FAQ
- “Maine Ghost Hunters is a client centered organization”, what does this mean?
As a client, or potential client, you may be reading this thinking “well, of course you are, you’re providing a service for your clients, so this obviously makes you ‘client-centered’, right?” – and this assumption would make sense. However, this is not always the case when it comes to letting a paranormal investigation team into your home or professional place of business. There are many different philosophies out there in the paranormal investigation ‘field’ regarding the motivation behind why certain teams function in the manner they do, the least of which centers on the needs of the client – or even their ‘wants’. Some teams will take every single investigation request that enters their email inbox, regardless if they have the ability to meet the needs of the client by conducting the requested investigation. This is not a client-centered approach, and the client will realize this after their time has been wasted, they’ve given strangers unfettered and unsupervised access to their home or business, and their hopes for help have been replaced with confusion, frustration, and renewed uncertainty. Maine Ghost Hunters refers cases all year long. We refer cases for many reasons, including but not limited to;- Distance away from the MGH investigation core: As an example, we often receive requests for investigations from Aroostook County. As much as we’d like to be able to help, and we know we can for a lot of these requests, what would we be able to offer a client who has an emergency situation and needs us to be at their residence the next day? We’re upwards of 4 hours away from some of these investigation requests. We feel it would be doing a client in this type of situation a complete disservice to take their case knowing there is another fully qualified paranormal investigation team within 30 minutes of the location they’re asking to have investigated.
- We lack the personnel needed for the level of assistance requested: If a client tells us they’re being attacked by a demon, nightly, and it’s leaving scratch marks on their body and they’re possessed by an evil spirit, we may not have the staff to properly address this situation. Taking this case would very likely wind up being at the client’s expense and may bring further detriment to their situation. Whereas, there are far too many paranormal investigators and investigation teams in action, presently, who are actively seeking these types of cases because they want to be involved in the ‘darker side’ of paranormal experiences. They aren’t focused on providing a level of service that matches their abilities as investigators. They’re actively seeking out client cases which they can use as a means to gain the personal and professional experience needed to tout themselves as “demon hunters”, and similar. They’re using clients to build their professional experience portfolio. It goes without saying there’s an ethical component regarding investigators conducting business in this manner. More importantly, for those clients who have legitimately concerning paranormal activity – this manner of behavior puts the client at additional risk of potential detriment.
- The client location is not interested in having us share our collected evidence and experiences with the public. This is not a hard and fast rule for us, by the way. We do have client cases we accept – and sometimes seek out – that forbid us from sharing our evidence publicly. However, there are cases we refer to other teams for this reason and we’ll tell you why. Maine Ghost Hunters takes peer review of evidence very seriously. We’re a skeptic-based group, not a ‘science’ based group, but we strive to reach a healthy degree of ‘scientific’ based, rational, reasoning when reviewing our evidence. That said, we adhere to a protocol, and a standard, that results in evidence that survives the test of time. We feel it’s our duty to share these protocols, standards, and results with our peers so we can all learn from our mutual processes and the results of those processes. This is what helps the paranormal community learn and grow, and it’s also what helps us all become better at what we do. It’s due to this philosophy that, as members of Maine Ghost Hunters, we see ourselves more as students – than teachers. We’re beyond flattered to have a seat at the table as contributing members of the conversation.
- We’re unavailable for reasons of scheduling conflicts, low staff-number availability, and/or we’ve maxed out our investigation commitments and feel we couldn’t give the requested case the attention it would deserve should it need to be addressed on a long term basis, etc…
- What does it mean when MGH defines itself as a group of ‘skeptic believers’?
- Maine Ghost Hunters is comprised of members who believe in the existence of paranormal activity. If you think about it long and hard enough you might reason it in a similar way we do; “why would we hunt for something we don’t believe exists?”. We wouldn’t. Would you? That said, we also aren’t in the habit of calling something ‘paranormal’ without obtaining the evidence to back up that claim. So it’s absolutely fair to say that MGH is a skeptic based organization which relies heavily on our audio recorders to capture spirit voices whenever possible, and our video cameras to record any physical phenomena which takes place during investigations. Physical phenomena can be anything from observing shadows that don’t belong to anyone in the room, the moving of objects, or the manipulation of our investigation tools by use of surrounding energy fields. We use all kinds of different tools to detect spirit interaction. Some are quite simple, such as hanging string from the ceiling with a single jingle bell tied to the bottom, and some are very complex such as our FLIR thermal imaging camera which is used to detect heat differentials in the environment. Any tool we can use that will allow our clients to observe the paranormal phenomena we record is a tool we consider a valuable asset in our equipment arsenal.
