Image by mnd.ctrl via FlickrA teacher in Virginia has formed an after school ghost hunting club for his students. Marcus Daniels a science teacher at Lakeland High in Suffolk Virginia says he formed the group to help boost students problem solving skills.So far they have studied Ouija boards with inconclusive results, ten students felt paranormal influence could not be ruled out while six felt it could. Recently they undertook an investigation of an historic structure in the town where they used the usual "Ghost Hunting" gear but also included a Ouija board and tarot cards. Not sure what tarot cards would have to do with paranormal investigation so let's hope they release their information publicly. The group also uses a $5,000 thermal imaging camera like those seen on paranormal TV shows. It's good to be a novelty, I guess.
During their investigation their teacher played Civil War music trying to stir up paranormal activity while the students wandered about asking for signs of a presence.
The group has a website where they list information about their club and tests they've undertaken. Hopefully, in the future their teacher will show them how to write a full paper on experiments with data and analysis as well.
It appears, though, from a casual perusal of the site that the group is based upon the TAPS model for the most part. Their teacher has more or less carried over that type of structure to this student organization and the reporting reflects the same type of reporting and analysis. They also list the popular television series on their website.
While they have studied Tarot cards, unfortunately, their teacher missed the most agreed upon hypothesis in psychology and parapsychology concerning Tarot. As most researchers have found the Tarot is a non-paranormal system utilizing subconscious information to arrive at a answer to a question. Tarot as a "fortune telling" device has been effectively debunked for many years while this use of the cards, thanks to Carl Jung, has remained popular and useful in many situations. Rather than an experiment conducted with Geiger counters and EMF meters it would have behooved the group to look closely at psychological processes and the interaction of the reader and subject.
It is heartening to see young people seriously considering explanations for paranormal phenomena and hopefully, this early experience will get the "ghost hunting" bug out of their system and allow them to pursue deeper subjects and studies as they mature. What is even more uplifting is that the students don't seem to be losing interest because, as we all know, activity is hard to come by on investigations. They seem as interested in nothing happening as when things go happen. That trait forms the seed of an effective investigator.
The Lakeland High School Skeptic Society will be featured in an upcoming issue of "Haunted Times" magazine. (full story)
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As a Paranormal Investigator I have the opportunity to visit many wonderful sites of supposed haunting phenomena. I am a member of Sonoran Paranormal Investigations in Arizona and websmaster for the group.
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2 comments:
All I can say is 'oy veh'.
So a high school club is as good as a mediocre group of adult investigators? Comforting.
Hi Buck,
This is Mr. Daniels from the Lakeland Skeptics Society. First as foremost I'd like to thank you for writing this wonderful post about our club. I showed it to the kids today and they were very excited about the fact that we were being talked about openly in the paranormal research community.
A couple of things... First about the Tarot cards. Our question regarding them was not psychological in nature. The kids were made aware that psychology has been shown to have an influence on the reading. Most of the children reported 70 - 80% accuracy of the cards readings. We wanted to test, however, if any paranormal activity would result from use of the cards. The psychology behind it would have been a completely different experiment altogether. Our results showed, as will be published soon in Haunted Times, that there were higher levels of both gamma and emf radiation during the reading as well as a noted temperature drop of 5 - 6 degrees F. The editor for Haunted Times, Mark Mihalko, did catch some very interesting photographs during the initial testing. We brought the Tarot along with us on the investigation to see if maybe they would help stir something up due to the semi-incredible results received during the first session.
Secondly, I am currently working on getting the kids to start publishing research papers on our finding in a journal article style and format. I thought it was a bit funny that you had mentioned that because I was thinking the same thing and mentioned it to them a couple of weeks ago. This is something I am going to work closely with our club secretary/'s with to create detailed results of our findings that could published.
Again, thank you for the kind words and helpful tips!
Marcus Daniels
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