As someone who is a little (very) obsessed with the paranormal, I follow just about every blog and every Facebook page regarding the matter. It has not been healthy for me. Most of the time I wind up completely upset and worked up about the comments and stories that I read on there. Also having recently joined an awesome paranormal investigations team in Cape Town I have had the not-so-fortunate privilege to read some of the messages and requests that come through to the team. I decided I needed to vent and get it out of my system and where better than on my own blog where I can pretty much write about whatever the hell I want. I will now tell you all the things that I am sick and tired of hearing about regarding the paranormal.
Orbs
This is first on my list because there are few things in the world that piss me off more than orbs. I don’t know who was the first person to start documenting orbs as paranormal, but I really wish they had been more specific about it. If I have to watch one more video of someone who obviously hasn’t vacuumed the carpet in a while and now suddenly has a home full of orbs I might actually have an aneurism. If you have managed to capture 50 orbs floating around in your home you do not have a spirit disco, you have a dusty home. If you keep getting an orb in the same spot for every shot, you have a dirty or damaged camera lense. If you took the image or video using a flash then there are a multitude of reasons there might be an orb appearing on your footage. This is not to say that orbs are never paranormal, it just means that it is highly unlikely that every second person has 20 of them hanging out in their homes.
Should the orb follow some of these characteristics then it might be something paranormal:
Multiple colours
Following a person/course
Unusually shaped
They move independently of their surroundings (wind etc)
I blame the orb craze on ghost hunting TV programs that needed something to keep viewers interested and so used orbs as “proof” of paranormal activity.
Blindness to the Facts
For some reason people are more likely to believe everything they see on a ghost-hunting show than they are likely to believe what they see on the news. This means that you suddenly have people finding paranormal activity all over their homes. Here is something I actually read once:
“There is a lot of bad energy in my home. My housemate is a serious drug addict and is only getting worse. Recently a lot of my personal items are going missing. It was first my watch, and then an artwork just disappeared off the wall and this morning I found my wallet on the ground completely empty. I think his negative energy might have bought something evil into the house, what should I do?”
Yes, you read that right. This woman is clearly an idiot but had it not been for the TV shows claiming every odd occurrence is paranormal, she probably would have noticed the most likely cause for her troubles instead of living in fear that she has a thieving spirit in her home. This goes right along with creaking furniture, thuds from the ceiling and scratching noises on the roof. It amazes me how closed off people become to the logical explanation.
Demons
I have read way too many comments on some of the paranormal pages of people telling each other that they have demons in their home. Not every spirit is a demon, OK people? Do you understand me? It is quite a hefty accusation to tell someone that their home is infested with demons. This is not ok. I don’t think people fully understand the seriousness of telling someone that they have demons in their homes. This shows a serious lack of knowledge. Demons are not good; they are very evil, so just imagine the fear you would experience if someone had to tell you that your home is haunted by a demon. Now you have Erica who does admin at a car rental company telling people that they have demons in their homes. Not only are you putting someone through immense fear and discomfort in their own home but you are making demonic hauntings seem like a common occurrence. This creates a “crying wolf” effect. Then, by the time someone who might be experiencing a real demonic haunting in their home cries out for help, everybody rolls their eyes because “It is probably just nothing again”.
Exorcisms
On the note of demons and demonic hauntings, you would be surprised to know how often I have come across someone who claims to have undergone an exorcism or multiple exorcisms at that. There are laws surrounding exorcisms. Firstly, you need to be a qualified exorcist to be able to perform exorcisms. This includes studying demonology and first dealing with a handful of demons before actually performing any exorcisms. You cannot just jump into it and start exorcising all willy-nilly. This makes it highly unlikely that so many people have undergone one. In most countries by law you need to give consent to undergo an exorcism. I wonder how many demon-possessed people would be able to give consent to an exorcism. Exorcisms have been known to take a serious toll on people, in some cases the victim has died, and they should really not be taken lightly.
The Attention Seekers.
The easiest way to get the extra attention you might be craving is to put yourself in a situation that cannot be proved or disproved, and what suits that better than being haunted? The amount of cases I have read about where there are logical explanations for just about everything about the case is ridiculous. You receive a case of someone that apparently wants your help; they want an explanation for what is happening in their home. Then you sit for hours going through it all, staring at every detail, looking at every option and FINALLY you find the cause of it and good news, they’re not haunted. You type out your explanation of what exactly is occurring in their home and you give them the good news. Then you receive a reply that basically says that even though you went through all this effort and even though you found an explanation that could possibly explain it, they just know that their house is haunted. They then also let you know that they called upon a friend who has always been “a sensitive” and they feel that there is something in the house. These are the people that post their “hauntings” all over social media and just about every paranormal page they can find. This should get them the attention they so desperately desire.
These are just the main things that annoy me on a daily business. If people could just learn to read every now and then we might have a world with less of this nonsense in it. It would appear that dealing with the paranormal is 10% fun and 90% nonsense. Luckily it is interesting enough to keep me invested.
