GUARDING AGAINST SKEPTICISM BY STEVE GONSALVES OF TAPS

I wanted to share an article by Steve Gonsalves of the TAPS Team or Ghost Hunters as most of us know him as.  I thought this was a really good article about skepticism that I think we all who are in this field get a "good dose" of very often from maybe others that just don't understand what we do or maybe they do and just want to give us a hard time....either way I think Steve's article was really good. 

Guarding Against Skepticism – by Steve Gonsalves

You spend a lot of time doing the research, finding the evidence, and showing your evidence to the public.All this time spent just to hear someone say “That’s not real” or “That just looks like smoke”.
This person we all love is known as a skeptic.
The skeptic could be another research group, the media, or it could be your friend who you are showing your
latest research to.
Skeptic is such an evil word for some, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Not if you research, collect, and present your evidence properly. Be your own skeptic, Don’t believe it until you see it.
Collecting your evidence could be the most important part of your research.
Most common evidence collected are photographs and videos.
We will focus mostly on photographs.
When taking pictures, We all know to make sure it’s not raining, no dust in the air, no camera straps, no smoking on the premises and no breathing in cold weather. 

I would like to go over a few things that can be very beneficial to your investigations.
The first thing you should know about is coupling.
Coupling is using other tools in conjunction with your photographs.
For instance, you could use an EMF gauge in conjunction with your photography.
Most people do this anyway, but a lot of researchers don’t and most new investigators don’t know any better.
This way you could present your evidence as, “Everytime my EMF gauge spikes a reading that supports paranormal phenomena, I capture this smoke like mist on film”.
That is a much better way to present evidence then, “Look at the strange mist in these pictures”.
The EMF gauge offers a scientific backing for your evidence.
The same would work with thermal probes or any of the paranormal adapted technology we use. 

Next, I’d like to talk about control pictures.
These are pictures of a non-paranormal nature on the same roll of film with pictures of a paranormal nature.
What this does is stops people from assuming it is something wrong with the whole roll of film. For example, say you are investigating a case where a woman knows where the activity is, and can tell it’s in the same room as her.
You take a few pictures in the area she says it is, and also take a few pictures in the same area when she says it’s not there.
This way, when you present these pictures as evidence you can say, “When she said the ‘entity’ was present we took these pictures with the fog like mist.
When she said the ‘entity’ was gone, we took these control pictures we took came out clear of the fog like mist”.
So we have control pictures validating our paranormal pictures.
It can also be used as easily as taking pictures outside of the investigation location to use as control pictures.
So you can present them as, “In the location we have these pictures with the fog like mist, we took these control pictures outside of the investigation location and all of these pictures are free from the fog like mist”.

One other thing I want to address is the lingo we use when talking about our research, and more importantly presenting our evidence.
Try to stay away from words that may cast a negative shadow on our research.
Words such as “Ghostbuster”, “Ectoplasm” and “Psychic”.
Not that these things don’t exist, it’s just that these words and words like them reflect negatively on our research.
Ectoplasm was a substance that used to exude from the mouths of early century mediums.
Come to find out it was just cheesecloth they would swallow and regurgitate at the climax of their session.
Also the Ghostbusters movie made Ectoplasm seem like a made up word.
Try to use phrases like mysterious fog, strange mist, or even Ectoplasm-like mist instead of ectoplasm.
You’ll find that if you use words like Ectoplasm, Psychic and Ghostbuster, people will have a harder time taking you seriously.
Of course there is a lot more to making and keeping your reputation healthy, but using simple tips like these it will be a lot easier to present your evidence to skeptics.

Steve Gonsalves