Sue St.Clair and Matthew Didier's Paranormal Blog

You may be disappointed to learn we do not go out with the latest discombobulated boobeloober that will make ghosts instantly appear, and can be purchased for a ridiculous amount of money at an online ghost hunter store.

We are researchers, and documentarians, and realistically, the only absolutes as far as equipment go for us is our ears, eyes, common sense, pen/pencil, and paper...

The main thing for us is to get the reports and stories (including the oral history, "mythology", and witness reports of events) and then look at the data to see if there's anything above simply collecting data, that we might wish to do.

Since the attempt to collect evidence of (and explain incidents if possible of) "paranormal" activity is something we do, we listen to the reports and see if, from them, we can determine if we wish to proceed with any equipment for regular recording of events or environment... If the reported experiences are happening with fairly regular frequency (experiences more than once every two weeks,) and the events are "seen", then we may bring cameras... if it's "heard", we'll bring audio recorders... if it's "environmental" (strange breezes, temperature changes, etc.) we'll bring weather monitoring equipment.

Again, these instruments would be tailored to the reports and with any times involved with the activity.

Either way, the most important things for any investigator to have in their "tool kit" are pen/pencil and paper... and common sense or critical thinking.

I should point out that the concepts and indeed words, "common sense" and "critical thinking", have been hijacked by the so-called sceptics (as much as they hijacked the term "sceptic" which used to mean "doubt", but now is used as "disbelief/non-belief",) to mean cynicism when looking into these events...

For us, "critical thinking" and "common sense" means that you should "question" and look for better evidence without falling into faith/belief or non-faith/non-belief... and that you should be safe.

As an example of "common sense", many people look for ghosts in cemeteries... but if you look through any four "true ghost story" book, and count the number of places with reported stories, cemeteries and ossuaries are not at all well represented... Ghosts are experienced where the people they are thought to represent lived, played, worked, or died... not where they are buried... so "common sense" says that cemeteries, despite the hoo-haw surrounding them, are not bastions of ghostly activity.

Another example is people considering going into an "old, abandoned house to look for the ghosts". Again, are there historical ghost stories from the house? Is it legal to be in the house? Is it safe to be in that house? If the answer is "no" to any of those questions, not going to the house is a good show of common sense.

As for critical thinking... everyone should have an ounce of doubt. I had a woman say that she had one nasty "cold spot" (localised area of noticeably lower temperatures than the rest of the nearby environment,) in her new kitchen. She bought the house in Spring time, and even when she contacted us, (early Fall of a year with a very warm (hot) Summer,) if she put margarine or butter on the counter in that area, it would stay "hard" and almost refrigerated regardless of the rest of the rooms temperature.

She looked into the history of her home, and although her house was "new" (new build in a development,) she found the original land was home to a pig farm and had wondered if the abattoir or shambles were near where that bit of her kitchen was located.

With a quick look around, I noted an above HVAC vent nearby and with a little bit of "feeling", was able to determine that the breeze from the vent hit the exact spot where butter would stay hard when the air conditioning was on. A test with a lab thermometer (and the turning on and off of the central air conditioner,) confirmed this was the case.

This was not to "shame" the person, or to debunk anything maliciously, but simply look for the most correct answer as to what's been experienced, and this is the least we owe to people who trust us to investigate their experiences.

Critical thinking, for us, simply means not being too credulous (although there's most often no reason to doubt a witness,) but not completely accepting a hypothesis of causation without empirical evidence.

Granted, we also believe in saying words many seem too scared to utter.. "We don't know". If something remains unexplained, that is the only correct answer, regardless... unless, of course, you can absolutely and empirically prove the existence of ghosts as popularly defined.