will taunt the spirit, insult it, call it names. Anything to get a reaction.
I sort of get it. I’ve been on long, boring investigations where nothing is happening. Your ears strain for any creak or rap. You’ve taken the same picture of the same corner a dozen times. The questions you pose to spirits on your audio recorder begin to sound a lot like begging. (“Please, please, please, Mr. Ghost. Please talk to me.”) You’d do almost anything to get some action going. You’re beginning to get really irritated at that stupid ghost who’s not cooperating at all. It’s tempting to try and stir things up a bit.
Some investigators will try to trigger a negative emotional response from the spirit. They mock, ridicule and sneer. They egg the spirit on in the most insulting terms. And sometimes it works. They get results—a whisper on their audio recorder, a shadow on their photo, an orb streaking across the room on their film. For the investigator, the end clearly justifies the means. Unfortunately, this is just as untrue in paranormal investigating as it is in any other area of life.
The goal of the paranormal investigator is to study phenomena and document it, not to create it.
Firstly, if the haunting is residual, an unconscious re-enactment of a traumatic event of the past, then there is no conscious spirit to interact with. It’s a little bit like shouting comments at a movie screen. No amount of cheering or booing is going to change the outcome.
Second, if your objective is to identify the spirit and discover why it haunts a particular location or person, throwing a new set of factors into the investigation will only confuse the results. The chances that you will be able to discover any information helpful to your client will lessen significantly.
There is an accepted scientific theory that the presence of an observer always changes the nature of the observed. A serious investigator in any field tries to minimize this as much as possible. By provoking the spirit, the paranormal investigator is impacting the situation in the most dramatic manner possible. If your aim is just to get a result, any result, it might be worth it. But if your aim is to discover the nature and purpose of the spirit and to help the client deal with it, perhaps even convince the spirit to move on, you’ve just defeated your own purpose.
Provoking spirits is ultimately irresponsible. When the night is over, the investigator gets to go home with another anecdote to add to his collection. But the client is stuck with a pissed off ghost. Very few clients come to a paranormal investigator because they’re comfortable with the activity in their home or place of business. They come to us for help, for answers and for understanding. The least we can do is act professionally. We can’t promise results but we can promise to do no harm.
The most important tool an investigator should bring with them is respect. Respect for the client, respect for the location and respect for the spirit.
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Patricia Davisson is the EVP specialist for Puget Sound Ghost Hunters.
