The state of affairs.

When I founded the B.C.P.S 10 years ago with my wife Heidi. There were 4 other groups that I had heard of operating in the Black Country area, The West Midlands Ghost Club, Parasearch, Penn Paranormal (Defunct) and U.F.O.R.M. The B.C.P.S was founded just before Most Haunted came upon the telly, not by many months, but we are slightly older.

But since the founding of Most Haunted, paranormal research has become the new gardening. Every man and his dog is ghost hunting. And sometimes from what I've heard, a dog may well do a better job. Everybody is a parapsychologist, Psychic, foremost ghost hunter and all the other crap that comes with something that requires little to no real proof. And I wonder why? Me, I'm just plain old Wayne Pickrell, a man with a lifelong interest in paranormal phenomena and still none the wiser after 10 years of investigating the paranormal. Yes 10 years ago, I was an armchair enthusiast. And came into paranormal investigation, expecting to find a ghost in every corner of the UK. But was I going to get a wake up call.

What I found instead was that I spent many a sleepless night for very little reward. For although it might be hard to believe in this present climate of thrill seeking investigation groups, TV programmes and psychic TV, ghosts do not come out to play, just because the ghost hunters are on the scene! Although some will justify staying up all night with photo's of dust, orbs in other words, Ouija board sessions, E.V.P that's been altered upon a computer and only sounds like what the researcher wants to hear ( ofiolouy, see the ghost is saying, the investigator claims, it's name is Oliver, when all I can here ofioluy. LOL.) and what the psychic said, without any real research into whether the psychic was right.

What a state of affairs the paranormal research field is in. Which seems to have gone back to the middle ages. If we're not careful, there will be witch burnings at the stake next.  And then we have the other side of the coin, the scientific based groups with their ghost detectors. Hang on! How can you build a piece of equipment to detect ghosts, when there is no real proof that ghosts exist. Would you not need a ghost to measure the accuracy of this supposed equipment??? I'm no scientist, but I bet radiation was discovered before the Geiger counter was invented. I may well be wrong, but I doubt it. How can you build detection equipment without something to measure it against? I certainly do not claim to know it all, but some commons sense must be used here, PLEASE!

We at the B.C.P.S use Camcorders, Cameras, Thermometers and a psychic. Now just allow me to explain here. A psychic, our psychic is a member of the group and will admit freely, that she is as much under investigation by the group as is the alleged ghost. Although she has an uncanny ability to be quite accurate at times. And I do believe she may be capable of something. But it's the something, I'm investigating. Is she talking to the spirits of the dead, is she a mind reader or just lucky. I do not know! So until anything can be proven otherwise, the jury is still out. Anyway, we do also use an EMF meter, which again is under investigation, although I never use this EMF meter in buildings, for there are to many electrical items to affect this piece of equipment. Hence the finding would be flawed and of no real proof at all. But we have had some rather large readings in the middle of nowhere that are beyond explanation. And no electrical equipment to cause this strange effect. But does this lend credence to the existence of ghost, sadly no!

When any ghost hunter is investigating a commercial premises, it's OK to to offer up the weak evidence of Orb photo's. What the psychic found or E.V.P. Mainly because ghosts to a landlord, proprietor and so on of a commercial premises bring in the punters! But what about private properties. People's homes. Well, most people who call you in, don't want a ghost, they want peace of mind. They want it to be the plumbing, the electrics or just their imagination. Although I'm not saying this may well be the case in all alleged hauntings. Sometimes a good investigator might discover the supposed ghost is something normal, just by using their common sense. I remember one case I investigated, were the family had had a group in prior, who offered up the weak evidence of Orb photo's and what a psychic claimed to be the ghost haunting them. The alleged ghost turned the television on in the middle of the night. When in fact there was no ghost, but the family left the telly on standby and the families pet cat was using the TV remote as a pillow, until it turned the TV on and ran away frightened by the noise of the TV. Case solved and Casper the friendly ghost was nowhere in sight! 

Now this is not always the case. The B.C.P.S have investigated some sights, where we have experienced some phenomena that we are still at a loss to explain. The Manor House in West Bromwich is one such place and a lane in Kinver is another, plus the happenings, I've experienced in my own home. I am at a loss to find plausible explanations for these happenings, but that does not mean, I'm still not looking. But I'm sorry, I will never jump to wild speculative assumptions to please my belief system or someone else's! 

Now, I'm a Christian, I believe in God and used to believe we died, went to heaven and lived happily ever after and sinners were cast into Hell to be prodded by Satan for eternity with a pitch fork. But after some serious research and reading the Holy Bible. I discovered that when man dies, he is dead until the day of resurrection, when Christ calls them forth from the grave. So, if that's the case, who are the psychic's talking to? I could hazard a guess, but I will not. And where on earth are ghost coming from. A possibility could be, slips in time or time replaying itself. But that is only a theory with no solid fact! There are millions of questions surrounding the paranormal and very few answers. So until such a time that the answers become available, please use one thing that is common in most of humanity, when dealing with a paranormal situation and that's your common sense!