- Do most of your paranormal interactions involve a spirit who was once a person?
- Yes, and it’s because of this very reason we treat every spiritually active location with a level of sensitivity and respect similar to how we’d conduct ourselves if we were dealing with a living person trapped in a very personally stressful situation. MGH team leadership often reminds fellow team members to ‘treat every spirit like your grandmother’; with sensitivity, genuine care, compassion, and empathy.
- The Maine Ghost Hunters investigation approach assumes that spirits are causing issues to get the attention of ‘the living’ in a manner that may seem frightening, or even destructive, because they’re unable to communicate in any other way. Our philosophy includes the belief that a frustrated spirit is similar to a frustrated person. If any one of us ‘living’ people were to stand in a room with other living people, day in and day out, and no one could see us, hear us, talk to us, or feel our emotional reach for ‘connection’ we would become very frustrated very quickly. We might go to great lengths to be recognized as being present. When spirit activity is approached in this manner it becomes a much more fluent experience in terms of communication. Even if we can’t seem to hear or see them, they can hear and see us trying to hear and see them, and this – in our experience – has made a world of difference for a number of clients and their spiritually active locations.
- Why does MGH investigate the paranormal?
- To help our clients make sense of what’s going on in their spiritually active environment
- To help facilitate communication between client and spirit presence
- To bring relief, understanding, and a sense of ease to clients regarding the paranormal activity they fear, find disturbing, or are curious about.
- To learn more about ‘paranormal’, in general. To garner new experiences that will help us become better paranormal investigators. The more we learn the better prepared we are to help future clients. Every new case prepares us for the next. If you’ve had an investigation done by Maine Ghost Hunters you’ve benefited from the graciousness, generosity, and trust given to us by every client we’ve served before you. It really is a community effort, and we couldn’t be more thankful for that part of the MGH experience.
- To collect new data for the direct purpose of researching, studying, and getting better at what we do. It’s similar to the above written sentiment, which is client-centered, but this angle is more about our stance on peer-review, evidentiary responsibility, and furthering the limits of where paranormal investigations can ethically, and rationally, expand.
- Will you review my evidence for me?
- We get this question a lot. Maine Ghost Hunters has a very strict policy regarding our data collection protocol. There are far too many unknowns for us to consider while reviewing evidence we’re uncertain of, regarding how it was collected, the circumstances it was collected, or the state of the environment in which it was collected. It is because of this that we graciously decline requests to review evidence we weren’t a party to collecting.
- Maine Ghost Hunters simply does not have the time, nor the man power available, to review all of the evidence we’re requested to analyze in any given month.
- Can I go on a ghost hunt with you?
- Maine Ghost Hunters occasionally hosts public ghost hunting experiences which we invite non-team members to participate. In the past, each event has come with a participation fee ranging from $30 to upwards of $100+, depending on the location, the price we incur renting the location, the objective of the event (fundraising for a cause, the team, or an outside organization, et al… ), and other considerations that vary according to the specific circumstances surrounding the locale of the ghost hunt. These hunts are often advertised on our Meetup.com account, through social media (Twitter, Facebook, the MGH website, etc…), and sometimes at the location of the hunt, itself.
- What equipment do you use on your investigations?
- MGH utilizes a wide range of tools to conduct our investigations, but the most dependable to us have always been our audio and video recording devices and the software to analyze the data we collect with these devices.
- What is the most paranormally active location you’ve investigated?
- This question comes to us so often you might think we’d have an answer already prepared for the occasion, but the truth is… we don’t. We’ve investigated a couple of private residences, a number of times, which really impressed us with the sheer number of Class-A EVPs and real-time spiritual interaction we experienced, but there are also a few public access locations that have left us equally impressed. Some of the public locations we can mention would be the Portland Head Light Keeper’s Quarters (it’s a museum), the Gardiner Library, Lakewood Theater, and Fort Western in Augusta.
