It’s true that in November, the group as a whole, underwent some personnel and strategy changes. As I sit here listening to Christmas music and writng this blog installment, I can’t help but reflect on all the changes and all the work.
We had a busy year. The last three months found us conducting three restaurant investigations, three residential investigations and a movie theater investigation. Busy indeed. And now, I am in evidence review mode.
Everyday in between taking care of ma, the house and my freelance writing work, I sit down in front of my monitor to watch footage streaming from the DVR in the hope that maybe the team may have actually caught something via camera during an investigation.
What always makes me laugh is the TV shows that depict investigators sitting around looking at video footage and listening to EVP recordings in what seems like a fairly short time. If only reality was like that.
Our team has a nine channel DVR system and on most investigations, we run at least five cameras at a minimum. That means that if we have a six hour investigation, it takes 30 hours to review the footage. Nope. We don’t look at all five cameras at once. We look at the footage for each camera-that’s six hours per camera per location in the building.
Add to that, there is the EVP work which, depending on what recorder was used, can be very time consuming. Why? There is a debate between investigators as to which technique works the best. I prefer using voice activation and a Sony recorder. It cuts down on recorder space and I have gotten excellent results but some investigators prefer letting their recorders run. When you go through the recordings, it can take hours depending on how it was recorded.
Also you need a quiet area to do the review and a good set of sound canceling headphones. That always makes me laugh as I have friends who buy the really expensive headphones. Me? I have a set of RCA headphones purchased at Walmart for $19.99. I have had the same headphones for more than six years and they are great. I also have the gift of good hearing so I tend to pick up stuff no one else can thus finding those hard to hear EVPS.
Then there are the wireless mics that are recorded directly into the computer during the investigation and the hand held video cameras.
Did I mention the paperwork? In addition to all the evidence review there are also the reports that investigators turn in. Each report must be gone over and compared with other reports from the investigation in the hope of finding similarities in readings or impressions. As the team monitor, I also have my own reports to fill out and those include weather temperature records taken every half hour, watching the indoor weather monitoring equipment and making notes on any changes, watching all the cameras, and constant note taking when I see what may be something of interest in one of the rooms.
In addition, as I do the evidence review here at home, I have forms to fill out whether I am watching video or listening to EVPs. I am a scientist after all and that means a lot of record keeping, classifying EVPs, looking at still pictures of the site, and looking closely at every anomaly that shows up on the video.
I also break away and do some investigating myself.
For those of you who see investigators on TV review their evidence in under six hours, it is very different in the real world. To do the evidence review for one investigation can take a week or more depending on how much equipment was used in the field.
And once the evidence has been reviewed there is yet another form called the Final Investigation Form and behind that is the Client Report.
Yes. Investigating the paranormal is fun but like any job, there is a lot of work involved and if we, as a group can help some person or family along the way then that makes it all worthwhile.
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